Nevados, the Solar Tracker That Adapts to Any Terrain with Yezin Taha

Transcript

WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:16.045
I put it a little different way until Nevados came along in American football field with a one foot rise in the middle to handle rainwater runoff was a problem that has to be accounted for with conventional trackers by using variable posts for fuel height.

00:00:12.580 --> 00:00:16.045
That thing that looks so flat.

00:00:16.102 --> 00:00:20.519
It was a problem for conventional equipment. We came along and we changed that.

00:00:21.179 --> 00:00:35.429
Are you speeding the energy transition? Here at the Clean Power Hour? Our hosts Tim Montague and John Weaver bring you the best in solar batteries and clean technologies every week. I want to go deeper into decarbonisation. We do too.

00:00:35.670 --> 00:00:45.960
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.

00:00:41.789 --> 00:00:46.649
Together we can speed the energy transition.

00:00:49.270 --> 00:00:55.418
Today on the clean power our terrain tracking trackers, I'm Tim Montague.

00:00:51.963 --> 00:01:08.890
Welcome to the Clean Power Hour check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify and please tell a friend about the show. My guest today is Yezin Taha, he is the founder of Nevados solar. Welcome to the show.

00:01:09.640 --> 00:01:11.829
Thanks, Tim. Thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here.

00:01:13.000 --> 00:02:13.599
I, I just love talking to you guys. And I don't know what it is about you. What you have is, you know, you and I have some common or things in common, but I am a geek for racking. I love talking about racking. I don't know what it is about racking. It's not the sexiest part of a solar array necessarily. But it's extremely important obviously. And a statistic that our my listeners really want to know is that 94% of utility solar is now built with solar trackers, single axis trackers. And this happened over a period of only like six or seven years when the industry basically went from fixed tilt to tracker, you get more energy as you're tracking the sun 10 to 15% is the statistic I use. Some companies use a higher statistic. I think we have to be very careful about that. But anyway, yes. And tell our listeners a little bit about yourself. How did you get interested in solar? And why did you start Nevados?

00:02:14.169 --> 00:02:43.090
Yeah, sure. Well, thanks, Tim. The you just introduced me to the 94% number today. And it's first I'd heard that I haven't looked at that number for a little while. But we were talking 70 80% A handful of years ago. And now we're at 94% of utility scale projects using trackers that's incredible. Really, it shows the growth of the industry. Well, yes, the How did I get into solar tracking, I'll sum it up.

00:02:43.270 --> 00:03:42.310
One quick sentence here. I crushed my leg in 2009 and almost lost it and that's how I ended up creating the first all train solar tracker in the world. And I can go into a little more detail if you're what happened to your leg. And that was a freak accident skiing as in Jackson Hole. And going down parachute three something was weird day, followed the day before and then refroze overnight. So the snow was about as far as this table I'm sitting in front of here got half an inch of mashed potato powder on top, going down lat line couldn't see something pulled my left ski off. Don't know what it was still don't know when to fall down. I got caught in the downhill the slope and the upper low of the Mogul. And that was it. It just destroyed me destroyed my ankles. So that would work for about a year and a half. Took a long time to be able to recover from that. But you know, I can dig into that and a little bit of I'll start with that getting my career though if you wouldn't mind.

00:03:42.430 --> 00:03:49.330
But so so that time off during your during your recovery was was a time when you incubated the idea for Nevados

00:03:50.020 --> 00:04:10.516
No. It during that time. I learned how to fend for myself. I'd worked for I'd always heard for large companies. I came out of college and I worked at GE and then I went over to a large organization called Black and Veatch right and I started out Black and Veatch trained commercial air conditioning.

00:04:06.955 --> 00:04:36.951
From there I went to another pretty large organization ended up with Black and Veatch like conveners after I had my accident, but through that all like I didn't learn truly how to operate a business on my own. I was a small cog in a large organization. So during that time off, I I learned to fend for myself. And I had this goal of starting my own business. I tried it a few times it didn't really know what I was doing.

00:04:33.264 --> 00:04:52.449
And but I became an expert on solar industry when I came back to work at Black and Veatch. And then I finally have the drive and the comfort to operate on my own. And then the skill and experience with the solar industry and that's what led me really break out to start Nevados

00:04:53.050 --> 00:04:59.079
and presumably though the work you were doing, Black and Veatch is somehow related to the solar industry, right?

00:04:59.110 --> 00:05:47.110
It was It was, you know, I started my career designing gas turbines at GE. So I spent a little over five years doing that very deep technical work. After that, I moved into train commercial air conditioning. It was commercial H fac, equipment controls and software. That's where I really started to put together all these different pieces like understanding the heavy equipment, the control systems to operate it. And then the critical role that software played on making all of that equipment operate seamlessly. So that was my first real experience or, you know, Intro to putting all of those pieces together. From there, I went to another company that didn't last very long they they got shut down in the financial crisis.

00:05:42.790 --> 00:05:58.810
And six days after they shut down and I lost that that job. I crushed my ankle and I had a year and a half to ruminate on things. So I came back, I took this role with Black and Veatch.

00:05:54.730 --> 00:06:02.379
And I started doing bankability studies on single axis trackers.

00:05:58.810 --> 00:06:05.439
The first one I did was on array technologies. Okay, the last one I did was on next tracker.

00:06:05.560 --> 00:06:38.139
Gotcha. And I saw all the other major trackers in the in the world at that time flew all over the world. They were doing great things. And I you know, I learned a lot about the industry. Did construction monitoring work on large projects production estimate work. And I saw that a lot of good things were been being done in the industry. But there's this major unmet need is kind of hard to put my finger on at the start. But after a while it really coalesced around this idea of grading. It's like this is what we need to address. And ultimately, I left Black and Veatch to do that because no one was addressing grading.

00:06:39.430 --> 00:06:42.160
And so was there.

00:06:39.430 --> 00:06:46.269
Was there a signal though in the work that you're doing at Black and Veatch about about terrain?

00:06:47.350 --> 00:07:24.790
Yeah, yeah, there was, you know, really quick question, the signal was loud and clear. This is back in early 20. Teens, you'd see i Five shut down due to dust storms, some of those were from solar power plants, because you grade and then that dust gets lifted up and wind. Okay, so the way you combat that is you fill out these massive water trucks, you drive this big water truck over somewhere, you can get water, you fill it up, you drive it back, burning all this diesel, then you slowly move that water truck through the field, just spraying all this water on the ground. And it goes back in the desert again and just repeats.

00:07:21.399 --> 00:07:35.680
Because it's so incredibly wasteful. And you wouldn't have that situation. least not to that degree. He just stopped grading. So those were key points, and then seeing the just the costs involved with grading.

00:07:35.980 --> 00:08:07.870
It's an expensive endeavor. And no one really wants to engage in it if they can avoid it. This is something that grading has been around for large civil projects forever. Sure, it's, it's, I mean, can you think of any civil project, any contractor out there says, you know, what I want to do I really want to grade this site. Nobody says that. They want to they want to do the least disturbance possible. And, you know, that's what we should be doing in the solar industry as well limit that disturbance as much as possible.

00:08:08.350 --> 00:08:10.750
Absolutely. Yeah.

00:08:08.350 --> 00:08:51.970
I mean, that's one of the things I love about working in the solar industry is it's pretty much very environmentally friendly. And we're also of course, contributing to the energy transition, which is going to help us step back from the brink of climate chaos, although we have to be careful about that. I won't go on too deep a tangent there. But so Okay, fast forward. You arrived at this concept of a train a train tracking tracker to reduce the amount of disturbance that's all well and good. When did you actually put pen to paper and designed a truck than a moto striker?

00:08:52.269 --> 00:09:13.913
Yeah, so you know, I can credit a friend of mine named Brett for pushing me to do this. I was a Black and Veatch, I had this idea of maybe I want to go out and do this thing. And I also wanted to celebrate still having both my legs because my doctor thought she was going to be removing one of them after the accident. So yeah, it was rough. It was a rough recovery.

00:09:13.971 --> 00:10:18.489
I properly took eight years to recover. I'm still recovering today. Really. I I was talking with a friend of mine about what am I going to do? How do I do this step like you know, I Black and Veatch is great. I love working here but it's not it's not the direction I want to take my career. I want to start a business and anyway, a lot of discussions and finally he just got sick of it. He said look, he hasn't. You gotta quit. You can't take a sabbatical. You gotta quit. If you do it tomorrow, I'll give you a treasure map to a motorcycle hidden in the mountains in northern India. If you don't quit tomorrow, you don't get the map. So you got the map. And that that started it. I went on this big trip. Seven months took a huge amount of time off and just went around the world that a number of different things from El Camino to Santiago to finding this motorcycle Hicklin, India, went to Colombia, bought a motorcycle, rode 5000 miles around Colombia. And in Colombia, I was hiking up in Los Nevados, Sierra Nevada as they run all throughout the Americas.

00:10:14.763 --> 00:10:32.799
And I thought, you know, I can put my tracker idea up here. And that's where the name came from Nevados. Listen to Latos. And so when I came back, it was, it was I was focused on that from then on 2014 on. I was just focused on building and running in this business, given

00:10:32.799 --> 00:10:38.320
how serious your injury was, I have to ask, do you still ski? Yeah. Okay,

00:10:38.350 --> 00:10:39.610
you got to get back on that horse.

00:10:40.659 --> 00:10:44.440
Nice. I'm glad you I'm glad you I'm glad you did.

00:10:44.518 --> 00:10:53.467
So well, that that is fascinating. And we'll, we will have to talk more about skiing and motorcycling at some point.

00:10:53.544 --> 00:11:52.960
But I'm so keen to get into the thick of it here with the tracker. And what is it that differentiates Nevados from the plethora of other manufacturers on the market? I mean, granted, there are two gorillas in the room, next rocker and array technologies. I don't know what their market share is, but it's very big. And I mean, nine out of 10 times when I see a site plan, it's one of those two companies. So it is I would have to say a bit of a brazen move as well to design and manufacture yet another tracker when there's already half a dozen of well established tracking manufacturers, you know, in the US market, not to mention the global market. So let's let's get into it, though, when when did you really get get the company off the ground? And what's the status?

00:11:53.710 --> 00:12:11.049
Sir. So I do want to point out by the way, we are one of those well established companies now. We are we are growing and we're strong in this industry. So luckily, we're we have moved our way into that fold. Now, the history of the company, I think I'll take you through a little bit of it here.

00:12:11.320 --> 00:12:21.700
It wasn't, it wasn't a quick success by any means my mom has this great phrase of five more years, you will be an overnight success. And I think we're closing in on the end of that.

00:12:22.629 --> 00:12:42.610
But to start a business like this isn't easy. If you look at the you know, the the OSI, what's the word I'm looking for here, but the existing players in the industry, they started in a flatland paradigm.

00:12:38.710 --> 00:14:00.220
Everything's flat, you graded it all flat, we're working in the desert southwest, primarily. And the cost of land grading associated is so small compared to the you know, the cost of the solar module, it didn't really come up into consideration. So the software, the engineering, the initial engineering, construction methods, it was all flatland focused structures to so to shift off that it wasn't an easy lift, especially for a company that didn't have much money. Me, you know, who knew me like fundraising is very difficult. So it took a long time to build up all the infrastructure and requirements, you need to be able to, to make that transition. You know, I raised first funds for through friends and family, we got some government grants, the DOD, California Energy Commission, we would have been dead in the water without those grants. And then, and then we started raising some funding from Angel groups, pastina, angels, Tech Coast Angels, and then some independence. That's what that's what funded us for six years, or more, actually. And it was one and a half million total raised from in seed rounds over three rounds. And then you know, a handful of millions, 3 million total from government grants.

00:13:55.539 --> 00:14:26.590
All that money went focused, it was primarily focused on technology development, software to do production estimates on rolling terrain, and to operate the trackers on rolling terrain, the developing control systems that we need to operate on rolling terrain, and then the structure is a radical departure from how how the rest of the industry approaches its structure. You need all those pieces. You can't just do one, you can't just do the structure.

00:14:27.669 --> 00:14:34.389
Because then you're gonna have terrible operations of the plant. And since then, we found many more software developments.

00:14:34.389 --> 00:14:58.059
But, you know, that we had to create from engineering efforts to do other activities. But it took six years to really get through that now. We might have sold a little more equipment if SunEdison hadn't hadn't gone out of business. SunEdison they were the gorilla, right. And we were partnered with them, they went out of business. That was SunPower we partnered with and they shut down their utility and just division.

00:14:59.049 --> 00:15:01.360
Wait a second.

00:14:59.049 --> 00:15:02.110
What year was the company established?

00:15:02.950 --> 00:15:30.610
2014. So, yeah, sorry, I'm rambling a little bit here. But it through that period we were we were trying to develop and sell projects to these large. These large organizations such as in SunPower. Yeah, they kept failing, and so are our sales potential went away. We were almost out of business until t Shaw came along, and they were really looking for a tracker, they could fit to variable terrain. Oh,

00:15:30.669 --> 00:15:33.370
another U of I alum. Yeah.

00:15:34.990 --> 00:15:43.179
So within a few weeks, we had a contractor first contract, small one test site.

00:15:39.250 --> 00:15:56.740
And then we followed with a seven megawatt 13 megawatt and that things just took off from there. So six years it took to really get the product, software controls and structure where it needed to be. And then from there, we really accelerated.

00:15:58.210 --> 00:16:14.049
And so explain for our listeners, the difference between Nevados and the major competitors, just real plain and simple. What is the difference?

00:16:14.620 --> 00:16:51.970
Sure, I'll sum it up real quick, continuous torque to versus segmented torque to. So the competitors use a continuous torque to it's bolted together fastened together looks like one long piece. And the only way to get it to bend to follow terrain, is to bend the torque tube and have a bend in it, which is not ideal. Or use variable foundation heights, which means then people will be working with their chest and weigh overhead the back of their chest. Is that as this as the equipment stays at the same level, but the Yeah, the land rolls beneath it.

00:16:52.389 --> 00:16:57.399
And a continuous torque two might have what add modules? Or how many modules on a

00:16:58.419 --> 00:17:05.349
oh, you know, roughly up to 100 modules, you can have 80 to 100 modules.

00:17:00.789 --> 00:17:28.839
Yeah. Yeah, so we're the same for the length, you know, we're just kind of fit typical tracker lengths. But by breaking the torque tube up into segments and connecting it with flexible bearings, we all of a sudden can truly follow the natural terrain. And we wrapped up a tremendous amount of IP around that it is a unique design, no one else is done might develop that capability into that type of a system before.

00:17:30.339 --> 00:18:03.039
So we're, I mean, you, you obviously got the name from the mountain range, the Sierra Nevadas. But you're from the Midwest, where we don't have mountains. We are getting lots of solar now. But there are hills. Is is the is the market truly those areas that are that have lots of train or you being adopted in more flatland areas like the Midwest as well. Yeah,

00:18:03.039 --> 00:19:01.986
so we do have we have a number of projects throughout the Midwest already, you know, we have a lot of more rains and in the Midwest, left by the glaciers is a sediment, that beautiful topsoil that Canada used to have and that we now have because of the glaciers that that topsoil. It were the hills that were left behind there, the rolling hills are called more rains. And even though they look pretty flat, you have to account for the rolling nature of that land with a straight torch tracker. So even in those areas, yes, there's tremendous value of bringing our equipment in. And to put it a little different way until Nevados came along in American football field with a one foot rise in the middle to handle rainwater runoff was a problem that had to be accounted for with conventional trackers by using variable posts reveal height. Yeah, that thing that looks so flat. It was a problem for conventional equipment. We came along and we changed that.

00:19:02.048 --> 00:19:26.799
So that even American football field wasn't flat enough at the beginning. Now you know people are you know, different companies are able to handle that a little better now, but that's a walk in the park. You don't even notice it with our equipment. So if you're thinking about a gentle rolling field, it's still a challenge for most trackers. hours you don't even notice as you install it. Easy peasy.

00:19:28.660 --> 00:19:34.599
Yeah, even a couple of feet over the length of a continuous torque tube is a big deal.

00:19:36.190 --> 00:19:38.380
Tremendous amount of work and cost.

00:19:38.559 --> 00:20:14.259
The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America. The maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over six gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS America product lineup includes three phase string inverters ranging from 25 to 275 kW, their flagship inverter, the CPS 250 to 75 is designed to work with solar plants ranging from to megawatts to two gigawatts, the 250 to 75 pairs well, with CPS, America's exceptional data communication controls and energy storage solutions, go to chintpowersystems.com To find out more.

00:20:14.859 --> 00:21:11.380
Yeah. So the Nevada System, if I, if I'm understanding this correctly, it makes, you know, you can have more uniformity in your pile length potentially, your your the depth that the pile is being driven to if you're using driven pile or whatever Foundation, you're using a ground screw. So there's some standardization there that you may not get in traditional trackers. But what when you think of these high level things? Okay, you're, you're tracking the terrain. So the energy modeling is more complicated. We want to we want to talk about that. I like to say that, yeah, you make you make a piece of hardware, but you're probably a software company at your core, what is your differentiator there? But what other high level things should our listeners know about Nevados?

00:21:12.009 --> 00:21:34.269
Yeah, you know, that's software is key to operating and developing these projects, when it will dive into the software, if you like, when you're developing a project on rolling terrain, as you start to go up a slope, you the distance, the north south distance between the foundations has to decrease.

00:21:35.650 --> 00:23:10.839
Because you know, this, the steeper the angle, if you think about two legs of your triangle, the long leg of the triangle begins to shrink, and you have to make that correction, otherwise, your foundations are going to be too far apart, and a torque tube isn't going to be engaged correctly. That's when you're looking at 1000 10,000 30,000 50,000 foundations on a project, that's a big effort. So you have to get highly accurate Topo, you have to go through the engineering design. People have to know what their what they need to focus on, and you need software tools in place to be able to correct that distance, the north south distance between the foundations, it's called the northing, the northing between each of the foundations there, okay, the, if you don't do it, you're gonna have problems, you're gonna have torque tubes that are too short. And the software to do that analysis, it took us a little while to get it perfected. We haven't perfected now it took a little, you know, we had a few Growing Pains along the way. But we have that perfected now that software is step one, once you go through that, and you can do that analysis, you can also analyze the angle change in each Foundation, which is important to select the proper bearing, you get all that equipment, and you put it you create your bill of materials to be able to supply that site and tell the installers exactly where each bearing goes. That's a massive lift. Yeah, the amount of work that goes into creating that software is tremendous. But that's just on the design side.

00:23:06.849 --> 00:24:26.950
Now, when you're operating the site, you need to make sure that those trackers as they're moving in the morning, when the sun is low in the sky, they can't all face the sun, or they just shattered the neighbor behind them. So they have to back off, it's called backtracking. And when you're on variable terrain, that gets really difficult. You have to analyze all that Shadowfall. So we created a software there that created that develops tilt schedules for each of those rows to eliminate that intro shadowing. Okay, we we also did, we also created our own production estimate software, but really like, what bank is gonna say, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna trust your production estimate software, for sure. Now, it's difficult to get that bankable and approved, they want to go to independent organizations for things like that. So what we do is we, we send those tilde schedules over to DNV. GL and they use solar pharma to create a bankable product, bankable report on energy generation for the site. As far as I know, we're the only company that can do all of that work, you know, create the tilt schedules before construction, get it to solar farm or to be analyzed, and have that done prior to construction.

00:24:23.529 --> 00:24:35.200
You know, other companies can figure out those tilt schedules after the equipment's in the ground. That's not all that helpful to get a really accurate production estimate. Yeah, we can do it before.

00:24:35.529 --> 00:24:39.130
So a solar farm or like PV Ciske is I'm not familiar with solar farmer.

00:24:39.609 --> 00:24:43.539
Yeah. So my PV assessed, I'd say that's pretty good comparison. Okay.

00:24:46.000 --> 00:25:20.200
And, okay, so, you've got a robust way of modeling the energy production, which you know, that is very important. You have to, you have to know how many kWh on it average the sides gonna produce per year so that you can price the electricity that you're generating, and and make the deal happen. Right. And I had a question, you're breaking up the torque tube into smaller pieces.

00:25:13.809 --> 00:25:23.349
But you don't have more motors than the other designs, right?

00:25:24.099 --> 00:26:24.549
Correct. We don't, it's no more complicated. In fact, it's, we just got a study back showing that we're tremendously more efficient at install, that that study will be, you know, digesting it and getting that put out in a white paper on our website. But we do routinely hear back that the actual install process for our equipment, about 25% faster than the next best product on the on the market, it is fast to install, there's no alignment needed. Because you're just going from, you have a line, which is your torque tube, and you're going from point A to point B, which are your bearings, you just drop it in place. There's no alignment involved with that. So our system, you just drop all the pieces in place, you tighten the bolts in a certain order, you're aligned. You don't have to use string lines, lasers, none of that. It just auto aligns. Same thing with our modules. There's no no alignment process involved with a lot modules, they just kind of snap fit into place and you tighten bolts. So you

00:26:24.549 --> 00:26:28.660
you have made some innovation in how the module attaches to the racking.

00:26:29.559 --> 00:26:34.210
How you align it?

00:26:29.559 --> 00:26:41.440
Yes. Okay. Yeah, we use their 400 millimeter spaced holes on the module frames. And we use nubs that go into those holes.

00:26:37.660 --> 00:26:47.890
So you push the module on, the holes fall around the nubs, you're aligned, got patents filed on that, where we do try to protect our right to operate.

00:26:48.549 --> 00:26:51.940
But yeah, that's something unique that we put together. So

00:26:51.940 --> 00:27:32.380
if I'm a developer, casting about for alternatives, you know, this, this is one of the things that I find so annoying about the industry right now. There trying to drive down the cost of energy. And so they're trying to drive down the cost of the installation. And they're trying to use a robust product, but a very affordable product at the same time. Right. So what is your experience working with developers and and that are driving to LCL? II? And how's that playing out for nevados?

00:27:33.250 --> 00:27:48.220
Yeah, really, that's so this is, this is where it all comes down to right. Like you have to be cost competitive. And just because you're on a difficult rolling train project, where you might be, you know, cutting out a 10 cents a grading doesn't mean you get to put that on top of your equipment price.

00:27:48.460 --> 00:27:58.509
So we have to be cost competitive on flatland and rolling terrain. So it's really, you know, kind of flatland pricing everywhere. So we don't have a big swing in our pricing.

00:27:58.599 --> 00:28:17.529
If you're going from flatland or rolling terrain, it's pretty much the same darn pricing. It's the same equipment. And we are cost competitive. Even on flat land projects, our equipment is cost competitive. So it we don't really have a loss there. What we do is we help the developers and the PCs, avoid other costs.

00:28:17.740 --> 00:28:22.779
And by doing that, we bring a lot of land back into consideration that they wouldn't have been able to use before.

00:28:23.019 --> 00:29:17.740
Yeah. And I want to hit on some of this, like, in a lot of the country, you can't grade. So it's not even an option, that 810 cents that you might have spent or two cents or whatever, on grading, you're just not even allowed to spend it. It's going to be too problematic. There's gonna be too many protests at the permit hearings. You just can't grade the sites. So but even if you do, you know, there's tremendous cost involved. When when you come in with our equipment, you just ignore all that and you approach it basically, like a flatland project. With regards to land preparation. Yeah. And we don't get to charge more. Like I said, we don't get to charge, you know, buckets of money more to do that. We still have to be competitive because it's a solar project that fits within certain parameters, be it flatland project, or rolling terrain.

00:29:19.900 --> 00:29:23.349
Okay, so Oh, sorry, go ahead.

00:29:23.680 --> 00:29:38.346
Well, my next question is, is about the customer experience, like what is every manufacturer is different? And everybody talks a good game, but the reality is always slightly different.

00:29:34.425 --> 00:29:57.880
Right? So I'm just curious what is if I was to go to a Helga Pierre Nath, who I checked, has not installed the vatos yet, but he's excited to install in Nevados this year, he said, but, you know, if I talk to a developer, or an installer who's worked with tomatoes, what would they say about working with tomatoes? Well,

00:29:58.599 --> 00:30:45.280
so I'm going to answer that in two parts. It's the actual interaction of working with Nevados. And then what we help with at the beginning of the project, because the customer experience, we affect long before our equipment even shows up. It, it's this grading piece, you eliminate graded, you leave the natural train in place, you don't have to go through the permits and all the protests that you often see at the, you know, trying to get permits to grade these days. The risk mitigation planning, you don't have to do that, the amount of time it takes just to move the soil around, maybe you're taking all that topsoil and stockpiling it then doing your grading and then bringing the topsoil back, incredibly expensive process.

00:30:41.713 --> 00:32:32.790
That is part of the customer experience. And we're eliminating those that risk and those efforts, so long before they touch our equipment. The customer experience has been shaped by that by eliminating those costs. You know, if you think about grading, as soon as you start moving the dirt, you have these risks, you expose maybe shallow bedrock, or maybe you find something underground that you weren't expecting, it rains, and the water doesn't run off, and all of a sudden you have a bucket of mud that you're working in. And all of that gets taken out. If you're dealing with farmland, and the farmers don't want that land to be graded, so if you try to do that, you're going to have tremendous resistance from the farmers. And then they're the environmental agencies that you have to work with. They don't want to see any of that grading because you're going to get sediment going into rivers, streams, killing them potentially choking out ponds and lakes. So the customer experience has shaped at the beginning. And the customers, you know, it's the developer, but it's also the people who use the power around that area. They want to know the local constituents, they want to have a good experience as well. So it starts way back at the beginning. I want to give you one example, real quick. We have a project in Northern Virginia, it's 175 megawatts. It's built on the most ridiculously rolling train that you would ever you've ever seen a tractor installed on. No grading. The director of the environmental department of environmental quality came out and was just blown away by the beauty of the site. How well it was put together. And the fact that it had 1/8, the number of retention basins, you typically see, because you didn't need them because he didn't grade.

00:32:32.852 --> 00:32:49.089
And he nominated the site for an award. And we're waiting to see if we get it believe we will. Or they will number of groups involved. But that's part of the customer experience. Do you have any questions around that? Or do you want me to move on to the next part?

00:32:50.650 --> 00:32:54.309
I think I'm good there. What is the what is the next part? Sure.

00:32:54.309 --> 00:32:56.380
So the next part is getting the equipment to site.

00:32:57.430 --> 00:33:00.640
You know, we don't have just one big contiguous block anymore.

00:33:01.089 --> 00:33:04.119
Those days are pretty much gone.

00:33:01.089 --> 00:33:18.369
Maybe, you know, some projects here and there. But we usually have what were called, I called them fractured sites. So you have a section here section there and scattered around, and it might be five miles wide, 10 miles wide, couple miles tall.

00:33:13.990 --> 00:34:18.130
And you have to get all this equipment out to those specific areas and get it unloaded in those areas. And if you don't do that, it creates a lot of extra work for the the EPC. And it can kill their profit margins, there's probably going to be a change order go into the developer, this you need to get the equipment where it's supposed to go and not create extra work. So our supply chain team works very closely with the EPCs to make sure that we're shipping exactly what is needed for exactly those locations. And it's arriving at the proper time. We have little mistakes here. And there. Sometimes we have some big mistakes, we send our staff out, we relabeled things, we get everything prepped up, we get the equipment there early enough that if there's a mistake, we can get it prepped. And then by the time the work crews get there, we you know, it's you just seamlessly move into the next section of the site. It's something we've gotten a lot of strong feedback on that we do a very good job of supporting EPCs

00:34:20.170 --> 00:34:38.739
Yeah, logistics are very important. Properly kidding stuff. So it's easy to you know, get from container to field and get in the ground.

00:34:30.849 --> 00:35:09.099
Very, very important. So well in our last couple of minutes together. I guess. I'm curious, what prediction do you have for the tracker industry writ large because there are you know, a plethora of alternatives emerging we have systems like five B peg I'm arccos. And it's totally apples and oranges.

00:35:04.750 --> 00:35:12.670
Right? But what's what's in your crystal ball? What is it that keeps you up at night? And what are you guys working on?

00:35:13.539 --> 00:35:20.170
You know, we see a lot of differential settlement projects coming in these days.

00:35:15.820 --> 00:35:23.380
So, areas you might have liquefaction and an earthquake.

00:35:20.170 --> 00:35:35.889
I mean, biggest earthquakes in the US have happened in the middle of the country. You know, 1812, we had that massive quake and near New Madrid fault in Missouri. Yep, the Mississippi River backwards for a few minutes and rank church bells in Boston, massive quakes, right.

00:35:36.489 --> 00:36:33.909
We also have big quakes around the rest of the country. And you get issues with these large power plants, you might get settling of the land, or you're building on top of an old coal mine, you can't use that land for much of anything else, because the tunnels are going to collapse and you get movement on the top. So you can't put roads and houses and bridges or buildings there. We're seeing a lot of that land coming up to be used for solar power plants. And that's an area where Nevada's just excels, that we can handle that movements. So well. Way, way outside of our quoted capability for angle change to the at through the bearings, we can handle that, you know, we were not going to say it's gonna last for 40 years, but you have differential settlement, you have plenty of time to operate the plant, fix those issues, and stay within the warranty. So we're seeing things like that where we're, the industry is moving towards much more challenging land to work with, and you need a really high quality product that can bring value to that land.

00:36:35.739 --> 00:37:02.530
The differential settlement piece that that sparked a thought for me, what about brownfield and you mentioned old coalfields but what about landfills? Because differential settlement can be a concern there, but also the terrain, you know, you've got these east, many, many landfills are mounds, right, so you've got east west slopes, and then you've got South slopes, and, and you have to do ballasted.

00:37:03.070 --> 00:37:10.179
And so I've heard whisperings of a ballast that tracker, but have you had any contact with the Brownfield developers?

00:37:10.840 --> 00:37:13.150
We don't have a balanced solution right now.

00:37:13.449 --> 00:37:38.139
It's something we could look into, I think, really, the those opportunities are relatively slim. They're not they're not all that there aren't that many applications out there. Compared to how big the rest of the industry is. Now, it is a large portion of the industry, but it's not one that we're really focused on. Got it. Yeah, because you can't penetrate deeply through the cap or you'll penetrate in the landfill. And I know

00:37:38.139 --> 00:37:46.690
you got to do ballast. Okay, so the differential settlement is not a, it's not a narrow thing with landfills, not on

00:37:46.690 --> 00:39:37.599
landfills, it's in other places. But just a couple of other things, I think that we're going to see sorry, in the industry, domestic contents growing, the need for that will be at 100% domestic content by the end of the year, that then allows the EPCs to use field labor as domestic content as well. These are some big shifts in the industry, we got ahead of it, we we developed out our domestic manufacturing capability, bringing all that manufacturing back to the US. We started manufacturing in the US to be competitive with the industry, we have to go overseas, it wasn't something we wanted to do. Yeah, that's where our competitors were in his lower price. I'm glad to see the IRA is in place, we're able to bring that manufacturing back to the US, which is where we wanted to be at all along. But having that domestic content, it's a critical part for the industry to grow, it's a critical part for the country to grow. Outside of that, I would say just making these, these projects easier to install, labor is getting more difficult to find. So you need people who can be trained up more quickly and a more simple system. That is our system, it is so simple to know how to put this thing together, the learning curve is is short and fast. It's there's not much to learn to put this equipment together. So and then that equipment also a couple as well, with the automation systems that we're beginning to see rollout in the industry. So I think there's a lot of change left coming to the industry. How do you get the equipment in the ground? Like how many hands do you have available to do the work? What kind of land you're working with? It's going to be a very different next 10 years and the last 10 for the solar industry. It just is not going to we're not going to be installing power plants. The way you know, we are now in the next 10 years. Yeah,

00:39:37.599 --> 00:40:32.320
I mean there's a saying all the good sites are gone. That's not entirely true here in the Midwest yet it's it's so early days, but but certainly on the coasts. You have to you have to move to more difficult ground. So it does resonate that there's an opportunity. Well, I would love to do a part two. So let's stay in Touch. But let's wrap this up, I want to encourage my listeners to check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com. Give us a rating and review, please, that is the best way to help others find the show besides telling your friends and family about the show, that's the number one way to help us. And we do this for you. I want to thank all my listeners, it's it's great to be part of the energy transition with you. And how can our listeners find you Yes, and

00:40:33.550 --> 00:40:39.911
how they can find us. Online nevados.solar are pretty easy to locate that way.

00:40:36.268 --> 00:40:47.199
And if you want to swing by our headquarters in Jack London Square and meet with us welcome to do that as well just shoot us an email and we'll get in touch.

00:40:47.349 --> 00:40:56.170
That's in Oakland, California, in case you're wondering, Jack London squares is maybe a household name where you're from, but but not not for the rest of us.

00:40:56.679 --> 00:40:57.969
So thanks for that.

00:40:58.119 --> 00:41:47.829
Well, it's been a pleasure, I want to, I want to thank you for for, you know, doing what you're doing. I love to see the industry grow and evolve. So thank you. And with that, let's grow solar and storage. I'm Tim Montague, take care. Hey, listeners. This is Tim, I want to give a shout out to all of you. I do this for you twice a week. Thank you for being here. Thank you for giving us your time. I really appreciate you and what you're all about. You are part and parcel of the energy transition, whether you're an energy professional today, or an aspiring energy professional. So thank you, I want to let you know that the Clean Power Hour has launched a listener survey.

00:41:42.190 --> 00:41:47.829
And it would mean so much to me.

00:41:48.070 --> 00:42:25.780
If you would go to cleanpowerhour.com. Click on the About Us link right there on the main navigation that takes you to the about page. And you'll see a big graphic listener survey, just click on that graphic, and it takes just a couple of minutes. If you fill out the survey, I will send you a lovely baseball cap with our logo on it. The other thing I want our listeners to know is that this podcast is made possible by corporate sponsors.

00:42:20.440 --> 00:42:39.400
We have chin power systems, the leading three phase string inverter manufacturer in North America. So check out CPS America. But we are very actively looking for additional support to make this show work.

00:42:39.429 --> 00:42:43.929
And you see here our media kit.

00:42:39.429 --> 00:42:46.750
With all the sponsor benefits and statistics about the show.

00:42:43.960 --> 00:43:25.210
You know we're dropping two episodes a week. We have now over 320,000 downloads on YouTube. And we're getting about 45,000 downloads per month. So this is a great way to bring your brand to our listeners and our listeners are decision makers in clean energy. This includes projects executives, engineers, finance, project management, and many other professionals who are making decisions about and developing, designing, installing and making possible clean energy projects.

00:43:18.789 --> 00:43:35.769
So check out cleanpowerhour.com both our listener survey on the about us and our media kit and become a sponsor today. Thank you so much. Let's go solar and storage

Nevados, the Solar Tracker That Adapts to Any Terrain with Yezin Taha | EP205

Listen On

Recent Episodes