Clean Power Hour

The U.S. is facing a major energy challenge. AI data centers are driving electricity demand higher, grid infrastructure takes years and billions of dollars to expand, and communities need reliable power. Could microgrids and distributed energy resources help bridge the gap?

In this episode of The Clean Power Hour, host Tim Montague speaks with Lester Crafton of Ovanova about the evolution of solar, battery storage, and microgrids, and why he believes homes and businesses could play a much bigger role in America's energy future.

Lester shares the story behind Ovanova's unconventional beginnings, from a...

Can you put cattle beneath solar panels without damaging the equipment or driving up project costs?

Silicon Ranch set out to answer that question, and the result is what Matt Beasley, Chief Commercial Officer at Silicon Ranch, describes as the world's first utility-scale solar PV plant specifically designed to integrate cattle grazing.

In this episode of the Clean Power Hour, host Tim Montague speaks with Matt about the engineering behind this breakthrough, including a patented solar tracking design that adjusts panel positioning in active grazing areas. The 4.5 MW project in Christiana, Tennessee, went live in...

America’s nuclear renaissance is gaining momentum, but new nuclear power plants can take around a decade to build. With electricity demand rising and the grid under pressure, what can the energy industry do now to deliver reliable, affordable power?

In this episode of the Clean Power Hour, host Tim Montague speaks with Cortney Piper, founder and executive director of the Tennessee Advanced Energy Business Council and president of Piper Communications.

They explore Tennessee’s growing advanced energy economy, the role of solar and storage in meeting near-term electricity demand, and the policy decisions needed to a...

Solar and battery storage are reshaping the energy industry, but policy uncertainty, grid constraints, manufacturing challenges, and equipment reliability remain major issues.

In this episode of Clean Power Hour Live, Tim Montague and John Weaver break down the latest developments in solar, energy storage, and the evolving power grid. They discuss new research showing that four-hour battery storage is becoming cost-competitive with gas peaker plants, China's restrictions on solar manufacturing technologies, U.S. solar deployment forecasts, and the growing challenges of connecting data centers to the grid.

The conversation also explores solar project quality, the...

Solar EPCs face growing pressure to deliver projects on time, manage costs, secure financing, and navigate changing energy policies. So how can smaller companies grow while protecting their profitability and reputation?

In this episode of the Clean Power Hour, host Tim Montague sits down with Forrest Cohn, co-founder of Utopian Power, to discuss building a reliable solar and battery storage business in a changing market.

Based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Utopian Power develops renewable energy projects. It provides engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) services for municipalities, municipally owned utilities, rural electric cooperatives, and other project...

A 100 kW rooftop can be a meaningful source of energy savings—and a difficult project to finance. How do you make solar work for affordable housing, churches, and nonprofits?

In this episode of the Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague sits down with Ben Underwood and Isaac Baker, founders of Massachusetts-based Resonant Energy, to discuss how they built a solar development business around nonprofits, houses of worship, and low-income multifamily housing.

Ben and Isaac explain how a portfolio approach brings buying power and financing to smaller projects, why their business pivoted toward affordable housing, and what de...

Rising electricity demand and prolonged outages are pushing the Tennessee Valley to rethink how it builds and operates the grid. Where do solar, batteries, and community-scale microgrids fit?

In episode 374 of the Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague welcomes Gil Hough, Executive Director of the Tennessee Solar Energy Industries Association (TenneSEIA), for a conversation following the organization’s 2026 conference.

Gil explains how the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) shapes this distinctive public-power market—and why municipal utilities and electric cooperatives are becoming a source of innovation in solar, storage, and distributed energy.

Tim and Gil disc...

Solar and storage are moving into a new phase, and this week's Clean Power Hour Live covers the technologies, policies, and market shifts shaping that transition.

Tim Montague and John Weaver break down the latest developments across solar, batteries, wind, grid infrastructure, and electrification.

In California, Governor Gavin Newsom has signed legislation supporting virtual power plants and making plug-in solar officially legal. The hosts discuss what these changes could mean for distributed energy, grid flexibility, consumers, and the future of behind-the-meter solar.

They also cover US solar manufacturer ratings, a Google pilot for...

A battery only earns its keep when it can connect to the grid and get to work. What does it take to turn better battery technology into a viable energy project?

In episode 373 of the Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague speaks with Dr. Simon Engelke, founder of Battery Associates and Battery MBA and host of the Battery Insiders podcast. They explore the technology, economics, and expertise needed to scale storage across the grid, transportation, and emerging industries.

Drawing on his Cambridge PhD in lithium-ion batteries and his work advising and training industry professionals, Simon explains...

Grid storage is growing faster than the industry expected. EVs accounted for more than 70% of global battery deployment in 2025, down from almost 80% in 2024, according to the IEA. 

On this CPH Live, Tim Montague and John Weaver unpack stationary battery storage growth and follow the batteries to two places: 230 GW of data center interconnection requests and a solar plus storage copper mine in Congo. They also cover China clean tech investment, EV charging costs, and agrivoltaics. These stories show where new batteries are going and why.

Episode Highlights:

How do you take a 365 kW commercial solar project from a customer conversation to steel in the ground?

In this episode of the Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague goes behind the scenes of a 365 kW commercial solar project for Griffin Beverage in West Branch, Michigan, with Jordan Rhyne of Countryside Energy and Kyle Sinclair of Sinclair Designs & Engineering.

The project brought together domestic-content solar modules, custom racking engineering, structural analysis, field installation lessons, and a challenging interconnection process with Consumers Energy.

Jordan and Kyle walk through what it took to make the project...

What if your solar system could earn far more by powering AI compute than by selling electricity back to the grid?  

In this episode of Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague talks with Karl Andersen, founder and CEO of Lektra, about a different approach to the growing power demands of AI. Lektra places GPU servers alongside distributed energy resources such as solar and batteries, turning homes, businesses, and other energy sites into small-scale data centers. 

Instead of exporting excess solar to the grid, an energy host can use that electricity to power GPU workloads and earn re...

America may need more than 230 GW of new power capacity through 2030. Regulated utilities are expected to deliver only about 93 GW. So where does the rest come from?

Tim Montague takes that question to Sylvia Leyva Martinez, Director of North America Utility-Scale Solar at Wood Mackenzie, on a crossover with her show Interchange Recharged. They work the gap from opposite ends of the industry: utility-scale generation versus C&I, community solar, storage, and microgrids. 

They cover safe harbor strategy under the ITC phase-out, how projects get financed, and how the AI data center boom reshapes demand. T...

G&W Electric's vanadium flow + flywheel microgrid matched a full year of frequency regulation revenue in under three months 

Vanadium flow batteries rarely anchor a commercial microgrid, but G&W Electric built one around a solar, battery, and flywheel system at its Bolingbrook, Illinois headquarters. John Gounaris, VP of Global Marketing, and John Pederson, Principal Staff Engineer and the project's manager, walk Tim Montague through the build. 

G&W Electric manufactures switches, reclosers, and grid automation gear used across US utility grids, and its 121-year-old campus needed resilient power to protect production. The project runs on...

Speed to power: Bala Ramamurthy of Critical Loop on cutting grid connection from years to days with modular microgrids. 

Speed to power is the problem Critical Loop was built to solve. Bala Ramamurthy is the founder and CEO of Critical Loop, a California modular microgrid company that brings megawatts to industrial facilities and data centers when a utility interconnection is years away. Before energy, Bala spent 12 years at SpaceX as chief engineer on the first human spaceflight mission, and he applies that same high-reliability systems thinking to the grid. 

This conversation covers how their Cygnus co...

Section 232 tariffs are reshaping solar module pricing across the United States. Tim Montague and co-host John Weaver sit down with returning guest Chris Lettman, a solar module supply chain and technology expert with Imperial Star Solar. 

Chris explains why the new policy works as a price floor, not a simple tariff, setting a minimum import price plus a 15 percent tax on cells, wafers, and modules. The three break down domestic cell shortages, First Solar litigation, and how developers hedge against monthly price hikes. 

Anyone buying solar panels before the December 4 deadline needs this pricing and pr...

Clean energy company culture is what separates good solar EPCs from great ones, and Mynt CEO Derek Hansen has a name for how he builds it: inspire, empower, support.

Company culture in the solar and storage industry gets talked about far less than it should, and this episode makes the case for why that needs to change. 

Derek Hansen is CEO and co-founder of Mynt, a vertically integrated development, engineering, and construction firm that builds solar and battery storage projects for commercial real estate owners and other solar developers. Tim Montague hosts this conversation, framing i...

Solar asset management inside a 35-year ownership model: CJ Colavito and Jay Smith of Standard Solar explain what it actually takes to own distributed generation projects for decades, from evaluating tracker and inverter reliability to redesigning inverter specs around eventual failure.

In this episode of Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague sits down with CJ Colavito, General Manager of Integrated Project Teams, and Jay Smith, VP of Operations and Maintenance and Asset Management, to discuss what they have learned from developing, building, owning, and operating commercial and community solar projects.

The conversation goes deep on one...

The Federal Communications Commission's new ban on foreign-produced solar inverters left the industry without clear answers on warehoused stock, firmware updates, and grid cybersecurity risk. 

On this episode of The Clean Power Hour Live, hosts Tim Montague and John Weaver break down the foreign inverter ban alongside new Section 232 solar tariffs that set a 38 cent per watt minimum price on modules. They also cover a Reuters report on Chinese electric truck exports climbing as diesel prices spike across Southeast Asia, a 30% efficient perovskite-silicon solar panel from Tandem PV headed to market this fall, and a phishing scam u...

Chris Koczaja grew LightWave Solar to 30 million dollars by refusing to chase every deal. This is the discipline that got him there.

Chris Koczaja is the CEO of LightWave Solar, a residential and commercial solar and storage installer in Nashville, Tennessee, now in its 20th year in business. 

In this conversation, Tim Montague asks Koczaja what actually separates a good solar company from a great one: recruiting and retaining strong teams, planning so thoroughly that execution has no surprises, a philosophy Koczaja calls building boring solar, and never betting growth on a single revenue stream, a...

Enhanced rock weathering pulls carbon dioxide from the air using crushed rock. Jim Mann, CEO and founder of Undo, explains how the process works and why the technology scales fast. Undo turns rock dust into permanent carbon storage and sells credits to Microsoft and British Airways at $350 a ton, a price Mann expects to halve within years.

The atmosphere holds 1.7 trillion tons of legacy CO2, and enhanced rock weathering ranks among the few carbon removal pathways built to pull carbon out for good. Jim Mann, CEO and founder of Undo, joins host Tim Montague to break down...

Dual-use solar financing in action: Sunrise Solar's Richard Stoltzfus built a 700 kW behind-the-meter array for Harbor Sales Company. The build stacks a USDA REAP grant with a Maryland MEA grant and drives the customer's levelized energy cost to near zero.

A 700 kW behind-the-meter solar array now offsets 70 percent of the electric load at Harbor Sales Company, a plywood and sign-panel distributor that has run out of Sudlersville, Maryland since 1931. 

Richard Stoltzfus, CEO of Sunrise Solar, and Kendrick Tice, COO of Sunrise Solar, join host Tim Montague to walk through their Chestertown-based company's build for Harbor S...

Georgia is the second-largest data center market in the country, and its grid is straining under load growth no one predicted five years ago. Michael Chanin, CEO of Cherry Street Energy, joins Tim to break down how behind-the-meter solar and storage are stepping in, why utilities need private capital to keep rates in check, and what a multi-gigawatt data center outside Savannah means for the region.

Tim sits down with Michael Chanin, CEO of Cherry Street Energy, a vertically integrated power company based in Georgia that develops, owns, and operates behind-the-meter solar and storage for commercial and...

The U.S. needs 400 GW of new capacity over the next two decades. Michael Grasso, CEO and founder of Grid Rails, tells Tim Montague that roughly twice that much flexible capacity is already plugged in, and explains why only 20% of eligible devices are enrolled in virtual power plant programs today.

Data centers, EVs, heat pumps, and new construction are pushing U.S. electricity demand up by roughly 50%, about 400 gigawatts over the next two decades. The reflex answer is to build more generation. Michael Grasso thinks we are solving the wrong problem.

Grasso is the CEO...

Wildfire smoke from Canada cut solar production across New England by as much as 40 percent, according to ISO New England, a loss of 2,500 megawatts at peak hours compared to the forecast. 

Tim Montague and John Weaver dig into that data, including John's own project numbers, on the Clean Power Hour Live. They also cover a massive BYD battery storage deal in Abu Dhabi, a new gas car ban in China, rising copper prices, and a wave of new battery products hitting the market. 

Whether you're an installer, developer, investor, or simply following the clean energy tr...

Power generation is changing fast. As utilities struggle with interconnection delays and growing electricity demand, businesses are looking for faster, more reliable ways to secure power.

In this episode of Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague sits down with Walt Jordan, Chief Revenue Officer at dGEN Energy Partners, to explore one of the least talked-about emerging technologies in distributed energy: linear generators.

Unlike traditional generators, linear generators have no crankshaft, no spark plugs, no engine oil, and very few moving parts. They are designed to operate continuously, and they run on multiple fuel sources, including natural...

America's electric grid wasn't built for AI, electric vehicles, battery storage, or the rapid growth of renewable energy.

So how do we modernize a system that was built and started in the late 1800s and early 1900s, more than a century ago?

In this episode of Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague sits down with Zaid Ashai, CEO of Nexamp, the nation's largest community solar developer, to discuss community solar, battery storage, grid modernization, and why policy certainty is essential to building a cleaner, more reliable, and more affordable energy system.

Nexamp operates across 19...

What does it take to turn next-generation solar technology into a bankable commercial product?

Swift Solar is closing the U.S. heterojunction and perovskite tandem solar cell gap. Dr. Gunter Erfurt, managing director at Swift Solar and former Meyer Burger CEO, joins Tim Montague and John Weaver to explain why U.S. module capacity sits near 50 gigawatts while domestic cell capacity trails at 5 gigawatts.

Following Swift Solar's acquisition of Meyer Burger's technology, intellectual property, manufacturing equipment, and engineering team, Dr. Erfurt shares how the company plans to accelerate U.S. solar manufacturing while preparing for...

Community microgrids saved lives during a PG&E shutoff in Humboldt County. Lisa Cohn of Microgrid Knowledge has tracked every project getting built in America right now. She tells you what separates the ones that succeed from the ones that fail, and what you need to know before entering this market.

Community microgrids are among the fastest-growing segments in solar and storage, and among the hardest to finance and build. Lisa Cohn is the co-founder of Microgrid Knowledge, a publication she has run for over a decade, covering every major microgrid deployment in the United States. 

Solar carport installation costs can swing by 12 cents per watt before a single panel goes up. Kyle Sinclair, CEO and co-founder of SDE (Sinclair Designs and Engineering), James Strizki, Project Manager and CFO of GenMounts and Renewable Energy Holdings, and Matt Boyce, a PE licensed in 27 states and Principal Engineer at Engineered Solutions, join Tim Montague to break down exactly how carport projects are won and lost. Between them, they have engineered, manufactured, reviewed, and installed hundreds of megawatts of solar structures. This webinar covers the full arc of a carport project from initial bid to commissioning, with a...

CATL unveiled its TENER Sodium energy storage system at Intersolar Europe in Munich, rated for 15,000 cycles to 70 percent state of health at room temperature. CATL frames that as a 25 to 30 year service life, and it takes only 34 modules to stand up a one gigawatt-hour site. That single specification changes how commercial storage professionals price, propose, and finance battery projects. Tim Montague and John Weaver dig into what it means, alongside Illinois growing from about 80 megawatts of solar a decade ago to over 6,000 megawatts today under the new CRGA law, SunBallast ballasted racking and what module stacking tells you about...

A single design error on a commercial solar project can cost $60,000 to $70,000 to fix. Scott Wyssling and Catherine Kelso of Wyssling Consulting explain what quality design actually looks like, why AI cannot replace a licensed engineer reviewing plans, and how battery integration really fits into commercial solar today.

In this episode, Tim Montague sits down with Scott Wyssling, founder and principal at Wyssling Consulting, and Catherine Kelso, Director of Commercial Design and electrical engineer at the firm. Wyssling provides structural and electrical engineering and design for residential and commercial solar and storage projects across the United States...

Battery energy storage fire safety is one of the most urgent permitting challenges facing solar and storage developers in 2026. Mike Nicholas, Energy Storage Specialist and Fire Consultant at Hiller Companies, brings a rare perspective: he built Kern County's entire BESS permitting program from scratch in 2019, when no national standards existed, and now travels the country helping developers, EPCs, and fire departments get these projects to yes.

Kern County has the highest concentration of renewable energy and battery storage in California, including the largest active battery storage project in the world at roughly 3.2 GWh. Mike developed a 32-page...

A US federal court just ruled the IRS acted in an "arbitrary and capricious" manner on solar and wind safe harbor rules, shaking up project timelines for developers racing toward the July 4, 2026 deadline. 

Meanwhile, at the Shanghai Solar Show (SNEC), energy storage claimed more floor space than solar panels for the first time, signaling a major shift in where the industry is placing its bets. 

Tim and John dig into safe harbor court rulings, vertical integration in US module manufacturing, battery technology milestones, and agrivoltaics at the Vatican. Viewers get first-hand reporting from the Shanghai So...

Solar & storage pioneers Solar Design Associates share 50 years of firsts on the Clean Power Hour. They put solar on the White House in 1979 and built the first community solar garden in America. Haskell Werlin and Steven Strong trace solar's fall from $16 to $1 per watt, explain why the battery cost curve is following the same path, and break down what the ITC-free era means for developers.

Solar and storage pioneers Solar Design Associates have been designing solar energy systems since 1974, accumulating firsts from the Carter-era White House installation to the first true community solar garden in the United...

Community microgrids and virtual power plants are two of the most misunderstood concepts in clean energy, and the gap between them is where billions of dollars in grid value are being left on the table. Craig Lewis, Founder and CEO of the Clean Coalition, returns to The Clean Power Hour to break down how community-scale microgrids and VPPs actually work, where the money is, and why the current policy window in California matters to every energy professional in the country.

California's Microgrid Incentive Program funds up to $18 million per community microgrid project, covering 100% of upfront costs for...

Energy resilience for homeowners is the mission behind Energy Access Innovations, a multi-brand clean energy company building an end-to-end ecosystem for solar and battery storage. Nicole Tomasin, Chief Commercial Officer at EAI, joins Tim Montague to explain how the company serves the consumers the rest of the industry ignores, including DIYers and rural markets.

Battery storage and solar access for homeowners is moving beyond coastal markets and high-income consumers. Energy Access Innovations has built a multi-brand portfolio covering distribution, DIY support, installation, and financing under one mission: making energy resilience affordable for every American. Nicole walks Tim...

Silicon solar is approaching a hard physical efficiency ceiling at 30%. Perovskite tandem solar is the only proven path through it. Joel Jean, CEO of Swift Solar, explains the technology, what the Meyer Burger acquisition brings, and where tandems sit on the road to commercial scale.

After seven decades, silicon solar is closing in on its physical efficiency limit, and no previous thin-film technology has been able to outperform it at competitive cost. Joel Jean, CEO and co-founder of Swift Solar, a tandem PV manufacturer based in California, joined Tim Montague on the Clean Power Hour to explain...

A new report from Clean Energy Associates found that some solar module factories in their first year of production are hitting yield rates as low as 30%. That means 70% of modules coming off certain lines require rework before they ship. The finding applies directly to US manufacturers, most of which are still in early ramp-up stages. 

In this week's Clean Power Hour Live, Tim Montague and John Weaver break down what the report means for solar developers sourcing modules right now, why newer factories in the US face the same challenges previously seen in India and Vietnam, and w...

Community microgrids are functionally illegal in most of the United States, yet climate-driven outages are getting worse. Cameron Brooks of Think Microgrid explains why wires laws block resilient grid solutions and what it costs us to keep burying lines instead.

Burying power lines costs $4 million per mile in Colorado and up to $9 million per mile in California. That means every 20 to 25 feet of buried line costs as much as it would take to equip a home with a full battery backup system capable of riding through a 48-hour outage. Cameron Brooks, founder of Think Microgrid and E9...