Clean Power Hour

Chris Koczaja grew LightWave Solar to 30 million dollars by refusing to chase every deal. This is the discipline that got him there.
Chris Koczaja is the CEO of LightWave Solar, a residential and commercial solar and storage installer in Nashville, Tennessee, now in its 20th year in business. 
In this conversation, Tim Montague asks Koczaja what actually separates a good solar company from a great one: recruiting and retaining strong teams, planning so thoroughly that execution has no surprises, a philosophy Koczaja calls building boring solar, and never betting growth on a single revenue stream, a rule he calls three ways to win. They also cover why LightWave solar refuses to install unproven technology, how residential battery storage is changing the customer conversation, and what's shifting across the Tennessee Valley as utilities adjust to rising demand and changing federal incentives.
In this episode:
What separates a good solar company from a great one
Why LightWave builds boring solar on purpose
Koczaja's three ways to win growth framework
Why LightWave waits to adopt new battery and inverter technology
How LightWave retains talent, including its boomerang employees
Building a strong reputation in a market with bad actors
Residential battery storage, resiliency, and home microgrids
The Tennessee Valley Authority and the changing grid
The ITC phase-out and what it means for installers
The residential ITC phased out at the end of last year, and the commercial ITC begins phasing out through 2029, while the storage ITC runs through 2032, a gap Koczaja says is already changing how LightWave pairs solar with storage. 
TVA reserve margins are tightening as data center demand grows, pushing local power companies toward flexibility programs and local generation. For installers working with fewer incentives and a tighter grid, this conversation shows a Tennessee Valley strategy built for both.
Chris and Tim will both be at the Tennessee Valley Solar and Storage Conference, September 2 and 3 in Chattanooga, hosted by TenneSEIA. 
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Connect with Chris Koczaja
Chris Koczaja LinkedIn
LightWave Solar Website
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The Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.com
Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/

The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America’s number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Enhanced rock weathering pulls carbon dioxide from the air using crushed rock. Jim Mann, CEO and founder of Undo, explains how the process works and why the technology scales fast. Undo turns rock dust into permanent carbon storage and sells credits to Microsoft and British Airways at $350 a ton, a price Mann expects to halve within years.
The atmosphere holds 1.7 trillion tons of legacy CO2, and enhanced rock weathering ranks among the few carbon removal pathways built to pull carbon out for good. Jim Mann, CEO and founder of Undo, joins host Tim Montague to break down how his company spreads crushed basalt on farmland to speed up natural rock weathering by 50,000 to 100,000 times, turning atmospheric CO2 into bicarbonate that stays locked in the ocean for around 100,000 years.
Undo counts Microsoft, Barclays, British Airways, and McLaren Racing among its customers, selling durable carbon removal credits at roughly $350 a ton today, with a path toward half that price as the company scales. Mann and Montague debate whether net zero targets go far enough, why the EU's carbon border adjustment mechanism forms the backbone of a real carbon market, and what enhanced rock weathering needs to move from thousands of tons a year to the gigaton scale the IPCC says the world needs.
Here is what you will learn in this conversation about enhanced rock weathering and carbon removal economics:
You'll learn how Undo speeds up natural rock weathering by 50,000 to 100,000 times by spreading crushed basalt on farmland.
Find out why bicarbonate formed through enhanced rock weathering stays locked in the ocean for around 100,000 years.
Understand how Undo prices carbon removal credits near $350 a ton today, and why Mann expects the price to fall by half.
Hear Tim push back on net zero as a partial solution, since 1.7 trillion tons of CO2 already sit in the atmosphere.
Learn how the EU's carbon border adjustment mechanism links carbon removal to emissions trading and builds a real compliance market.
The EU's carbon border adjustment mechanism now stands in force, and similar rules move through the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Regulators start linking carbon removal directly to emissions trading, moving today's voluntary carbon market toward a compliance market with real teeth. 
If you are trying to figure out where permanent carbon removal fits next to renewables and storage in your own project pipeline or client conversations, this episode gives you the numbers to start that conversation. 
Connect with Jim Mann, Undo 
Jim Mann | LinkedIn 
UNDO Website 
Support the show
Connect with Tim  
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Tim on Twitter
Tim on LinkedIn 
Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com 
Review Clean Power Hour on Apple Podcasts

The Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.com
Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/

The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America’s number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Dual-use solar financing in action: Sunrise Solar's Richard Stoltzfus built a 700 kW behind-the-meter array for Harbor Sales Company. The build stacks a USDA REAP grant with a Maryland MEA grant and drives the customer's levelized energy cost to near zero.
A 700 kW behind-the-meter solar array now offsets 70 percent of the electric load at Harbor Sales Company, a plywood and sign-panel distributor that has run out of Sudlersville, Maryland since 1931. 
Richard Stoltzfus, CEO of Sunrise Solar, and Kendrick Tice, COO of Sunrise Solar, join host Tim Montague to walk through their Chestertown-based company's build for Harbor Sales. 
Montague and Stoltzfus dig into the mechanics of commercial solar incentives in Maryland, the sunset of the 30 percent federal ITC, and why rural electric cooperatives in the PJM region are capping new solar interconnections even as demand for grid capacity grows.
Here is what you will learn in this conversation about dual-use solar and commercial solar incentives:
Learn how Sunrise Solar stacked a USDA REAP grant with Maryland's MEA grant to push a customer's levelized cost of energy toward zero on a 700 kW system.
Find out how a 700 kW array offsets 70 percent of Harbor Sales Company's load and pencils out to more than 3 million dollars in savings over 25 years.
Understand why the 30 percent ITC sunset and Delmarva Power's tightening interconnection limits pushed this project from planning into construction.
Hear Kendrick Tice explain why Sunrise Solar sources its racking from one manufacturing partner instead of juggling multiple vendors, and what that does for project timelines.
Hear Tim Montague weigh in on whether rural cooperatives in the PJM region can keep pace with rising demand for grid capacity and where incentive structures differ from state to state.
Maryland's grant-stacking model, layering a USDA REAP grant on top of a state MEA grant, offers a template for other states as the federal 30 percent ITC winds down. At the same time, rural cooperatives across the PJM footprint are capping new solar interconnections, a constraint Stoltzfus and Tice say is already blocking chicken farmers and dairy operations from going solar. Professionals financing behind-the-meter projects in cooperative territory will find the co-op discussion directly relevant to deals in the pipeline right now.
Connect with Guests 
Richard Stoltzfus | LinkedIn 
Kendrick Tice | LinkedIn 
Sunrise Solar | Website 
Support the show
Connect with Tim  
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Tim on Twitter
Tim on LinkedIn 
Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com 
Review Clean Power Hour on Apple Podcasts

The Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.com
Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/

The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America’s number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Georgia is the second-largest data center market in the country, and its grid is straining under load growth no one predicted five years ago. Michael Chanin, CEO of Cherry Street Energy, joins Tim to break down how behind-the-meter solar and storage are stepping in, why utilities need private capital to keep rates in check, and what a multi-gigawatt data center outside Savannah means for the region.

Tim sits down with Michael Chanin, CEO of Cherry Street Energy, a vertically integrated power company based in Georgia that develops, owns, and operates behind-the-meter solar and storage for commercial and industrial customers across the Southeast.

Georgia repealed its ban on third-party solar ownership in 2015, opening the door for "Solar Energy Procurement Agreements" (Georgia's version of a PPA). Since then, Cherry Street has built a customer base that includes Delta Air Lines, Porsche Cars North America, Gulfstream, and the City of Atlanta, offering no-cost, no-upfront-investment solar that cuts customers' energy bills and carbon footprint.

Chanin and Tim dig into what is driving unprecedented load growth in Georgia: the state is now the second-largest data center market in the US after Virginia, and OpenAI recently announced its "Project Camellia" data center campus near Savannah in Effingham County, a $20 billion, 3.2-gigawatt (3,200 MW) project built in partnership with Georgia Power. On the recording, Chanin describes the project as a joint Anthropic/OpenAI announcement and cites 4,000 megawatts of capacity; public reporting on this specific project ties it to OpenAI at roughly 3,200 MW, so that detail is worth a quick check with Chanin or Cherry Street before publishing.

Other topics covered:
How Cherry Street's economics pencil out: average customer electricity cost of 10-12 cents/kWh, build costs under $1.50/watt, and how real-time pricing has made solar competitive even against historically cheap fossil generation
Cherry Street's solar-plus-storage pilot with Georgia Power and the emerging value stack for behind-the-meter batteries (capacity payments, energy payments, demand management)
Georgia's Public Service Commission, including Chair Jason Shaw and newly elected Democratic commissioners Alicia Johnson and Peter Hubbard
Cherry Street's vertically integrated delivery model: in-house engineers, general contractors, and site supervisors that take a project from signed contract to energized system in under 100 days

Cherry Street Energy shows what happens when a state removes one legal barrier and lets the market do the rest. Georgia's 2015 shift on third-party ownership opened the door. Rising load growth from data centers and electrification is now forcing utilities, regulators, and private developers to work together on a scale nobody planned for a few years ago. Chanin's take is clear: solar and storage are not a side story in Georgia's power future. They are becoming part of how the state keeps the lights on and the bills manageable. Listen to the full conversation for the details on Cherry Street's build process, its storage pilot with Georgia Power, and what EPCs and developers should know before entering the Southeast market.

Connect with Michael Chanin, Cherry Street Energy
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelchanin/
Website: https://www.cherrystreet.com/
Support the show
Connect with Tim  
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Tim on Twitter
Tim on LinkedIn 
Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com 
Review Clean Power Hour on Apple Podcasts

The Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.com
Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/

The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America’s number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

The U.S. needs 400 GW of new capacity over the next two decades. Michael Grasso, CEO and founder of Grid Rails, tells Tim Montague that roughly twice that much flexible capacity is already plugged in, and explains why only 20% of eligible devices are enrolled in virtual power plant programs today.

Data centers, EVs, heat pumps, and new construction are pushing U.S. electricity demand up by roughly 50%, about 400 gigawatts over the next two decades. The reflex answer is to build more generation. Michael Grasso thinks we are solving the wrong problem.

Grasso is the CEO and founder of Grid Rails, and he spent 17 years getting to that conclusion. He helped deploy the first residential storage batteries at Sunrun, first on LG Chem hardware and then on Tesla, and he ran the largest residential storage virtual power plant in the country at Sunnova, supporting Luma's grid in Puerto Rico. His argument: the flexible capacity sitting inside the devices causing the load growth is close to double the load growth itself. What is missing is the orchestration and settlement layer that turns those EVs, batteries, thermostats, and water heaters into dispatchable grid capacity, and pays the consumer for it in real time instead of months later as a buried bill credit.

Thirty-four states now have some form of demand response or VPP program on the books, and by Grasso's numbers, only about 20% of eligible devices are actually enrolled. Tim pushes hard on why, and on whether any of this pencils for a homeowner who does not want one more app sending notifications.

What you will learn:
Why 80% of eligible devices are still on the sidelines, and why Grasso calls that a program design problem rather than a hardware problem
How real-time settlement changes consumer behavior, and what it unlocks for utilities beyond incentives: collateral, cost of capital, bad debt, and new products like prepaid or unlimited EV charging
Why Grid Rails is built for the moment a customer opts out, not for constant notifications, and how opt-out recovery keeps programs from quietly bleeding participants
The ERCOT math driving utility urgency: roughly $50 per MWh bought forward against spot exposure that can run to $5,000
What Grasso says a simple VPP application is worth to a household, around $500 a year in most markets and into the thousands in some, and why he thinks a more dynamic market leaves a lot more on the table
Why per-device budgets matter, from capping EV charging at $15 a week to holding air conditioning to 20% of the bill
Grasso points to headlines warning that the largest utility in the country is signaling blackout risk as soon as 2027, and treats that as the pressure finally moving utilities toward orchestration. Tim comes at it as a customer, not an analyst: he does not have a battery yet, his own rate just jumped 25%, and he wants a number before he buys. That exchange is the heart of the episode.

Connect with Michael Grasso, Grid Rails
Michael Grasso | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelpgrasso/
Grid Rails: https://gridrails.ai/
Email: hello@gridrails.ai
Support the show
Connect with Tim  
Clean Power Hour 
Clean Power Hour on YouTube
Tim on Twitter
Tim on LinkedIn 
Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com 
Review Clean Power Hour on Apple Podcasts

The Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.com
Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/

The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America’s number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com