Green Giants – Episode 53

Wes Ashworth (02:55)

Yeah, no question. It’s a cool journey. And something we talked about back when early solar felt more like virtue signaling than a viable business. What made you keep showing up for those odd residential installs? And was there a specific project or moment that made you realize this could actually scale?

Matthew Horvath (03:12)

Yeah, that’s a bit of a tricky question, isn’t it? Because when I started off doing those installations, I was just an apprentice. And it’s really tough in the trades environment to understand that there might be something beyond hooking up the wires and taking home a paycheck.

At the time, I’ll be completely blunt and honest, I didn’t really know what I was working towards. I was learning principles of electricity. The owners and clientele that we were installing solar systems for on roofs and ground mounts, and in other ways, were the ones who made the economic decisions around whether it made sense to their lives or not. We would never really go install a system where someone wasn’t saying that this is the right move for me.

And that right move for many people, sometimes it’s economics, sometimes it’s virtue, sometimes it’s trying to leave an impact on someone else. So, we have to be mindful that there are different decision-making factors that go into the process. So, I don’t really remember saying, yeah, this project’s got me so hooked, I’m staying in it. The nice thing about working in a small shop up in southern Alberta was that we had so much variability in what we did in a day-to-day task.

So, during those day-to-day tasks, I just continued to learn the small bits at a time, stacked on it, stacked on it, stacked on it. Now we’re at a point where I’m actually able to help people do economic review, find those owners that are looking at potentially building those projects, negotiate and talk about what makes a meaningful impact to them, and bring forward those experiences like that wire can’t fit in that size of pipe, right? Those really little things that, when we’re doing these designs and otherwise, relaying that information to someone who doesn’t understand it as well, are very challenging if you haven’t had your hands on that scenario in the past. So, once you’ve seen it, touched it, felt it, dirt in your hands, that’s when you can start to move ahead and figure that out.

Wes Ashworth (04:41)

Yeah, I love it. And how else, thinking about just digging into your more hands-on background, starting in having that agricultural background as well, how’d that shape your perspective as you got deeper into solar development, how did that come to play?

Matthew Horvath (05:16)

I don’t know if I got deeper into solar development, but I got more mindful of land. So yeah, my mom remarried when I was younger, and we moved on to the farm. So, I like to consider myself a bit of a halfway farmer. And some of the farmers I do work with will chuckle about that because I know just enough to be dangerous, but I don’t know. I probably couldn’t operate their business at the same level because I’ve gone into my own trade and am doing my own work. what it really signaled for me is taking care of land, and really what a real day of work looks like for farming, because that lifestyle is probably foreign to a large portion of our population, and tough to have everyone considered when we start talking about solar projects because by and large they end up being very industrial type in nature and because of that, rural communities have their views of what it is and the owners see the electrical value and so coming from that background, I’d say that the biggest thing that it did for me is really just drew real good roots and helped those roots establish. From there, I like to use it as a guiding principle for myself.

Wes Ashworth (06:24)

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s got to have like just an incredible impact on, like you said, just the relatability and understanding, all the different pieces of the puzzle, and being able to relate to that farmer or pieces of agriculture, those kinds of things, and connect those dots. So, your hands-on experience clearly laid the foundation at some point that evolved into a bigger vision, one that eventually became Sun Cycle Farms.

Thinking about that turning point, what was the moment or how did that come to be, that where you said, kind of like, there’s gotta be a better way, and led to the founding of Sun Cycle Farms.

Matthew Horvath (06:55)

A couple of years ago, I was starting to see some utility-scale solar projects with a few thousand acres coming under solar coming into Alberta, and through some level of mounting frustration, mean, doesn’t frustration always lead to something? Through mounting frustration, I ended up working with the team on trying to do some land procurement. And it was agricultural land, and the tenants said it was good land.

But the crazy thing was, we were offering them more to just leave the farm, pretty much. And that was one thing that just about blew my mind. We were about to pay someone to stop farming and stop producing food. And the reason I was interested in having those discussions is that I still wanted, from my roots, to be able to talk to them about some of the benefits to the community. Because there’s a real monetary benefit if these systems are built correctly.

And then that led down the road of, why are we gonna displace? Well, maybe we don’t need to displace while we’re doing it. Maybe we need to incorporate more into one synergy. So that was probably the turning moment in my career that said I have to start building the foundation of Sun Cycle Farms. And that is the synergy between operator, maintenance, agriculture, cultural value, and the land. And so, there’s a community benefit and a benefit to all parties involved when we start to actually synergize instead of piecemealing this.

Wes Ashworth (08:26)

Right? Yeah, and another segment of this, we talked about, you know, agrivoltaics, is a hot topic, but also a very misunderstood one. And we talked about that, what do you see as the biggest misconceptions in how it’s being approached today?

Matthew Horvath (08:42)

I’ve got some feelings that I’m sure some of the viewers may not share, but I’ll give my opinion on that and see where it goes, but anytime that we’re doing agrivoltaics, I think we have to be very, very sensitive to the cost implications that we drive towards the electricity value. So, when we’re elevating solar panels or modules and we’re tipping them at angles that aren’t maybe optimal to the current system designs and doing all these things, it’s signaling that the price of the electricity coming out of the solar system has to increase as well to recoup those costs that are in the front end of the construction of project.

We’ve spent a lot of years building solar, and it’s kind of crazy to think that 12 years ago, we were still starting to put these things on houses, and some of these projects were starting. Um, but over those 12 to 20 years for some individuals, we’ve really come to an understanding of how to optimize for capital expenditure as well as the price of electricity that comes out. I think that’s so critical to think about when we started talking about agrivoltaics, because there has to be some virtue in everything we do, but I don’t think that changing these systems and making them less economically beneficial to the parties involved is maybe the best roadmap for all individuals involved. I really believe that we need to be looking at what we’ve already signaled through money and then adding our virtues and our values to that proposition to see if it works for everyone.

Wes Ashworth (09:50)

Yeah, it’s fair. And I know you’ve shared that agrivoltaics shouldn’t mean higher electricity costs overall. How do you balance that? Like, how do you balance practicality with innovation?

Matthew Horvath (10:18)

It’s tough, and we’re talking about a market that reaches a lot of people. So, in my localized area, we don’t have a lot of the same systems that might exist, maybe in some southern states where raised solar modules can offer a benefit to some fruits or berries or something like that. That just doesn’t grow here. So, you do have to be mindful of the situation and location. In our location, a lot of the time, elevating it just increases the price, and if you increase the price, the return takes longer, and it’s harder to reach a financial investment decision. So, the monetary benefit to all parties can actually walk away, which, to me, I don’t think that’s maybe the best foot forward when we have an opportunity to produce electricity as well as agricultural outputs in an ecosystem that works together.

Wes Ashworth (11:05)

Yeah, sure. And I don’t want to miss this. In terms of what we talked about, how it came to be Sun Cycle Farms, sort of the origin story, can you give us a real quick overview of what Sun Cycle Farms does? You know, if somebody is unfamiliar, what are you providing?

Matthew Horvath (11:20)

Yeah, so Sun Cycle Farms is a very interesting proposition because it has quite a few partners now that are technical experts in a lot of different areas. We have technical expertise in agriculture, technical expertise in electrical and system design and implementation, we have technical expertise in business planning, transmission planning, distribution interconnections, and land leases. The team is broadly expert in many areas.

In some early developments, the team is able to do some consultation to help get the ideology right between the parties involved. So that can be owners, municipalities, rural tenants, just whoever might be involved, because we have this broad lens. From there, where we actually are starting this year, is our demonstration farm, where we’re actually starting to prove out all of our technology works.

And so, what we’re doing with technology is interesting and a lot of fun because it’s got three pillars, right? It’s got the operations and maintenance of the solar asset integrated with the agricultural values and approach to ensure that we get an agricultural output, and then we have security systems layered into all of that. So yeah, it’s kind of a proposition of depending on where an asset stage is at, we definitely can integrate in most solar scenarios, and down the road, who knows, maybe it’s even agriculture on a broader lens because technology seems to be driving us forward right now. And farmers seem to resist that. Maybe some don’t.

Wes Ashworth (12:44)

Right, no doubt. Shifting a little bit from like what’s being built to where it’s being built or where you’re building it. So, land is at the heart of any solar project. And you’ve raised some critiques about how it’s valued and undervalued, which I think is important to hear. You’ve seen firsthand how solar lease agreements can leave landowners shortchanged. What’s broken in the current model, and I want you to explain the problem. How do you propose fixing it? What’s the solution?

Matthew Horvath (13:16)

This one goes a couple of different directions, right? We don’t always have aligned interests. When you evaluate a land lease and you’re talking about this, from an Alberta lens, quite commonly municipalities feel underrepresented when we go to the commission to look to move projects forward. They feel like they can’t say no and to some effect they’re getting more involved in that through some updates from the government but to some effect I at what point is it my backyard and not your backyard and then the question I think that we really need to solve is what can be done with that land like do we does it have to be zoned agricultural or does it have to move to an industrial zoning and it looks like the zoning does have to have some consideration.

As far as the lease goes, though, there’s a there’s different types. different developers will offer different types of leases. I think it’s absolutely critically that landowners understand what’s in and what’s out of a lease. In years gone by here in Alberta, there’s always a bad rap around certain thing, right? So, the bad rub on this one would be, some people don’t have any plans for reclamation on their land. So, they’ve given up access to the land. Their lease may not cover reclamation, and at some point in time, that landowner might be on the hook. Now we have you the you can look at the government whichever way you want to, but they are stepping in to say that we’re going to make sure that reclamation is involved in these, but in our province, Alberta, here we do have some you know liabilities and oil and gas and renewables and items that way.

So, I hope we can solve that issue later. But one of the reasons I was doing that early development work and working with this group to try to attain that lease for this solar project when I was starting on this process is because that company had already written in a fairly substantial wording around how they’re going to make sure that the land is reclaimed. And that was before it was a requirement.

Oftentimes, they weren’t requirements until a bad actor took action. So, it’s a real challenge on the lease side because the lease is only going to be structured to what the developer’s asking. And I think that I think a lot of owners have to come back to the landowner to say that this is the best use of land, and this is how we’re positioning it to be reclaimed. This is how we’re positioning to have a municipal benefit. This is how we’re positioning to move this forward in a way that makes sense. And then in that way, neighbors might not be impacted in the same way.

Most projects already have requirements to make sure that the impact is reasonable to anyone in the vicinity. I mean, there’s obviously ongoing discussions about whether there’s an impact on the value of homes, if there are additional impacts that are negative. And most of the time, it’s that I’ve seen lately, it’s still saying that we don’t see that impact like people are claiming.

It is a, those are all challenges. I don’t know if you can solve everything with a silver bullet, but I’d say Sun Cycle Farms is about as close as I think we can get to making sure that everyone has found some alignment through the solar project and making sure everyone’s on the same team.

Wes Ashworth (16:32)

Yeah, I think that’s huge. Another compelling point you’ve made is just the fact that landowners stop farming and lease to solar tells us something about land value. What are we missing when we ignore that signal? And just could you expand on that a little bit more?

Matthew Horvath (17:03)

Yeah, that was a pretty critical one. When I talk to farmers and I talk to people in agriculture and I talk to anyone else outside, basically when I’m out there talking, and I’m explaining, people didn’t sign their land over because it was a bad deal. They signed it over because it was a monetary benefit that was higher than what they were doing with agricultural production typically. And so, if we miss that signal, we’re missing what we’re putting the value on completely. So we just have to be very, very mindful that synergy, the sum of both, is probably better than the sum of one, either way. And typically, when people do stop farming, they do become a bit of a bad neighbor because if a tenant, an industrial tenant, isn’t taking care of weeds and other things in the area, that becomes a neighbor’s problem. So, there is an optical view of these projects that just go out there and collect sun and the land, some people say it goes barren and other things, but we used to do solar and we used to sell solar as a resting the land. It’s going to come back to you better than it was beforehand.

That analogy is just not true because when people rest the land, they plant a crop or they do something with the land that helps it recover. Because we’re taking the nutrients out when the farming operations are ongoing. Resting, it would be a couple of years of maybe some fertilizing and some grass.

So, when we build a solar project and we’re operating and maintaining it and we’re not caring about the ground at all, and it’s not caring about the soil at all, bad things can be left behind. And so, it’s just so important to care about it. That’s rooted in values for me.

Wes Ashworth (18:44)

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s a good clarification. So, with that, like what would a truly regenerative land-positive solar project look like from day one?

Matthew Horvath (18:54)

Well, that’s a great question that I hope we can get to the bottom of at our demonstration farm. Because of our technical expertise across the team, we commonly brainstorm a lot of things at one time. So, implementation is going to be the most critical step here. And it’s probably not going to be what a regenerative agricultural farm looks like on day one. It’s probably going to end up in a spectrum. Day one, we’re trying to remove the costs of mowing. On day two, we’re trying to increase forage uptake in certain areas. Day three, you catch that spectrum, right?

I probably can’t paint it with a brush right now and say this is it. Because there’s going to be areas where, and this is talking to the global market again, there’s going to be areas where something that works for us here in Lethbridge or southern Alberta doesn’t work. But the framework of everything we’re doing does. So, then, how do you make sure that the technology can guide the activity? That’ll be the critical mover. And just to make sure that those principles of regenerative agriculture and farming, in most cases, I’d like to see it going towards that regenerative land recovery model, because solar is about resting the land in the back of my head. So, I like to see solar projects going that way, but in a lot of cases, there might need to be an option just to keep agricultural value up. And that might not always be any regenerative system, but there might be some forage production, some cropping, some cutting, some removal. It just looks different in a solar system because you cannot run broad-acre implements like we can on a dry land farm that we do right now.

So, the model of farming is different. That’s all there is to it. It’s just how it looks will be kind of defined by where the land is at. doing some consultation on what works, finding access to markets, and then working out a plan that way. this is day one at Sun Cycle Farms. We tried to say, here is our price list, and this is what we do on every project. And it started to become very clear that there is no way that you can do that. You just cannot say, Do you want the Big Mac with cheese or fries?

You know, you have to look at what you’re getting into, get an understanding of the objectives of the owners, the solar asset owner, and the landowner, and then figure out how much of that can overlap or what doesn’t. That’s the solution we’re looking to provide. Maybe there is no farming overlap there, but the land still needs to be taken care of, and that’s where we can step in and help out.

Wes Ashworth (21:20)

Yeah. And in terms of that, like what are some of those tried-and-true principles? I know it’s going to vary based on each situation and case by case, but what are those tried-and-true principles you’re striving for when you look at those projects?

Matthew Horvath (21:43)

Yeah, there are a few. One of them is going to be soil health. So, the first thing that we do in most, I think almost every consultation we’ve done now, is soil sampling. And we’ll actually go in, do soil sampling, and get reports back on what makes up the soil. The objective is to create better soil, better forage, and more nutritious proteins coming off the land instead of having feedlot beef, maybe some pasture-grazed beef, and some grass-finished beef.

I think we were probably one of the first groups in Canada to do extended cattle run inside a live solar facility. It was some pretty fun news. They called it solar burgers and we had quite a chuckle with that. Tried and true, everyone’s going to say sheep. We know we can run sheep. We’ve seen some images of sheep overgrazing and what it leaves the soil in bad shape.

So, one of our solutions is a technology-driven live data, and so being able to control in your own hands where your animals are. Making sure that the grass is growing.

Wes Ashworth (22:45)

Yeah, we’ll dig into a of those pieces as we go a little bit further here. Of course, ideas are only as strong as their execution. But what’s powerful about your model is how operational it is. know, it’s tech-enabled, data-informed, still grounded in agriculture. And I want to talk about how that all comes together on the ground, and something you’ve teased us with. But I want to hear more about it. Can you walk us through that current demonstration project? What makes it different from the average solar site?

Matthew Horvath (23:14)

Yeah, so with the current demonstration farm, it gives us a safe space to try things that people haven’t tried before. Where if we were going to go into a live utility solar project right now and say we want to do all of these things, they might look at us sideways and say, why on earth would you do that? We’re meeting our obligations. And that’s another one of the little bits of flags, right? We’re meeting our obligations. We’re keeping the vegetation down, and we’re operating and producing electricity.

So that is a bit of a challenge. So, showing them the net benefit of having reduced operational costs as well as synergizing with land production is a real key there, so I guess that’s a roundabout way of saying at the demonstration farm we get a chance to do anything that’s absolutely Insane compared to what you would see a normal project.

Wes Ashworth (24:05)

I love the idea of it. And I would imagine that’s not a normal thing, right? Like, they’re not really anybody doing that, or at least not many that I’ve heard.

Matthew Horvath (24:13)

Yeah, like we’re looking forward to testing out a whole bunch of equipment in there, some of which I don’t even know if I’m supposed to say much about, but there’s gonna be a testing bed. A lot of fun.

Wes Ashworth (24:23)

Right, absolutely. Another piece, you alluded to this a little bit earlier, but how are you integrating operations, maintenance, and agriculture to create just a multi-benefit model, and how do you measure success across those layers?

Matthew Horvath (24:35)

Yeah, so one thing coming from a kind of a security background, installation-wise anyways, is noting that a lot of buildings and a lot of asset owners have a 24/7 security on call. There are call centers, they’re operational 24/7. Then, learning later that a lot of generating asset owners have control rooms as well, but only for the operations.

So now you would do a call out for operational work, or you would do maybe a call out for something else. I think there’s going to be a tremendous amount of value for a solar project asset owner when the control room can watch everything and signal the right party.

Today, in a lot of cases, even with fires and other things, when a fire breaks out, firefighters might not even know what they’re allowed to do because the solar project, they won’t know if it’s on or off.

So, if our control room is to signal to them and say, fire in location A, the system’s been de-energized for you, and you are safe in that area to proceed with water fighting. That is the type of information that needs to pass through the control room in a very fast manner. And the same information can flow through on agriculture. It can flow through operations and maintenance. It can be security-related.

And the contact point doesn’t always have to be the same contact point. So, at the D-Com side of my business, when you have quite a few electricians on staff. You can prioritize an operational requirement that actually ends up costing you less because you don’t have to have staff on site 24/7. And so, with mobile staff working across multiple projects, coming to a resolution on a small issue that’s notified through our system is a very beneficial way to drive costs down immediately.

Wes Ashworth (26:08)

Yeah, so thinking about that and getting into a little bit further, what are some of those other smart technologies you’re using, whether it’s camera systems, or anything else? What are some of the technologies that are being deployed right now that you’re finding success with?

Matthew Horvath (26:33)

Yeah, I think the best way to frame that is to state that I come from a renewable installation and operations background, as well as having some experience in the security sector.

Being able to marry up some of that technology on both sides of the fence is a way that we can provide additional services without having to increase prices immediately because if you wanted to go into security and do security systems, most of time there’s not a requirement or a need for that on a solar asset with a six-foot chain-link fence. They just need a couple of maybe monitoring cameras.

But where we are able to gain some value for everyone is that we’ve noticed that labor costs on maintenance and vegetation management are rather high because there are a lot of things you have to work around when there are solar panels throughout a field. We’ve optimized solar for the output and the lower capital. A lot of systems have cables hanging in the air, and to get a mower through there, you have to be able to turn in a certain way, which takes a very long amount of time. So, to reduce those times using the data that we can drive is the goal line for us. It’s cost optimization through data.

Wes Ashworth (27:45)

Absolutely. And then from an O&M perspective, how in agricultural activity actually reduce risks, not increase them for asset owners?

Matthew Horvath (27:55)

Well, that’s a great question because in a lot of ways, I would say maybe the risk is kind of similar but I’d say that your route to operation or your uptime might be even better because what we found is when there is agricultural producers on the land that are trained in multiple things even if we are missing something like an operator that hasn’t seen that a panel blew off a week ago a lot of the times someone that’s actually connected to the land is going to be spotting that and because in most situations right now there’s a separate vegetation management contract and a separate operations and maintenance contract.

A lot of the time, maybe some contracts will look different where the operations, maintenance, and vegetation management work more closely, but I have seen scenarios where the owners’ project management group manages each contract separately and when the vegetation management service provider sees something that’s operational, they don’t really care. It’s not part of their work. So, because it’s not part of their work, they don’t signal, they don’t flag.

We think that since there’s a synergy across a site, if someone’s on that site, they have a duty to do all aspects of being on the site. I mean, with the right amount of training. not going to We don’t need the farmers working on the electrical equipment without some proper training there.

Wes Ashworth (29:03)

Right, no, absolutely. So, switching gears a little bit, even with the best design, execution, technology, and policy, can either amplify or derail a project. Alberta’s Ag First Solar mandates its fascinating case study, which now requires Ag First planning for solar. What’s your experience been navigating that process, and is it helpful or harmful? And just give us some context there.

Matthew Horvath (29:33)

I would say from my lens that’s some muddy water we’re wading into now. We have the AG first portion really goes towards class one and two irrigable lands. So, when developers are trying to develop a solar project on class one and two lands, they have to come in with an AG plan. It might not be thoroughly understood what that looks like.

And because there are a lot of different parties involved, so you have, in Alberta, you have the Alberta Utilities Commission that’s evaluating this as part of the process to get towards the permitting. And we find it of extreme interest that, at what level of the AG plan, is an asset owner going to have to follow? Because I will say in farming, you don’t just say for the next five years, this is my outlook.

You might have a rainy year, you might have a dry year, you might have irrigation, other people don’t, you might see that you need to rotate crops differently next year. Defining an AG plan that needs to be evaluated with some level of common sense, which I know is kind of a scary word these days. We need to use a little bit of common sense that an AG plan means that we’re doing something because it works, and because our model, because our model particularly, does work, AG planning might look different from day one to day five. And we talked about this briefly before, what is the optimal regenerative agrivoltaics project?

Well, we need to evaluate. similarly, with these projects, that evaluation might change next year. We might have, it can go one of two ways, right? Like maybe we seeded everything and nothing established, and that’s happened to a lot of people before. Or maybe we seeded something, it took off like crazy, and everything is working really well.

So, the AG planning portion of those class one and two irrigable lands, I hope that at some point we receive additional clarity on what works and what doesn’t work for them. But at current, the best you can do is put together the plan. We’ve done a few and submitted them, and see what happens after.

Wes Ashworth (31:30)

Yeah, no, absolutely. It’s a good perspective. And zooming out a little bit, your work isn’t just about energy or land use. It’s about building something regenerative and enduring, which we’ve touched on a couple of times. Thinking about what’s next and how soil health, carbon, and even new crops fit into that vision. I know you’re now exploring carbon credit registration through soil health, which I thought was really intriguing. How does that process work? Why is it such a game-changer for renewable projects?

Matthew Horvath (31:56)

Well, right now I think it’s really good for those projects because what we’re doing when we increase the amount of carbon in the soil is making sure that there’s additional life that’s available in the soil. So, it’s a validation measure of saying that we’re actually doing a really good job of regenerating the land and making sure that the soil is better than we left it.

Whether there’s value, real value to it is left a little bit uncertain. Sort of part of our process to date has been we monetize it because there’s a risk involved with that, but we leave the proof of work and the action in the soil behind. So, when the soil is returned, it is a healthier soil because we’ve proven it.

And like I said, the values, I’d like to see if this works down the road, and this is what the demonstration farm and all the practice is going to be for, but I’d like to see it be a potential offset of operational costs. So, if the system needs a certain amount of dollars to run every year, and we are actually regenerating soil health and measuring carbon that’s going into the dirt, and working on offsets in that manner. I’d like to see that work towards operations and maintenance, and agricultural offsets as well.

Wes Ashworth (33:09)

Yeah, absolutely. Another thing you’ve hit on, we’ve touched on a couple of times, you said we need to go beyond sheep, but you mentioned cattle earlier as well. What other livestock agricultural strategies are you experimenting with, and how are you determining what works where?

Matthew Horvath (33:24)

That’s a great question. From early consultation and soil analysis, we are able to start building up models for what works and what doesn’t work. There’s going to be a lot of trial, hopefully not a lot of error, because of the technical information that’s going into these decisions. The internal joke is beyond sheep. And we see this all the time. So, a project pops up, sheep go in, and people say it’s agriculture. And we look at it and say, it’s a little bit light on maybe, agricultural activity that could be happening.

There’s all manner of animals that we’re looking at right now and trying to get some experimenting going. We want to get the base case done. The chicken, the sheep, the pigs, and the cows are trying to get it all managed and coordinated. I’ve personally heard from farmers that a lot of what we’re looking at trying may or may not work out just because pigs are harder to control, and this and that. But I really believe that if we look at this broad lens and use data and technology to our benefit that we should be able to achieve this no problem.

Wes Ashworth (34:35)

Yeah, absolutely. I’m glad somebody’s working on that problem. Fast forward a little bit, looking ahead five, 10 years or beyond. So, what’s your big vision for Sun Cycle Farms, and what kind of legacy do you hope to leave the renewable energy and agriculture space?

Matthew Horvath (34:50)

I’m really, my daydream here is that Sun Cycle Farms can provide really healthy food to communities and really take care of solar assets and the land. So, the Pie in the Sky, we get healthier food locally through a good distribution network, and everyone wins, and that’s probably the best place I could leave that off on.

Wes Ashworth (35:17)

Yeah, no, that’s fantastic and something you can really get behind, and it’s important to have that why and belief in what you’re doing, and I think that’s a really strong one. Kind of final question, closing out, any additional words of wisdom, things you wish you got to talk a little bit more about, things we didn’t cover, anything else you want to share with the audience?

Matthew Horvath (35:38)

I mean, there’s just so much. I hope that the audience types in Sun Cycle Farms on their computer, goes looks at the blog. There are so many images and things that are hard to relay through words. I’m a blue-collar gentleman myself, and I think we joked about this in our last meeting. Words aren’t always my friend. I like implementation. I like getting my hands dirty still, even if I’m in the office a lot more than I used to be. So, driving Sun Cycle Farms forward on implementation is my goal now, and I just really hope everyone goes over to the website, takes a look at it, and tries to open their mind up a little bit about what is possible.

Wes Ashworth (36:10)

Absolutely. Yeah, and I think a picture is worth a thousand words, and just being able to see it and dig more into it. So, we’ll link all that in the show notes as well. Please go check that out. Click the website. I’ll link the blog as well and dig more into that. But it’s fascinating. I really am glad you came on the show. I wanted to help get your story out there and provide some perspective, too. So, with that, we’ll wrap up today’s discussion with Matt Horvath, General Manager at D-Com Electric and co-founder of Sun Cycle Farms.

His mix of hands-on expertise and forward-thinking approach shows us that the future of energy isn’t just about technology. It’s about how we use the land and care for it. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe, share it with your network, and go check out the links as we just noted. Thanks for tuning in, and we will see you soon.