SunCast

Heather Reams spends her days at the intersection of clean energy and public policy, helping shape conversations with lawmakers about how the U.S. meets rapidly growing electricity demand. As President and CEO of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions (CRES), she brings an insider's perspective on the political shifts redefining how Washington talks about solar—and why those shifts matter far beyond Capitol Hill.

In this conversation, Heather explains why affordability has become the dominant energy issue in Washington, why permitting reform remains one of the biggest barriers to building new infrastructure, and why solar's gr...

One of the most common assumptions in business is that responsibility should be earned only after years of experience.

After more than two decades as a Navy F/A-18 fighter pilot and instructor, Jason Knapp came to a different conclusion: capability often follows responsibility, provided organizations are willing to invest in training, honest feedback, and continuous learning.

That philosophy shaped his transition into clean energy, where he worked across battery manufacturing, supply chains, and policy advocacy, helping lawmakers better understand the technologies shaping America's energy future. Now, after years of advocating from outside...

A single battery cell can shut down an entire storage plant.

It's one of the many operational realities that make battery storage fundamentally different from solar, and one of the reasons software, analytics, and automation are becoming just as important as the batteries themselves.

Ty Fenton, Director of Data Analytics at FlexGen, joins Nico Johnson to explore what really happens after a battery project is commissioned. From managing thousands of individual cells to processing enormous volumes of operational data, Ty explains why operating battery storage requires a completely different mindset than operating solar...

Last year, solar and storage accounted for more than 80% of all new power generation capacity added in the United States.

So why does our industry still behave like the underdog?

In this special collaboration between SunCast and Energy Empire, Nico Johnson and Jigar Shah sit down with Dan Shugar, one of the most accomplished entrepreneurs in solar, to explore a question that reaches far beyond technology, manufacturing, or policy.

Perhaps our biggest challenge isn't building projects...

...it's learning how to lead?

Dan has spent four decades helping...

For decades, the energy industry has treated its biggest challenge as building more power.

Sean Kelly thinks that's the wrong question.

As CEO and co-founder of Amperon, Sean spends his days helping utilities, traders, generators, and some of the world's largest electricity users anticipate what's coming next. And what he's learned is surprisingly simple: the grid's biggest challenge isn't producing enough electricity. It's knowing when, where, and how demand, weather, and renewable generation will collide.

That shift is changing everything.

In this Tactical Tuesday conversation, Sean explains why Amperon...

Everyone agrees we need more distributed energy. The harder question is: who pays for it?

That's the question Molly Bauch has been wrestling with.

As North American Connected Energy Lead at Accenture, Molly helped develop a new model that connects one of the fastest-growing sources of electricity demand with one of the country's biggest energy challenges.

The idea is surprisingly simple.

Data centers need community support and faster paths to power. Millions of low-income households need access to affordable solar and storage. What if those two needs could solve...

What determines whether a battery project performs safely over its lifetime?

According to Kathleen McCaffery and Jeff Zwijack, the answer has as much to do with process, preparation, and quality assurance as it does with the battery itself.

In this special live SunCast broadcast, Nico Johnson sits down with Kathleen McCaffery, retired Battalion Chief and former Global Fire Liaison for Tesla, and Jeff Zwijack, Associate Director of Energy Storage at Clean Energy Associates, to discuss what hundreds of inspections reveal about battery safety, operational readiness, and risk management across the energy storage industry.<...

There are 43 years of decisions compressed into this episode.

And if you work in energy, utilities, infrastructure, manufacturing, or public policy, it's worth your attention.

Tom Fanning spent four decades at Southern Company, including 13 years as CEO, helping guide one of the largest and most influential power companies in the United States through extraordinary change. Along the way, he oversaw everything from international development and grid modernization to cyber security and the completion of Vogtle, the first new commercial nuclear plant built in America in more than 30 years.

In this special...

Leadership transitions reveal what companies value most.

When FTC Solar recently tapped Anthony Carroll as the new CEO, they chose someone who has spent more than two decades helping build some of clean energy's most recognizable companies. From helping scale Power Electronics from a small Spanish manufacturer into a global powerhouse, to leading Powin during a period of extraordinary growth, Anthony has experienced both the excitement and the hard lessons that come with building businesses in rapidly evolving markets.

Now, after stepping away from the industry to lead automated manufacturing initiatives outside of...

What if the most compelling case for clean energy isn't climate change, economics, or energy independence?

What if it's public health?

Former EPA Administrator Michael Regan has spent his career connecting pollution, environmental protection, and energy policy to the everyday health of American communities. In this special collaboration between SunCast and Energy Empire, Nico Johnson and Jigar Shah sit down with Regan to explore why he viewed the EPA as a public health agency first, and what today's clean energy leaders can learn from communities demanding a greater voice in decisions that affect...

Rare earths are having a moment. And if you work anywhere near clean energy, batteries, EVs, data centers, defense, or domestic manufacturing, this conversation should be on your radar.

And, when it comes to rare earths (aka critical minerals), it seems everyone talks about mining.

But according to Mark LaVerghetta, that's not where the real critical minerals challenge lies.

Nico got a chance to sit down with Mark, co-founder of ReElement Technologies, in person finally, and learned that the true bottleneck in the clean energy transition is refining. You can dig...

Risk looks different depending on where you're standing.

In Episode 936 (Jason Kaminsky & 2026 The Solar Risk Assessment), we explored risk through the lens of data, operations, and asset performance.

Today’s episode looks at it through the eyes of someone who spent four decades preparing organizations for uncertainty, disruption, and worst-case scenarios.

General Robert Neller served as the 37th Commandant of the United States Marine Corps, leading one of the world's most respected organizations through an era of rapid technological change, evolving threats, and global instability.

In this conversation, General Ne...

Solar projects are increasingly being financed and operated as long-life infrastructure assets. That means the industry can no longer rely on assumptions about risk—we need evidence.

In this episode, Jason Kaminsky, CEO of kWh Analytics, walks us through what the latest Solar Risk Assessment reveals, and answers a deceptively simple question: Which solar risks actually matter?

Drawing on dozens of partners’ fleet-scale operational and underwriting data, Jason explains how the industry is moving beyond anecdotes to identify the risks that have a measurable impact on long-term performance, resilience, and project finance.

Ex...

A solar moratorium nearly shut down Alabama’s emerging solar market before most of the industry even saw it coming.

For years, the prevailing assumption has been that clean energy growth would be concentrated in politically progressive states while places like Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi lagged behind.

But that’s not what Monika Gerhart is seeing (and doing!) on the ground.

As Executive Director of the Gulf States Renewable Energy Industries Association (GSREIA), Monika operates at the intersection of policy, infrastructure, resilience, and market development across some of the most politically and...

Climatetech is entering a different phase.

The era of easy capital, oversized narratives, and growth-at-all-costs expectations is giving way to something more demanding: disciplined execution, durable business models, strong commercialization pathways, and teams that can scale proven solutions in real markets.

In this live conversation, Nico Johnson sits down with longtime investor David Kirkpatrick, Managing Director at SJF Ventures, to unpack what experienced investors are actually paying attention to now and why the companies attracting long-term conviction may not be the ones making the loudest headlines.

David has spent decades investing...

Clean energy has made tremendous progress on technology.

Solar is cheaper. Batteries are scaling. Virtual power plants are becoming real grid assets. Electrification is accelerating.

But many people still do not understand why these technologies matter to them personally — or whether they are actually worth the cost.

So what’s missing?

In this conversation, Nico sits down with Jessica Fishman to explore why the next phase of the energy transition may depend less on technical innovation and more on public understanding, trust, and emotional connection.

Jessica shares less...

Battery storage is becoming one of the most complicated sales conversations in residential solar.

Installers are now navigating different sizing requirements, shifting homeowner expectations, changing utility rate structures, evolving battery chemistries, and a flood of new products entering the market at wildly different price points.

And underneath all of it is a harder question:

Who can you actually trust to still be standing behind these systems years from now?

Sam Buffington, Business Development Manager at Pylontech, joins Nico Johnson for a deeply practical conversation about what installers should actually...

Electricity demand is rising fast. But New York is asking a different question than most states:

What kind of demand is actually worth building for?

In this live conversation from IESNA 2026, Nico sits down with Doreen Harris, President of NYSERDA, to explore how one of the largest economies in the country is preparing for 20–25% electricity load growth over the next 15 years. From AI infrastructure and semiconductor manufacturing to distributed solar and storage, New York is making major investments while trying to ensure growth also creates long-term economic value.

Doreen explains why du...

AI data centers are changing more than electricity demand. They are changing how the grid itself has to operate.

Legacy data centers behaved with relatively flat, predictable load profiles. But giga-scale AI campuses introduce rapid swings in demand that can stress substations, destabilize generation assets, and expose the limits of infrastructure designed for a very different era.

In today’s episode, Nico Johnson sits down with Jon Parrella, CEO of Terraflow, and Anna Siefken, Director of Policy & Markets at the Long Duration Energy Storage Council (LDES), to explore what this shift means for st...

The grid is getting more crowded.

EVs. Heat pumps. Batteries. Rooftop solar. Flexible demand.

What used to be a system built around a few thousand centralized assets is rapidly becoming a network of millions of connected devices interacting with the grid in real time.

That changes everything.

In this episode, Nico sits down with Devrim Celal, Chief Flexibility Officer at Kraken, to unpack why the future grid is becoming a software coordination problem, and how Kraken is helping utilities orchestrate distributed energy at massive scale.

But this...

Australia is installing solar and batteries for about $2 a watt.

In the U.S., it’s closer to $5.50.

So why do we still have this huge gap?

Barry Cinnamon went to Australia to find out. What he discovered challenges one of the industry’s favorite explanations. Even if you remove permitting delays and other “soft costs,” the U.S. still doesn’t come close.

Today’s Tactical Tuesday breaks down the real drivers behind [residential] solar pricing, from federal manufacturing policy and tariffs to financing structures and regulatory friction. Then we take...

Rebuilding solar manufacturing in the U.S. is not just about capital or policy. It is about making the right bets at the right time.

It comes down to timing, experience, and the critical decisions.

Alex Zhu has spent nearly two decades inside the global solar manufacturing system—from the early rise of Chinese production to failed U.S. factory attempts, and now to building one of the few solar cell manufacturing facilities in America through ES Foundry.

In this conversation, Alex explains why he focused on solar cells instead of mo...

Are data centers starting to bypass the grid?

A growing share of planned projects are pairing with behind-the-meter generation, and the shift has happened quickly. At the same time, there’s still real debate about how much of this will actually materialize.

Michael Thomas, founder of Cleanview, tracks what moves through interconnection queues, permitting timelines, and development pipelines. His data highlights how developers are responding to rising demand, tighter timelines, and increasing grid constraints.

In this conversation, Michael shares what he’s seeing in the data, where demand is growing fastest, and...

Most people [who have been in the industry awhile] have opinions about SunEdison.

This is one of the first times Ahmad Chatila and Jigar Shah have sat down together to compare notes on how it actually played out.

Both were inside it.

Both made the bets.

Both saw things others didn’t.

In this conversation, the two leaders who helped build one of solar’s most ambitious companies sit down to examine how it actually worked and why it did not hold.

They walk through the...

Dean Solon has always been a pattern matcher.

Across projects, conversations, and time in the field, he’s constantly picking up on what’s changing — where pressure is building, where systems start to strain, and where the next opportunity is taking shape.

But seeing the pattern is only half the story.

Joseph Fahrney is the one who has to turn those signals into real products, real partnerships, and real projects — while protecting focus and making sure the right ideas actually get built.

Live from Intersolar, Dean and Joe join Nico Joh...

You can now plug solar panels into a wall outlet in some states.

No permits. No installer or electrician even required?

Just… plug it in.

So who’s responsible when that system starts sending power back into your home, or the grid?

Plug-in solar is moving faster than the standards designed to govern it. And right now, the rules are still being written.

In this conversation, Nico Johnson sits down with two experts at the center of the process. One is helping shape the National Electrical Code, the...

What does it actually take to earn trust at the highest levels of utility-scale solar?

Tyler Nelson has a perspective few in the industry can claim. As founder of Revamp Engineering, his team has been embedded in the design and execution of a massive share of utility-scale solar and storage projects across the U.S. — working alongside the developers and EPCs shaping the grid in real time.

But this conversation isn’t about scale for the sake of scale.

It’s about how that kind of trust is built.

We dig...

Most energy professionals believe the data will win.

John Szoka did too.

After a career in the military and time in the North Carolina legislature, Szoka followed the facts and became a clean energy advocate. But what he learned next is what matters.

Data might change your mind.

It doesn’t change most people’s.

In this special conversation, **Jigar Shah and I co-host a discussion with Szoka on how decisions actually get made in energy—from state legislatures to local communities—and why storytelling, trust, and timing o...

If it takes more than one meeting to explain what you do, you have a messaging problem.

In this live conversation from Intersolar North America, Nico Johnson sits down with Spenser Meeks of Apex Presentations to unpack why so many clean energy teams struggle to clearly communicate their value—and how that confusion shows up as longer sales cycles, more meetings, and missed opportunities.

Spenser, a former engineer turned messaging strategist, breaks down a simple shift: say less, but make it matter. When your message is clear, it becomes easier to connect, qualify, an...

Nico had the chance to sit down in person with today’s guest — and as you’d expect, that face-to-face conversation brings a level of depth, candor, and nuance you don’t always get.

Emilie Flanagan, Founder and CEO of Carson Power, has built her career across Southeast Asia, Europe, and the U.S. — from advising on energy markets at KPMG to working inside a European family office, and eventually leading more than 200 megawatts of community solar development in New York before launching her own platform.

In this conversation, Emilie shares how her approach t...

Every year, the industry says the same thing.

“C&I solar is about to take off!”

And yet, it never quite scales the way we expect.

Could this year finally be the year?

In this live panel from Intersolar, Nico Johnson sits down with Joe Ross (CPS America), Rob Smith (ABC Supply), Tim Montague (Clean Power Consulting), and Jim Wood (SEG Solar) to unpack what’s really happening in the commercial and industrial market.

The opportunity is real—but it’s uneven, complex, and highly dependent on where you...

What do you do when your entire market disappears?

That’s not a thought experiment for Michael Bergey. It’s the story of his career.

Long before solar dominated rooftops, distributed wind was solving real problems across rural America — lowering energy costs for customers who didn’t care about climate narratives, only outcomes. Then policy support vanished. Oil prices collapsed. And later, cheap solar took over.

Most companies didn’t survive.

Bergey Windpower did.

In this conversation, Michael walks through what it actually takes to stay in the game w...

The residential solar playbook did not just change. It got torn up.

If you are still operating like yesterday’s incentives, product assumptions, and sales motions will carry you forward, this episode is a reality Margins aren’t disappearing overnight. They’re leaking — in places most contractors don’t even notice.

In this live conversation from IESNA 2026, Nico Johnson sits down with Rob Smith and Eric Cieslak of ABC Supply to break down where solar contractors are quietly losing profit — and where the smartest operators are starting to take it back.

From jobsite...

Long duration energy storage has spent years sitting in the “we’ll need it someday” category. Not anymore. As grid strain grows, data center demand surges, and reliability becomes a boardroom issue, long duration storage is starting to move from interesting concept to urgent solution.

Recorded live at Intersolar and Energy Storage North America, this panel brings together Anna Siefken of the LDES Council, Aric Saunders of Noon Energy, Tristan Bannon of CellCube, and Andrew Friedenthal of E-Zinc. With Nico Johnson leading the conversation, the group digs into what is changing in the market and why mo...

Most conversations about agrivoltaics stay at the surface.

Rebekah Pierce didn’t set out to become a voice for solar. She was trying to solve a much simpler problem:

How do you make a small farm financially viable… without giving it up?

What followed was a shift — from seeing solar as a “necessary evil” to recognizing it as a tool that might fundamentally reshape how farms survive.

In this conversation, we unpack what’s actually happening on the ground:

🔹 What exactly is the business of solar grazing

🔹 Where th...

AI isn’t just increasing demand for electricity - it’s changing how power behaves.

In this Tactical Tuesday, Nico Johnson sits down with Jon Parrella of Terraflow Energy to break down a problem few people are talking about: modern AI data centers don’t draw power like traditional loads. They ramp rapidly, swing unpredictably, and introduce volatility that existing infrastructure wasn’t designed to handle.

That shift is putting real strain on generators, batteries, and the grid itself - accelerating wear, increasing complexity, and creating new risks for developers and investors alike.

In...

Russell Gold has spent years explaining the energy transition from the outside. First as one of The Wall Street Journal’s leading energy reporters, and now from inside one of clean energy’s fastest-growing new entrants, T1 Energy.

At The Wall Street Journal, his award-winning work covered the fracking boom, Deepwater Horizon, and the investigation into the Camp Fire in California. He also wrote The Boom and Superpower, digging into the people, decisions, and forces shaping modern energy.

Now, he’s on the other side of the table.

As EVP of Strate...

Most C&I solar projects don’t fall short because of the solar itself.

They struggle because deals aren’t structured correctly, markets are misunderstood, or developers take on opportunities that were never a fit to begin with.

In this episode of SunCast, Nico Johnson sits down with Aaron Wilson, co-founder and CEO of Solar One, to unpack what actually separates projects that get built and deliver long-term value - from the ones that stall, get delayed, or fail to meet expectations.

Aaron didn’t come up through traditional solar channels. He sta...

Clean energy is winning on cost.

Solar and storage are cheaper than ever. Deployment is accelerating. The economics are undeniable.

So why does it still feel like the industry is losing the broader public narrative?

In this live conversation, Nico Johnson sits down with journalist Sammy Roth to explore the gap between technical success and cultural influence. After more than a decade covering energy and climate for the Los Angeles Times, Sammy now writes the independent newsletter Climate-Colored Goggles, where he examines how media, identity, and storytelling shape the energy transition.<...

If you want to understand where the energy industry is heading, pay attention to the journalists tracking it every day.

Thankfully, we get to sit down with three of the most plugged-in reporters covering the energy transition: Sammy Roth of Climate-Colored Goggles (formerly w/ LA Times), Julian Spector of Canary Media, and Darrell Proctor of POWER Magazine.

What signals are shaping the market right now — from capital flowing into new energy projects to grid bottlenecks, AI-driven electricity demand, and the evolving narrative around fossil fuels and nuclear?

These are the conversations ha...