Green Giants – Episode 54

Constantin Lindenmeyer (01:10)

Well, Germany was one of the early movers, and I just happened to grow up in that starting point of renewable energy. So, this year we in Germany, we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the so-called EEG, renewable energy law. And yeah, that was always a topic of conversation. And then I went to school, physics lessons started, and this became a thing; I became really interested. It was in the news as something that is a challenge for the next generation. And I felt like I wanted to be a part of it. From this moment, it just carried me all the way through university, and this is where I am now.

I can almost say I’m the first generation where renewable energy is just normal, it’s just been there. It’s no longer this that you need to be the absolute pioneer. You can just kind of grow up with it. And just looking forward to what the future brings even further.

Wes Ashworth (02:12)

Yeah, I love that. So well said, and a cool perspective, and just thinking about it that way. And I don’t know that I’ve really pieced that together, but you’re absolutely right that it is that. And I would say that the challenge of our time, right? So, from your academic background in sustainable energy to your MBA and time at Harvard and Stanford, you’re an impressive guy, by the way. How did that mix of engineering and business prepare you for leadership in solar?

Constantin Lindenmeyer (02:32)

Well, it all works together and the technical aspects almost go, maybe not to the back burner, but it really becomes the business approach and also the social and economic aspects of actually successfully introducing new technology into the market. And I think that was fairly early on the driver for me to kind of expand from a pure engineering background, as I mean, the technologies we are using now.

Most of them have been around for, I know, 50, 100 years sometimes even. The solar cell is nothing new, wind power is nothing new. We used it in, I don’t know, 300 years ago in Europe already on mills and something. So, it’s just kind of implementing it, bringing it to the next level, which is new, and then really kind of building it into the network, which becomes the ultimate backbone of modern civilization. Having the horizons bordered with the economic aspects and the social aspect, I think, became really important, both for the industry as a whole and within the company, of course, to kind of make sure that it works. This is, I think, what ultimately really sparked and progressed my journey there as well, just being able to look around and maybe not being single-focused on just the technical aspects.

Wes Ashworth (04:03)

Yeah, absolutely. And kind of bringing it to the current day. So, what drew you to Goldbeck Solar originally, and how has your role evolved to where you’re now leading North America?

Constantin Lindenmeyer (04:12)

In the end, I went over to the business school where I did my MBA. It’s called the Collège des Ingenieurs and it’s a joint MBA program where you work at the same time. Basically, Goldbeck Solar found me. At the time, it was a fairly small EPC company in Europe. And yeah, I went there for an interview and was successful apparently and yeah, I joined as somewhat the personal assistant executive assistant to the founder and CEO, and just the timing was incredibly fortunate. 2019, 2018 were when solar became profitable without subsidies in Europe, and this massive boom started.

Solar just grew with it, and I grew within that within the organization. Now we think we are seven, eight times as big as when I started, and new territories came on board, new jobs. So, fairly early on, I was in the business development section looking at, okay, what can we amend towards just being the EPC and O&M companies. What can we do with batteries? What can we do with agrivoltaics? Stuff like this. And ultimately, when the Canada or North America opportunity opened up, I was asked whether I would lead this team there, and I said yes. So, the last two and a half years now I’m on the other side of the pond, as we say from Europe, and based in Toronto, and trying to accelerate solar now in Canada and the United States.

Wes Ashworth (06:01)

Yeah, it really is an incredible journey as you outline it. And it’s clear, your global perspective and engineering business blend uniquely position you to lead in today’s renewable energy landscape. So, let’s bring that a little bit more into the present. So specifically with your leadership at Goldbeck Solar North America, how would you describe Goldbeck Solar’s model? What makes your approach different from other EPCs and solar developers in the market?

Constantin Lindenmeyer (06:24)

I think we really pride ourselves on two things. One is our engineering excellence, really going into the details and coming up with maybe even unique solutions in order to maximize the solar farm. And I think that comes from our overall holistic approach to a solar project. Over the years, we’ve really started doing everything in the basic value chain, from project development, the EPC, the O&M, but also what to do with how you sell the electricity, the asset management, and how all of that comes together. And by understanding each step on the way and knowing what kind of challenges it provides, we can bring that back into just the EPC web, for example, or just the O&M, because we know what kind of challenges come around. And with that, I believe we really managed to help our clients quite a way.

One of the examples and this is where it comes back to the engineering excellence is really thinking about designs early on. What is your strategy in order to sell the electricity? Do you go on the merchant side? Which hours are the hours that are more valuable than others? Can we adjust the design in order to capture them? If it’s a PPA, what are the most important hours there may be a client may have? How can we optimize whatever it is, and I think that really is at the core value of what we try to achieve every time.

Wes Ashworth (07:45)

Yeah, and you mentioned a few things there, and I know that holistic end-to-end approach, covers everything from development to OEM. You mentioned a couple of reasons why it is important. Why else is that full cycle view so important?

Constantin Lindenmeyer (08:05)

In the end, to maximize the solar farm, and I mean this is ultimately what should be the goal, it really is, you take the entire cost and you have the entire yield, and the higher the yield and the lower the overall cost, the better it is. Sometimes you can focus on your individual thing that you are working on and forget the bigger picture. As for so many things, sometimes if you just go for the cheaper option, it comes back to bite you because you need to replace things earlier than maybe a different option comes by. And yeah, we just do all of it. We’ve been in every single shoe that is possible, so to speak. So, it can sometimes really eventually we need to build the entire plant back, and hey, this is how you best do it. It might look strange now, but you need to already budget for that. And with the way we’re doing it now, this helps you a little bit more.

Wes Ashworth (09:05)

Yeah, absolutely. And can you give us an example of a real-life scenario? Could you walk us through maybe a recent project like the one in Alberta or others, how it represents your strategy just in action?

Constantin Lindenmeyer (09:16)

Yeah, for one project in Alberta, it was a merchant project that went on without a PPA, but really tried to take advantage of the electricity prices on the pool price you have there. And yeah, we did hundreds of different designs and simulated them with the pool prices of the past years to try to figure out what the optimal design. What do we need to change on the azimuth, maybe, on the pitch level, what is the angle? We tilt the modules towards the south, or do we even slightly go west? And what can we do then? Ultimately, we came up with a design where you normally kind of roll your eyes and kind of say, this must be some over-engineered thing, but we’re fairly confident that it helped the client to achieve the best possible results for his financial model. It’s a couple of angles where you’re like, why do you go for 27? It’s like, was what our math showed after so many simulations and optimizations.


This is where we find the sweet spot. If we can build it accordingly, that should actually be the best design. So, we ended up building it.

Wes Ashworth (10:39)

Yeah, you’re really hearing that like how Goldbeck Solar’s integrated approach plays out in real projects. It’s really fascinating, especially that Alberta example you just gave. Since your roots are in Europe, now you’re scaling in North America. I imagine you’ve got a unique vantage point. Let’s talk about some of this contrast between those markets, the lessons that can cross the Atlantic, or on the other side of the pond, as you said, as well.

What are some of the biggest differences you’ve noticed between how Europe and North America approach solar development?

Constantin Lindenmeyer (11:00)

I think one of these is really just the buildup of how it all started. And I think the overall motivation and potentially the acceptance was a little bit higher in Europe, really starting 25 years ago now, pushing carbon-neutral technologies and really kind of helping these emerging technologies. The interesting part is now that it’s kind of just another energy source. It’s actually the US that is now pushing in order to and is willing to invest to keep it as local manufacturing, something that Europe kind of didn’t do when they had to decide that around 10, 15 years ago. So now it’s the US that is willing to invest a lot more in order to keep manufacturing local. And they complement each other quite well.

It’s interesting to see when different countries are willing to invest in a technology. Looking back at it, it really is kind of the starting point. Probably some of those subsidization schemes in Europe, whereas now a lot of the further growth and engineering on really maximizing the efficiency also comes from the investments in the US.

Wes Ashworth (12:21)

Yeah, any other differences you see between those two markets, and kind of comparing, and it is cool having your perspective where you have seen it. You’ve seen it in Europe. You’ve seen it in North America and have that direct contrast available. So, if there’s anything else you can share, too, I’m fascinated to hear it.

Constantin Lindenmeyer (12:29)

The other is that you just have different bottlenecks of where basically projects kind of are squeezed, or where the main issue is. And the way you kind of develop around it. I think land per se isn’t really an issue in either Canada or the US. It’s just way bigger in terms of the space available. So suddenly, you have the space to build entirely different solar farms. If you go to Europe, see a panel that basically looks like a city in terms of massive tables of up to three, potentially even four modules per table, going high rows of rows of rows, whereas in the US, or Canada, you say, it’s a 1P tracker, you have massive space in between. That’s not a system you really see, particularly in Northern Europe.


Sometimes you even see it as a rooftop, which is an East-West system. So similar to a tracker, just fixed. That leads to different engineering behind it, but also different market strategies that just are unthinkable if you go to North America, and I think if you show pictures, it’s still the solar farm, but sometimes you’re like, really? Is this the same? We’re still, same components, just looking completely different. And I don’t think this is kind of what you would expect when you say, This is a solar farm. So yeah, always kind of interesting how many different varieties you can kind of build there.

Wes Ashworth (14:19)

Yeah, no, it is very interesting. Another thing I was thinking about, there are any lessons from Germany or the broader Europe, those markets that the US and Canada would be wise to adopt? Like, what can we learn from what those markets are doing?

Constantin Lindenmeyer (14:33)

Yeah, putting me on the spot here. I don’t want to be too presumptuous. But now I think it’s fair to say, think Europe had more time to kind of mature and start optimizing it. And I think you see that when you go towards the speed of engineering and construction. And also, let’s say you have very, very specific, highly specialized contractors out there that do nothing else than build solar farms. And I think this is still a rarity in Canada for sure, simply because it’s just such a small market but even in the US, you find new people every time, and you start a new project, it’s kind of okay, you have a significant learning curve for projects from time to time.

Whereas in Europe, this is much more standardized from day one. It really is at go. Well, I think that is always something we kind of just see, and this will come. Also, the distances, of course, help. In Europe, I don’t think there’s in Central Europe, you can’t go anywhere within a hundred kilometers, you don’t find a major city. It’s just impossible to replicate, and therefore, you have those differences.

I think the other thing that is interesting and I mean it really goes at the heart of also policy discussions and therefore gets particularly tricky but in certain aspects you can always just look at other countries that kind of are slightly ahead in their curve and adaptation of renewable energies and kind of can see how this went well or this didn’t.

Sometimes it’s kind of interesting that this isn’t happening as much as you would expect. Everyone has to go through different phases in their energy market design because you go from a very centralized system, a couple of major power plants, go to the transmission grid, go to the distribution grid, and then ultimately come up to the consumer. Now you’re adding in all those small little power plants and different levels that feed in, but according to the sun, not according to demand. And that changes your overall energy markets, and you need to adapt.

What is sometimes interesting is that everyone thinks we reinvent the wheel, and we do something completely new. Whereas there are a lot of countries that have been through it now and where you can basically say, if you do it like this, there’s no interruption to the market and if you kind of wander around, this might kill investments not only in the renewables but in the general energy space for a couple of years. And this is always something where we can look out and kind of see, and this goes across the world in so many things.

Wes Ashworth (17:31)

Yeah, no, agreed. On the flip side of that, anything that North America is doing particularly well or even maybe better than Europe when it comes to renewable deployment?

Constantin Lindenmeyer (17:40)

Absolutely, Wes. I think once again, it goes for so many things, but the adaptiveness and basically, going after new business models, the speed there in America is just astonishing. And yeah, I mean, I spent half a year in Silicon Valley, and that was super cool. Basically, my friends are there, classmates, we thought about solutions for problems that could occur in five, 10 years down the line. And people were also willing to invest in that. That is the startup scene down there. And I think in Europe, we sometimes have the problem, and we think about the solution. So, there’s this gap, and I came back with so many ideas on what you can do in the power grid and how you need to adjust and bring in things. And then in Germany, it was like, yeah, no, we don’t see that yet. We don’t have that. And like, you don’t have it now, but it’s the logical step if this continues. And now we see, now those ideas that I’ve heard basically eight years ago are being front and center in some discussions.

 And that was, well, surprising, but not so surprising because it just evolved. And considering how quickly that happened, it really amazes me how, yeah, how fast and certain things in the U.S. really take hold and get adopted. And yeah, that’s just really, really cool to see because it just shows you how much potential there is.

Wes Ashworth (18:54)

Exactly. It’s super interesting, and hearing just the different market dynamics and how that all works. Beyond just market structures, I’d like to geek out just a little bit, tiny bit on the engineering side. Every project brings its own challenges. I’m curious how your team is solving for performance and real-world constraints as well. So, what are some of the most technically challenging sites you’ve worked on, and how do you design around those constraints?

Constantin Lindenmeyer (19:40)

I mean, in the end, every time the ground conditions are tricky or you are constrained there, I think that becomes a really tricky project. There, now in three different countries, we’ve built on landfills. So, it’s a great spot in theory, right? It’s reclaimed land. You’re not using any agricultural land or anything. It’s probably not the prettiest site anyway, so you’re not taking anything away. Pretty much everyone, I think, can agree on the landfill. Yeah, you can build a solar farm. But you have the issue that you’re basically on top of waste, and how do you properly record for that? And the unique thing is we’ve built this now in Canada, the Netherlands, and Germany. And every time, the design of the plant is completely different. So, in Germany, the challenge was, we wanted to have a waterproof roof on top of our landfill so we don’t have any erosion. So, it basically became one massive roof, a continuous roof out of solar panels where there were no breaks allowed. And we had to design it that way.

In the Netherlands, there were pretty much the opposite there. No, we need the rain in order to kind of have the water for the grass that is important and you’re not allowed to really go deep into the ground. Plus, it’s literally pretty much a perfect hill round on all sides. And so, the solar panels now look in, I think, 26, 27 different directions because we filled the entire hill up, and yeah, it looks like a UFO from above now. And you would never think this is a profitable solar site, but no, it works for that specific design. And of course, the land costs, it serves additional purposes, so to speak. And then in Canada, it was a little bit similar to the Netherlands. Once again, ground, very, very tricky. You need to be careful. What do you do with the water flows so that nothing happens there? And in the end, it looks like a fairly normal solar farm. But yeah, the engineering behind it to get it there, that it’s stable, has been pretty unique. And I think also the construction team was very happy at the end when he finished that project, that everything went okay.

Wes Ashworth (21:56)

Yeah, super cool. It’s super cool just hearing some of those specific sites and how you kind of navigate around some of those problems. I know another thing you mentioned was a proprietary optimization engine your team developed. Can you explain how that helps you tailor design for performance and cost, and what that looks like?

Constantin Lindenmeyer (22:23)

Yeah. So that was one of my first tasks back at Goldbeck Solar when I started. And that was before, let’s say, the AI hype really got on its way. I think nowadays, we need to be honest, there are pretty good software out there in the open market that can compete with ours. But in those early days, it was really something that we spent a lot of time building an optimization engine that could simulate the CAPEX and ultimately the economics over 20, 25, 30 years with the operational demands of 15-minute hourly changing yields and electricity prices if need be.

Combining that with the different designs that we put in there, it allowed us to simulate hundreds of different designs and compare their economic KPIs within a matter of minutes to then kind of say, okay, this is the direction we want to go in. We never managed to bring it to a stage where we could just say, this is the design, and we immediately build it. But it allowed us to basically narrow down which design direction we wanted to go. Do we add another row? Do we squeeze it a little bit more? Is that profitable for the client? Or is this extra row just nice to have, but it doesn’t add any additional revenue? And yeah, it was an exciting time building it. To this day, I like using it to give me a quick indication of which way we are leaning.

And particularly if we do the development of those sites as well. always use it for EPC clients. It’s sometimes difficult to change too many things at the time we get involved, as they’re already set in certain permits. Though it’s another thing that we always tell our clients, involve us early. We’re happy to kind of take a look and bring our thoughts in as well, because sometimes the designs can surprise you.

It’s still a solar farm and everything. It’s the same components in the end, but you change a few things, and it can really make a difference.

Wes Ashworth (24:35)

Yeah. And as we know, like demand shifts, prices change, as you alluded to a little bit there. How else do you adapt solar designs, like either your west-facing tilt or other strategies, to maximize those returns?

Constantin Lindenmeyer (24:49)

I mean, pretty much everything. It really goes how much space you have available? And then building it into your building blocks, looking at the pitch, the DC AC ratio, so how much oversizing you’re really doing. All of that has CAPEX implications. Some of it may even have OpEx implications.

And then ultimately you compare that with what you think you know about the next 25 years in terms of electricity prices and even weather events. We stopped looking at weather data if it’s too old because the weather has changed in the Netherlands, which was a really striking example. We had a performance test on the site, and we used weather data that was the 30-year average between 1970 and 2000. Not too bad. It ended in 2000. But if you use the 30-year average between 1990 and 2020, it was significantly higher.

Over the years, the winters became sunnier. The irradiance levels of the sun were simply higher, and it had an effect on our test results. And it also has an effect on the yield of sites. And that can continue to change in the future. Even there, the weather isn’t constant, even less to say about the climate.

So, you kind of take assumptions there, and based on that, you might even want to change your design even further. Of course, then it’s pure speculation and you basically say if it’s that way this would be the optimal design but at least you come into those conversations and you start to think about rather than just building something and then your kind of is in the middle of operations phase and then, why did we do it that way? It might have a reason.

Wes Ashworth (26:45)

Yeah, it’s always super, super interesting. And the way you really adapt that system design for maximum ROI is a great example of how this field blends precision and agility. And speaking of agility, we’ll zoom out a little bit. So, we’re in the midst of historic acceleration and solar deployment. I’d love your perspective on what’s fueling that growth, how Goldbeck is preparing for what’s next. So, we’ve gone from one to two terawatts of solar in just a couple of years, you think like that. What’s driving that acceleration, and what does that mean for players like you in the space?

Constantin Lindenmeyer (27:19)

First of all, I think just now it shows how common solar really is becoming and how mainstream, so to speak. And I think that two reasons for it. It is now, and I think this is not debatable anymore. It’s the cheapest form of electricity if you just go on the pure kilowatt-hour production. Yes, you can’t control the timing of it.

For that, you need batteries or other forms of storage, but if you just go, I need a kilowatt-hour, which is the cheapest form of electricity in almost every country. Small exceptions, Switzerland, Norway, have really helpful natural conditions; notwithstanding, it really is the cheapest form of electricity. And the economics of scale there really, really drove that over the last couple of years.

And then the second thing which makes solar unique, I’d say, is that it can be applied in all sizes. So, it can start on your personal rooftop. You can build it on your own house. You can build it on top of factory buildings, utility-scale industrial rooftops. And you can build it ground-mounted anywhere in your garden if you’d like all the way to building hundreds, and nowadays even thousands of football fields. If you go into Asia or the Middle East and see what kind of projects they’re building there, think it’s a thousand football fields or even bigger. So, whatever you’re looking for with solar, it works. It’s completely scalable. And I think this is almost a unique feature of solar when it comes to energy generation, that it can go from a kilowatt peak to, I don’t know, the biggest solar farm, I think is two gigawatts, maybe three.

Who else can do that? Which other technology is able to do it in that size? And I think that really enables everyone that needs it to jump in at exactly the size one needs.

Wes Ashworth (29:09)

Yeah, and kind of with those thoughts, as you’ve said, solar is no longer niche. It’s essential infrastructure, which I love, that set of it. How do we shift the mindset from nice to have to must have across the board completely?

Constantin Lindenmeyer (29:37)

Conversations like this, just telling the success stories. I mean, listening to your podcast, half of your guests have some connections to solar, bringing it out there, just really saying what it is. And the only reason it is happening is because so many people already know about it. I mean, you’re not building solar because you want to build solar. No, it’s profitable, it makes money. It’s great. And you get a great return on your investment. And the times where solar has been kind of, been underrated or maybe smiled at are long gone. When the International Energy Agency and the World Energy Outlook constantly underestimated solar, and kind of said so. By 2030 or 2040, we will reach this number of gigawatts, and then two years later, the world will have reached that number already, and they will have done it repeatedly. Now it’s kind of a fun story to tell. At the time, this is what I mean once again, I wasn’t part of this first pioneering generation. I grew up with this is normal or this is coming, and I think this is happening in more and more countries now.

And this is an entirely new kind of mindset that is setting in. And I think we really just need to continue on that. We’ll see what comes. Germany, I think, generated 14 % of its electricity from solar energy last year. In China, I’ve read they are installing 350 gigawatts this year as the target. That is an absurd number. And also, the US wants to install more than 50 gigawatts this year. Yeah, I think we are there now, and it just kind of needs to become even, broadcasted, so to speak. It’s just another electricity source, and it’s by the way, it’s the cheapest, just casually.

Wes Ashworth (31:41)

So well said. I love it. Another thing, so with tariffs, domestic content rules, supply chain issues, how are you navigating the complexity of building in the US versus other markets?

Constantin Lindenmeyer (31:53)

I mean, we’re an international company. We’ve seen it happening, come and go, it’s become the new normal, so to speak, that’s always something that comes up. Just in the time I’ve been in the company, we had COVID, we had this ship blocking the Suez Canal, which is the most important trade route between Asia and Europe. Now we have tariff uncertainty. You constantly need to adapt, particularly when it comes to building in the US, though I also think that the domestic content rules that got rolled out in the Inflation Reduction Act are greatly minimizing the effect of the tariffs because so much of the components are manufactured in the US and they’re even starting all the downstream industrial processes to move over to the US. So, I think in this particular case that we now have these tariff announcements and then taken back and everything, it became a little less critical at least for the projects in the US, because you pretty much have to plan with domestically produced components anyway, and therefore they are less subject to those tariffs.

So, I think there’s always some uncertainty in the energy world and it feels like in the renewables even more. But it’s the train has left the station, as I think the saying goes, and there’s no really stopping it.

Wes Ashworth (33:13)

Yeah, agreed, agreed. Perfectly said there. So, with everything moving so quickly, it’s easy to lose sight of the deeper structural issues in the industry. Before we wrap up and get closer to time, I want to touch on a few of the myths and realities that you’ve called out, especially around cost structures, market misunderstandings. So, what’s one thing people, maybe even folks inside the industry, consistently get wrong about the economics of solar today?

Constantin Lindenmeyer (33:34)

I think one is really the differences you see around the world if you look on the capex or general economics of solar. The CapEx varies greatly. Europe to Canada, I think, is almost a factor of two in the CapEx cost for just the construction process. To the US, it’s almost triple, not quite. I think you can buy inverters and modules for a US project in the US, and for the same price on a per kilowatt peak basis, you get the entire project done in Europe. That’s just crazy. Okay, there’s no way this is economically feasible in the US, then. But it is because you have different yields and way more sun hours in the US, even in Canada, than you have in Europe.

You have the tax credits, they help, and they are one of the reasons why the pricing might be slightly elevated if you want to have the components all manufactured in the US. And so, if you look at the levelized cost of electricity at the end of it, they are once again comparable. You’re like, this is awesome. All those different things on the development side, on the EPC side, on the O&M side, they all vary; they are completely different for almost the same product. And they’re producing the same product at different, basically, levels, utilization levels. And in the end, the LCOE is almost the same. And it’s like, that is what I think my number one kind of story, when I tried to translate solar between Europe and America is it looks different, it is different, but in the end, it makes the exact same sense from a business perspective. And I think that is, that’s just super cool.

Wes Ashworth (35:33)

It is cool. And just some of that clarity around Solar’s true economics is crucial, especially as we think about scaling sustainably. And bringing me to one of those critical pieces as we get closer here is just the people, right? I never want to forget the people. I’d love to explore how you’re building the workforce and culture that will carry this momentum forward. So, with labor shortages, rising demand, how are you thinking about workforce development in North America?

Constantin Lindenmeyer (36:06)

I think we are in the middle of it, and it’s only catching on. As I said in the beginning, in Europe we really have those contracting companies, labor companies, and everything, and they can look back on a workforce that has built gigawatts each. This is coming to America as well, where you can really kind of have expert solar craftsmen that have been doing this for years and years and years and have been on all the big projects. Whereas even nowadays, you still have your learning period at the beginning of projects, even more so in Canada, maybe as in the US, where you really start to see those patterns emerge. And then the other part is with automation and robotics becoming better and better, everything you can do there is to ease it.

The weather conditions during the construction phases here are extreme. In Texas, it’s summer, 40 degrees, direct burning sun, and you’re carrying modules that are not that light. In Canada, in Alberta, in the winter, we have minus 20 degrees. You don’t really want to do construction work anymore. If it goes even lower, we have to cancel the day as it’s just getting unsafe. And what you can do there, if you can just protect the workforce a little bit more, have a centralized, maybe a construction table, and then drive the tables towards where they need to go. Something that I think the automation industry is really pushing towards. And I think that those steps will really help with that.

First of all, we can handle all this rising demand in solar farms with the available workforce as well as become even quicker in building those projects.

Wes Ashworth (37:55)

Yeah, zooming in a little closer just internally to Goldbeck Solar. What sets your team and culture apart, and how do you foster innovation while staying grounded in execution?

Constantin Lindenmeyer (38:04)

We really are, I think we can say that one of the pioneers in the solar industry, the German renewables laws, is 25 years old, and Goldbeck Solar as a company is 24 years old. And really, our founders come from a construction family, and they have a huge family business building all kinds of commercial buildings all around Europe; they didn’t have to leave that company. But it was his kind of drive, I want to promote solar energy. I mean, the early days, I wasn’t there, but they have been tough. It wasn’t that easy building new technology that, at the beginning, not really that many people believed in.

And yeah, I think that has carried us through the times. We’ve entered markets as one of the early movers around the world and really want to be ones that are out there and trying to promote renewable energy. And really, that belief, that drive, is at the very core of our culture. And now it gets amended by people like me who just kind of take it for granted, but kind of joined that as it’s already normal, so now we can really get going. And yeah, I think this is one of the perfect mixes we have there. And then, I think the other one is really our technical and engineering know-how that we really pride ourselves in, and kind of, going the extra mile, what we can do there to think about what is next, what can we do.

I mean, the staying grounded part comes if you’re in construction, and we do self-perform quite a bit. We have a construction team now in Europe, and we have a construction team in North America, and the day-to-day challenges that you really see there and the things that unavoidably sometimes don’t go the way you would like them always kind of keep you from dreaming too far ahead in the future because there’s something where you’re just like, let’s just think about that particular situation again.

Wes Ashworth (40:17)

Yeah, absolutely. I love it as a final question, looking ahead five to ten years ahead. What do you hope Goldbeck Solar North America will be known for? What’s a legacy you want to leave behind in the industry?

Constantin Lindenmeyer (40:29)

That is a very good question. Me being German, and I think Germans kind of get the stamp in terms of German engineering, German efficiency. If we get that as the entire company, that, if there’s a difficult project or a project that is really well designed, or that could be a Goldbeck site, that is kind of the thought people have that would be amazing.

I think then we really kind of proved, we know what we are doing. We really take on those challenges and are out there advancing the energy transition. And then the other part is pushing ideas into the market, being early on additional things that are happening. I think in Europe, we are one of the first ones starting to build battery projects, at least in Germany. They’ve been around way longer, but there we’re really trying to push that AgriVoltaics, we’ve been very, very early in Europe, and being part of an initiative, let’s try to define it in order to make it graspable what it is. And this is now something that comes to the US, which I’m super excited about and can’t wait to kind of see what is happening there.

And yeah, so I think those two things that we always are one of the ones leading the party into the next technology coming around, amending solar and being out there, and personally, for me, that would be just amazing if I could play a role in that. I’ve never imagined myself being in such a position when I started, nor even when I started at Goldbeck. But now that I’ve been in it, I want to make it count.

Wes Ashworth (42:18)

Absolutely. I love that. Incredible vision. I think great goals to have ahead as well, too. with that, we’ll wrap up our conversation with Constantin Lindenmeyer, CEO of Goldbeck Solar North America. From optimizing complex solar systems and scaling cross-continent operations, Constantin’s insights offer a clear window into what’s driving the energy transition forward and what it takes to lead through both innovation and execution. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing, sharing it with your network, and leaving us a review.

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