Dec. 11, 2025
Energy Projects Just Got Faster With AI
Building clean energy projects faster starts with better tools. Maryssa Barron, Founder and CEO of BuildQ, joins Tim Montague to discuss how AI transforms energy project development.
Maryssa Barron is the founder and CEO of BuildQ, the enterprise AI platform purpose-built for clean energy project teams to accelerate development, financing, and asset management. She brings cross-disciplinary expertise in renewable energy, project finance, and law, with experience spanning the full project lifecycle.
Before founding BuildQ, Maryssa advised Fortune 50 companies and leading developers on renewable energy procurement at Edison Energy and LevelTen Energy. She also served as Chief Operating Officer of a global solar company, where she oversaw project development, financing, and operations across international markets.
Key Highlights:
- How BuildQ reduces project analysis time from 3 weeks to 3 days
- Why one developer uses BuildQ instead of hiring 15 new employees
- AI frameworks that analyze interconnection queues and permitting data
- The role of human expertise in AI-assisted energy development
- How law firms and conservative industries are adopting AI tools
- China's 10X infrastructure buildout advantage and U.S. national security implications
- Behind-the-meter solutions and data center co-location trends
- Early adoption benefits in the energy sector
The energy sector needs speed and scale. AI tools like BuildQ make both possible.
Connect with Maryssa Barron, BuildQ
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/maryssa-barron/
Website: buildq.ai
Connect with Tim
Clean Power Hour
Clean Power Hour on YouTube
Tim on Twitter
Tim on LinkedIn
Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com
Review Clean Power Hour on Apple Podcasts
The Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com
Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/
The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America’s number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com
The Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Please subscribe on your favorite audio platform and on Youtube: bit.ly/cph-sub | www.CleanPowerHour.com | contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com | Speeding the energy transition!
WEBVTT
00:00:51.003 --> 00:01:21.700
I from a as a venture backed company, I look at every other investment in AI like startups as at being at risk if we can't really improve the way that project energy projects are are developed and executed. And it's what we're trying to do to help build the bridge to the future, because you're exactly right. It's It's inevitable everyone will have a co pilot eventually, and those that stand to gain the most from AI are those that adopt early.
00:01:22.299 --> 00:01:36.719
Are you speeding the energy transition? Here at the Clean Power Hour, our host Tim Montague, bring you the best in solar, batteries and clean technologies every week. Want to go deeper into decarbonization.
00:01:32.579 --> 00:01:46.859
We do too. We're here to help you understand and command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get to it together. We can speed the energy transition
00:01:48.789 --> 00:02:00.430
today on the Clean Power Hour. Ai enabled tools to accelerate development, reduce risk and scale portfolios. My guest today is Maryssa Barron.
00:01:57.010 --> 00:02:04.299
She is the founder and CEO of an AI first company called BuildQ Ai. Welcome to the show.
00:02:05.079 --> 00:02:08.590
Hi, Tim. Nice.
00:02:05.079 --> 00:02:08.590
Nice. Chatting with you again.
00:02:08.590 --> 00:02:09.519
Thanks for having me.
00:02:10.269 --> 00:02:18.550
Yeah, I'm really excited to bring this to my listeners as much as possible.
00:02:13.120 --> 00:02:51.849
I'm leaning into AI and clean energy. It's a great Nexus. It's a double edge. Everybody understands that energy prices are going up in the United States because of the build out of AI data centers, but we're also completely dependent economically and as knowledge workers on AI. So we actually need more data centers. We need more compute. I don't know how this story ends. I pray that it has a happy ending, but I'm riding the wave, as I like to say. I am caught in the balance.
00:02:47.050 --> 00:03:05.199
I am a knowledge worker completely dependent on AI, and I understand that it can accelerate the energy transition in many ways, and we want to leverage that. So tell us a little bit about yourself.
00:03:05.229 --> 00:03:10.629
Maryssa, how did you get interested in AI and the AI energy nexus?
00:03:11.409 --> 00:03:57.460
Yeah, so I come to build with about a decade of energy industry experience under my belt. So kind of the longer version of my my story is, after graduating from Harvard, went to work at Alton X. And for those who have been in the sector for a long time, you'll remember is that the first name of what's now trio advisors, and before that, Edison energy, the PPA advisor to global consumer facing companies like Microsoft, Novartis General Motors, who procure renewable energy in bulk. They were really the firm that pioneered the vppa space alongside some of the earliest corporate buyers of renewables.
00:03:58.390 --> 00:04:01.000
So wait, I don't, I don't quite follow you said.
00:04:01.030 --> 00:04:03.939
You said Edison energy, yes,
00:04:03.939 --> 00:04:16.750
so that was the the name of of the after Edison international bought alternex, okay, along with a couple other companies in the energy space.
00:04:14.830 --> 00:04:16.750
It was
00:04:17.080 --> 00:04:21.730
not to be confused with sun Edison or different, Yeah, different.
00:04:21.819 --> 00:04:24.279
But understand the confusion there.
00:04:24.610 --> 00:04:37.240
Yeah, there's and they're both in that or they were in that same space, I think. But anyway, so, okay, so you, you keep telling the story.
00:04:33.430 --> 00:04:37.240
I'm sorry.
00:04:37.389 --> 00:04:43.330
No, it's okay.
00:04:37.389 --> 00:06:00.399
So I worked in PPAs for a couple years there before going to level 10 energy. Level 10 had just raised, I think it was their series A I was the 15th employee, second person on the Developer Relations team, and it was my job to build out our developer side of the PPA marketplace, what's now called the Energy marketplace. So help grow that platform from 40 developers to just about 600 or so expand into Canada, European markets, and closed about a couple gigawatts worth of vppas while I was there. But I, you know, you know, while developing a really strong understanding of how early stage projects, our diligence and kind of viewed from the corporate offtaker perspective. I wanted to learn more about what happens next, the project financing piece of the puzzle, and so I went to Stanford Law School to study transactional law energy and really project finance. While I was there, I worked at a solar owner operator, a small IPP that was acquiring and financing and bringing to Operation projects.
00:06:00.460 --> 00:06:40.120
Did that part time while I was in school, and did a small stint at Skadden, a white shoe law firm based out of DC with a very strong project finance team decided ultimately not to accept the return offer, though I did ultimately become an attorney like took the bar and such kind of having all of those perspectives, investor, financier and lawyer, was able to see the challenges facing project development and execution, right as you said.
00:06:35.649 --> 00:06:52.450
You know, energy demand is exploding today. Projects have to get done 10 times faster than ever before. How do we do that?
00:06:45.309 --> 00:08:22.059
And I thought, well, kind of looking 510, years in the future, saw the potential for AI as a huge resource, a tool to help facilitate the day to day execution of projects faster, and so built a platform really designed to address one of the core issues that I saw, kind of sitting around the table, and those different perspectives that all of those users had in common, which was that every single one of these large scale infrastructure projects are coordinated through fragmented and manual workflows, emails, Excel, legacy software. You know, it's common that developers are spending hours of their day, just digging through data rooms, trying to assemble either RFP responses, financial models, a data room, and it's a it's a slow, opaque and impossible way to scale scale projects and portfolios. And so what I set out to do was builds a technology that leveraged AI first an AI first company that replaced the scattered files and fragmented legacy software with one intelligent workspace where every document change transaction was captured and traceable from day one, really providing every stakeholder a single source of truth and system of record on which to execute and finance energy projects 10 times faster than ever before. And that's what
00:08:22.059 --> 00:09:48.699
we're doing. And I mean it this just so completely resonates. It, you know, llms, which is, you know, one of the states of art that we have for artificial intelligence today are very good at this. You can upload, you know, gobs and gobs of folders of files full of numbers and maps and plan sets and tables and engineering studies, etc, etc, right? And it can give us this very quick analysis and profiling. And it's just amazing how quickly it can digest this content in ways that are 1000s. Ultimately, like the way it's doing that is 1000s or millions of times faster than we humans, and ultimately, we need humans in the loop, still very much, to verify that what it's doing is accurate, but like in terms of shortlisting things and telling us red, yellow, green, you know that's what we really need, is this quick analysis, and then we can drill down on those segments that are, you know, of highest priority and importance. So where should we start? How do you explain your platform to a prospect? I would love to learn a little bit about that journey.
00:09:49.449 --> 00:13:03.189
Well, so I would say that we're really our platform is designed to expedite workflows across the development, development departments, right? So law, from the legal teams the project finance and M and A teams to development and operations, and we do that first by building a unified data layer where you can connect your just with a couple clicks of a button, your SharePoint, OneDrive, Google Drive, into our system as well as other integrations, and immediately spin up a very powerful AI workspace that helps all teams accomplish their goals faster. To give you a couple of just use cases, here are on the sell side. So developers that develop and flip projects are seeing 40% Percent faster M and A transactions by using our platform as effectively a data room and AI powered diligence tool that they that reduces transaction costs across the board for not only themselves, but for the buyers on the other side, IPPs on the other side of transactions and financiers on the other side of project financing transactions report being able to reach investment decisions on projects three times faster because of how we've organized the information about projects and the key risks the due diligence come of what You mentioned already in the system. Right? Imagine right, being able to transform a four to six month process into two months one month instead. These are the kind of gains that we're providing to I just mentioned the M and A and project finance team, but development and operations team are seeing are using the tool to automate task management. So where, whereas, right now, a lot of teams are having to go and look at, say, a site lease, and look at all this, you know, the various milestones and option lease payments, say, a construction milestone, what they pay to landowners during construction periods, versus the first five years of development, so on and so forth, and having to put that in a log and make sure they never miss a quarterly payment across a 40 project portfolio, and each project might have anywhere from five to 20 to 40 landowners, right, rather than having to enter that manually into a sauna or just track it on a spreadsheet, we can automatically extract all of those tasks and put it into a task tracker for you, for your teams like that's not only a way to save time, but also helps mitigate risk that you're missing something, and everything that we provide is audible, auditable, so directly linked to those underlying source documents, so nothing ever gets missed. You don't have to look at that system.
00:13:03.579 --> 00:13:12.069
Yeah, let's follow that thread a little bit deeper even so you get a task list.
00:13:06.309 --> 00:14:09.339
Let's just say I'm tracking my portfolio. It's it's hitting commercial operation, and then, you know, starting to generate revenue, which is great. And I have to keep track of payments to the landowner, to the O and M Company, to various and sundry stakeholders. Maybe I have a loan on the project. I have to pay payback. So does the system help the IPP let's just talk from the IPPs perspective. Track that spider web of interactions even further, because, like, there's all the whole Okay, did the check actually go? Or did the ACH payment actually go and or is a human sitting there and going, Okay, check it, it that the check was, check was cut.
00:14:09.610 --> 00:14:27.549
I'm, yeah, I'm just curious, like, because they're seeing there's, there's definitely layers to this. And I mean, it would be awesome just to have the task list, right, an intelligent task list that prioritizes things for me, but then also, I really want it to track and
00:14:27.909 --> 00:14:31.360
be dynamic, yeah, be live, a living record.
00:14:31.360 --> 00:15:06.639
Absolutely. That's exactly, that's exactly the kind of efficiency tools, productivity tools that we're building in so on a refresh, like if you add that invoice, a documenting that you paid this landowner, or you received some disbursement memo, I don't whatever. What have you right? From the IPPs perspective, you add that to your data room, or maybe you receive it in an email, we will update that task list and say, Hey, we think we found we think you satisfied this condition.
00:15:07.299 --> 00:16:02.889
You can, of course change it if it hasn't. It's not true, like, right, if it's tagged to something else, but that's the idea, is to have this unified source of truth that records effectively a system of institutional knowledge across your entire department. So rather than having to now face the challenge that a lot of CEOs have talked to me about from IPPs about you know, they've, they've tasked each of their different teams with finding AI tools and having to worry about adopting eight different AI tools. We wanted to be sure that you only had to adopt one. And it's built on that common premise of, like, let's, let's tackle the Data Challenge, that kind of complexity. At its core right to automate these various workflows, like task management, contract management, due diligence and financing or compliance tracking.
00:16:03.939 --> 00:16:41.919
So there's a couple other scenarios I'd like to talk about, but I'd love to geek out if we could a little bit on the tech stack, and what exactly is the game changing technology, or technologies that's allowing you to have this one source we mentioned, llms, which are good at processing gobs and gobs of information, but we're also talking about automations, on automating workflows and maybe agents. I think you have a voice agent aspect to your platform. Is that right?
00:16:41.980 --> 00:16:45.909
No, no, I don't.
00:16:41.980 --> 00:16:48.939
We don't voice agent. No, no, not yet. Oh, okay, to the list,
00:16:48.939 --> 00:16:56.409
though, I must be conflating you with someone else. Tim, request a voice agent I can't talk to BuildQ, come on,
00:16:57.730 --> 00:17:00.549
I wish maybe in the future.
00:17:00.939 --> 00:17:14.680
Oh, that's that's relatively easy, but, but anyway, yeah, so walk us through kind of if to the extent possible. What is it that that that is so AI first about your platform,
00:17:14.860 --> 00:18:23.859
yeah, so without getting too deep into the secret sauce, I think it's, it's it's really about how we leverage this new technology with the view that it's going to get even better, right? And so we've built our platform to be future proof for all of the the new developments that foundational models, particularly llms, like Gemini open, AI's, chat, GPT and their their systems like expect very much expecting them to improve. And so we've built our systems in part, on top of them, along with building our own kind of mechanisms for, yeah, leveraging the latest and greatest that AI has to offer for our clientele, because we don't want to be at a point where in our customers who ultimately like who we're working with right one of the reasons why They adopted us is because they don't want to have to worry about, you know, two years from now, our tool be being obsolete because open AI has released a new model or something like that, right?
00:18:23.859 --> 00:18:26.769
Sure, yeah, we're always building at that cutting edge.
00:18:27.129 --> 00:18:38.589
You have to be agnostic when it comes to the LLM, yeah. Gemini three just dropped today, as we you know, as we speak, November 2025 it's supposed to be a game changer.
00:18:38.710 --> 00:19:31.839
Chat, GPT five and five one have been game changers. But so you've got a big pile of data which is dynamic. It's changing all the time. You have large language models, which are super computers, basically to analyze said data. And then you have your corporate, you know, machine and a myriad of platforms that companies are using, everything from email and cloud file services and, you know, finance tools, QuickBooks, etc, and and then there's dashboards, right? And so is when you talk about this single source as a as an IPP, let's just continue that discussion.
00:19:25.269 --> 00:19:35.200
Am I literally now using a web interface to track my portfolio?
00:19:35.470 --> 00:20:50.710
Yeah, that's right, exactly. So it is purpose. It's leveraging the latest and greatest in an easy to use interface where like purpose built for the kind of tasks that we know that IPPs engage in right on day to day, from the development side to M and A and project finance teams, just ensuring that everyone now is on the same page. Everyone has the latest and greatest. And you know, if Joe Bob leaves the company next month, that his his work isn't lost to the company, right? Because that happens all the time, right? These are, it takes six years to develop these projects. It's important to have that institutional record all in one place and easily accessible across teams, to reduce Deuce even the day to day like, you know, the often M and A or project finance teams, they're they're consulting with their development teams when they build a sim to make sure, like a project teaser or something, before they go out to market, they want to know the latest and greatest on an asset. What is the acreage? What are the acreages under, under site control, what's the status of interconnection? Wouldn't it be great if we you could with a.
00:20:50.710 --> 00:21:15.430
Click of a button, know all of that the latest, and know that it was verified, that know that it was true immediately. That would cut down, not only on the back and forth between you and team members significantly Well, it does already in our platform, but also could generate that sim for you, that project teaser for you. Wouldn't that be amazing?
00:21:10.420 --> 00:22:05.980
That's exactly what you know we are offering. We're offering teams. That's the value prop of AI, but built purposely to address the unique challenges of energy project development. And I think there's one other thing kind of tied to that is that we also recognize that these projects are not built in a silo, so built purposefully to allow for and facilitate the exchange of information when it's important to your legal counsel, to IPP, sorry, to EPCs or independent engineering firms, we foster a an ecosystem that allows for that kind of ease of sharing and collaboration that are necessary, right? It's never just one party building a project. It requires all of those stakeholders around the table to get something done, and we've accounted for all of that.
00:22:07.329 --> 00:23:28.930
The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over 10 gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS product lineup includes string inverters ranging from 25 kW to 350 kW, their flagship inverter, the CPS 350 KW is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts. CPS is the world's most bankable inverter brand, and is America's number one choice for solar plants, now offering solutions for commercial utility ESS and balance of system requirements go to Chint power systems.com or call 855-584-7168, to find out more. And so a platform that I'm becoming familiar with that this reminds me of is monday.com where, when I'm I'm working with a particular EPC client of mine on projects, and projects include specific solar projects, but also working with vendors or working as a team. And so how?
00:23:28.960 --> 00:23:49.029
Because there are so many of these monday.com like platforms out there that customers are using. Do you do? Is it a both and do I still need monday.com or is BuildQ replacing a monday.com
00:23:49.869 --> 00:23:53.019
Great question.
00:23:49.869 --> 00:25:31.960
So it depends on your team, and the the pace of adoption. We've seen teams continue to use monday.com, but increasingly, as certainly as we develop, I mean, we're a young company to start right, increasingly building out tools to kind of bring everyone to a single, single source of truth. And so what often starts in the project finance and M and A teams, developers decide to expand to incorporate other functions of their business. So we did design it to be accretive to your existing workflows, super easy to adopt, like there's not you don't have to spend even a day trying to set this up. You can set it up this workspace in 30 minutes or less.
00:25:33.940 --> 00:25:40.660
And, yeah, reap the benefits immediately while continuing to use your other tools. Should you? Should you choose to do?
00:25:40.660 --> 00:25:44.440
So? It's just that increasingly, teams decide it's not worth it.
00:25:44.529 --> 00:25:48.190
Hell. Why use two different tools? And I could be using one.
00:25:49.809 --> 00:25:57.309
Yeah, I'm a huge fan of getting rid of tools as much as I love tools. Fewer is better.
00:25:57.940 --> 00:27:03.190
You and me both like like the reason why you know what's you know, I work with an incredible team, and so, like one of the I'm just glad to bring some unique perspective to their to focus the talent is that I've seen this problem from a lot of different angles, right? Like I was tired of the tools I've been in the IPPC. I know what it's like trying to diligence a 20 project portfolio over here while finance my own seven project portfolio over here and there. We're using three different data rooms, or like cloud file services for these projects. And oh yeah, the project. Projects that we just bought. Not all the data was in there. As it turns out, we've missed something. Our lawyers have missed something, wow, like, imagine a single workspace where I'm guaranteed, not guaranteed, but like of so less likely to miss something due to human error or oversight,
00:27:03.339 --> 00:28:21.970
yep, and one of the most important data sources I've learned is transcripts of meetings, and that alone is a challenge, because Sure, your company may have settled on Gemini or zoom or teams, but you're inevitably having calls with other parties, whether they're partners or vendors, and those people have a different platform, and then, okay, we've got our note taker robots in there, but keeping that consistent and functional and then searchable is a non trivial matter, because that knowledge is super useful if you can tap into it in a timely manner. And my business is fairly simple, and it's totally doable, but I could see how just that. And I'm curious if you have like, an AHA around that there are so many sources right of of information that you have to somehow bring into us the unified data lake, for lack of a better expression, yeah, yeah, that's right.
00:28:23.710 --> 00:29:28.150
So we were responsive to customer demand, where the biggest next integration should should be, where the next tooling should be. We have a wonderful a new head of product who just joined our team, whose whole background has been developing AI products for companies like Microsoft and Oracle, building out their AI suites for for business enterprises. And, you know, it's, it's always a process of deciding what to build next. I think in we have, we've built our system though to get you at least 70 80% there with existing tools. So if you have a preferred AI note taker, you can just save in a PDF, just download once per week that those transcripts into your data room, and then have it ingested according to the projects that it's related to by our system.
00:29:28.210 --> 00:29:31.900
You just have to take that quick step of saving to a PDF first.
00:29:32.110 --> 00:29:46.930
Now eventually, do we want to get you to that 90% automated like, where it just automatically goes from your AI note taker to BuildQ, of course, is that what we're building next month? No, probably not. Yeah.
00:29:46.930 --> 00:29:49.960
Those connectors, so to speak, are super useful.
00:29:50.289 --> 00:30:25.240
My zoom recordings automatically get transferred to my local hard drive, and then I can do so many other things with them, and I don't like going into zoom and making the download, yeah, and then I've started to use some other note takers that will then email me the notes. And that's also useful and easy. It makes it easy to forward the notes to somebody else that was in the meeting. So what about agentic AI? Where are you guys on agentic AI? And are you using agents in your platform?
00:30:26.589 --> 00:31:13.180
Yeah, so we do leverage agents in our platform to in various workflows where they help our customers save time and money. Wherever we have we have a lot of expertise and decades worth of experience in building software on our engineering and product side combined. And so again, one of one of the value propositions we offer to our customers is that we're leveraging the latest and greatest, be that agentic AI, obviously, the llms and the improvements that we're poised to see over the next 510, years, and any new things on the horizon, right?
00:31:13.360 --> 00:31:22.690
Always. So can you give an example of how agentic AI is saving time and money?
00:31:18.579 --> 00:31:22.690
Yeah.
00:31:22.690 --> 00:31:42.250
So completing, completing manual tasks. So for a law firm that is looking for or your own legal teams looking for a a summary of all insurance provisions across all contracts.
00:31:42.370 --> 00:31:58.509
Want that in one, one table. Our system can do that through a combination of, obviously, leveraging llms and agentic AI produce that full, complete auditable table for your team to keep track of.
00:31:58.539 --> 00:32:11.440
Yeah, and I know that the LLM you know, the frontier models are rolling out agentic AI, kind of, within their within their platforms.
00:32:06.430 --> 00:32:25.569
But there's also then third party agents. Is, do you have a favorite or is there one you can reference as, yeah, check this out. Like, is it make.com is it n 8n? No.
00:32:25.569 --> 00:32:37.900
Not, not really one that I can speak to at this time. We we develop proprietary tools largely to accomplish the goals of our clients, specifically, largely Cool.
00:32:38.890 --> 00:32:56.200
All right, so are there other angles to this business of accelerating project development, or M and A, or, yeah, triaging portfolios that we should drill down on,
00:32:57.519 --> 00:33:37.240
I think just the expand The the the potential for these kind of tools to accelerate project execution from various different angles. I think you know, we're we're establish, we establish ourselves. And just the kind of market adoption we've seen from IPPs developers, law firms, independent engineering firms, as as as a leader in productivity and collaboration for projects. But of course, there are other there are other systems out there that you that can look to save time, right?
00:33:33.910 --> 00:34:59.980
These other applications of AI to expedite permitting. You know, diligence, fantastic tools out there. And yeah, I just, I'm so excited to look into the future and see, see solutions to problems that have plagued this industry for a long time. I think another angle to that. So as excited as I am for the future of where, where AI takes us, is kind of speaking to some of the legacy tools and the implementation of AI to legacy tools and the limitations thereof. And I don't think enough people understand like and I mean, certainly CEOs are beginning to see this. You know, Salesforce, maybe monday.com, for example. Of the limitations of just adding on an AI chat bot, right? That is, that is not the way to build an AI first tool, tool set, and it's really hard to adapt legacy software to that, to appropriately use AI in a way that's really going to you're going to really see exponential gains on ROI, because they're just not built to do that. They're built in fundamentally different than AI first companies.
00:35:01.750 --> 00:36:42.520
Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree, and it is absolutely a both, and you need those legacy systems to clue John AI tools, I would also encourage them to just do a new ground up. I don't use Microsoft tools very much, so I don't know where they are. I know copilot is popular if you use the Microsoft suite, but yeah, so let's talk a little more about the future. Certainly, you know, voice agents are definitely part of the future, right? We're going to get more and more used to talking to the computer. It's hard if you're in an office setting, and you know, there's cubicles and people around, and you don't want to necessarily create a den of voices, but you we can talk much faster than we can type. And so if you can talk to the computer, you can get stuff done faster and you know, so I, you know, I try as much as I can to do that when I'm querying an LLM, whether that's chat GPT or perplexity or grok, and they all have varying levels of voice agent tree, so to speak. Grok is my favorite for having a conversation. It is very good. I don't use grok for other things, per se so much, but it's great for if I'm driving and I want to have a conversation. But where do you see the future of AI and platforms like yourselves? Like how are you? How are you.
00:36:42.520 --> 00:36:44.230
Skating to where the puck is going.
00:36:45.370 --> 00:39:13.180
Yeah, I think it's the incorporation of of those advancements, right? But, I mean, I'm imagining a world where projects can get done three times faster, save 10 times faster. Excuse me, save for like, macro level and environmental challenges, like the interconnection queue, though we're seeing ISO ISOs also look to AI for support in doing, accomplishing their capacity studies work. I think it's still just the beginning to see the real impact that the adoption of these tools really have. But for especially like first movers, I think you stand to gain a lot in competitive advantage if you're able to turn around a term sheet in three days, what used to take you three weeks. I mean, a counterpart is a lot more likely to work with you, right? And if you have actually done the diligence versus saying, Oh, but I need also 90 days of exclusivity if you're acquiring a project, because we actually haven't done that much diligence, right? Like that saves time and money. It saves financing costs often, like it really does, and it improves the relationships between you and your stakeholders. And I think that's another thing that we haven't quite talked about, is how AI will, will, yes, automate a lot of work and save money and like, instead of adding five new people to your team, instead you just adopt one AI tool, we have a developer setting out to to develop a pretty significant portfolio of projects, a few billion dollars worth of assets, and rather than hire the next 15 people on his hiring plan, they're just using BuildQ. So there's that automation gain, but then there's the areas where AI is a supplement. It's an Augment. It just augments human human processes, the expertise that you rely on law firms for or independent engineering firms, right? It's, it's a supportive it's a tool at the end of the day, right? It's not a robot, per se,
00:39:13.360 --> 00:40:40.150
yeah, and to your, to your comment about ISOs and the queues, you know, it occurs to me that here we are in a race, really, to build out electrical infrastructure. We need more electricity on the grid so that we can have more compute, so that we can have more AI, China is building electric infrastructure at 3x what we are on a per capita basis, 10x on a national basis, and they've been doing this for a decade, and that is now a national security issue, that we're hobbled by this antiquated system of of of reviewing and permitting projects. And you think, well, there are two terawatts of clean energy projects in various queues around the United States. What if we did a smart analysis of, well, which of those projects would actually help the grid operators quickest. You know where the loads are, where there's capacity on the grid, not necessarily in this rank order of who applied first, right? And just triaging them on that basis, which is a great excuse for very long delays, right? They could, in parallel, completely process those two terawatts and say, Okay, here's, you know, the first tranche that is going to be most effective.
00:40:36.220 --> 00:41:01.210
This is a national security issue, and we're going to build those assets fast. And first, that seems like a great opportunity. And yet, I don't hear a lot of talk about this kind of, you know, really reinventing the the utility model in the United States. We clearly need to reinvent that model.
00:41:01.990 --> 00:42:24.280
Yeah, I think that. And it's and it's really cool to think about the applications of what the potential for fully embracing AI tools by those regulating, regulators who have a huge impact on project timelines and investment outcomes, what that could really result in in terms of gains? But I think it's, I mean, just today, right? In the next six to 12 months, three years from now, even most likely, probably not going to see that they're slow to move entities, right? That's just the reality. Whereas IPPS, they need to move today, they need to. To find ways of expanding, extending their bench with with less overhead all the time. And I think you know, just on a macro level, that's why you see more distributed generation build out more behind the meter opportunities co locating power with with data centers being increasingly common and likely even more common in the future, because there's no other way to like build in miso if you need a project two years from now, right? You're going to face a pretty tremendous cue to get there.
00:42:26.350 --> 00:43:24.820
Yeah, so there are signals like FERC. FERC received a letter from the executive branch, I think that they the executive branch wants them to accelerate data center permitting and and that will probably happen right? A third of our a third of our economy, the stock market is due to AI stocks, right? Is a huge part of our economy, and that's a double edge. There's also the potential of a bubble, but it truly is, like the internet or electricity, like, even after the bubble bursts, there's going to be an industry there, because we just there is no future. If there's a future, there's no future without AI. And, you know, so I say, let's do it.
00:43:25.360 --> 00:43:30.580
Anything else you want our listeners to know in our last minute together. Maryssa, I really appreciate this.
00:43:30.880 --> 00:43:35.020
Oh, absolutely.
00:43:30.880 --> 00:43:58.270
And no, you're so right. Like I from a as a venture backed company, I look at every other investment in AI like startups as at being at risk if we can't really improve the way that project energy projects are are developed and executed, and it's what we're trying to do to help build the bridge to the future.
00:43:55.060 --> 00:43:58.270
Because you're exactly right.
00:43:58.270 --> 00:45:52.060
It's It's inevitable everyone will have a co pilot eventually, and those that stand to gain the most from Ai, or those that adopt early to recognize that what you're pointing to. But beyond that, you know, we've covered a lot of ground here in talking about the tools that are kind of the frameworks of building AI tools, the use cases, I think, for any of those still on the edge, kind of unsure whether or not to adopt, it should be telling that your law firms, the law firms that you work with, are also adopting AI, some of the biggest law firms in the country have dedicated innovation groups that are their sole task is to vet, demo, test new AI products all the time. And if, if your law firm can get behind it, so can you, because that is, there's no other more conservative and slow to move industry, I think, in the country, as much as as infrastructure is right right there along with them, I think in terms of just being risk averse, it's already telling that there's a lot of adoption across industries, but especially, especially ours, and that's what, it's what we see Every day. So I think, yeah. For anyone who wants to learn more, please don't hesitate to reach out to me and our team happy to talk to you about how you can implement AI in your own organization and energy, or if you are able to save time and money in developing your project. And we see it as a win for our company, and we'd love to help you get there. Ton of industry experience behind us.
00:45:46.480 --> 00:45:55.660
So yeah, I'm really excited to see what the future holds and appreciate this conversation.
00:45:55.660 --> 00:46:32.920
Tim, hey guys, are you a residential solar installer doing light commercial, but wanting to scale into large CNI solar. I'm Tim Montague. I've developed over 150 megawatts of commercial solar, and I've solved the problem that you're having you don't know what tools and technologies you need in order to successfully close 100 KW to megawatt scale projects. I've developed a commercial solar accelerator to help installers exactly like you. Just go to clean power hour.com, click on strategy and book a call today.
00:46:32.950 --> 00:46:47.320
It's totally free with no obligation. Thanks for being a listener. I really appreciate you listening to the pod, and I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and store. Search, go to clean power hour and click strategy today. Thanks so much.
00:46:48.460 --> 00:47:02.680
Check out all of our content at clean power hour.com Give us a rating and a review on Apple or Spotify. Tell a friend about the show. That's the best thing you can do to help grow the show and help more people find the show and reach out to me on LinkedIn.
00:47:02.680 --> 00:47:34.960
I love connecting with my listeners. Also upcoming trade shows. You know the regional re plus events I go to those. I'll be at Inter solar in California in q1 I'll be at re plus northeast Boston in q1 and so many other places, Houston, San Diego, Dallas, and look forward to seeing you there. I want to thank Maryssa Barron with BuildQ Ai for coming on the show today.
00:47:34.960 --> 00:47:35.890
Thank you so much.
00:47:36.510 --> 00:47:37.530
Thanks for having me. Tim.
00:00:51.003 --> 00:01:21.700
00:01:22.299 --> 00:01:36.719
00:01:32.579 --> 00:01:46.859
00:01:48.789 --> 00:02:00.430
00:01:57.010 --> 00:02:04.299
00:02:05.079 --> 00:02:08.590
00:02:05.079 --> 00:02:08.590
00:02:08.590 --> 00:02:09.519
00:02:10.269 --> 00:02:18.550
00:02:13.120 --> 00:02:51.849
00:02:47.050 --> 00:03:05.199
00:03:05.229 --> 00:03:10.629
00:03:11.409 --> 00:03:57.460
00:03:58.390 --> 00:04:01.000
00:04:01.030 --> 00:04:03.939
00:04:03.939 --> 00:04:16.750
00:04:14.830 --> 00:04:16.750
00:04:17.080 --> 00:04:21.730
00:04:21.819 --> 00:04:24.279
00:04:24.610 --> 00:04:37.240
00:04:33.430 --> 00:04:37.240
00:04:37.389 --> 00:04:43.330
00:04:37.389 --> 00:06:00.399
00:06:00.460 --> 00:06:40.120
00:06:35.649 --> 00:06:52.450
00:06:45.309 --> 00:08:22.059
00:08:22.059 --> 00:09:48.699
00:09:49.449 --> 00:13:03.189
00:13:03.579 --> 00:13:12.069
00:13:06.309 --> 00:14:09.339
00:14:09.610 --> 00:14:27.549
00:14:27.909 --> 00:14:31.360
00:14:31.360 --> 00:15:06.639
00:15:07.299 --> 00:16:02.889
00:16:03.939 --> 00:16:41.919
00:16:41.980 --> 00:16:45.909
00:16:41.980 --> 00:16:48.939
00:16:48.939 --> 00:16:56.409
00:16:57.730 --> 00:17:00.549
00:17:00.939 --> 00:17:14.680
00:17:14.860 --> 00:18:23.859
00:18:23.859 --> 00:18:26.769
00:18:27.129 --> 00:18:38.589
00:18:38.710 --> 00:19:31.839
00:19:25.269 --> 00:19:35.200
00:19:35.470 --> 00:20:50.710
00:20:50.710 --> 00:21:15.430
00:21:10.420 --> 00:22:05.980
00:22:07.329 --> 00:23:28.930
00:23:28.960 --> 00:23:49.029
00:23:49.869 --> 00:23:53.019
00:23:49.869 --> 00:25:31.960
00:25:33.940 --> 00:25:40.660
00:25:40.660 --> 00:25:44.440
00:25:44.529 --> 00:25:48.190
00:25:49.809 --> 00:25:57.309
00:25:57.940 --> 00:27:03.190
00:27:03.339 --> 00:28:21.970
00:28:23.710 --> 00:29:28.150
00:29:28.210 --> 00:29:31.900
00:29:32.110 --> 00:29:46.930
00:29:46.930 --> 00:29:49.960
00:29:50.289 --> 00:30:25.240
00:30:26.589 --> 00:31:13.180
00:31:13.360 --> 00:31:22.690
00:31:18.579 --> 00:31:22.690
00:31:22.690 --> 00:31:42.250
00:31:42.370 --> 00:31:58.509
00:31:58.539 --> 00:32:11.440
00:32:06.430 --> 00:32:25.569
00:32:25.569 --> 00:32:37.900
00:32:38.890 --> 00:32:56.200
00:32:57.519 --> 00:33:37.240
00:33:33.910 --> 00:34:59.980
00:35:01.750 --> 00:36:42.520
00:36:42.520 --> 00:36:44.230
00:36:45.370 --> 00:39:13.180
00:39:13.360 --> 00:40:40.150
00:40:36.220 --> 00:41:01.210
00:41:01.990 --> 00:42:24.280
00:42:26.350 --> 00:43:24.820
00:43:25.360 --> 00:43:30.580
00:43:30.880 --> 00:43:35.020
00:43:30.880 --> 00:43:58.270
00:43:55.060 --> 00:43:58.270
00:43:58.270 --> 00:45:52.060
00:45:46.480 --> 00:45:55.660
00:45:55.660 --> 00:46:32.920
00:46:32.950 --> 00:46:47.320
00:46:48.460 --> 00:47:02.680
00:47:02.680 --> 00:47:34.960
00:47:34.960 --> 00:47:35.890
00:47:36.510 --> 00:47:37.530
