Green Giants – Episode 25

Bruce Stewart (01:27)

Yeah, you bet. well, one, thanks for, again, the invitation and thanks for the question. So I’ve actually been very focused on renewables for quite some time. And if you look back in the early 2010 to 2015 timeframe, I was at Constellation Energy and we were very active in sort of clean energy solutions on the solar side. And we were also, at that point, I was building and growing the ability to bring renewable solutions into both businesses and the consumers.

We focused on, at that point in time, it was, if you think about that, that’s 14 years ago, right? 10 to 14 years ago, there was a discussion about it, but people often thought about renewables as a premium. And today we’re in a very different environment, right? We’re in a very different environment. And then we were evangelizing it. We were doing deals with the PGA, with the NHL and helping them have the first green season at the NHL, which was pretty cool during our time at Constellation to working on utility scale solar, right, to behind the meter sort of commercial solar, to advocating for solar on rooftops. So, you know, as I did that through Constellation and then thinking about energy efficiency and how we can increasingly be energy efficient, again, all the way through to our direct energy time.

There was a constant sort of refrain as we were providing ways for customers to save on their energy bills, right? Whether through energy efficiency or through sort of rate reductions. There was also an ever growing sort of conversation around customers simply saying, how do I actually become more carbon neutral? How do I activate against my desire and interest and actually driving to basically a solution that will help me in my business or in my home actually contribute, right? And be part of this migration to consuming clean energy, to driving to carbon reduction and so forth. And so that was really sort of the crystallization as we went through, we had three and a half million customers at Direct Energy.

Many of them actually selected renewable options along with their electricity or natural gas sort of options they were selecting. And after we sold that business to NRG, I was interested in sort of taking the next step, is how can we even go a step further? And as I was looking, and I saw quite a unique and valuable solution in community solar, which was still, it’s still young. You, we still have, you know, know, upwards of six gigawatts sort of in the market, but it’s only, it’s not in every state in the U.S. and there’s still plenty of opportunity to educate consumers about how easy it is to basically subscribe to and help the construction of net new clean energy resources through community solar farms, right? And save on energy bills. So that was a lot of the impetus for me to sort of really take the next step and go all the way to really sort of driving a greater acceptance, a greater awareness, a greater knowledge and a greater adoption of clean energy solutions, especially one that’s as promising and as easy to adopt as community solar.

Wes Ashworth (04:34)

Yeah, no, I love that story and just the trajectory of, kind of how you got there. And it makes so much sense. And several things you mentioned there we’ll dive into as we get deeper into the episode that I want to unpack and learn a little bit more. I am curious. So one of the things I think I have personal passion for is seeing people from different backgrounds. And I know you’ve been in renewables now for quite a while, but you had a career before that in some other industries and you learned some different things from those.

I’m always curious how that perspective helps you and shapes what you’re doing now. So how has that previous experience shaped just your vision for Perch Energy and some of the things that you’re doing now?

Bruce Stewart (05:13)

I appreciate the question. So my, you know, in my career early on was in sort of the media and telecom space, which was cable television, right? And we were bringing, you know, cable television and an ever evolving sort of set of cable television services. Today, we take for granted streaming, back in sort of the nineties timeframe we were doing near video on demand, right? And bringing streaming today, we take for granted, you know, sort of wifi and broadband capability in our home.

Back in the timeframe, when I was in that industry, we were bringing broadband solutions to customers. the next sort of chapter was, in the technology space in specifically sort of online with teams like Yahoo and helping people sort of move from, you know, a tethered experience on their computer or PC to their laptop, to their iPad, to their phone, and creating sort of mobility of consumption of not just email, but all sorts of services and solutions, also with AOL at that particular point in time and helping people sort of consume content. And so why do I bring these pieces up? Because part of what we’re doing today in the energy space is the energy transformation is defined by a technology transformation for how we’re delivering services, how we’re delivering customer care, right?

How we’re delivering, marketing and sales of services, how we’re actually building automation, and how we can fundamentally sort of transform the energy transformation was also sort of the advent, with the transformation of media and telecom for online services. So I’m bringing a lot of that, those experiences from my past here and front and center to those conversations is always how are we actually making the product, right?

And how are we making it easy to understand? How are we making it easy for people to find and to step into, in our case now, subscribing to Community Solar? Back then it was, how do we get people to continue to adopt the next sort of broadband at their home in a cable time frame? How do we get people to increasingly consume additional mobile services that used to be on your laptop now on your mobile phone? How do we create a better search experience on a mobile phone tailored to the notion that you are mobile versus one where you’re sitting at home?

Like all of those kinds of ideation on products and innovation is very relevant today to our current energy transformation, which is how do we actually make renewable energy services more readily available? How do we help, educating customers to use those? And how do we help them step into it and deliver value, right? So the value is the customers being able to truly be able to be part of a material movement of shifting our grid increasingly from traditional fossil or brown fuels over to green and renewable energy sources. We’re always going to have a mix, but how do we actually help change that mix and at the same time bring a strong value proposition to customers, which includes helping them with their billing solutions, helping make sure that they can get customer care questions, and putting front and center, you know, CSAT, know, net promoter scores, like caring about the customer in that journey, every, every bit as much as making, net new product innovations and knowing at the end of the day that, ongoing sort of additional adoption, ongoing sort of momentum for business customers, for municipal customers, for small commercial customers, residential customers, low medium income customers is all about creating a really strong experience in onboarding, a really strong experience through the life of that, in our case, subscription to community solar and delivering on the promise of energy savings, right, for them.

So those are the real things that I sort of take through a couple of different industries that when done right, right, and all you have to do is take a look back and say, yes, the technology needs to work. Yeah. Yes. Broadband needs to work. Right. Yes. Mobile applications and services need to work really well. Right. And yes, subscriptions and billing and online sort of, our online sort of services to support those who build these community solar projects and the customers who are subscribers to it, that that really works well. If you keep that front and center, you’re going to help be able to drive that, that for the referral market sort of takes care where people are like, Hey, listen, I just signed up for the greatest product ever. And that’s when you really know you’re starting to get, you know, get some real momentum here. And that’s part of the focus.

Wes Ashworth (09:41)

Yeah, that’s so brilliantly said and I love those parallels just with thinking about going back in time to the internet. And I was there, part of that, and remember that vividly in terms of like, people saying, this isn’t gonna work, what is this? And just this resistance to it. And then seeing that evolve rapidly and quickly, same in telecommunications, from, it wasn’t very long where we went from, you know, a black and white bar phone to having smartphones, you know, in a matter of years and just how quickly that adoption happened and the technology evolving. So I love those parallels from your previous experience and how that relates now and I’m sure has had a huge factor just in your success and driving that success. And with that, you know, Perch Energy has experienced significant growth, you know, doubling your markets and clients.

What are the key drivers behind the success and how do you envision the company’s growth in the next few years?

Bruce Stewart (10:35)

So part of it is, I mean, listen, every business that runs, you do it with a team, right? And so at the end of the day, do you have a composite of a team with different skills and capabilities and backgrounds, right, that can really sort of help propel you to the next level, right? That are comfortable with transformation, because we’re living in a business today, in community solar that continues to transform. The number of markets that are opening up as it is, sometimes, you know, and there’s also a federal overlay of regulations that sort of are intended to support and incentivize the additional growth of community solar projects. And so really knowing at the end of the day, you have to have a team that’s sort of consuming, you know, an ever shifting movement and be comfortable in a market that is transforming and being excited about being at the front end of pushing that transformation.

So it’s about the team, right? And so when we sort of think about us as a team, we say, you know, at once we do need to be technologists. We need to actually think about our platform. We have a clean energy platform that helps, bring customers, onto solar farms and then manage them for the better part of the life of that solar farm that could be 25, 30 years. And so, do we have technologists that can build a really strong platform that helps us make it easy for customers to come on board, and then helps work with the utilities on the building and management side, and then ultimately handles the care of those customers through time as they may move from business from one location to the other? We can transfer their benefits of the subscription from one location to the other as they might actually close the business down in one location and open another.

Same for residential customers, as they might move and or be in their houses or if they’re renters, and how do we actually help continue to do, like, what does our platform from a technology standpoint support those pieces and the short answer it does and so at once one leg of the stool is are we technologists that are building a strong platform that can be scalable right so as we grow and we are growing can we continue to grow with automation that continues to allow us to scale and that’s one of the things from the past i’ve i’ve been part of businesses that have grown from, you know, zero customers or 40,000 customers to millions, right?

And being able to think about a platform that can scale effectively through time is also part of a technology and an operations capability, so that’s a really key part of it. So that’s like, you know, call it a three-legged stool, that’s one. Two, we have members of our team that truly understand the renewable space. Perch was born from Blue Wave Solar, which was out there, which was a developer. Now they’re an IPP. They now own assets for the long haul. But people came out from community solar, from its very inception in Massachusetts. We have team members that have been around that understand some of the nuances of it, can really guide our clients that build these solar farms along and help us sort of navigate it. So that’s that next element is how do we actually have people that truly understand the renewable space? That’d be sort of the second leg of the stool.

The third leg of the stool, from a team perspective, would be folks who also understand how to scale and grow, that have a retail element, that actually understand that you do need to acquire customers of all types, like acquiring a large, what we call anchor customer, a large commercial customer is critical at the end of the day. But also how do we actually get small commercial customers that will acquire, how do we acquire municipal customers, residential and increasingly low medium income customers because there’s lots of parts of the legislation that are incentivizing making sure that solar can truly be for all so that everybody can participate in the energy savings. How do we have, if you will, a retail mindset or a mindset that can actually serve customers?

And so that’s another part of this stool. And by the way, that has done it not just for where this business industry is today, but where we can actually imagine millions of customers subscribed to Community Solar. And we have team members that have actually built those platforms to deliver that scalable solution. So at the end of the day, part of this success is about a team that actually can do that, that allows you to double, to your point, the number of markets that we’re serving, allows us to double the number of customers we’re serving, allows us to build those technology and operating capabilities to truly scale, so it all comes down to team. Nobody does anything alone. We all do it together. And so that’s a really powerful way that when we think about a differentiator for us is how we’re focused on having the best players on, that can be the best service providers to those who build, the asset owners that build these projects, and also a great service provider, the customers that subscribe.

And doing both of those things at the same time, because that’s what we’re a platform, we’re connecting both of those, customers and community solar projects together. And that’s pretty cool.

Wes Ashworth (15:43)

It is cool. I was glad to hear you just to focus on the team, right? And that’s what’s driven the success. And I see that often. It’s a matter of, companies often will have a great technology, a great service, a great product, they’ve got the right go-to-market strategies and all these sorts of things. But if you don’t have the right team in place that are rowing the same direction, that are helping you push those things forward, especially in an industry like this, that there are a lot of challenges and things like that there, that it’s just difficult. That focus on team, building the right team, building the right people underneath you, that really is everything. So I’m glad to hear you mention that one. In terms of community solar, there’s still tons of growth available.

And we’ll talk about that as we get into this. thinking about some things that may distinguish Perch Energy from other players in the community solar space, beyond the people you have. And I don’t want to undermine that. I think that’s a huge, huge piece of it. But what other elements would you say maybe are different from Perch Energy compared to some other players out there in the community solar space?

Bruce Stewart (16:47)

I appreciate the question, everybody, because it’s something we address day in, day out, right? So, you know, there are probably three that are sort of, have the lion’s share of the community solar market, and we’re one of those three today. And we do find ourselves bidding to win the right to provide acquisition and management services to folks who own these solar farms, right? And that will own them for a long time, and so part and parcel of that is from their perspective, how good is the quality of our service, right? How capable are we of scaling with them, right? And so we have found that many of our customers, we have a strong repeat level of business with the clients who build these solar farms that enlist us, project after project, to continue to grow with us. And to do it from a state from Massachusetts to New York to Maine to New Jersey to Maryland to Illinois that are willing to say, let’s keep growing together. And they sort of have a trust-based relationship in us, knowing that we’ve delivered for them before and we can deliver for them yet again. So an element of differentiation is proof in quality of services, it’s kind of simple.

Like one of the big things is can you acquire customers for us cost effectively, and can you fill our project on time, and can you keep the project filled with customers? Because guess what? Customers do move and do change, and you’ll need to sort of always keep that project fully subscribed, as we call it, right? So all the power that’s being produced, if you will, which produces credits, all that power and those credits produced, we can put them in the hands of customers so that a broader array of customers can fully subscribe and get the benefit of the savings. That’s a key part of our job.

And then sometimes it’s tricky, right? It’s tricky to actually deal with utilities, right? Not every utility is the same, the rules and the way in which to interact with them. So we have people that are experts. part of our definition is we’re experts in actually engaging with and working with the utilities on building management. And guess what? It’s, you know, 40 plus different utilities with different rules. And so how to actually understand those rules and navigate those, that’s an area of expertise, right, that we’re able to bring. Another expertise is to actually understand the rules, right? Well, there’s a federal set of rules, there’s a state set of rules, and they’re different between each of the community solar markets. And so we have policy and regulatory expertise in the business. We also have an advocacy element in which when we see that a certain policy isn’t quite working, we are part of an advocacy play to change some of those rules. So that’s a differentiation that we bring to our clients at the end of the day, they’ll want to know that our CSAT scores are good. They’ll want to know that our ability to do accurate on-time billing is good.

That should be table stakes and it is for us, right? At the end of the day. But one other element that’s increasingly important is, are we here for the long run? Are we here for the long haul? Right? And so are we in a strong financial position to be able to ride through this market as it changes and grows and evolves and expands, right? Can we be that multi-decade player? And so we put ourselves in a strong financial position as well to be able to say, are we around for the long haul? And when you look at the other, sometimes the other competitors may not quite have some of that, what I would call sort of financial strength. So that’s an important element of it as well, right? Well, all of those pieces sort of come together to say, we’re putting ourselves in the right position to be able to have strengths in acquiring a mix of customers that would be diverse.

Some people are very focused on residential customers only. We know that our project partners here, that own the farms, would like a large anchor, would like a big, investment grade customer to take maybe 25, 30% of the project. They’ll know that they’ll want some to be small commercial, some to be residential, and then perhaps some under certain regulations for sure to be low-medium income. We’ve developed capabilities in each one of those. And that’s actually really key, and I would say differentiating, because some sort of specialized, some of our competitors specialize, and we think it’s really important to be able to say, whatever you need from customers to subscribe to your projects, we have the capabilities and the partnerships to put in place to be able to bring those customers to you on day one to fill the project, but also to keep them filled full through time.

Wes Ashworth (21:23)

Yeah, clear differentiators there. And I know Perch Energy aims to make solar for all a reality and it makes strides to do that. And can you elaborate on some of the innovations or strategies you’ve implemented just to reach a broader audience, including the low to moderate income customers and renters?

Bruce Stewart (21:43)

You bet. Well, it’s no mistake if you look at the Inflation Reduction Act and the climate bill parts of it, which is, think, where you’re going, right? And for folks that are in your audience that are students of it, realize that there are incentives being put in place to make sure that the benefits, this energy savings benefits, electricity bill savings benefits, do apply to all. And so the Inflation Reduction Act provided that, an additional incentive of up to 20% savings through what they call a federal adder, that can accrue to project owners that fill the projects with, let’s call it half or 40%, whatever the different state by state. There’s also state benefits as well to bring to low-medium income customers as well. So in New York and Maryland as well as in New Jersey, as well as the federal adders.

So that means at the end of the day that the customers that you’ll be targeting are low-medium income customers, right? And some of the dynamics of targeting those low-medium income customers are coming from the standpoint of could they actually put rooftop on? The short answer is no. Oftentimes, if they’re a single-family homeowner, perhaps, is that, does that investment in rooftop solar make sense from their household budget? Maybe, maybe not.

In a lot of cases, if they’re not a family, a single family owner, there also could be a renter. And so generally, renters couldn’t truly participate in rooftop solar, right? And so the ability to basically subscribe to a farm that’s not co-located on your roof, right? That’s it, but it’s in your community that’s generating jobs in your community. You’ll be able to subscribe to that and get 20% savings on your electricity bill. For somebody who’s from a household budget, 20% on their electricity bill can be a real material benefit across all of their household budget items. And so that’s one of the real things that gets released as a consequence of the Inflation Reduction Act and some of the state legislations and the policies that are promoting the ability to, let’s make it available for all and for all means; Renters, single family homeowners, businesses, you name it. Everybody can subscribe as long as you’re in the same utility zone as that community solar project. And that’s quite liberating. That’s quite liberating from that perspective. because statistically as robust as rooftop residential solar is or commercial residential solar, and I’m supportive, right? I’m supportive of all of those.

This is about bringing options, bringing additional options to the table. And Community Solar does just that. If somebody’s unable to afford it or not interested in affording it or they’re a renter as a business owner or a commercial owner, they can still get the savings benefits and still support the development of net new clean energy in their local communities. And that’s a real change agent for folks. So folks that before were deaf to the marketing messages or unable to execute on the marketing messages for rooftop and now do it.

And if you imagine that, upwards of 70% of folks may not be able to put a rooftop system for any number of reasons, because they may be a renter, maybe because it doesn’t have the proper disposition, meaning from a, know, southern exposure to the sun, or it has shading, or they have roof aging issues or budget, financing issues or aesthetic issues, whatever they are, you’ve now opened up that market to really be able to step in and be able to take advantage of renewables, right? Number one, and supporting the development of it, and two, energy savings, which is a nice one too, right? A nice one.

Wes Ashworth (25:30)

Yeah. It’s a nice one too, for sure. And probably a lot of what’s driving the growth and digging into that a little bit more. According to Wood McKinsey, the US community solar market is expected to add 4.5 gigawatts of capacity from 2023 to 2027, which is significant in a four year period. So nearly doubling the total installed capacity to date. Could you provide insights into what’s driving this expansion and how Perch is positioning itself in this fast growing market?

Bruce Stewart (26:00)

Well, what’s driving the expansion is the opportunity for developers basically to look at the spectrum. So many of our partners do utility scale, will also do DG, sort of distributed generation behind the meter, rooftop elements. And this now gives them another opportunity. They already have the capabilities, both financial, right, investment funds, but also the engineering, procurement, and construction capabilities to build these projects. And now you have another opportunity to build slightly smaller scale projects, because community solar projects are generally sort of five megawatts and below on a project by project basis. They will cobble a handful of those together at different times.

But it’s another way to sort of continue to put net new renewable sources in place, there are proper incentives. state over state over state continues to adopt a way to say, really do, the states are sending it at federal level, we’re setting objectives to reach carbon neutrality, right? Or carbon reduction goals. And you have to have multiple activities going, right? Clean energy can look like nukes, and the greater adoption of nukes can look like hydrogen.

But clearly stuff that’s already in place and already working and already demonstrating are things like solar and even wind. But you’ll see all of those things and all of these things are going to make a step function improvement. And our partners are saying we’re in that space. This is a key part of, we have the ability. We have, there’s investment appetite in this, which is really important, right? There are incentives in place and we’re making a good, sizable, ability to sort of continue to add net, new generation to our grid. And if you look at our consumptive behavior, right, as a nation, whether it’s the advent of additional data, data center resources to support all of, the significant online activity, much less the coming AI activity, when you look at sort of the continued growth in the EV charging and the increasing electrification of many things. This is a really important way for us to meet that current demand and future demand.

Wes Ashworth (28:22)

Yeah, and that increasing demand is real, as you mentioned, so that the data centers, AI, EV charging, even reshoring, bringing more manufacturing into the States, it’s a huge power user. So all those things, so any of these options are gonna help, just as our energy demands increase, and community solar being a huge, huge part of that. The other thing that I wanted to make sure we touch on is just around the education side of the equation.

I know it is a challenge educating consumers about community solar, and I think I read a stat, only 30% of US consumers are aware of community solar options, which does highlight the need for increased education and outreach. guess, what has Perch Energy been doing to overcome this hurdle? What success stories or challenges have you encountered? Just increasing customer engagement, awareness, education.

Bruce Stewart (29:12)

Sure. Wes, podcasts like yours to help bring awareness and education are surely helpful, right? But it’s so much, and it’s impactful, and as big as your audience is, we need more conversations like this. And I appreciate the question because I think about where we are. We could say that we are still a very young industry. So if you look at the Wood Mackenzie sort of projections for the growth, you look at the growth of the industry over the last five to five to seven years, it’s been a pretty significant growth jump.

You look at, to your, even the points, the stats that you’ve raised, continued strong sort of growth of community solar. It is still in a handful of states where most of that, more than a handful, two, you know, three handfuls of states where you got really strong adoption and growth. So I’m not surprised by the 30% stat on a national basis, but in state to state, I think there’s a greater awareness in markets like Massachusetts, like New Jersey, which is up and coming. There’s a growing awareness, but it’s less so than New York, where it’s already been quite robust and you have lots of projects already built. Maryland will be following with more projects coming. Illinois has got a nice level of momentum. So you do have a bit of a view where state to state, market to market, it might be a little different education awareness. But the point is, and what’s interesting is, having grown up with folks saying, what do I need, you know, high speed internet access to my home for broadband back in the day?

You’re not, you know, I’m dating myself, but in the nineties, right? So in the nineties, people were like, what do I need faster email for? And they couldn’t have imagined that it was going to be essential to the conversation we’re having today. The fact that we’re doing streaming, podcast based videos that started that, you know, a couple of decades ago that we had to build that infrastructure. The same conversation is here, which is people didn’t, we’ve got to sort of educate people about the why and its value and how it fits into the broader ecosystem.

People aren’t waking up as much as I wish they were. Wes, they’re not waking up each day and saying, how do I get it today? I’ve got it on my to-do list. How do I subscribe to community solar? So our job at the end of the day is, to work with, all of our partners, right? There are folks where people that are out there shopping for energy services and we’re sort of working with them.

We’re talking with folks that are at the front end of building trust-based relationships with customers and saying, did you know, right? Did you realize on a digital basis, on a digital basis, were you aware that you could, in addition to putting rooftop solar, you also have this idea to not actually have to put any solar at all on your home and to simply subscribe. And by the way, you can do this in five minutes and then you can start getting savings in the next month or two as you’re subscribed to that project. And people are like, wait, I didn’t know that.

And so there’s those kinds of conversations. So it’s the whole cadence of digital conversations, of creating discussions like these, to a whole variety of forums. And then there’s reaching out directly to consumers, And letting them know that this is an opportunity. We’re partnering with chambers. We’re partnering with community groups, right? We’re partnering at very macro levels of somebody that’s already bringing in energy-efficient product to somebody saying, in addition to this energy efficiency, you could also support renewables.

There’s lots of conversation about how do I get involved in renewables? And we’re trying to put ourselves into that conversation with a, did you know? And if you didn’t, which is often the case, well, what does it mean? And how do I get involved? And that’s great. And now go tell your neighbor, your friend, or otherwise. We’re talking to business groups, right? Whole business groups, manufacturing groups, hotel associations, these folks that would be like, wait, any opportunity you can to basically meet an objective to support the development of clean energy and get savings on your energy bill, nobody doesn’t like savings on your energy bill, right?

And this product works in a nice, very consistent way. It’s X percent off your utility bill through time. And so it’s a really simple product and then it’s just helping people understand, well, wow, that’s actually really interesting that we have this dynamic and jump on board and get yourself subscribed before somebody else takes that subscription and gets the savings ahead of you, right?

Wes Ashworth (33:36)

Yeah, exactly. And I think it’s important to highlight just so many of those different areas of just education and awareness and getting it out to everyone. And to your point, not to undervalue the one person, the one person that has a positive experience that goes in. Because the only thing better when you save money or you have something, you want to share that. You’re like, hey, did you know about this? Somebody in an apartment complex or in a community or what have you, like, they’re going to get that word out so quick, again, not how important that is.

You mentioned some other partnerships and things like that. I know Perch Energy has partnered with impact investors and is helping some of those low-income communities as we talked about. How does Perch balance this mission of economic and environmental impact? What are some of the most significant outcomes you’ve achieved so far with that?

Bruce Stewart (34:20)

I appreciate you bringing this up. So we have, you know, Nuveen, we did a recent fundraising and Nuveen, who is well known on the impact side, is now an investor and a partner of ours going forward. And it was important as we were going through that investment round to find somebody that was simpatico with us on understanding the to sort of build and grow the business, but also to sort of meet what I would call the demand that was out there for continuing to help do this solar for all, to sort of also address the cross-section of low-medium income customers that often on many projects are sort of left aside, right? And so Nuveen, you may be aware, we had a release on this earlier where we’ve done now a handful of initiatives where we’ve basically brought the community solar savings value proposition to their affordable housing business.

They’re one of the largest affordable housing portfolios. And we’ve been proud, really proud to basically partner with them to bring the value of energy savings, the education of energy savings, right, to their tenants. So, and helping their tenants actually save on their electricity bills, right? It’s a really key way. And so we’ve set up, you know, key, sort of go-to-market partnerships, which have us actively engaging and speaking and talking at these locations, right? Both in Massachusetts and in New York City, sort of in the boroughs. And educating those customers and bringing those, helping those customers get signed up for the energy savings that they might not have otherwise understood and known. That’s an example of what I would call a very layered and strategic part of our partnership with Naveen.

In addition to that, there are also other community partnerships that we’ve put in place that are focused on and supporting a low-medium income segment of the market to bring the same value proposition and education to them and to say, listen, there’s a sense of trust. Can we trust this? That somebody vetted this? How do we know we’re making a fair and safe decision? Will I see the savings benefits? Is it easy to sign up for? You know, in New York, it’s quite easy because they can put the savings right on your utility bill.

Little trickier in Massachusetts because it’s often a dual bill market where the savings will be separately billed. Little trickier, but people have to understand those differences and then help guide people through that process to be like, yeah, this is really valuable for us and our household budget. And you find that on the other side of the people are quite appreciative of that savings and how it helps them sort of redirect some of those funds to other needed elements, whether it could be healthcare or childcare or education or whatever the case might be.

Wes Ashworth (37:11)

Yeah, and one quick thing I want to touch on too with that is just understanding just the other states, right? I guess from your perspective, what’s the timeline on that when you start maybe seeing some other states adopting, getting into it, launching these community solar programs or supporting them?

You know, if somebody’s in a state that’s not in one of those, what do you see in terms of timeline and what that looks like?

Bruce Stewart (37:33)

You bet. I would say, you know, Wes, one thing is that there are 20 plus states that have some form of community solar regulation, but they’re all at different sorts of stages, right? Some are in the pilot stage, some are very robust. And so, there was a lot of work done at an industry level to continue to sort of open up net new markets. I think there was some hope that California would open in a more robust way that it has, right?

But we’re seeing incredible continued enthusiasm in a market like New York, strong growth in Maryland, New Jersey, right? You’re seeing Virginia, you’re seeing sort of renewed growth in Minnesota that was an early market, seeing some step up in Colorado, you’re seeing a net new market in New Mexico, which came out bullish a couple years ago. Now the regulations are finally coming in, so that should be coming live, so that’s a net positive.

And then Illinois obviously is a relatively new market that continues to sort of adopt. And so I think some of the things that will help the adoption, maybe you’re kind of going there in your question, which is how do we, best practices make a difference, right? And we do have, there are different ways in which community solar operates in different states. And that’s part of the, part of the trickiness and the solving that, solving those nuances that we bring to the table with our partners. But making it easier, utility consolidated billing is just, putting those savings right on that utility bill is quite valuable, right? For customers, it makes it easy for them to sign up. It makes it easy for them to sort of see those savings right there. And you’ll see that in markets that there’s a variety of the new markets, making sure that that happens is, for instance, a key sort of element of it, just to name one, for instance.

Wes Ashworth (39:17)

Yeah, no, that’s great. And from your perspective, too. So what’s next for community solar? Are there any technological innovations or trends that you’re excited about that could transform the industry?

Bruce Stewart (39:28)

I think some of it is the continued option. You look for the proof points. There are really strong proof points in New York for how well it’s grown, right? Good proof points in Massachusetts. You’re seeing really strong interest through all of these markets, strong proof points in Illinois. You’ve got a lot of history in the Oregon’s, Colorado’s and Minnesota. Consumers are pleased, right?

And so when you look at it at the end of the day, it’s a question of, is it working? Yes, right? Consumers are consumers and that’s a multiple of consumers. Businesses are happy with the ability to support this, right? It’s creating jobs, right? In local markets, right? know, it’s creating opportunities. It’s actually changing the complexion of our grid and it’s making a difference to landowners, right? There are landowners who are benefiting from having incremental lease income.

Some of them are farmers that are getting a net incremental lease income. So a lot of the momentum is there as the proof points. So where I see, is the continued development of its working, the beneficiaries are at every level of the ecosystem. Those who are actually providing the space for these five megawatt farms, whether they’re rooftops on top of warehouses or they’re on agrovoltaics. Those folks are benefiting.

The job creation is benefiting market by market. That’s really powerful, right? And let’s not forget all the consumers are benefiting at the end of the day by actually having net new, right? And then we as a society are benefiting by bringing net new clean energy to bear and incremental, right? There’s always a conversation about, are some of these initiatives really bringing net new clean energy that’s scalable? And it is, right? And it is. And so that’s where I see it growing, that there’s increasingly a greater awareness and a greater understanding of how powerful this can be, and how important a part of the puzzle of our energy transformation this is. There’s lots of interesting things happening. This is available now, right? It works now, right? And consumers can see the benefits now. So let’s push hard into continuing to sort of make this a key part of the trajectory. And investors are there saying, we agree.

There’s always going to be a long pole, like this one’s going to require a little bit more investment, some of the cool hydrogen stuff that’s going on, lots of the big investment in utility scale, wind and solar, those are great. But the idea to be able to put this in methodically year over year and keep putting gigawatts of clean energy onto the grid is a really powerful sort of prospect.

Wes Ashworth (42:04)

Yeah, I well said. And for me, I mean, looking at it, I know you agree community solar is a no brainer. You know, it’s just a matter of continuing to scale, continuing to push adoption, education awareness, all those sorts of things. So if you’re listening to this and you’re in one of those communities, by all means, you need to go look into it, look it up, start inquiring, know, reach out to companies like Perch and others. It’s time, you know, it’s a no brainer. Go look at it at least, evaluate it and you could save yourself some money, which is always good, but also help with the energy transition and as you said, rising demand and energy demand of what we’re using and all those sorts of things. So again, to me, no brainer, easy to conclude on that.

Bruce Stewart (42:46)

I’m glad you said it. It’s one thing when I say it’s a no-brainer, it’s another thing when folks like you and our customers say it’s a no-brainer. So thanks. I said it’s true.

Wes Ashworth (42:52)

Yeah, yeah, that’s what you’re being in the industry just talking to people learning more about it You’re just like why isn’t everybody doing this? You know, it’s because as we said like 30 % are aware and awareness obviously It’s not like 30% that are aware are just going and adopting so we have a long ways to go But but again, it’s so promising and as you said the investments there you’re seeing more of that You’re seeing more investors, know participating in the space and and that’s always a great sign as well, too.

So, kind of closing out here, sort of final thoughts. So when it’s all said and done, what legacy do you hope to leave behind in the renewable energy industry? And if you were able to look back at your career, what would you feel good about in terms of legacy and impact?

Bruce Stewart (43:32)

That’s a big question, Wes. I’m hopeful that this energy transformation is going to require quite a few of us. Hopefully, I will share a legacy that many others feel that we were able to make an impactful step in actually continuing to bring net new renewable solutions to market and helping customers understand that and getting a greater adoption, right? So the legacy at the end of the day is that we’ve been able to build a lot more renewable energy. It’s helped our economy, right?  For sure, it’s helped our climate and our environment, our environmental concerns at the end of the day right? It’s helped our local communities. And importantly, it’s actually helped our customers, right? All types.

Sort of being able to execute on their mission to become more carbon neutral, and to see this as a really great opportunity and yes, also benefit them from their household or business budgets at the end of the day. That’s a powerful, I think a powerful opportunity for us and to do it lockstep along with this energy transformation and make this an important part of the broader energy transformation, right? Make this a key piece that said this really has moved the needle, given all of the benefits we’ve said that customers and people feel how we’ve moved the needle.

Wes Ashworth (44:51)

Yeah, that’s so good. And that’ll bring us to the end of today’s episode of Green Giants, Titans of Renewable Energy. A true heartfelt thank you to Bruce, CEO of Perch Energy, for sharing your valuable insights on community solar and innovative leadership. To our audience out there as always, we hope you found this conversation as enlightening as I did.

Thanks for tuning in. We’ll catch you next time as we continue to explore the pioneers driving the renewable energy revolution.