The World Changing Podcast

Greg: [00:00:00] If you sign up for community solar, the fundamental question you should ask is, how is the money split? Your power bill is the reason that this value exists. So if you work with a community solar company who says, come subscribe to this community solar farm, and I'll save you 5% on your power.
Greg: The immediate place my mind goes is like, well, how much money are you making ? Because I know that if my, if my power bill does not exist mm-hmm. for this community, solar company mm-hmm.
they don't even have a business.
Greg: Welcome to the World Changing podcast. Was that too much? Yeah, that was probably too much, but let's keep it, we'll keep it anyway. How about this? If we do the podcast and the world doesn't change, Then we can take that out. Welcome to the World Changing [00:01:00] podcast, where we deconstruct the projects and products that are moving us towards a decentralized and carbon-free future.
Greg: We'll talk to the skeptics, supporters, and innovators in the fields that depend on electricity to run their industries, which is changing every single day. I'm your host, Greg Robinson, co-founder of Aston Labs, a decentralized infrastructure company, and on the other side of the camera here, we. Flo Lumsden our producer, and she will make sure that the train stays on the tracks while we do this.
Greg: welcome to the first, uh, it says Greg Ode, but it's like Greg Ode Plus Flow.
Greg: It's a Greg Flow Ode . Uh,\ so these are really interesting. I like these because it allows us to sort of dig deep on topics and I get to be overly opinionated.
Greg: [00:02:00] Flow gets put on the spot and gets quizzed at the beginning and at the end to see how we're doing. Today we're gonna talk about community solar, and we're gonna dig into that topic. It's one that is gonna start showing up for people on their social media ads and then their mailboxes. So it'll be fun to get your perspective, sorry, your perspective flow's, perspective get flow's, perspective, as a consumer of like what this is, and just really get down into the details.
Greg: And we're not, a lot of times if we have a guest on, like they have a really deep understanding of a topic, they may be like super biased about if this is the greatest thing that's ever existed, or if this is like the silver bullet, solution for the world.
Greg: So these are really cool episodes because we just get to dig deep and it's totally self-serving and fair game. Fair game. Fair game. [00:03:00] That's right.
Flo: And self-serving. But also it's a way to introduce topics. Some of you listeners may already be experts on these topics, but maybe you'll enjoy our perspective as well.
Flo: Yeah. And then we can carry that convers maybe, and maybe you won't. But then we can carry the, the narrative forward in the future. That's right. Episodes and, and build on what we're discussing today. Yep.
Flo: Here we go. We spent a whole like hour and a half talking about it last week and I'm still like, I'm like, what's community solar? You dunno. I have a much better sense
Greg: of what it is. Yeah. What do you think it is? Oh boy.
Flo: Uh, this is a quiz, , and I'm in school and I
Greg: had a lecture last week.
Greg: It's like a, it's like a pre-quiz, like where they quiz you before to [00:04:00] just benchmark your knowledge and then at the end you have it again. And, and then we'll know how we did.
Flo: Okay. what I have in my mind right now about community solar is that it is a new concerted, government endorsed or supported effort to allow individuals to buy solar power.
Flo: To offset their bill or to, replace part of their bill. And they may not have solar power. They don't have solar power on their house, but there's a solar panel somewhere that they're somehow connected to, whether that's actually connected or just financially connected. They're
Flo: purchasing solar power from a giant community grid or,
Greg: um, panel.
Greg: Yeah, that's it. Okay, cool. [00:05:00] Wow. . Yeah, we talked about like why, why does it exist now? Like what's helping it exist? How does it actually work? And then the other thing we talked about a bit was like what are the challenges and what are some of the questions?
Greg: And kind of the purpose of doing this was that, we had talked about why does it exist? Why does it exist now? Why are we even talking about this? And so I'm gonna just start with why we're talking about this. So the reason we're talking about it is more and more states have started to adopt this regulation or legislation to let this idea of community solar exist so that people basically, as you said, can subscribe to fields of solar panels.
Greg: So, and there's one fundamental reason which we'll get to that, that they're letting you do this and it's not so that you can feel good about yourself, that you're buying solar power.[00:06:00] I mean, maybe that's what it is, but you're really not. Directly buying solar power in all cases. And we'll get into that too.
Greg: So the reason we're doing this is people are gonna start to get things in the mail, about community solar. It's gonna come in many for forms. You can't put solar panels on your roof. So subscribe to this. They might call it a solar garden, might call it a community solar.
Greg: And some very bad, poorly marketed efforts are gonna be called virtual net metering, if anyone calls it that, and they might actually know what they're talking about, but it's gonna be pretty bad marketing and probably have pretty low adoption if they call it that. Uh, so that's why we're doing this, is to make sure that when people start to get that.
Greg: M marketing in their face, whether it's on social media, whether it's coming into your mailbox, like so that people can kind of interpret what is it? So what is it? The main [00:07:00] regulation that's come up, and this has been around for a long time, uh, is just now starting to get traction.
Greg: It's called virtual net metering. And there's this policy that came on a long time ago called Net Metering. And the idea was if you put solar panels on your roof, and of course you only make solar power during the day, so you're using solar power during the day, but you're probably shoving some of the electricity back onto the grid during the middle of the day just because you're probably making more on your home than you're actually using at that moment in time.
Greg: And so you'll start to push electricity onto the grid and then at night, Just all your electricity is gonna come from, from the power grid, and so you're making more during the day. You're not making enough at night. This concept of net metering is completely a regulatory construct. It's not actually how electricity works, but it was a way to basically say, [00:08:00] look, you make some in the middle of the day, extra for the grid, they'll give you some essentially for free at night since you made some extra during the middle of the day.
Greg: So this regulation was really what unlocked the solar industry altogether. Residential solar. So the reason companies like Solar City or Sunrun or any of those companies popped up is like, finally, this makes sense. We're not just gonna dump electricity out of the grid and give it to the power company.
Greg: Yeah, there's gotta be some kind of quid pro quo. We're not gonna get into this today, but there is a deep rabbit hole that you could go down into about, uh, Whether that's fair. Who's getting the better? Is the homeowner getting the better end of this deal, or is the grid getting the better end of this deal?
Greg: We won't get into that today. So that's why that was net metering. So originally net metering existed for a rooftop and a homeowner. Well then somebody, [00:09:00] I don't know, who said, well, what if I don't have enough roof space? So then somebody else somewhere said, well, what if we stick 'em out in the middle of the field and kind of do the same idea where the middle of the field solar panels will make some extra power, dump it into the grid, we'll get a bunch of money back, and then well at least we, we, let's see if we can get the utilities to give us some free power at night.
Greg: If we dump some in during the day, which is a little bit of a stretch. I mean, we're already sort of like, you know, bending the entire construct of running a power grid, right? So then they were like, well the solar power's way over there and it's not on my roof. Then how do I balance how much is being made out there in the field to how much I'm using in my house?
Greg: Like now I need to know three things. I need to know how much power is being made out there,
Greg: how much is my home using at this [00:10:00] moment? And then how much are all the other homes using at this very moment while that solar farm over there in the field is making power? So now we have like this math problem that we have to do and the the thing, the easiest thing to do is just sort of like sum it all up for the year, whatever's.
Greg: And then subtract out all the stuff that you use at your home and all of the other people who have subscribed to this field of solar panels have used. And we just do a little math problem and we say, okay, well, you all used a hundred percent of what this field used, and so now we'll just say nobody owes a power bill anymore.
Greg: That whole entire concept, that whole math problem that's going on sums up to this sort of poorly marketed term, virtual net metering. That's what that means. I think we talked about this a bit when we were, imagining what we talk about today. [00:11:00] There's a website that's run by NC State University.
Greg: It's been around since the day I graduated, possibly even before I graduated from college. And when I graduated from college, I went right into the solar industry. And so as soon as I came out, it's like I was trying to learn what kind of regulations exist all over the place. And so I came across this website called Desire usa d s i r e usa.org.
Greg: And it has basically every one of these regulations, so virtual net metering, net metering, any of these things will be found in this big database. And so there's a growing trend of states adopting this ability to, um, basically allow homes to subtract the power that they use from the amount of power that's made by some field of solar panels over the middle of nowhere.[00:12:00]
Greg: So yeah, that's virtual net meter. That is how this whole entire concept exists is this, this sort of agreement between the utility company and the legislators, regulators, and, and math, basic edition and subtraction. And so what this does, this is very important. So what that does now is if I just made some solar power out in the middle of nowhere and I dumped it onto the grid, sold it to the grid, they're probably only going to pay me a few cents for that power per kilowatt hour.
Greg: We'll say 3 cents per unit, a few cents per unit. On the other hand, if I can subtract the amount of units my home uses from that, I'm actually getting this value. As a homeowner, I'm getting this value. My entire cost per unit, my entire [00:13:00] cost per unit as a homeowner is gonna be around, let's say 12 cents.
Greg: So if I just, if I'm a company who just dumped solar power onto the grid, I might get paid a few cents. But if I can use it against a homeowner's power bill, I, all of a sudden, as a solar farm owner can get paid, like can, can get like 12 cents or more value from this. So if you just think about it, that means that virtual net metering, although it's this very simple math problem we're doing between the utility company and the homes that are subscribed to it, uh, there's four times the amount of revenue that's being made by this farm.
Greg: So that construct alone has now made a lot of people with money say, yeah, we should probably buy some solar panels in the middle of fields. Okay? Because now I have all of this extra revenue that I can make that I couldn't make before. Um, Yeah. So that is actually what, so what Community Solar is the way you [00:14:00] put it at the beginning, that's exactly what Community Solar is, and that's how it all exists.
Greg: I think the details of it, um, are what we're gonna cover next. .
Flo: Yeah. So as I've been, as we've been talking about the grid in general, I've learned from you that the grid has to be balanced all the time. Mm-hmm. . So if you have excess energy coming in, that's a bad thing.
Greg: Somebody's gotta do something with it. So you could put it in a battery. You could.
Flo: My question is, if all the power comes in during the day when the sun is shining,
Flo: Are the power companies, are the government actually gonna use that power or is it just sort of going to waste? Like they don't know what to do with it yet.
Greg: Uh, really what's happening is like [00:15:00] they're just having to turn off other things. So I mean, the lights are always on as long as the lights are on, it means the grid is balanced.
Greg: So if you add a little bit more solar power from running these community solar farms, uh, they're really small compared to the size of the grid. So like, it doesn't really, doesn't really affect the power of utility that much. Um, but they do have to shut off other things that they otherwise would've used.
Greg: Oh, that's good. Yeah. And so that's exactly it. And so they have to, so the theory always has been if I put more solar power and more wind power onto the grid, And the grid has to be always in balance. Then they have to shut off the things they were gonna use otherwise, the coal,
Flo: the
Greg: oil in, in the natural gas, and all of those things.
Greg: That's always been the theory. Now what actually [00:16:00] happens a lot of times is, as you might imagine, if you don't put a battery on that farm and you just put a whole bunch of these solar panels on people's homes and out in the middle of the fields and everywhere where you're only making power in the middle of the day.
Greg: So even if you are able to shut off everything in the middle of the day, you still have to find that as soon as the sun goes down again. So it's not like you get to get rid of those power plants, right? They still gotta stick around for like after the sun goes down or, or if the wind's not blowing. And so that's a big.
Greg: That is always the question of, like we said, I said before, like, is this fair? Who's getting the better end of the deal here? the utility still is gonna keep, or whoever runs those power plants, they're still gonna keep all the coal generating plants and the gas generating plants on until you can completely make up [00:17:00] for that power every millisecond of the day, not just for the middle of the day.
Greg: So every one of these regulations, has a cap on the amount of community solar that can go in because if too much goes onto the grid, then, then it, it causes problems for the utility company. Now the utility company has a bunch of assets that used to make money in the middle of the day, or someone has assets that used to make money in the middle of the day and now they don't make money anymore because the solar power is there.
Greg: And so that. That trend has happened over, the last like 20 years in California in a big way. So you just keep putting up more stuff that's making more power in the middle of the day, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the day. And then the sun goes down and it's like, well, I, here, here come all of the generators that have just been sitting there all day long.
Greg: It does move the [00:18:00] needle to move this stuff out the grid. But you, you said it before, I mean the answer since I even started hearing about this 15 years ago is like, well batteries, we just put batteries on it, which is like a hundred percent correct.
Greg: Like, yeah, some kind of storage is the answer. So now we've got all this stuff being made in the middle of the day. So that's the thing about community solar is like if you make it in the middle of the day, they have to find a some home for it. Who finds that home for it is that's like, that varies widely between which utility.
Greg: Some of the utilities out there would, you know, there's only maybe a couple that have like some pilot programs that they've run that, uh, while the solar's being made during the middle of the day, you could pre-cool your building. Does that make sense?
Greg: It's like, I'll, I'll incentivize you to run your air conditioning before the sun goes down [00:19:00] so that your place is already cool for after the sun goes down. Like that's a program that utilities are trying to run. So they're trying to now figure out how do I get the, let's say the, the users of power to align better with the makers of the power.
Greg: Okay. But as we are today, we have a regulatory construct that allows people to put solar panels up remotely who can't put 'em on their roof. Uh, that's purely mathematical financial, regulatory construct. And then, uh, and then we have this other sort of effort that is how do I make users do different things so that I can use more of the clean energy.
Greg: And so that's, that's just where we are today. And you're right, like if we could fast forward and just put batteries on all these things, then
Flo: great. Yeah. And it sounds like maybe one of the motivators for people who do care a lot about sustainability and getting emissions down [00:20:00] would be it's a way to finance and just get more solar panel plants up, even if they're not utilized to the best of their capacity yet.
Flo: Yep. And then we'll figure out. Cause then, you know, I don't know how long it takes to put up a solar farm, but I'm sure there's a year or two. I don't know. There's some time, so maybe, yeah, maybe not. Yeah. But I mean, sometimes you have to get these projects and play years in advance. And then I guess people probably also hope by the time we get there, there will be better systems to utilize the additional solar power.
Greg: Yeah, definitely always say like, it's on the, on the power grid, it's actually quite easy to create value for the power grid. Just kind of have to, like you, if you knew that it, that the, the grid was peaking, like, which means like all of the power plants are [00:21:00] getting used that are there. Uh, you could shut off your house.
Greg: You could shut off all your lights. You could shut off all your stuff, all your, all of your comfort. So creating value for the grid is actually quite easy. You just shut stuff off when it's peaking, and if it's not, if it's not peaking in, there's a lot of solar power getting made, but it doesn't need to get made right now.
Greg: You could turn all your stuff on. So that's creating value for the grid is just like helping to match. The hardest thing is capturing that value. So how do you actually get that value that you've created for the grid? That's incredibly hard. Um, and that's why historically it's always been these regulatory or market constructs.
Greg: You have to have some kind of way to get paid for the value that you create. And so, everything I've seen in my career, everything we've seen in in clean energy, sustainable energy is mostly because some kind of financial or regulatory construct was made [00:22:00] so that the people who create the value.
Greg: Create the service, actually get paid for the service that they create. Right? Seems so logical in every other market. , it's a
Flo: hard, it's a really hard market,
Greg: right? It's like I, if I make pens and I sell pens, it's not hard to get compensated for the service or for the product that I've made. Uh, but on the power grid, since we're all sort of connected in this, uh, perfectly balanced ecosystem, it's like sort of like getting, creating Yeah.
Greg: Creating value in capturing value.
Flo: Should we talk a little bit about, um, one thing I don't, I was a little unsure about only prepared for this conversation was the profit share from Community Solar.
Greg: Oh. Like who gets paid? Like, how does, is that a thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so yeah. Getting [00:23:00] into the idea, so we've gone through like, Why it is, why it exists now, why does community solar exist now?
Greg: How does it work? And then we get into the question of like, how does the money flow? So a very flippant answer to why this exists is that solar panels need to get financed. So like if solar panels for your roof need to get financed, they just look at your credit score like they would in a car. Are you buying a car or you buying something?
Greg: And then they'll say, okay, you have a good enough credit score. It looks like you're gonna pay your bills. And you just lease them for your home and it makes your solar power for you
Greg: Basically just like a car, you can lease it, you can get a loan for it, you can buy it outright with cash. It's just another asset that you're buying. In this particular case, you're buying it to make your power in the world of virtual net metering, so the remote, the solar panels out in the middle of a field somewhere, that's a little trickier in that [00:24:00] some company, some service provider has to come in and get a whole bunch of you in a bundle, and they have to put you in this holding period where they say, okay, now I have enough people, let's say 150 homeowners who are willing to subscribe to this field of solar panels.
Greg: because the total amount of power that they use when will be taken away from the total amount of power that's made out in the middle of the field, and then there will be all of that money. All that value that's created, as we talked about, can now be shared across the company running the solar panels and the homeowners.
Greg: If you sign up for community solar, the fundamental question you should ask is, how is the money split? Your power bill is the reason that this value exists. The fact that you've subscribed to this community solar farm, [00:25:00] that is why this, this value exists. So if you work with a community solar company who says, come subscribe to this community solar farm, and I'll save you 5% on your power.
Greg: The immediate place my mind goes is like, well, how much money are you making ? Yeah. And so that's a good question is like, how much money is the community solar company making for me to subscribe to this? Because I know that if my, if my power bill does not exist mm-hmm. for this community, solar company mm-hmm.
Greg: they don't even have a business. Yeah. Like I'm, I'm the reason it's like crowd funding, right? It's like I am the reason that this solar farm exists right now, they're gonna do some, they're gonna do work. They're gonna have to go find the field, talk to the landowner, lease the land, get the builders to come and build it, operate it every single day, make sure that my power bill is actually [00:26:00] associated with this.
Greg: So there is actually some work to be done. So I'm not saying they're doing nothing, but that would be, that's really important to note, is that the existence of me as a homeowner subscribing to this is the reason that this. Business even exists for them. So, but at the end of the day, all that really has to happen is some money needs to get paid to get that solar farm to go in.
Greg: Mm-hmm. . So the way they do that is they look at that bundle. You're in a bundle with 150 other people. They look at all your credit scores. Mm. And they, and then some bank or some lender over here says, okay. Or some investor says, I'll back that bundle of people. That's kind of cool. Yeah. So, so now you have this relationship between the people who are gonna build it, operate it, own it, manage all the subscribers.
Greg: And sometimes those are a bunch of different people. You might have like a builder or developer, somebody who goes and deals with the land and the electricity and the, environmental impact studies and all of those things. And [00:27:00] then you have another company that just deals with subscribers, makes , Mm-hmm. A nice looking power bill instead of a, you know, your typical utility bill. So they just create that experience for you. And then, as I said, there's this lender or investor who puts the money in and then finances the solar panels.
Flo: That's, I really think that's interesting to think about how your individual good credit is contributing to the overall good credit of the funding of a solar power farm.
Greg: Yeah. So they really have
Flo: to use your, your like social security number and stuff, like they have to know all your stuff. Yeah. And then they have to pass it on to another party,
RoughEdit1_CommunitySolar_1: a
Greg: bank or something. Yeah. Yeah. That would be, I mean, if, I guess you could go into those questions for people.
Greg: Like, I assume if I was running one of these, I would make sure that That I was anonymized, you know, it's like this basket of 150 credit scores. It's probably even more than that. Like they'll take, maybe they'll do a hundred different fields of solar panels, which will actually have like 1500 different or 15,000 [00:28:00] different subscribers to it.
Greg: And then they might say, ah, this has an average credit score of, seven 10 or something like that. And that's how they get their money is basically through a lending program. The same way as like a somebody financing cars or selling cars would do it.
Greg: Mm-hmm. .
Flo: And it's like we talked about, it's the power of networks. Um, yeah. And being able to, you know, have access to solar or to support solar farm development Right. In a part of it as part of a group.
Greg: Yeah. And it's interesting because.
Greg: It, it's, it's what's really fascinating is like the idea of everybody being able to get together in this group and subscribe to a community solar farm. I remember some of the first used to call 'em solar gardens or community solar gardens, you know? And I was like, okay, well we're gonna get together 40 or 50 people and we're gonna put like [00:29:00] a, we're gonna get the big field, it's gonna be a big open field, and we're gonna put like a, we're gonna put a big table, like a banquet table out, and we're gonna get people to walk up to the field and sign up.
Greg: And then they'll have to sort of sit around for 18 months and then we'll call them 18 months from now and be like, Hey, remember how you walked out to that field last year? Yeah. You, it's time for you to start paying us now. Like that's a terrible user experience. But the early, early, early adopters for community solar, that was the experience companies have figured out, uh, now how to sort of, Sell, you know, basically sell like renewable energy credits or something, or offsets to people and then give them this experience of buying credits and then sort of shift them over.
Greg: So now they've got them in, they've got them on the product. So now they can just look and say, oh, I already have 150 people on this product. Now, 18 months from now, I'm gonna start to subscribe them [00:30:00] to community Solar. So it's not so much of a, like a experience of like, you walk up to a field, sign up at a banquet table, walk away 18 months from now.
Greg: Yeah, you're, you're subscribed, you don't have to wait anymore. There's sort of, they've figured out a way to sort of hack that gap. It was always hard to kind of corral people and keep them in the pen, cuz who knows if 18 months from now once you've built this thing, if people are still gonna be even living there.
Greg: Yeah. Maybe they sold their house. They're not even subscribed anymore. So that was a, that was something that had to be figured out for this to actually be. A product that could scale. And I think now there's enough companies out there that are serving individual customers. I mean, these could be retail power companies, some states, not North Carolina, not Washington, but states like Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Texas.
Greg: Like these are, I shouldn't mention Texas. I shouldn't mention Texas because I actually don't, I don't [00:31:00] know what their net metering, we can look that up afterwards and put that in the notes. I don't know what their net metering laws are there. So I don't know if this is even possible. So, so
Flo: this is happening already?
Greg: Yeah. Yeah. It's been happening for a long time. It's that quote of like, which I'm gonna get this wrong, but it's like the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed. Yeah. You know, that idea of like, yeah. Uh, it's been going on for, at least a decade and a half.
Greg: Um, it's just now, like I said, some of these bad user experiences have been fixed by smarter. Okay. Not smarter, but just like more technologically driven companies. And so now they've figured out how to like corral people and then subscribe them to these, these
Flo: farms. So that's more of like a business slash entrepreneurial step Yeah.
Flo: Than a government.
Greg: Yeah. Permitting step. I really, I really hate this, this phrase, but they say it all the time in the energy business, which is opportunity follows regulation, [00:32:00] which is so antithetical to like any entrepreneurial effort. It's like the idea that you have to. For permission to, to go and provide value to people.
Greg: It's like that's not what they do in
Flo: San Francisco. They got
Greg: the
Flo: robots delivering food and I know that stuff's
Greg: legal. Yeah. Like not really all of those things. I think in some ways you have to sort of show people what's possible, cuz it's hard for, and I do have empathy for regulators who have to somehow figure out how to keep up with all that.
Greg: Cause it's true. Like people get burned by stuff and that's the job of the regulators to protect people from getting burned. And people get, definitely get burned like literally and figuratively by electricity. Because it's invisible. It's just some kind of financial construct that does something to the grid.
Greg: So if you put a solar farm in your backyard and you didn't tell the power grid that you were going to. They're not gonna know, they're not gonna be monitoring it. You know, if it's really, really big, then you could actually make everybody's power, go out and blow up substations and various [00:33:00] other things just by putting like rogue power onto the grid.
Greg: And so that, that constant balance makes it, makes it really tricky. But, but yes, this is completely an entrepreneurial effort that has made it scale. It had to start as like someone had to say, I mean, the difference here is like the utilities fi it's like, sure, you wanna put some solar panels on your house and stuff and you don't want me to pay you anything for them.
Greg: Okay, thanks . Some free electricity for me. But see, like that's not, that's where this re particular regulation that allowed this community solar thing to happen had to occur for this entrepreneurial step to, to stay. And that
Flo: regulation was the virtual net metering. Yeah. Where you get paid. For the power you create.
Greg: Yeah. You basically get to net it out against your power that you create. It's just like a, you make some, and I'll give you some credits for it against your nighttime, and
Flo: it has to be associated with individual home consumption.
Greg: I [00:34:00] think in some places this may not be the same case anymore, but I do believe that in some cases it's easier for these community solar companies to subscribe.
Greg: Like one pretty large commercial customer if they have commercial virtual net metering, uh, than, or industrial. And that's also
Flo: a, a thing like a legal thing. Yeah.
Greg: Yeah. Okay. Like it could be residential. It could be commercial. Okay. They'll put like how many homes are allowed to subscribe.
Greg: But like, all of these are just different rules to keep it tamped down and not let it get outta control. Last I looked at it was like 40% of a community solar farm could get subscribed to buy a commercial customer and then the rest is 60%. I think that was a really a way for the regulation to allow these community solar service providers to, to scale because they were like, wow, that would be hard to Right.
Greg: Get 150 customers into this bucket. But if I could just get 60 mm-hmm. , you know, [00:35:00] 60%. Well, well, I was gonna say, if I could get 60 of those homes used by one single commercial customer, that's only one that's not 60 different sales I have to make. Right. I can just make one sale and then I'll go fill in the other 90 homes.
Greg: And
Flo: is this, are, are these regulations about commercial and residential virtual net metering, are they different per. . Okay.
Greg: Yeah. Yeah. That's why I was plugging the desired usa.org thing is cuz like every single state is different, the caps are different. How close they're allowed to be is different. So you could have some places where it's like, know, you can't be within two miles of each other.
Greg: That's because you don't want the grid to get overloaded in one location, so you sort of spread it out. But yeah, state by state, what,
Flo: what Two things can't be within
Greg: two. Like two solar, two solar farms. Oh, two community Solar farms might not be able to be within two miles of each other. [00:36:00] And so if you were a really big landowner, let's say, and it was two miles from the, let's say from the south end to the north end of your land, You know, you might be able to get two, probably only one on your land, so you could own a ton of land and think, whoa, yeah, I'm gonna be able to cover this thing in solar panels and get leases from all these people.
Greg: And it's like, you can't, maybe not. Yeah, they'll cap like the, the amount and honestly like this, this community solar, we're talking about it very specifically as community solar. But if we come, I was gonna say, come up a level, but you know, up one layer of abstraction or, you know, let me say that again.
Greg: Basically if we go to a more fundamental level, then community solar, then this is really how when you hear that Google's a hundred percent renewable. Really what's happened is they're doing the same [00:37:00] thing in a way. They're like agreeing to pay a price.
Greg: They're basically agreeing to put up their credit against some big solar farm. So if that solar farm doesn't make enough money, Google will make up for it. That's basically what they've agreed to is like, if Google gets the credit, uh, I shouldn't say it like that. If Google gets the renewable energy certificates, which basically is like, they made the solar, they made the power.
Greg: If they get those, then they tell this like certification authority. Hey, just so you know, I had the certificate, right. So maybe lead or something. Uh, actually, so in this case they're , they're called like generation information systems or gis? Uh, no. Sometimes, sometimes they have, there's the Western, I always forget the name.
Greg: It's like the western renewable energy. Generation [00:38:00] Information system.
Flo: Okay. But they just put that their carbon neutral wherever
Greg: they want. Right. It was Regis with a silent W. Okay. And then there's another one, there's some other ones that are called Generation Attribute Tracking System, which is like gats.
Greg: So I, that's sort of, you can go research those all you want. The point is it's like a non-profit certification authority that basically says, I guess similar to leads. Yeah. As for building emissions, these generation tracking systems are there so that Google or anybody who wants to say that they're green mm-hmm.
Greg: green powered mm-hmm. can go and retire these so that no one else can use them. And so you go and retire them and you say, Hey, I, I retired this many units of electricity for this. to these things of green electricity, and then look at my buildings. I used this much, so I used this much over here, but I retired this many credits.
Greg: Right. No matter where [00:39:00] I got those from. Yeah. I still get to retire them and mm-hmm. , and then that's how you get to, um, that's one of the financial constructs that we've used to, and really regulatory constructs we've used to allow companies to say I'm green powered. Mm-hmm.
Greg: still some questions around whether that, I, I still think it's, it always comes back to the same thing. If you're a complete idealist or a purist, nothing's good enough. Not yet. It's not good enough until everything is run 24 7, not even 24 7, like literally every millisecond by , you know, it's, there's no averages.
Greg: It would have to be every single thing that's on our grid right now doesn't emit carbon. And everything that doesn't make carbon has been retired and shut down and isn't even allowed to be that. That's the ideal list view and all the other things we're talking about are basically like, how do I get these things financed?
Greg: How do I get the revenue to flow to a company so that they'll actually wake up in the morning? Some entrepreneur or executive team or employees or whoever [00:40:00] will wake up in the morning and work on this. Mm-hmm. . So that's what all these, these things are for. I think. One last point on this is community solar is fundamentally the whole program.
Greg: Virtual net metering, the community solar program subscribers. The lenders lending against the credit scores. It's all just to get the solar panels and the project paid for mm-hmm. . Yeah. Right. It's like, how do I get it paid for it? How do I make people enough money so that it pays back the loan and it can get on the grid?
Greg: So, and there are many, many constructs, but every single time somebody says I'm buying solar power, I'm buying renewable energy, I'm buying this. It's like, most of the time you're not buying it. Mm-hmm. , most of the time you're just like putting up your credit or your balance sheet. to allow it to get financed.
Greg: It's
Flo: like moving little credits around, but they are supporting the projects and people and infrastructure that people are trying to create. It's just like, it's all not perfectly connected yet. It's kind of like Right. [00:41:00] Little pieces moving around.
Greg: Yeah. The only people who are truly like, and again, like I hate to even get into this argument because I do think a lot about the actual grid, like what's having to do with the actual physical infrastructure.
Greg: Cuz to me if we really want to achieve the goal of decarbonizing electricity fundamentally is like, we gotta get all the carbon emitting. Gone. And so these are like all these little steps. It's gonna be everything. We're gonna have to use it all. Mm-hmm. and, and every single thing you can do to try to get there, I think is, um, is important.
Greg: I think it's also important to have conversations like this where actually you dig into the Weezer, you're like, what's actually happening? Right. What am I being told I'm doing? Mm-hmm. versus what am I doing?
Flo: Yeah. Right. It's not that it's bad, it's just that it's really complicated and it's been simplified.
Greg: It's been simplified to make it easy to market and easily palatable so that people can
Flo: Yeah. There's a reason for that. Cause it's so complicated. [00:42:00] People just want to say, this is a good thing.
Greg: Right. And it's a healthy, this is problem for us to not believe that. The simplification of things is not people trying to pull the wool over your eyes.
Greg: It's like in fact it's, they're just trying to make it easier for you to understand this complicated concept. Yeah. And, but sometimes I do, I've probably, I felt, definitely felt prey to this in my, in the early days of being in this industry. Um, cause I was so focused on like, well, you know, the actual electricity flow onto the grid at a certain point mm-hmm.
Greg: and being so obsessed with that sort of makes you miss this whole thing. It's just like, well that's fine, but, and that is required, but I don't need to understand how microphone cables work to talk into this microphone. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's like the same thing with, it's like you don't, I mean, it's nice for, if you really wanna know, you can get all the way down to it, but at the end of the day, it's like, look, they just need your power bill and they need your [00:43:00] credit score so you can get some lending.
Greg: Right. They need to get some money to build these things. And because you're putting up your credit score, And your power bill. Now these companies can get their solar power financed. Yeah. And make profit and continue on the path towards decarbonizing the grid. Whether it's
Flo: perfect or not.
Flo: It's like crowdfund where, except you don't wait for the product to come out. They start paying you back for
Greg: it right away. They start paying you back for it as soon as it gets turned on. As soon as it gets turned on. Yeah. They still have to buy the, they still have to build the system. So depending on how permitting goes and all of that stuff, like with the actual site, I mean, you could be sitting in a waiting list or in a queue waiting for your community solar program to start.
Greg: You could be waiting there for years. Hmm. That makes sense. Definitely. Months, definitely a year, but, mm-hmm. . Um, yeah. What
Flo: about, okay, one thing we talked about that we [00:44:00] should bring up I think is, um, the inflation reduction Act. Because you said, you've mentioned to me that that is going to impact this.
Greg: Yeah, I just, it tosses a few more.
Greg: It tosses a few, like federal policies on top of the state policies that make it, potentially more beneficial. You can get more tax credits. So your financing theoretically could be cheaper. Um, do you have to, sorry. No, I was just gonna say, your money could be less expensive. The lender, the lenders could, you know, take less return in the form of cash payment and take more of their return in the form of tax
Flo: credits.
Flo: So the federal government is supporting this Yeah. With the, with this new inflation
Greg: reduction act? Yeah. Yeah. A lot of it came down to tax [00:45:00] credits, like getting more tax credits for putting it in more, uh, like. Economically disadvantaged areas. Mm-hmm. . So, because really, like if you think about it, if a farmer, has some piece of land that they can't grow crops on, like this sort of gives them an opportunity potentially to put, a small, small field of solar panels up and they can get paid for it.
Greg: So that would be like land, they weren't getting paid for it and now they might be able to get paid for a while. I mean, this could be, this could be decades of payments, sees over a decade of payments. That's cool. And it's a permanence installation really, and you guess you could dismantle them, but it just allows farmers to be able to have a new, uh, farmers specifically in disadvantaged areas to have a, a, we'll call it a new cash crop.
Greg: Mm-hmm. . Um, and, and, Large utility scale stuff doesn't really do that. Like when I say utility scale, I mean like the gigantic fields [00:46:00] of solar panels that you drive by on the freeway. That would be considered utility scale, very rare that a, that a farmer is gonna sacrifice that much of their crop land to give, to put up solar.
Greg: So if you're giving low income people savings on their power bill because they're subscribing to community solar farms, and I think you can kind of stack the tax credit. So like, I think you can get up to like 50%. of the investment in the solar farm can come back in the form of tax credits.
Greg: So if you've got a million dollar farm, it's like 500,000 of that. It's gonna be in tax credit, it's like year one. If you make it for low income in a, , in a disadvantaged area. So low income people subscribing in an economically disadvantaged area, you could end up with, with getting a bunch of sort of federal tax credits to lower your money.
Greg: Lower your cost of money. Cool. Yeah. Riveting stuff. Really, I think anytime anybody brings, brings up the inflation reduction act, it's [00:47:00] like, um, I always sort of like, feel this chill. Cause I'm like, I didn't read all of it.
Greg: does anyone, so we have to fact check any of this
Flo: stuff. The politicians don't even read all of it. . That's right. They're, they're, I've worked in Congress. Yeah. They don't their Their teams. Their teams do. Somebody on their staff does. Yeah. And they brief them. And they brief them, and then they go vote.
Flo: There's a little bell, there's . It rings like four or five times a day. They have to go. Really? Or at least twice a day they have to go vote. And it's like, no way. They're reading all this stuff. Yeah. They don't have time. Yeah. But sometimes they just play solitaire instead, which is kind of depressing.
Greg: My gosh.
Greg: That's gonna be an entire episode. We're just gonna talk about like, what do politicians do for real?
Flo: They pay their staff to work their butts off overnight all day. They're, they put all the responsibility of their [00:48:00] entire career onto the backs of their 20 staff people. Yeah. And then they sit in their office and they play solitaire and they meet with celebrities and then they go vote.
Flo: That's incredible. And
Greg: they raise money. It's incredible. We definitely need to have like the politician on here, we need going through my, I'm sure they don't all
Flo: do that. Yeah. But
Greg: some of them do. Yeah. Yeah. We don't have to be that specific
Flo: especially the career ones that are like, yeah, I got this.
Greg: Yeah. Yeah. I think, I mean, and in some ways it's like they're, they're supposed to be representing. That is what's always struck me is like this idea is like their job is to sort of represent the people who voted for them. And like, it's like, well, the staff members can probably do that research of what would the people want?
Flo: They do take, they do catalog. Catalog and respond and listen to somebody on their team. Sometimes an unpaid intern like I was , [00:49:00] will listen to every person that calls in or emails.
Greg: That's incredible.
Flo: You spend, you spend so much time just listening to people, so actually if you, if you call. You're a congressperson.
Flo: It's not impossible that your message might be relayed to somebody whose issue that is on their team. Especially if a bunch people call with an opinion. Definitely. It doesn't, doesn't not work.
Greg: Yeah. Well, I, I mean actually this sort of gets to what I, what we were talking about before about you shouldn't always think that what seems, what, like if something is different than what you expected, we shouldn't automatically jump to well that's wrong.
Greg: Right? Right. It's like this idea that it's like, well, just because these solar programs are actually just like financial and regulatory constructs to make it so solar can get financed. You're not actually buying renewable energy in many cases, even though you might tell all your [00:50:00] friends about it at a cocktail party that, well, I'm buying solar cuz I subscribe to the solar farm.
Greg: But like some company might be buying your credits and retiring those. So actually they went solar. You just put up your credit score so that the solar panels could get financed. Yeah. Even though that seems weird, it's not inherently bad.
Greg: Yeah. Just like it's not inherently bad that our, that the person who's good at talking and convening people and they're good at marketing and staying high level and getting people rallied around issues aren't also the people who like, dig deep in the email chains. Like, even though that might not be what we wanna believe in an idealistic sense is going on mm-hmm.
Greg: uh, maybe it doesn't mean that it's such a bad thing. I, I think in some, in a lot of cases, I know some politicians who probably would even say this Sometimes you don't really want the politician down at that level. . Yeah. It doesn't necessarily mean something good is gonna happen.
Flo: If they stop doing, [00:51:00] they might not be the best person at understanding it and picking the right vote.
Flo: Yeah. Someone who's really well versed in whatever the topic is, that they're community to community solar, they're on the sustainable energy.
Greg: Right. Maybe that's the right person for that job and the The generalist politician is not necessarily the person. Maybe they should just be playing solitaire.
Greg: Maybe that's actually what's best for our country. If our more politicians would just play solitaire, maybe. Yeah, maybe. Maybe we should uplift them and be like, it's okay. . It's okay that you're playing solid. I mean, I'm sure you do
Flo: more of that. It's not like he wasn't working like he, that man had to run
Greg: all over.
Greg: Yeah. This is a specific person you're referring. Yeah, I could get in a lot of trouble. . Yeah. Well, I think we're gonna, this, this is an investigation that's gonna go on now. ,
Flo: I'm gonna have to update my LinkedIn so it doesn't reflect . This,
Greg: this is gonna be so easy to find out. No [00:52:00] to be continued. Um, um,
Flo: wait, can I say I feel like after we've talked about it more, I feel like if I were gonna participate in community solar, which actually sounds pretty cool, like if I got like a cool energy bill and they were like you, it's almost like you're supporting a crowdfunded little startup campaign for a, like a particular solar plant.
Flo: Yep. And it's still cool, even though maybe it's not actually those electrons from that plant may not, or almost always are not gonna be like actually powering your house.
Greg: Yeah. We should probably break, dig into that a little bit because I think there's two things. There's are the electrons going to your home?
Greg: Electrons, , we're not gonna dig in. It. Electrons go to wherever they need to go. if you turn your toaster on, some electrons are gonna flow into it. To power like period. Where those came from is kind of irrelevant. I [00:53:00] think more importantly is to dig into like, where do the certificates, where does the actual like cert certification go?
Greg: That is actually something you might wanna ask likely, like don't. If you're thinking about buying solar power, whatever, and you start digging into like, where are the electrons going? , and like, you're, where are
Flo: Bob, Fred and style the electrons going,
Greg: this is like a Portlandia episode or something like that.
Greg: Or it's like, have you named each of your solar panels? Do you know where their children are going? , uh, when the electron cracks free. Of the, in the starts flowing in the solar panel. Do you know where you are?
Flo: I, oh, this could go the wrong way. This could go down some funny, weird conspiracy .
Greg: We're already there.
Greg: We already did. We already like, you know, trashed politicians, all politicians play solitaire. You heard it here first. All politicians play. So solitaire, , community, solar [00:54:00] electrons aren't actually going where you think they're going ,
Flo: but to, okay. Yeah. So, okay, so that power's getting generated. We can assume that it's getting used somewhere and that's, that's good.
Flo: And that that grid is going up. We're basically funding helping to crowdfund this new, not grid, uh, power, solar power or wind power, something sustainable plant. Mm-hmm. . And hopefully in the future we'll have technology to help utilize that even more with batteries or whatever we decide to do to.
Greg: I will say one thing, I have to interject one thing.
Greg: The only way batteries are going on that community solar plant is if virtual net metering goes away. Oh. Virtual net metering acts as like a financial battery . It stores the stuff you made on the balance sheet and that it credits you when, when you're using stuff that wasn't made Well,
Flo: it's, it's a bigger version of what happens if you put solar on your house and you're connected to
Greg: the grid.
Greg: Correct. That's exactly right. It's like, yeah, it's a remote version of what happens [00:55:00] on your, on your roof. And so that's the only way batteries are going in. So at some point, the 20 staff members are going to have to dig back into this legislative, we need like a clock on it. There needs to be like some kind of clock ticking, and then at some point there needs to be a metric that, that the grid gets saturated enough.
Greg: Net metered solar and then that needs to get turned off. So now, now people need to put in batteries. You could give them like a grace period. It's like, look, you need to have a battery on your home. By, I don't know, 12 months from now, 24 months from now. That's probably what should happen. It's like we need to phase out.
Greg: Not right now, but like we need to phase out. Net metering eventually so that you create, again, you create a market opportunity for battery for the same thing to happen with batteries. The same thing would happen. They'd be like, Hey, uh, just wanna let you know, uh, your power bill, they're gonna phase out.
Greg: Net metering, virtual net metering, so your power bill's gonna go up by this [00:56:00] amount. We would like to finance a battery over here. So anybody who wants their power bill to not go up by this amount and stay down where it is. Say Yes, let's get a battery. Yeah, we gotta get a battery. So those 20 staff members have to figure it out because it's ultimately gonna come down to, you're gonna get in another argument.
Greg: Because this is the thing that's gonna happen. It happens every time, like to get net metering into place. The US was way behind. I mean, this has been in Denmark for a long time. A lot of Europe had it for a long time. Europe is always ahead of us. Definitely. They're just, they're an older culture.
Flo: They've lived more
Greg: culture. I think they have more, I don't wanna say more control, but they definitely have more like ability to, that's a whole nother conversation.
Flo: Yeah. Let's not go into that. Yeah. But I didn't know this, I didn't know that this was something that had already been done in Europe and, and it makes sense to me that we are now doing it now.
Greg: Yeah. And we've been, like I said, we've been doing it for in various places at various levels. Uh, we've been doing it for a couple [00:57:00] decades now. At least a decade and a half. And I think that, but again, like it was hard to get past. We were behind getting it passed. So it is likely we'll also be behind phasing it out.
Greg: Yeah. Well cause now that it's there, it's gonna be harder for people to be like, I mean I think what has to be made is like the economic argument for batteries needs to be made and the fact that like, hey, now we can take this like middle of the day solar power, it's not really needed and we can start like putting it in the night times in the bank.
Greg: Yeah. Putting it in the, putting it in the storage bank and then bringing it back on the financial bank. Yeah. In this case, so batteries are a battery, are an electron bank, like they're an actual, like they fix the physical problem. Fred,
Flo: Sally and Todd,
Greg: the electron, they're hanging out who go sleep, correct?
Greg: Yeah. Unfortunately one of them probably over time is going to die. That's just what happens in battery. So Sally didn't make it? Yeah.
Flo: But Fred and Todd are Yeah. Ready for the next [00:58:00] day. Yeah.
Greg: Or the middle of the night. Least the evening. Yeah. Yeah. They should be there for the evening. Yeah. So that's really important.
Greg: Like as I was saying before, we have to create these financial constructs in lieu of technological constructs, like physical constructs. And we'll
Flo: talk about, y'all talk about that more because you know so much about, carbon offsets and carbon credits and how, and that it's, it's, it's different, but it's attached to the way this is being financed, which is moving the credits
Greg: around.
Greg: I appreciate you saying that. I know so much about it. There are people who know a lot about this stuff and we should try to get them on the podcast. If you're out there, anyone who knows a lot and will. Did they know a lot about carbon offsets? I think what I do understand is that a lot of these are ways to store the information about what happened somewhere and who paid for it.
Greg: That's [00:59:00] what all these things are for, is , who paid for the goodness to happen somewhere else. That's what these credits are for. It's just like, it's like money, right? Like money. Yeah. Dollar bills are just a, they're like a storage device to say someone created a service over here, right? So we're gonna store that in that they're gonna store that service that they sold in this dollar until they need to go buy a service from somebody else.
Greg: And then they're gonna move that over and they're gonna store that and they're mm-hmm. . So that's really, I mean, it's the same thing with these credits and I think. In lieu of being able to do things constantly in real time with the physical nature of electricity. Like constant, constant barter system.
Greg: Mm-hmm. . So this is where we're gonna have to go. I mean, it's crazy, this whole idea of like, it used to be so simple for these utility companies is just like sell power one way. It's like, I know what you would like, here you go. You'd like that
Flo: toaster to make you some toast today. Exactly.
Greg: Yeah.
Greg: You'd like some warm bread. Yeah. Yeah. And you're happy to pay me for it.[01:00:00] You'll rent these wires and everything from me for eternity if I'm the utility company. And then somebody was like, no, we actually wanna make our own stuff. And so then they were like, then the utility was like, okay, the peasants wanna make their own stuff.
Greg: Yeah. The peasants wanna sell me something. And so then they had to make, then we started making stuff. On our roof. And we sort of had to in some ways because we didn't have good battery technology and it wasn't cheap enough and the economics just didn't work out. We had to say like, please, utility company and staff members of well-meaning politicians, will you please give us the ability to get paid some extra for the solar power we're making in the middle of the day?
Greg: So they said, okay, sure, we'll give you net metering. And then people without good rooftops and solar exposure on the roof said, [01:01:00] Hey, we wanna be involved too. And so the 20 staff members, well meaning politicians said, Hey, we should think about these people without good rooftops over here.
Greg: Let's give them remote financial constructs for them to be. Sort of put up their credit score and their balance sheets and possibly their money to crowd support. These, these community solar farms. And then it's, and then like we were talking about, like at some point somebody's gonna have to say a batteries, they're affordable.
Greg: They can shift the physical nature of the grid. Um, but yes, we will not dig into the, the credits, the certificates. Mm-hmm. the offsets. Those are, that's a big, that's sort of a thorny conversation. Um, but yeah. So now, so now is the ultimate moment you have. Now I have [01:02:00] to quiz you. Oh,
Flo: well, I was gonna ask you.
Flo: Mm-hmm. , are you yay or nay if you had to go vote in Congress for community solar? The, the bell is ringing. All right, Greg, you're off. Go vote. Yeah, I'm
Greg: ye you're ye. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, I think it's the necessary next step. I mean there's so many details of it that I would feel differently about, like how they run the programs, but I'm the wrong person to ask.
Greg: Like, I mean, we were talking about like a pretty multidimensional problem here in the sense it's like, well you could be a purist or an idealist about how it should be, and then no one will adopt it because it's completely un, like it's not understandable at all. Mm-hmm. . I think you really have to balance that, like what gets it adopted, what is the cost, what is the actual cost of batteries now, um, I think.
Greg: If you have virtual net metering in some parts of the country where electricity is very expensive,[01:03:00] and you don't really need more solar power in the middle of the day. Mm-hmm. like California, you really do not need more solar power in the middle of the day.
Greg: They are to the max. I mean, it's, it's, and so like those are places where I might, if I'm one of 20 people, well meaning politicians office, I've got a big, giant heart about wanting to decarbonize the grid. Ideally, you also have like a big brain that says we should decarbonize the grid and not just a, a big heart that says we should.
Greg: And uh, and I think I would probably start pushing to get rid. Of net metering in, especially
Flo: in California where there's
Greg: Especially there. Yeah. Especially when you start to like really stress out the grid in the middle of the day. I think at that point you start to say
Greg: solar plus storage is cheap enough now. But like I'm telling you, if anybody listens to this who are running like solar [01:04:00] leasing companies or any of those things, they're all like, like, please, please don't scary. It is, I mean, I think, I don't look at it that way. I think it creates another revenue opportunity for these people.
Greg: Like in many cases they've paid off these systems many times over. There's collecting this lease. Now they've already paid off their financing, but you also run into the issue, the fact that some of these systems, some of these contracts were written with homeowners like 10 years.
Greg: When the price of solar power was, like solar panels were way higher. Mm-hmm. . And so like these people are not gonna go replace all of that solar, cuz you still have a 15, possibly even 25 year life left on the solar panels. So if you haven't paid off your financing yet, that would be an interesting study for 20 staff members of politicians to go through and see how many solar companies out there.
Greg: What's like the remaining balance due, you know what I mean? I mean, some of these companies are public, so you could probably just go to their financials and find out like, , what are the remaining balances due on these solar [01:05:00] leases? Because if they're already paid off and it's just these companies are just like, just pure profit coming in on these solar leases, it's like, well now you can start to say it might be kind of annoying for people to change their business models.
Greg: But that is the solution. The solution is you gotta get rid of this financial construct where people can just artificially shift their, you know, what were the names of the electrons, Sally, Todd, and something. We'll go with Sally and Todd, uh, to shift those to the evening, put them in a battery, shift them to the evening.
Greg: That's not gonna, like I said, that's not gonna happen with virtual net metering. Right. And net metering. It's just, there's just no economic reason for anyone to change. Right. And nobody's gonna do it outta the kindness of their heart because nobody's gonna finance those batteries. Mm-hmm. , unless there's like actual money.
Greg: Mm-hmm. flowing in for providing them. so I know I just said yay, but I say yay with like, I'm yay community solar where it economically makes [01:06:00] sense. And right now. And right now, yeah. Not forever. Not
Flo: forever, no. And, uh, should we mention that you might have a friend from a community solar. Company?
Greg: No, that's not very firm, but Oh, I will say I have a friend who has told me that he knows somebody
Greg: So like a friend of a friend who might be able to come on and tell us all the things we got wrong. Okay. .
Flo: Cool. Well, I think we're good for this
Greg: Ode. Well, you have to, no, we have the final quiz oh, okay. I'm ready. What is Community Solar?
Flo: It is a business that is receiving incentives from the government and the power companies to find individuals in corporations who would like to invest in the development of a solar farm [01:07:00] that they can all share the rewards
Greg: of.
Greg: That's close. The only, the only edit would be like, these individuals and companies may not invest, they invest in the sense that they're just paying back the loan. Like the actual people investing will be some Oh, right. Some bank or fund or something like that. So some fund, but they participate. Yeah.
Greg: They're putting up their credit scores and their, and their, or their balance sheets or their, they have to commit for
Flo: a certain amount of time. Yeah.
Greg: Usually a commitment. There's a contract. Yeah. Yeah. So that's an important, I mean, but that's exactly right. I mean, it's basically these people are gathering around to support this solar project and really just to get it financed.
Greg: And then once it's financed, then who pays it back? The people who subscribed. It's a, it's a cool construct. Okay. But again, [01:08:00] like it's got a, it has a expiration date. I guess my only hope is that people are paying attention to that expiration date. Mm-hmm. , because the company's running the community solar subscription, they're a perfect group to also run the battery situation.
Greg: So it's not like they're gonna go out of business or you're like putting these community solar people who have done a great job of acquiring customers. Acquiring customers is expensive. Mm-hmm. , you gotta pay for all those ads and mailers and campaigns and all the things that you do. Mm-hmm. . And so once you've acquired a customer, you don't wanna lose that customer because some regulatory construct puts you outta business.
Greg: Um, so they're a logical group to also then go put batteries in.
Flo: Yeah. Maybe they could lobby for it
Greg: themselves, maybe. But now you're asking these people to like change, like lobby to have to change their business wellness. Oh yeah. They're probably not gonna wanna do that. That's one of the questions we should ask if we do get somebody on about community solar.[01:09:00]
Flo: That's a good, good point. Well, thank you for educating me on this topic and I look forward to our next Greg episode.
Greg: Thank you. Thank you for taking the quiz. You're welcome. Yeah, you got like a, you got like a b plus. Yay.
Flo: That was my normal, that was like my, that was my grade. I always got, was like an A minus or a b plus, which I always felt like Yeah, yeah.
Flo: Was good enough. The balanced
Greg: life. Balanced life. Yeah. That's what B is for balance . B is for balance.
Flo: a, B is for,
Greg: yeah. Anxiety. Anxiety. .
Greg: right. That's good. Okay. Yeah, this is exciting. Yeah, that was fun. That was fun. I wanna just do more of these.
Greg: Thanks for tuning into this episode of the World Changing Podcast. Be sure to follow us wherever you get your podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube [01:10:00] to hear the latest episodes.