Green Giants – Episode 38

Vishal Lala (01:34)

Yeah, absolutely. You know what? It started back in 2009. I studied finance and worked for companies and was trying to really figure out what do I do next. And solar was high on my list or something in renewables was high on my list. And right around that time, the government of Ontario, Ontario, or the province of Ontario here in Canada came out with the Green Energy Act, which ended up being a very generous or lucrative feed-in tariff program that required proponents to use Ontario, Canada-made racking inverters and modules. And at the time we had said, or my friend and I that I started the business with, said, how do we participate in this?

We were both looking for something new and we thought, okay, well, development might be a route. So what we did was we bought six kilowatts of inverter, and inverter modules and racking material for only $6 a watt, just to put things in perspective. And in 2009, put this stuff together ourselves and realized, hey, there’s a lot of parts in this racking. It’s very complicated. And we didn’t get a whole lot of support and, you know, then the discussion turned into like, you know, how are we actually going to install something like this? Like we did it in the summer, but how are we going to do something like this in the winter?

Being Canadian, it was a real concern. You know, there’s going to, get ready to be a huge solar boom, but like, was it practical to put together these 30 parts to put together, you know, to put up one solar module in a flat roof at the time? So literally, you know, back of the napkin sitting at dinner, put together a sketch of what it should be, hired a mechanical engineer to put some drawings together and then went to market with it. And, you know, truthfully, it was supposed to be just something to make revenue while we figured out what we really wanted to do. And it caught fire. We became the number one rooftop racking company in Canada, which was largely based in Ontario. We had the largest developers, the largest EPCs working with us.

And again, it’s because we focused on solving a problem. How are we going to build lots and lots of solar from November? The summer challenge was already figured out, but how do you build from November to April on a frozen roof with gloves on? And people really appreciated our solution. And as a result of that, the company was born. It’s evolved a lot since then. It’s grown a lot since then, but that’s really how it started.

Wes Ashworth (03:54)

Yeah, I love it. I love those back a napkin stories and especially it’s like you get a live example to see that in real life and see it play out. So that’s incredible. So as you mentioned, Polar Racking has been operating for over 15 years. We talked about those early startup days and what are some of the key milestones in the company’s growth and development that you’re most proud of.

Vishal Lala (04:30)

Yeah, I mean, there’s actually, there’s a few, mean, obviously launching out of the gate, you know, we never would have expected that we would have got that huge jump right out of the gate. And that was exciting and it allowed us to grow and add a lot of people and continue innovating, which was great. You know, setback in 2017, we had a new government forum chair in Ontario that just like, kiboshed the solar program for lack of a better word. And then we had to pivot and see, you know, where do we got to go next? So we went, you know, to Western Canada, we went into the US, we went to the Caribbean, reinvented ourselves a little bit.

Right around the same time, we’d come up with our ground mount product, our fixed-silt ground mount product, and that also changed the business. We started, you know, we hired geotechnical engineers, we started doing foundation design, foundation supply, supplying our fixed racking system for the projects that were all left here in Ontario, but lots of like I said lots of work in Western Canada and the US and then in late 2021 we acquired one of our largest competitors and brought on a single axis tracker as well as a lot of really really talented people that had, you know, worked in solar but you know in a different organization that was much more corporate so marrying those two companies together was also a big milestone for us and now we’re leading supplier trackers, mostly in the Northeast US, but obviously all over Canada. We’re looking at international markets as we have previously discussed in Asia and the Middle East and seeing exciting opportunities there right now as well.

Wes Ashworth (06:02)

It’s been an incredible journey for sure. And I think that thread is always tends to be there with successful entrepreneurs. It’s like when the going gets tough, it’s the pivots and the shifts and figuring out, okay, how do we make this work? And where can we go or where can we shift our business or what have you? So cool. We’ll get more into that as we go. So thinking a little bit about what’s made your company special, and I know Polar Racking prides itself on quality and innovative solutions. What sets your products apart from others in the market, particularly in terms of design and durability?

Vishal Lala (06:35)

Right, so yeah, I really appreciate that question because I feel like, as you said, we’ve had to pivot a lot and we’ve had to come up with new plans and we’ve had to look at new markets, but the one thing we’ve never changed is the focus on quality. We’re always trying to bring the most valuable solution to our customers. We’ve always played more to the owner than to the person that’s in and out of the project quickly.

And I think that’s the only reason that we’re here today 16 years later is because the quality is what we’ve never ever ever compromised on. Like I’ve always realized that these projects that we’re building, you know, they might change owners three times, but the reality is that they need to be here 25, 35 years, 40 years in the future. And, you know, I’m out there putting, you know, my name behind it, putting the company’s name behind it. And I, you know, I want to offer quality, want to offer value, I want to offer a solution and I want to be the best at it.

So, you know, truthfully, Wes, like we probably could have grown, at times, like much larger by offering something much cheaper. But I watched hundreds of companies do that in my time. I mean, you’ve been around the solar industry also, we go to, you know, RE plus and there’s a hundred companies that are new and there’s, you know, 200 companies that were there last year that are not there anymore, right?

And we’ve just kind of been, you know, slow and steady, focused on quality, you know, let the market come to us and appreciate what we’re building. You know, don’t get me wrong. Like we’re, you know, we’re very price competitive in the market, but we feel like our solution, you know, adds the most value to the project. You know, by the same token, we’re never, you know, the cheapest number out of the eight. Like we want to be the most valuable proposition that you’re looking at.

And it’s coming to us, you know, there’s more and more owners that are sticking with these projects long term. And there’s more owners that have had, you know, the issues in, whether it be frost heave or, you know, challenges with the wind or whatever it is. And they’re starting to get more picky about, you know, what they select and, and, you know, we’re here to offer them a solution.

Wes Ashworth (08:46)

Yeah, I love that. the approach. What are some of the things to comparing different racking solutions in terms of quality? Like what are some of the things with your solution that are maybe different than the average product that’s out there?

Vishal Lala (08:59)

Sure, yeah, I’ll start with our single axis tracker, for example. Most single axis trackers are designed to build 500 megawatt site and gigawatt site in the middle of, let’s say, Arizona or Texas. And those projects are great, by the way, and I want to be on those projects. But those are pretty simple. The ground is flat. It’s pretty homogeneous. It’s huge. There’s not much constraints, and there’s not much topography.

We came at it from a different angle where we said, you know, the ground where solar is really being built, Canada, upstate New York, the Northeast in general, or the Northwest, it’s not flat. It’s hilly, it’s rocky, it’s hard, and you know, there’s a lot of frost. And you know, your traditional driven foundation doesn’t necessarily work the best in frost. Like it could work good, or it could work well for the next three, four years, but you get that one year where you get the deep chill and like, you know, those foundations start popping out of the ground.

And truthfully, we saw it happen with others that had come to Ontario in the early days and said, no, no, it works in California. It’ll work here. No problem. You know, we always do that. We’ve always done it this way, right? Which is famous last words, So we really took the approach that like, we need to find a solution for these sites that are not necessarily as pretty.

You know, we designed a tracker that really rolls up and down the hills. You know, if you have to grade with our tracker, you have to grade with anyone else. Like it’s really bad adjustable and it’s, you know, it really flows that well. But most importantly, it attaches to piles that you would need to use and you know, the north, it attaches to all types of piles by the way. So if you’re listening and you have the 500 megawatt project in Texas, we’d love to have it, but if, you know, if you got the project in New York and you need ground screws, like we have one ground screw, whereas everybody else has two ground screws and an adapter that, you know, is connected to the bottom of the table. And, you know, that’s a solution, but that’s an afterthought almost, you know, like, okay, how do we make this work?

We went at it with like, this is where we’re building, you know, let’s design the solution for this market, right? And our product works with ground screws and helical piles that are, you know, very common in the Northeast and in Canada, but it also works with I-beams. It works with the ballasted foundation because we don’t have the torque tube. So, you know, it’s much more adaptable to the ground conditions, which ultimately is one of the bigger risks. And, you know, I feel like people don’t spend enough time thinking about it, but we spend a lot of time thinking about that. Like, let’s not make the ground work for our solution, let’s get a solution that works for the ground because the ground is there and it’s the only thing that’s not changing.

And that’s been our approach to these projects because again, we’re always taking a long-term view. Like this thing has to produce power for the next 40 years. So let’s do the right thing today so that 20, 30, 40 years from now, someone else doesn’t inherit the issues, right?

Wes Ashworth (12:06)

Yeah, absolutely. And you hit on a few things there just to dig more into that a bit. So as you mentioned, that focus on challenging terrains and climates is unique. And I would say also to your point, there’s a lot of folks that design for not those environments and then try to make it work in those environments versus you’ve had that in mind from the beginning. Can you talk about a little bit more about how Polar Racking addresses those extreme conditions like frost, snow, high winds?

And maybe why this matters for long-term project success. Why should someone care? I guess that’s the main question.

Vishal Lala (12:39)

I know that’s a fair question. So I’ll tell you a couple of things. it comes to the Northeast and frost, like we focus a lot on foundation. That’s your biggest risk. If you’ve ever, you know, go into your backyard and anywhere where there’s winter and like, you know, come spring and you see all these rocks that have popped out of the ground that weren’t there in the fall, like frost really pushes things out of the ground. And we really think a lot about that and we want to make sure that we’re putting the right solution in. So that’s why we made our tracker from the beginning, adapted our tracker and our fixed tilt and truthfully our carports all ready to accommodate, you know, to different types of foundation for frost and et cetera. And then secondly, like we just have a very robust solution.

So we sell a lot of our fixed rack today in the Caribbean. The Caribbean has obviously extremely heavy winds and there’s two things about that. One is you need to have a robust solution to withstand the forces, but two, you need to mitigate the areas where there could be potential risks. So whereas our rack generally has beefier members, everyone else has like lots of different parts and braces and lots of different fasteners, lots of different braces, lots of different connections and wind is like water. It finds your weakest connection and then it’s a zipper effect from there almost, right? So you want to have a rack that’s not only robust when it’s built, but easy to build, easy to QC, easy to make sure that it was built right because ultimately you can design whatever you want, but if it’s not built correctly, like you’re going to get yourself in whole heap of trouble anyway, just mitigating the amount of decisions that can be made in the field and, you know, taking that out of the hands of the installer and putting as much of it as you can in into the design of the rack.

And truthfully, like our rack is not any more expensive than anyone else’s. Like we’re always competitive. Obviously we’re growing, we’re getting sales, but we are putting a lot of thought into that upfront. You know, like how can we again, provide a solution that end to end is more valuable, reduces the install time, reduces the risk when it comes to all these load factors, and provides a solution that’ll be there and last for a very, very long time.

Wes Ashworth (14:58)

Yeah, absolutely. And just to put it out there, what’s the worst case scenario? Like a cheap racking system where those thoughts are not put into the design and somebody goes with that low cost solution. What’s the worst case scenario? What can people be scared of?

Vishal Lala (15:14)

Honestly, like so I’ll give you a real life example in 2022 Hurricane Fiona. You know, it caused a lot of devastation, a lot of devastation in the US and lot of devastation in Canada. We had a solar site, 27 megawatts in Summerside PEI. There’s two sites in Summerside, PEI, 13 megawatt and a 27 megawatt. Now, for those of you that are not familiar with PEI, you’re probably not because it’s small. It’s like one of the tiniest provinces in Canada. So you can appreciate Summerside, PEI is that much smaller.

But the summer site PEI is right on the water. So huge winds, heavy, heavy snow in that area as well, and hard ground conditions. So you really got to think about where you’re installing and what you’re putting up. And so Hurricane Fiona came up the coast. It didn’t go to PEI, but strong winds in PEI. Our solution, three modules flew off one of the tables. You know, the 27 megawatt site and those, that table had not been fully QC’d. It was still under construction. 13 megawatt site, foundations bent into, racking bent into like complete rebuild of the site. And, you know, we had quoted on that site, truthfully, and when we lost it, I’d call the developer and said like, “Hey, I’m not sure about your foundation. Cause our sites, you know, a couple of kilometers or a mile down the road and we have completely different results.” And they’re like, no, somebody stamped it, so we’re good.

And you know, that’s what we find a lot like, oh no, they stamped it. know, like who are you working with? Like, do you, you working with someone that cares about the quality, that understands the conditions? And you know, that’s like not rebuilt and there’s a lot of lawsuits and stuff going on around that. But you know, Wes, you’re now you’re reminding me of things.

The PM that was managing our site called me one day a month earlier and said, “Hey man, like, did I make the right decision here? Because the guys down the road are flying through that rack right now. And they came by and they said, look at you guys, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And again, our product is very, very quick to assemble. you know, that was just, I feel like that was a lot of gamesmanship from them, but he called me and he’s like, you know, why are their beams lighter?

And so I, you know, I obviously said, you know, we focus on quality, but, truthfully I got nervous too. I was like, well, that’s my engineering team. I’m like, guys, like how, how are there beams later? It doesn’t make any sense to me that they’re able to do this. And like, you know, we ran the models and, and you know, like the guys came back and they’re like, look at the analysis. Like, you know, this, like the way that we did it is right. You know, the loads are heavy, the winds are heavy, the snow is heavy. Like we need to be ready now, you know, fast forward a month and month, month and a half, like, you know, Mother Nature came and tested it, tested the rack itself and you know, like the results speak for themselves really, you know, like no damage. And we had like 13 sites in Atlantic Canada with no, like zero damage. And we had our competitors products all over the floor. And, relatively speaking, there was a lot more devastation. There was homes, there was trees, was everything like that from solar wise, like we were unscathed knock on wood.

But yeah, we saw what happens when you don’t think about that, right? And that’s the thing that nobody’s really thinking about today, I feel, in solar because there are just so many players and there’s so many people in and out of projects, in and out of projects, but it’s something that we’re all just thinking about. And again, I really attribute that to the reason that we’re still here and so many people are not, right? So.

Wes Ashworth (18:44)

Yeah, no doubt. I love that the real life story really paints the picture. And Mother Nature is undefeated. Like you don’t know when it’s coming, but it’s coming. At some point, a storm, something’s going to happen, right? And then you think about it. And then it’s all the hindsight of, man, we should have just, you know, paid a little bit more as affordable and had a higher quality solution. And then too, like it’s, there’s a lot of components there. You think about the rebuilding that cost, but also the liability, lawsuits and everything else that come about. So it’s just not worth it. So yeah, love that story.

Vishal Lala (19:18)

And by the way, our solution was, was evenly priced. It was just someone’s very similarly priced. That was the feedback we got. They said, “Oh, we’re just more comfortable with them because we saw them do this before.” Like, you know, they’ve done a lot of projects and like in the U S so they’re like, oh, we’re, comfortable with them. And I’m like, guys, like we understand what’s going on here. And that’s why we’re waiting in New York because like we’re used to the hard conditions, we’re used to the ground conditions, we’re used to snow and frost and you know, so that’s why like we feel like, like we know we’re bringing, we know we’re bringing value, you know.

So I’ll give you another example actually. You know, on our carports, we had a, we had a site, one megawatt site in Southern Jersey and when we went to go do foundation testing, we found that there’s a very high water table, so we said, okay, well, like, you know, this is not ideal because typically when you build a carport drill big hole, put your foundation in, put a big blob of concrete around it and you build and that’s, know, what’s used in 90% plus of carports and it works and it’s very robust and you know, it’s almost like if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But in this case, we saw the high water table and you know, when you start pouring concrete down the hole, the water just washes it away and you gotta do all these special things to do it. So, understanding foundations, and again, we’re a racking company. I know I talk too much about foundations, but we’re a racking company, but we design helical pile. So, very challenging project. They had like a date to get their racks in, some New Jersey racks, I forget the name of the rack exactly, and they’re like, it had to be completed by July 1st.

And they obviously PO to us late because nobody’s ever early. like, you know, we like, because we were thinking about the solution, like we got it done, we got it done ahead of time. Like the customer got their racks. Across the street was a three megawatt site that we lost. And again, they went in and they just started drilling holes and pouring concrete. like the job got built like six months later because they couldn’t control the washout of the concrete and lost their racks, so again, like working with people that have solutions or that are focused on solutions, like in the long run and in the short run, like I feel that, that it does pay off. Right. And, and again, for us, it’s like, we don’t compromise on that either. So. Yeah.

And by the way, it was cheaper, like much cheaper in the end, you know, with our solution, right?

Wes Ashworth (21:56)

Exactly. mean, that’s normally how it goes, right? I mean, it’s one thing sort of the upfront, which again, I think you’re competitive there, obviously, and that’s good, but it’s also the long term in the all in investment, which is the most important thing today. Shifting gears to a completely different topic, something we touched on was just agrivoltaics and that being a big topic in today’s society, Canada as well, I think even more so sometimes, but.

You mentioned agrivoltaics as a growing area for Polar Racking and I’m curious, what excites you most about this dual use technology? What potential do you see for its adoption in North America?

Vishal Lala (22:29)

Yeah, I see it excites me a lot because again, it’s a solution. It’s solving a problem. A lot of pushback in Europe and Canada. We’re seeing in the US right now, not using agricultural land to develop solar. And unless like, you know, the urban Alberta came out, like you cannot use it unless you have you can prove that you can do dual use. And for us, like those challenges are exciting.

We like to come up with solutions and we are, we’ve invested a tremendous amount of money, especially in late 2023 and 2024. We’re continuing to invest to come out with a lineup of products. If you go to our website, you’ll see the fence design, the umbrella design, the multi-tracker, and we’re launching them one by one. We’re gonna build our first fence here in the next couple of weeks followed by the umbrella, but we have we’re we’re really trying to solve this this problem and and the interesting thing is, it’s like all the studies show that if you if you use, you know, solar, whether it be the fence design or the multi-tracker design it not only does it do dual use like, you know agriculture plus energy production it actually increases the number of crops you get per year because now, when you’re watering, you know, the water’s not burning off necessarily all day and you’re getting like, you know, three crops of you blueberries or strawberries or whatever it is and and then now, if you have the shade for let’s say cattle, to you know feed and stuff like that like less cattle are dying when it’s really really hot outside because now you have a structure for them to go, you know, get shade in.

So there’s just so many extra benefits that we’re seeing as we learn more and more about agriculture. You know, we’re really focused obviously on the solution, the racking, the foundation, making sure it’s robust, making sure that it’s going to be there. Obviously, you know, it’s on agricultural, you know, applications. So people are going to be around it a lot more than, you know, traditional ground mounts. So we need to make sure it’s safe and robust, but we’re really excited about the practical application and what this means for developers and farmers and how that can help grow and proliferate the adoption of solar ultimately at the end of the day.

Wes Ashworth (24:51)

Yeah, now it’d be really cool to see how it evolves over the coming years and the technology changes and it’s only going to get better and better. So definitely excited to see where that goes. Thinking about your expansion that we touched on in the intro. So you’ve expanded beyond Canada, into the US, the Caribbean, exploring new markets too, like the Middle East and Asia. I guess what have been the biggest challenges and lessons learned from these expansions?

Vishal Lala (25:18)

So I’ll tell you we are in expansion mode right now. Challenges is just managing the different expectations in the different areas and how to work with customers and just catering our communication to these customers in these different time zones and speaking their language, if you want to call it. But I’m excited. Last year I went to India, I went to Saudi Arabia, went to China, I was in RE+, and all the international markets are buzzing. I went to the Caribbean show that was based in Miami and they’re buzzing. The excitement for solar grows every year. That’s the beauty about us being in this industry. There’s more and more and more of it.

You know, we get thrown these curve balls all the time with some political change and things that are really completely out of our control. But, you know, the overall adoption of solar, you know, the runway is pretty, it looks pretty great, you know, for the next little while. So, you know, we have a world-class solution, you know, that’s fully, wind tunnel studied and UL and bankability reports and all that great stuff. And, you know, people are asking for it. You know, the Saudi example is actually a really interesting one.

We had a webinar about our, about our tracker. You know, like in just dedicated to the North America market. Like this is what we do. This is why we’re different. No, this is a solution we’re offering. Unbeknownst to me, there was two people from Aqua Power from Saudi Arabia that attended our webinar. And they just saw on LinkedIn and the guy contacted me or one of the gentlemen from Aqua contacted me after he says, I really like your solution.

Their president is going back to Saudi next week to re-meet with a lot of those customers. That’s your oil and gas market that’s just going all in on solar. And it’s to another level that you wouldn’t expect to normally see, and it excites me. It’s not like, you know, in Canada at least, and I feel like, you know, in some of the conversations in the US, like people try to make this like renewable or oil and gas. Like why? Who said that? Like who painted these technologies against each other? It makes absolutely no sense. There’s a place for, you know, a great energy mix. I feel there’s more security in having an energy mix as well. And, solar has a great part to play in and because of the cost, obviously it’s, it’s, it’s easy. It’s fast. You know, the costs have come down dramatically in the last 16 years and you know, people are recognizing this all over the world and it’s actually less political in the rest of the world than it is in North America, which is, it’s a mind twist to me.

You know, obviously I’m born and raised in Canada and you consider this to be, you know, fairly liberal country when it comes to, you know, social values and like, why is renewable energy a topic? You know, why aren’t we all behind it, you know, at the end of the day? And I ask myself that question way too much and I know I’m not gonna have, you know, solve that answer, but you know, whatever we can do to help, you know, grow it, I think, you know, we’re making a difference at the end of the day, so.

Wes Ashworth (28:33)

Yeah, I love all of that. I think one of my biggest objectives, even with this podcast, like information, great, but just helping bridge that divide. It doesn’t matter what side of the fence you’re on, what industry you’re coming from. This is a great solution that should be embraced by everybody. It shouldn’t be a political argument or those kind of things. So I agree with that.

Vishal Lala (28:54)

Look, I’m sorry just to pick up on your point, like at the end of the day, like the largest landlords in the US of these solar farms are rural America at the end of the day, you know, and you know, lot of people that have had these lands in their family for, you know, hundreds of years and they weren’t necessarily making money, you know, off of their operations and now they’re making great money in the taxes. Does the county or the municipalities making great tax revenue. And there was a lot of jobs created because of it, you know, building these farms. And so like, it’s a win-win across the board. At the end of the day, it’s just, I feel like not enough people are getting that message.

Wes Ashworth (29:34)

Yeah, we’re trying. We’ll get it out there more and more. Conversations like this are helping. We’ll do anything we can. Shifting a little bit just to learn a little bit from your insights and just your experience. As a long-time leader in the renewable energy space, what are some hard-learned lessons that have shaped your approach to business and leadership as a whole?

Vishal Lala (29:36)

Yeah, I mean, specific to renewables, like you have to be adaptable. You have to move, the technology moves very, very fast. So you need to keep up with the technology. And so you can’t get married to something for too long. There’s always a better way to do things and you gotta be willing to try. You know, the one thing I’ll say is you learn, like you try a bunch of things, but you learn to cut it off.

Like if something’s not working, like let’s cut it and let’s go and there’s nothing wrong with that. Okay, like this didn’t work, let’s try that. And you know, it’s all strategic in terms of, you know, making the investments or making the moves, but you can’t like live and die by that sort. So like the ability to adapt, the ability to move, the ability to want to be better, like that’s, you know, that’s something that this business has really, really, really taught me. And then, you know, the other thing is the team, like, you know, Wes, started this, working day and night and doing a lot of it, know, bootstrap the whole thing and with a really, really smart team, but a very small team.

And now the team is much bigger, but you have to have dedicated people and people that care and people that want to be the best and you’ve got to treat them with respect. Then you got to appreciate their efforts. And that’s something that I definitely try to do.

And the feeling is really mutual, like within the business, you know, like our leadership team is really, really strong, really dedicated, really passionate. And like, I know, like, can’t do this without them and we can’t accomplish our goals and our vision without them. so, yeah, just finding great people that are super passionate, which this industry is really blessed with, and appreciating them is really, really key to, you know, growing any business at the end of the day.

But this one, because it changes so fast, you need to have people that don’t get discouraged quickly and are willing, that can see the bigger picture and want to keep going after it.

Wes Ashworth (31:34)

I’ve said this before, you can have the best technology and product in the world. If you don’t have the right people supporting that and helping you build that, then it’s a tough road and maybe an impossible one. It’s thinking about your team and fostering that. How do you foster that culture of innovation and quality within the team? What role does company culture play in Polar Racking’s success?

Vishal Lala (32:09)

Yeah, it’s something that we’re continuously working on. You know, obviously we have directors of HR and our VP of ops that are, and myself, that like, we’re really obsessed with this almost. To say like, you know, how do we, cause now we have a team in North America and we have, you know, some U.S. people and we have a team in India also and like, how do we make them feel part of the mission?

How do we keep them all striving towards the same goal? How do we make them feel heard? And that’s definitely been challenging as we continue to grow because I’ve always been the person, the door is always open, right? And I’m talking to everyone and my best ideas are coming from, sometimes the guy that started six weeks ago, like, hey, why don’t you guys do it like this? And then, quickly, he’s got a great point. But as there’s more and more people, you know, I’m getting less and less feedback like that. like trying to keep the feedback loop going and making sure so I don’t know Wes if I have like, a proper answer for you other than the fact that we’re spending a lot of time to put tools together, you know, software tools together to share information.

You know, we do our regular town halls. We do a lot of events as a company to get out of the office. So, you know, for example, last year we did barbecues and we did bowling, but we also went to a food bank and we spent the entire afternoon like packing, you know, December, you know, holiday time, you know, when the winter weather gets cold, the demand for food, food banks now are off the chart, you know, more than it’s ever been with the recent inflation struggles that people are having.

And, you know, we spent like five hours packing food baskets that were going to be delivered to families for free. And, you know, that’s when I really saw the team. Like, I know we work great together in the office because like you’re great at engineering and you’re great at supply chain and you’re great at accounting. like we literally came together and like, even the people at the food bank were like, wow, you guys are efficient. You guys put this together and like the PMs are PMing like solar jobs were PMing like how to organize the, how to organize the food collection.

And it was just like, so, you know, it was a proud day for me to see the team. Like we can, anything, any challenge we take on together, like we can, we can tackle it and do it better than, you know, anyone else. And, you know, so I love that about our team and yeah, the culture thing, like it is very entrepreneurial in that like, we empower the people quite a bit. And, you know, we are focused on, on our goal of being the best, but yeah, at end of the day, it really comes from, you know, we have a lot of self.

You know, we have a lot of people that are very self-motivated and take a lot of pride in their work. And all we’re trying to do is enable that at the end of the day, right?

Wes Ashworth (34:46)

And that’s such a big piece that you hit on that, you know, that person that had just started, right. And it has an idea and you actually just really listening to it and going like, actually they’ve got a good point, let’s actually look into this. You know, that’s a drop that the ripples from that are exponential. You know, that just multiplies across the company. Then everybody else sees that everybody else hears that. And then they know like, I can bring ideas to the table, you know, I can, and they’ll take me seriously, even though it could be somebody in an hourly part-time position or something like that.

And some of the best companies I’ve ever talked to, that thread was there. Where they were like, everybody brings ideas to the table, everybody’s encouraged, they can have a voice and those sort of things. So you’re certainly doing that without a doubt. You mentioned something earlier I wanted to circle back to. So you mentioned you visited some international solar shows. And I think this would be good insight for the listeners as well. So these shows in regions like Saudi Arabia, India, Thinking about those other markets and these other shows, what are some insights I guess you gained? How do you see global trends impacting the solar industry? What were some of your key takeaways from those?

Vishal Lala (35:51)

Yeah, I mean, the one thing I’ll tell you is that they’re alive. So what I mean by that is, for example, Shanghai Solar Show I went to. I’ve been to Intrasolar Munich. Obviously I’m in RE Plus. This thing was double the size. The amount of people, the amount of vendors, the amount of attendees, it was just off the chart, like something that I’ve never ever seen before. You know, that was one thing in and again, like going to Saudi going to again, like just so many people, so many companies, like so much of an industry and like I feed off of energy like at the end of the day and so I’m excited.

Yes, I’m not participating in the market today, but I’m excited that so many people are excited about solar. So I could say it’s a global phenomenon. It’s not just something that’s happening here in North America or Europe, as it once was, actually, to be honest with you. So from that perspective, it’s really exciting to see the different innovations, to see what works in certain markets. I saw some of the solutions they were using in China, for example, wouldn’t work here in North America.

But it’s cool to see that they thought of that stuff and and that different things like that and then and then just there’s some things that are overarching like, know, like just all the new battery technology, you know, like we saw that everywhere and there’s just so many players and so many different solutions and you know, battery storage like EV like stuff like that that wasn’t a big thing in any of the shows like even three or four or five years ago was just like massive now, massive,

Wes Ashworth (37:23)

It really gives you perspective of how quickly it’s evolving. I think we say that a lot, but getting to really see it firsthand like that and you’re like, wow, in three, five years time, that’s only going to continue. That’s so cool. I wanted to touch on, so I briefly mentioned it earlier, Polar Racking has worked on some impressive projects, including the largest urban landfill solar installation in North America.

Can you share some details about the project and what made it unique?

Vishal Lala (37:48)

Sure, you know what? This is a project I’m really proud of because it takes me back almost to my rooftop days. So I love doing rooftop solar because we’d supply solar and it’d be on top of a Home Depot, for example. I know we’re using the power exactly where it’s being produced and you’re putting the panels on an area that otherwise would never be used for anything else. And these landfill projects was exactly that. Like they’re in the heart of Calgary.

So, you know, very close to the power base. So just like, you know, you don’t have like, you know, transmission going for miles and miles and miles and the losses that come with that. And then the landfills, they’re there. There’s nothing else you can do with that. So it’s just the perfect place to use for solar. And I can’t even think of another application to use there. So yeah, extremely proud of that.

Those projects, again, worked with one of the largest utilities in the country, Atco, and the off-takers I’m forgetting now, big bags, big technology companies. I just win, win, win all across the board. again, just contributing to a project that I felt like, yes, the developers I’m sure did well and everyone’s doing well, but what a great use case for solar at the end of the day, right?

Wes Ashworth (39:06)

Yeah, I love that. You and you’d love to see more of it, right? Especially those like to that point, it’s like, what else is going to be, you know, used there? But it’s such a great use of the space that otherwise would just be sitting there doing nothing, nothing beneficial for the most part.

Vishal Lala (39:23)

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, we’ve worked on a lot of those landfill, brownfield projects in the US and in Canada. And again, you know, it’s great. These ones just happen to be like, you know, one was 55 megawatts, the other one’s 37 and a half megawatts. So, you know, like just at a bigger scale and very visible, like when you’re in the city of Calgary and you’re driving around, it’s very visible for everyone to see, you know, I think that’s great.

Wes Ashworth (39:50)

Yeah, no, I love it. Thinking about the future and what’s next for Polar Racking, any innovations or updates we can expect from Polar Racking in the near future, whether it’s agrivoltaics or other new product lines?

Vishal Lala (40:01)

Yeah, so Agrivoltaics we spoke about, that’s huge for us and our roadmap. And then the other thing is just continuous improvements. We’re improving all our products, we’re coming up with a new feature on our car ports, easier assembly for our core product, which is our fixed tilt wrapping, and then a lot of improvements to our tracker to just make it easier and faster to install. And then we’re all at the same time in parallel. We have cleaning robots that we’re working on, which are huge for the Saudi market, for example, and different things like that.

So yeah, definitely stay tuned. Agrivoltaics is big on our website. So you can check out that line today to see what that is. But yeah, the other product improvements, I’m super excited. It’s things that we’ve been working on for a while, but obviously, it takes a lot of testing before you can release it to the market. And we’re in the testing phase on a lot of new features that we’re adding to our products and you excited to bring them out to the shows and to the market and see them, you know, that’s the other rewarding thing about our business that is very fast-paced which makes it challenging but like you can have an improvement or you can launch a product and you know six months later, a year later like you know you’re standing in the middle of the field watching it do its thing and you know that’s very rewarding in itself right so yeah.

Wes Ashworth (41:16)

Love it. And I will link the website in the show notes as well too. Anybody who wants to go there and check that out. A couple closing questions here as we get closer to time. So what legacy do you hope to leave in the renewable energy industry, both personally and through Polar Racking?

Vishal Lala (41:36)

You know, it’s one of the same pretty much. I, you know, I’ve lived in and breathed this company for the last 16 years. So I feel like it’s part of me. But again, like, yeah, the legacy is quality. The legacy is quality. It’s value. It’s, you know, working with a reliable supplier that takes care of you that, know, that, that, you know, that goes the extra mile and, know, they feel like, okay, well, I did a project with Polar. Like I chose, I chose to do something really well and really great.

And ultimately, you know, that is the legacy that our name is synonymous with quality at the end of the day.

Wes Ashworth (42:13)

Yeah. And I want to hear your opinion on this or your perspective. So thinking about this fast moving industry, and there’s a lot of investments happening. There’s a lot of new companies starting coming about, new technologies emerging. Thinking about an entrepreneur today that’s maybe in, they could be the ideation stage of forming a business or they’re in that early stage, you know, where you were some time ago, based on what you know now and the journey you’ve been on.

What’s one piece of advice you would give to that entrepreneur that’s early on in the journey?

Vishal Lala (42:44)

Yeah, I mean, I think focus on creating value. You know, solve a problem, bring a solution, you know, do something that people are really going to appreciate and don’t give up on that because it’s really, really easy to give up. So yeah, just focus on bringing something to the market that’s valuable and sticking to it and don’t let the small things get you off track.

You know, the one thing I will say in the renewable industry is like, you know, I go to the shows early on and, you know, I would just have people come up to us like, oh, you know, we’re doing this many gigawatts and that many gigawatts and this and that, and it’s easy to get distracted and chase those things. No, like focus on what you want to do, what you want to accomplish, what your mission is. Stay true to that and you will be rewarded in the long-term. I truly, truly believe in that.

So don’t get too distracted by all these things that are easy to do and you start chasing things and those things don’t necessarily work out. But if you do something consistently over and over and over again and your commitment to quality, your commitment to value, like, you’ll be much further ahead.

Wes Ashworth (43:48)

Yeah, sound advice there. And final question, if there’s anything else, any other key takeaways, piece of advice you’d like to share with the audience, anything you’d like to share.

Vishal Lala (43:56)

Yeah, no, just, you know, I just I’ll just say thank you to you, Wes, for the opportunity. It’s been great getting to know you as you know, we prepared for this podcast. And, know, obviously, we’re friends now. So we’ll know each other much longer. And, you know, lastly, I would say, you know, we’re here, we’re here to, you know, solve solutions and problems and do something innovative. And if you’re interested in that, you know, please feel free to reach out and we’re happy to discuss.

Wes Ashworth (44:27)

Yeah, love it. And yeah, same to you. You are one of the good ones. So glad to call you a friend and glad to bring this episode to everyone else. So with that, we’ll wrap up today’s conversation with Vishal, CEO of Polar Racking. I truly hope you found his insights into innovation, leadership and the future of renewable energy is inspiring as I did. Vishal’s vision for pushing solar technology to new heights and challenging terrains and emerging markets truly showcases what’s possible in the renewable energy space.

To our listeners, as always, thank you for tuning in to Green Giants. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who’s passionate about renewable energy and innovation. And don’t forget to check out Polar Racking as well. Until next time, stay curious and keep leading the way forward.