Transcript
Intro
Daniel Dus: We're the only organization in the world we know of that can give immediate pricing for every one of these unique activities. So whether it's civil engineering, electrical engineering, substation engineering, permit applications, et cetera, we can fix those prices upfront for the first time.
Jigar Shah: You're taking all these things that, like, someone else would have charged $100,000 for and you're like, "Uh, I just did the math."
Jigar Shah: You're like Costco. You're like, "That cost me $1,943. I think I'll just charge a 5% markup on there and just charge people." I'm like, "Daniel, you could charge $20,000 for that."
Jigar Shah: Hello. My name is Jigar Shah, and I'm a clean energy entrepreneur.
Jamie Nolan: And I'm Jamie Nolen, a clean energy communications executive, and this is Energy Empire. Hi, Jigar. I haven't seen you in a couple of weeks, so- I know.
Jigar Shah: Welcome back. How is your health? Thank you.
Jamie Nolan: It's good. For anyone who missed the memo, I was so sad I missed the recording with Katherine Blunt.
Jamie Nolan: I contracted salmonella food poisoning, which, like, you think is an urban legend. They always tell you to, like, practice good food safety, but it's real. I'm here to tell you that it's very real, and it was extremely unpleasant, so- Oh
Jigar Shah: my God ...
Jamie Nolan: um, but I'm back. I'm 100%. Thanks for covering for me while I was out, and I'm excited, uh, to talk to Daniel Doose.
Jigar Shah: Yeah, this morning I had to go to my son's school. They all had to pick a, an important topic that they wanted to do a presentation on, and of course my son picked clean energy and why it's so important to get off of fossil fuels. Aw. And so, like, I'm, like, crying, um, you know- Oh my gosh ... over at the, uh, episode.
Jigar Shah: He created a pop-up book, uh, of, like, all these, like, wind power and tidal power and solar pa- panels that, like, popped up, and he even had, like, a detailed presentation on how a solar cell worked.
Jamie Nolan: That's awesome. I mean, no surprise, but we may need Dylan to make a little cameo and do us a, do a show and tell for the audience- I think we-
Jamie Nolan: because that, that sounds so cool.
Jigar Shah: Well, Daniel is amazing. I have known Daniel for years. Um, full disclosure, funny enough, like, one of, uh, the other people I work with closely is a guy named Richard Dovere, and Daniel and Richard don't like each other because they, they had, like, a lawsuit with each other, like, many years ago when Daniel was in a previous job and Richard was in a previous job.
Jigar Shah: I don't know whether they buried the hatchet, but I like both Daniel- Well, I'm sure
Jamie Nolan: they'll appreciate you airing their dirty laundry, Jigar, on our podcast. Go ahead.
Jigar Shah: I mean, that's how we do, but I like Daniel and I like Richard, so it's good. But I think, um, but Daniel is, like, a class act, and he- we all know that he gives of himself all the time, right?
Jigar Shah: He does the big Solar Fight Night thing. So I'm really excited to get into all of the things that he does, why he does them. I think, uh, I'm g- I'm here to, like, yell at him for, like, underpricing his services, which I think he does. I think he provides so much value he should charge more, but we'll see how he responds.
Jamie Nolan: I do love that refrain that you constantly have. And I would say his company, Clean Tech Industry Resources, it's one of those companies that when you get the pitch, you're like, "Why are you not, like, huge? Why are you not, like, famous? Why are you not rich?" Like, it's just one of those concepts that makes so much sense, so I'm really excited to share that with our audience.
Jigar Shah: Yeah, I have no doubt in my mind that one day he will be rich, but I think that, uh, you know, what he's doing right now is unlocking real value for solar projects. As many people know, solar has gotten a little bit more expensive, actually, to install over the last two or three years, and I think his product is getting us back on track to reducing the cost of delivering solar to customers.
Jamie Nolan: Absolutely, and it all ties back to energy affordability, and this is just, like, another company that is doing groundbreaking work and driving down the cost of power, so I'm excited to talk to him.
Jigar Shah: Let's get into it. Le, le, da-da-da, da-day.
Daniel Dus: Mm. Energy
Interview
Daniel Dus: Jigar, it's great to see you.
Daniel Dus: How are you? Fantastic. Yeah, very good. It's thawed up here in Vermont, so excited about that.
Jigar Shah: What do you guys get, like, 60 days of great weather a year?
Daniel Dus: Max. Maximum. Oh, no. Yep, probably less. Not the best solar irradiation, unfortunately.
Jigar Shah: But everyone loves to come up and stay with you, I'm sure, during the, like, leaf-peeping season.
Daniel Dus: Yeah, we have fall, and we do have Smugglers' Notch, so we've got some treasures, but they're kind of few and far between sometimes.
Jigar Shah: You get icy skiing up in Killington.
Daniel Dus: Not this season. This season we got real powder. But that was weird, to be clear. Yeah, that was very, very strange. You
Jamie Nolan: think it's, you think it's bad skiing up there, you should try hanging out with us in, like, uh, Pennsylvania or Virginia.
Jamie Nolan: It's a great way to break something. Mm.
Jigar Shah: Yeah, I've got a place up in Deep Creek Lake, and we have a ski resort called Wisp which I don't know that it can technically be called a ski resort, but... Daniel, we're gonna jump right in 'cause you have an incredible story, and I would like to get into it. So, like, just to start, you're the fourth generation of your family to work in energy, right?
Jigar Shah: Your great-grandfather was a coal mine engineer who became president of Michigan Tech, uh, University. Your grandfather built power transformers at General Electric. Like, three generations of building the system, and you're the one that pivoted into renewables, right? And ended up the second person in the US to reach a gigawatt of solar PPAs, after me, obviously.
Jigar Shah: And, uh, so, like, what did watching your family work the energy industry teach you that carried you into CIR?
Daniel Dus: Yes. Yes. You know, y- I usually don't tell all of my renewable energy friends about my coal leg- family legacy, but thanks for doing that, Jigar. I, I appreciate it.
Jamie Nolan: You're like a energy nepo baby, Daniel.
Jamie Nolan: Is that what you're telling us?
Daniel Dus: Ev- ev- evidently. I, I remember when my peers in middle school were going to, as they should have, baseball camp and soccer camp. I went to Michigan Tech mechanical engineering camp. So you can imagine that was a fun party. But ... And then going into the 125,000 square foot library, which is named after my great-grandfather, and seeing it filled with energy knowledge, right, energy industry knowledge, it definitely set the stage.
Daniel Dus: And seeing the transformer building, 2 million square feet that my grandfather built power transformers in, it certainly gave me the feeling that humans can do really big things, right? And I just wanted to be part of it.
Jigar Shah: Well, you know, I protested the Michigan Tech coal plant, so
Daniel Dus: there you
Jamie Nolan: go. Did you really?
Jigar Shah: Oh, yeah. I went to Illinois, right? But all of us had a coal plant that, like, was a- adjoining the university that then, you know, was like a cogen facility, right? So you would take the heat off the coal plant and heat and cool all the buildings and-
Daniel Dus: Yeah. Coal kept the lights on for a long time. We no longer need it.
Daniel Dus: If Great-Grandpa was around today, he would certainly be a solar engineer. I have no doubt about that.
Jigar Shah: I love that. And so give me the origin story of CIR, right? Because you used to run Adani's solar business in the US, and, like, I mean, there's a little bit of an origin story between the two, right?
Daniel Dus: Yes, absolutely.
Daniel Dus: Working within Adani was pretty amazing. This is an organization that signed the world's largest PPA at the time of eight gigawatts, commissioned the world's largest wind-solar hybrid park of 1.6 gigawatts. Earlier this week, they just announced they've commissioned the largest battery outside of China of 3.4 gigawatt hours.
Daniel Dus: So that's the scale of the projects and the complexity of the projects that's happening there, 10x the United States, and that my team has worked on. And so we acquired Adani's US business, the intellectual property there, and spun it out into what is now CIR. So direct outcome from what I had ranked before we left as the world's largest global solar developer, so quite a spin-out story.
Jigar Shah: And remind me what CIR stands for.
Daniel Dus: Clean Tech Industry Resources. Yes. All right. There we go. The most generic possible name because we don't care about our brand. We care about serving the industry, so not super important that we have a memorable brand, I guess.
Jigar Shah: We're gonna fix that.
Daniel Dus: Yeah,
Jamie Nolan: I'm like, y- Rebrand's always there.
Jamie Nolan: Always, always available to you, Daniel. Okay. Yeah. So you des- you describe CIR as the world's only Amazon-style service store for complex energy professional services, to include site visits, diligence, energy modeling, permitting, grid studies, merger and acquisition support, construction management, et cetera, et cetera, all at fixed global pricing.
Jamie Nolan: So for a listener who's never thought about energy project development as a storefront, explain what you actually built. Like, what does a customer literally do when they show up?
Daniel Dus: My inability to answer that question in a simple, clean way is actually one of the cores to the value we've created, because it's really a choose-your-own-adventure story, right?
Daniel Dus: We have clients that can come and purchase a single energy generation model, or they can retain us to deliver a gigawatt-scale battery to NTP immediately, right, with zero lag, no bid time, et cetera, just straight into execution. And so it varies by client and their individual needs, their internal bandwidth, external bandwidth, where their bottlenecks are in, in that moment.
Daniel Dus: We can apply bandwidth to support them and accelerate in exactly that, that location in that way. It's
Jamie Nolan: almost like there are, like, separate modules, and so you can, like, go little or you can go big, like, depending on your needs.
Daniel Dus: Any system size. Yeah. Awesome. Any system size globally.
Jigar Shah: But let me get into my pet peeve, 'cause I, I think your storytelling is terrible, Daniel.
Jigar Shah: Yeah. So like, so like- Accurate ...
Daniel Dus: let me like- I'm reading
Jigar Shah: Storyworthy
Daniel Dus: right
Jigar Shah: now as we're talking ... let, let me get right into this. Yeah. 'Cause, like the thing that I find fascinating about what you do is that, so number one, the reason you have this business, as I can tell, is that Adani is basically obsessed with doing everything in-house.
Jigar Shah: So as a result- Yeah ... like you are not allowed to hire any external consultants, and so you had to do everything in-house, from geotechnical reports to, you know, interconnection studies to all this other stuff. And so as a result, you inherited a team of, like, 100 people in India who were experts in esoteric reports or whatever for US projects, right?
Jigar Shah: And so that's why you have all of the people that you have, right? Because they sort of were forced to become experts in like each individual thing in the US, right? And that's really what you're renting out. And then the next stage, as I understand it, was all these companies came through Powerhouse, right, and other, like, incubators, and they all basically created their own little app that, like, made their part of solar more efficient.
Jigar Shah: Nobody obviously wanted to have 74 apps. But you decided to license all 74 apps, right? And, like, figure out how to become an expert at all of them, and, like, help people do things more efficiently, right? Today you've realized that half of them are garbage, and so, like, you only have, like, 37 apps, right? But you started with all of them just to see like whether you could figure it out.
Jigar Shah: Yeah. Right? And now you're sort of at a point where you can do everything for everybody, but in some ways when you say that you can do everything for everybody, it's even more confusing, right? Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Because in some ways you kind of need to say, "We have the, like, deluxe car wash, the simple car wash, the car wash with waxing, the car wash with like, you know, the interior, like, you know, detailing, et cetera."
Jigar Shah: Like, I feel like you need false packages even though you have the abilities to do all of it.
Daniel Dus: Yeah. And we do in our latest pricing calculators, we do have a fixed price to NTP any solar or battery project globally. So that's literally full performance of the development work But we also do any slice of that entire process for unique clients, and we don't really care which it is.
Daniel Dus: Some clients we bill $200 or $300 a month to, some clients we bill $150,000 a month to. Tasks come in one side of the organization, and work product and execution happens. Um, so our execution framework is the same for all of those clients regardless of scale and scope. But I agree, yeah, it's very, very hard to tell that story.
Daniel Dus: It's extremely hard.
Jamie Nolan: Well, Jigar just told it for you. He did. He So all you need to do, Daniel, is just take the transcript from this conversation and- Yes ... turn that into your... Like, everyone- Yes ... loves an exciting origin story. Like, you can count on Jigar to be like... This is like, I get in trouble with my husband for doing this.
Jamie Nolan: He'll tell a story and I'll be, like, listening, and I'll be like, "Well, what really happened is..." And then I'll retell the story. I have gotten scolded so much about that- I'm sure he loves that ... that I try not to do that now. But that's, that's basically what Jigar did. It... But I mean, you're a CEO, so that's gonna help you.
Jamie Nolan: Perceived less positively by my husband, I think, but-
Jigar Shah: Well, you know, like, that's what Jamie and I do. We jazz it up.
Jamie Nolan: Yes, it's true. Yeah. That's what we're here for.
Jigar Shah: So now you've gone out in the world and you've, have pitched the top 100 solar developers, right? And NTP for those folks who are following along is notice to proceed, so that's all of the steps required to start construction basically, right?
Jigar Shah: And- And
Daniel Dus: financing, yeah ...
Jigar Shah: and you've gone to all of those people, and you've captured I think, what, 20 of the top 100 are now, like- 25%- ... you know, clients ...
Daniel Dus: plus, yeah. That's-
Jigar Shah: That's right ... pretty amazing. And most of that, I think, has been accomplished in the last 12 months.
Daniel Dus: It is, yes. We now have over 250 clients, so I'd say more than 50% of those in the last 12 months.
Daniel Dus: I think we're adding a new client every other day, and we have a single United States sales representative essentially.
Jamie Nolan: That's wild.
Daniel Dus: So yeah. Yeah. We cannot onboard folks any faster than we are essentially. We're, we're being governed by our bolting on bandwidth just to do more of what we're already doing.
Daniel Dus: But it's a strange time to be in such a good place, but I guess we just knock on wood and call it a day.
Jamie Nolan: So you've said that CIR has commoditized roughly 95% of the activities it takes to advance an energy project. For someone in the industry hearing that number for the first time, what does commoditized actually mean in practice?
Jamie Nolan: Like, what is the work now that wasn't standardized before?
Daniel Dus: Almost none of it, Jamie. We're the only organization in the world we know of that can give immediate pricing for every one of these unique activities. So whether it's civil engineering, electrical engineering, substation engineering, whether it's permit applications, et cetera, we can fix those prices up front for the first time.
Daniel Dus: And so 95% of these activities to get projects to construction and finance readiness are commoditized in our process. The 5% that are not there are the boots on the site portions of the site studies. The majority of environmental assessments, wetland delineations, these things are actually desktop, and we've commoditized all of those.
Daniel Dus: But the site-specific screening, we will scope them, RFP them, we'll collect a dozen bids and provide them at cost to our clients, but they're not yet commoditized.
Jigar Shah: You're taking all these things that, like, someone else would have charged $100,000 for, and you're like, "Uh, I just did the math." It's like you're like Costco.
Jigar Shah: You're like, "Uh, that cost me $1,943. I think I'll just charge a 5% markup on there and just charge people." I'm like, "Daniel, you could charge $20,000 for that." They're like, "No, I think I'm just gonna take the cost and, like, mark it up 5%, like, charge my client that."
Daniel Dus: You know me well, and you know that if I could give our services away for free to advance clean energy projects, I would.
Daniel Dus: Yes, you are
Jamie Nolan: right. I know. I love that. I love that, Daniel. As someone who, Jigar, Jigar, who likes to tell me that I'm too generous and I want to pay people too much, and I, I can't help it. You can't turn it off.
Daniel Dus: It is the mission that often comes first.
Jamie Nolan: So Daniel, can you give us a concrete example here of, like, a price comparison of what a project may cost working through CIR versus, like, the standard process?
Daniel Dus: Sure, of course. I like to use, the DOE has a PV system cost analysis. I think the last one was refreshed in 2024. And if you look at that, soft costs are about 17 to 19 cents per watt for a 100 megawatt DC project. Our cost to NTP 100 megawatt DC project is 1.52 cents. That includes full systems engineering.
Daniel Dus: Most folks can't even get just the engineering done for that number. So that's the magnitude of the advantage.
Jamie Nolan: All right. So we were talking about how you were able to commoditize 95% of this process. Yeah. So what is it that's in the 5% that you cannot commoditize, and what does that 5% that's remaining tell us about where the industry still needs human judgment?
Daniel Dus: Yeah. What's interesting is we actually have commoditized the human-in-the-loop portion of all of our workflows. So they're heavily software-dependent, but they also have subject matter experts in every workflow controlling the quality and advancing those in real time. So where we need the human in the loop falls into a few categories.
Daniel Dus: One is, um, I would just call it generally EQ or emotional quotient. People convincing other people to do things, right? Bob the fire marshal is going to have personal opinions that have nothing to do with the code every time, and you have to be ready to either educate Bob or agree with Bob and update and refresh your engineering technical work procurement, et cetera, or come up with some type of a settlement and negotiate with Bob for, for a settled negotiation.
Daniel Dus: And by the way, Bob is not gonna answer his telephone. He's only going to respond if you show up in person with a large box of donuts. And so that is extremely important- Fruit basket,
Jigar Shah: Daniel. Fruit basket.
Daniel Dus: Much healthier. Much healthier.
Jamie Nolan: So you're saying, you're saying stakeholder engagement, community engagement- Yes
Jamie Nolan: essentially communications and marketing functions where you have to actually build trust with people- Yeah ... cannot be replaced with, replaced
Daniel Dus: with machines. And, and also the other major bucket is simply liability. We're in constant touch with l- professional licensing boards, and if you ask them, licensed civil, structural, electrical, financial advisory, legal bars, et cetera, if you ask them if they're prepared to give any AI a license, they will laugh at you, right?
Daniel Dus: And that is not about to change anytime soon. These are human boards, so therefore you must have the human in the loop to take full liability for any and all decisions and actions, and we don't see that changing. So that's where we spend a lot of our time and focus.
Jigar Shah: So the other thing I was thinking about is you started off the company with, like, a license to all these different apps from all these companies around the country who are trying to, you know, like, make each one of these component parts more efficient.
Jigar Shah: But now we have AI, right? And so you publicly announced that you're gonna try to have 1,750 AI agents in place by the end of this year. You have a Google AI lead that, like, you've been working with for the past two and a half years to guide you around what was possible, right? So help us understand the apps that you were using before and then the agents you're putting in now, whether any of them interact with each other, are they replacing the apps?
Jigar Shah: Do they do some other function? Like, like how does AI, you know, really help make this all happen?
Daniel Dus: Yeah. It's, it's a great question, and we still have over 52 different enterprise-level third-party tools that are fantastic. Of course, we have PVcase and PVroof and DNV GL Solar Compass, Homer Grid, Zendi, and on and on and on, right?
Daniel Dus: And then we have expert operators in each of those tools. Where we have our AI agents working is on the automation and acceleration and improvement of the human workflows that advance any one of these unique disciplines. And so, for example, the AI data room diligence process that we acquired from Richard Matsui, we now have over 25 different highly trained, specialized AI agents executing that process to identify risk in various data rooms and compile key information and make it actionable.
Daniel Dus: And so y- but you're certainly right in that we've gone from sort of passive software tools now to tools that can act on our behalves, and so that's really where we're spending a ton of time, of course. And for us, these work everywhere from generating meeting minutes immediately following a call to initial pricing and cost estimation for projects, all of which go through a highly expert subject matter, but reducing the time that it takes them to prepare and assess and analyze these things.
Daniel Dus: There is not a single workflow in the organization that's not touched by AI automation and software. Zero.
Jigar Shah: I saw Jamie just perk up there. Are you replacing her Fireflies meeting notes, uh, you know, app here?
Daniel Dus: We also use Fireflies. We like Fireflies a lot. Oh,
Jigar Shah: okay.
Jamie Nolan: Yeah. No, I, I just got, I just got... I had a-- I did have a client refer me to another tool yesterday, so we'll have to, I'll have to try that out.
Jamie Nolan: Um, also- Fireflies is good ... uh, love the shout-out to Richard Matsui, who I have to point out was our colleague at the loan programs office. So hi, Rich, if you hear this. Okay, Daniel, so here's the question you owe us an honor- an honest answer to. You kind of already suggested as such, but- Mm-hmm ... um, you've said that the commoditization of knowledge work isn't a future threat, it's already happened, and I think that you're kind of explaining that as you're talking about the, the structure of your company and how it works.
Jamie Nolan: But for the energy engineers and developers listening right now, what you've built is essentially a eulogy for the way their jobs used to work, like how things were done. So what is your honest case to that workforce? What should they be doing with the next 10 years of their careers?
Daniel Dus: It is the number one pushback that we get from teams that we want to or are working with on occasion.
Daniel Dus: They see our process, our process, our workflows, and they think they're just going to get fired tomorrow, right? We had one engineer tell us, um, some time back that he was not even going to present our quote to his management because he said, quote, "I would look like an idiot for all of the money I've been spending on this scope for the rest of the portfolio."
Daniel Dus: Wow. And so of course that's the wrong response, and the right response is that this is absolutely a Jevons paradox moment for renewable energy. If you can reduce, as we can, the cost of delivered assets by 20% to 30%, then we only increase the demand for solar across homes, businesses, and at utilities. And so there is no shortage of work to be done and employment to be had in that dramatic growth scenario if we all tighten the belt, get more efficient faster, and we continue to widen the gap of what the cost and price of our energy in the market versus alternatives, right?
Daniel Dus: So that is our entire thinking. And by the way, if anyone would like to talk about working for us, please call me.
Jigar Shah: Well, and that's what I keep telling people too who ask me this, is I'm just like, you know, these are all of the tasks that nobody wanted to do. Like- Yeah ... it was painstaking work. You had to figure out where the mistake was.
Jigar Shah: It was like a Where's Waldo, you know, effort, 'cause you had this, like, complicated drawing. You're like, "Are we sure that it's correct? And what part is not correct?" Or whatever. Now you have an AI agent that can tell you exactly whether it's correct or not, and like, and then highlight the parts that you should just look at more carefully.
Jigar Shah: I totally agree with you. I, I feel like this is gonna allow us to 10x the amount of solar that we deploy, which is what we need to do in this moment. Yeah. The one question I had though on this is really just how do we restate what I just said to humans, right? Like, what part of their job is AI and what part of their job is them?
Jigar Shah: And how do they feel like that part of what they have to do continues to be important, their judgment continues to be important, right? That, like, the AI is there to assist them, right? I mean, 'cause, you know, Jensen Huang talks about this all the time, right? That, like, that when Microsoft Excel came out, it wasn't like everybody who did spreadsheets manually, like, lost their job.
Jigar Shah: Like, in fact, tens of thousands of additional people got hired to do more spreadsheets, right? And so, like so- Mm-hmm ... I feel like everyone thinks that AI's coming for their job instead of thinking that AI's gonna be a tool that helps them do their job more effectively.
Daniel Dus: What I think is important for us all to remember is that we have all been subject to way too much data and plenty of great advice for a really long time.
Daniel Dus: It was all just one Google search away. Subject matter experts have been dumping it online for years and years. So yes, AI now gives us a million times more data and analysis and great advice. It still has to be actuated in the physical world. It still has to be turned into action. And so that's where we lack the, I think, fear that exists often in the market.
Daniel Dus: What our AI advisors point out to us is that AI is going to and, and has already started inventing amazing new medical devices, technologies, et cetera. Those require factories to be built. They require sales teams to be sold. They require human relationships to be deployed. They require electricians in the field, right?
Daniel Dus: And so the number of new technologies and advancements that we're looking at, including in our field, is going to be substantial and require humans to execute, bottom line.
Jamie Nolan: Daniel, you're one of the six founders of the Solar Fight Club, which has grown Solar Fight Night into one of the largest renewable energy fundraisers in the world.
Jamie Nolan: Twenty-two events, more than 14,000 attendees, over 1.8 million raised to date for clean energy nonprofits. I know it's the party of the year for the renewable energy industry every year at RE+. I never miss it. Jigar and I have gone-- been going together for years now. For listeners who have never been to one, what actually happens at a Solar Fight Night, and why does this scene exist in clean tech?
Daniel Dus: Well, what ha- actually happens at Fight Night, I guess in Vegas last year I had a sway pole performer representing wind. I had synchronized swimmers representing hydrogen. I had a guy running around in a tinfoil hat with a Pinocchio nose talking about how windmills kill whales. And I had a joker running around giving people tariffs for absolutely no reason, like, "Your shirt's too red.
Daniel Dus: Pay a tariff." Like-
Jamie Nolan: What was that? I didn't see that. That's hilarious, though.
Daniel Dus: Yeah. So we have fun with what's happening in the moment, 'cause sometimes if you don't laugh, you cry. But at its core, Fight Night has the exact same mission it's always had, which is to celebrate the industry and the people that are making this transition happen, that are fighting for a cleaner future, and to make the human connections that get projects done, right?
Daniel Dus: That mission remains to this day. It's the best networking event in the industry, in my opinion, and that is Fight Night in a nutshell.
Jigar Shah: All right, take me to the bar. How did the six of you get together? And what was it like when you came up with the idea?
Daniel Dus: So the original idea was from Todd Friedman, now, uh, development at Altus.
Daniel Dus: And- It was about survival back then, right? In 2008, it was about how to not go bankrupt or leave the industry. My first two years in solar, I made exactly $0. And so that's what we were talking about. How are we going to get the first projects that we were getting signed, how are we going to get them done?
Daniel Dus: I'll never forget, I showed up and I was talking about how I'd signed a 100 kilowatt PPA with the City of Santa Monica, and everyone was like, "100 kilowatts, like, how are you ever gonna do that," right? "It's massive." And so that, that's, that was really the genesis, and of course we all know that we have more passion in this industry than others.
Daniel Dus: I think, Jamie, you were alluding to why does such an event exist in the clean tech space versus maybe some others. So for fun, if you Google "nonprofit fundraising event for oil and gas nonprofits," you will come up with exactly zero . So it's, it's not as if there is much competition, um, and I think it really comes down to the core heart and soul of our industry being more than just an economic initiative, but a moral and imperative o- as well.
Daniel Dus: So I think that's why Solar Fight Night exists.
Jamie Nolan: I love it. Can you give a quick shout-out to one of what group you've... I know every year you support a different nonprofit organization- Yeah ... but either the group you're supporting this year or one that stands out to you from the last few years.
Daniel Dus: This year we are promoting our leading industry advocates, because as Jigar likes to point out, political power is our first, second, and third priority, and so we are supporting Solar Energy Industries Association, SEIA.
Daniel Dus: We're supporting Vote Solar, who's the leader at the state level. Of course, SEIA's the leader at the national level. And we're supporting Run on Climate, which is a leader at getting mayoral and county government candidates elected who are pro-climate, and that's where we see a lot of projects dying these days, locally, hyperlocally, so huge fan of their work especially.
Jigar Shah: So now let's turn this back to capitalism. And so, so CIR actually gets a lot out of Solar Fight Night. So like- Mm ... I'm not suggesting you started it for this purpose, but now that you have like a party that everybody wants to get into, that gets sold out, you have a VIP line, and all this other stuff, like how do you guys use this strategically to get more customers to notice CIR and in the door and all that stuff?
Daniel Dus: It's a great question. Actually, no one has ever asked me this question before, so. But people have asked me, "Why do you have, you spent 1,000 hours arranging or, and coordinating and executing Solar Fight Night over the years for $0?" Right? That's a, that's a perfectly reasonable question. And there's certainly an element of it just gives me hope in humanity again.
Daniel Dus: We go through the year, we read all these terrible headlines about all these stupid things we're doing as a species, but you go to Fight Night and you remember that there are so many good people doing such good work, and that is more valuable than the almighty dollar sometimes. Now, um, going back to capitalism, Jigar, it is a secret sauce item for CIR.
Daniel Dus: Although I've never taken the mic and spoken about CIR, who m- runs and manages and execute the, the event or, uh, myself For one concrete example of the outcomes here, we have everyone's contact information. We have 63,000 contacts for every vendor on planet Earth globally. And so when we support our clients in executing procurement activities, on average our clients' internal teams might go to three to five bidders.
Daniel Dus: On average, we go to 150 bidder organizations, and we have everyone's personal Gmail addresses because of Fight Night, thank you. And so we're able to get to them and make sure that they're responding to opportunities that fits with their scope. Um, so on average, we're able to drive procurement costs down by 3 to 5%, even at the 100 or megawatt or gigawatt scale project.
Daniel Dus: That's a lot of cash and value to our clients. And probably a full third of our clients have come from being in touch with folks just outside of the commercial relationship focus, right? It just gives us something to connect with. There are too few opportunities for us to connect as humans these days outside of a commercial environment, right?
Daniel Dus: Everything is an ad, and Solar Fight Night is the opposite of that. I invite every one of our competitors in too to the event to celebrate the industry 'cause it's about all of us.
Jamie Nolan: Awesome. I love that so much. Um, so you've also launched Clean Tech Fact Check through Solar Fight Night, which is a platform- Mm-hmm
Jamie Nolan: built specifically to push back on misinformation in clean energy. You've said critical decisions in this industry are getting made on incomplete or misleading information, which I think we can all agree with. So what's the piece of misinformation that Clean Tech Fact Check is built to take down right now, and who's the audience that you're trying to reach with that beyond just our colleagues in the industry?
Daniel Dus: Yeah. Well, first of all, I'm trying to stop calling it misinformation and just call it lies. They're lies. This is really the truth of the matter, and it, it's, it's ironically one of the great disadvantages of our industry is that our executive teams are moral and would never lie. I do not know a single renewable energy eg- industry executive who would get on and lie, for example, like the coal lobby saying that pollution is good for us, for example.
Daniel Dus: Now, we've databased dozens and dozens of these lies, and then prepared well-researched scientific responses as well as comedic responses, if that's what you want to respond with. We've also databased all the industry videos of every farmer whose farm the industry's saved, uh, every homeowner who has put panels on their roof and wants to brag about their zero-dollar energy bill, um, so that folks can access those videos and respond wherever they are.
Daniel Dus: We've databased where those folks are and those stories come from. So there's a repository of responses to the lies and misinformation in real time, so 'cause it can take a long time to research and respond and reply. So instead, you can go to cleantechfactcheck.org, immediately search, find the lie, cut and paste response of your choosing, uh, 'cause we just have to be in the mix on the discussion.
Jamie Nolan: That's an awesome resource that I have... I am embarrassed to admit that I didn't know that it existed, but I'm gonna go check it out right after this recording.
Daniel Dus: Brand-new. Brand-new. We launched-
Jamie Nolan: Yeah.
Daniel Dus: I'll check it out ... two or three weeks ago, so.
Jamie Nolan: Oh, awesome. Yeah. Great.
Daniel Dus: Yeah.
Jamie Nolan: All right. We'll definitely have to put that in the show notes.
Jamie Nolan: Yeah. As well as a link to where folks can go to potentially become a customer of CIR. Mm-hmm. Because, I mean, I think if they, if you listen to this episode, if you're in the market for any of these services, the value prop here is just completely undeniable.
Jigar Shah: Last question on my side RE Plus got pushed out to November this year- Yeah
Jigar Shah: um, in Vegas. I think it's the same week as the F1 race, so that's gonna be crazy. And so, like, where is Solar Fight Night?
Jamie Nolan: Is the F1 race- Right ... also in Vegas?
Jigar Shah: It is, and it's that Thursday- Oh ... of that week. And so I'm out on Wednesday this year out
Jamie Nolan: of, uh- Oh, well I- we better all g- go make our hotel reservations now.
Jamie Nolan: Smart.
Jigar Shah: Yeah, exactly.
Daniel Dus: Yes. Immediately. I, I did notice that our suite booking was 50% more when we booked it last month, and I thought it was just for the conference, but that makes much more sense. Uh- Yeah ... I think the F1 set probably has a little more cash to spend on, on fancy hotel rooms than our renewable energy industry friends do.
Daniel Dus: We are at the same venue, Zouk Nightclub, IU Dayclub. I wanna say it's a 3,500-plus, uh, person venue, really nice, super, super high-tech, and we're gonna have a lot of fun. And hopefully, I'm gonna knock on wood after the recording here, hopefully we'll be celebrating the midterms, right? That's what, that's what we hope.
Daniel Dus: Oh. High energy. Yeah.
Jigar Shah: Oh my gosh, I'm gonna be nervous. We definitely want a lot of clean energy champions to win their seat-
Jamie Nolan: Yes ... in the
Jigar Shah: midterms. Yeah.
Jamie Nolan: Has to happen. Absolutely. Well, we can't wait to see you at S- at Solar Fight Night, Daniel. We'll be there.
Daniel Dus: Yes. We're doing one at ACP too. Three a year now.
Jigar Shah: Amazing. Well, thanks for coming on, Daniel, and thanks for all the great work you've done for years for our industry. It really is important. And, uh, just a reminder, double your prices.
Daniel Dus: Oh.
Jamie Nolan: He does this to me too. It's just a
Daniel Dus: number. Jevin's paradox, Jigar. Jevin's paradox, right? Our, our conversion rate from a cold call to a client is 60-plus percent for a reason, right?
Daniel Dus: So there's, uh, there's some upside in being aggressive on our pricing structures.
Jigar Shah: I love it. Thanks, Daniel.
Daniel Dus: Thanks.
Jigar Shah: And in future episodes, they'll be exploring how those forces are reshaping our food systems and ocean intelligence. Sound interesting? Go find the S2G podcast and start with The Global Energy Order Has Changed. Now What?
Debrief
Jigar Shah: Well, that was fun.
Jamie Nolan: Yes. So great to talk to Daniel. He's really inspiring. He's one of those people who is absolutely driving change in our sector with an incredible company that is driving down the cost of power and just making our, y- you know, these, these services and this generation so much more scalable in a really powerful way.
Jamie Nolan: So I can't wait to see what they do next.
Jigar Shah: But it is kind of hilarious that he is not at all a self-promoter.
Jamie Nolan: He's not. I mean, it was funny- But- ... to me when you were kind of like, "I'm gonna retell that story for you." I mean, I really hope that he takes that to heart- ... because he should toot his own horn a little bit, and it d- doesn't come naturally to some people.
Jamie Nolan: But then in other places, I thought he was really eloquent. Like, he had a really great response on, like, some of the workforce issues related to AI adoption in the sector, and he really understands, like, the human element of the work and how important the trust-building is. And just there's so much heart in what he's doing, like with Solar Fight Night and all of his nonprofit work.
Jamie Nolan: So it was great to get to know him a little bit more.
Jigar Shah: Oh, he clearly cares. I mean, that's when he lights up is he really cares when he's talking about others, and he clearly, like, clams up when he wants-- when I, like, ask him to talk about himself. I'm like- Sure ... "No, I want you to talk more about yourself."
Jamie Nolan: Yep.
Jamie Nolan: Yep. He's obviously, like so many of us in this sector, really cares about climate, and is, like, here to, to just do well by doing good.
Jigar Shah: Well, and I'm super excited to see how the tools that he's put together really can reduce the cost of, uh, the soft costs on solar. I mean, I was shocked by his numbers where he was like, it's, like, 17 to 19 cents per watt on the cost of installing a solar project, all those soft costs, and he's reducing them down to, I think he said 1.52 cents.
Jamie Nolan: Yeah. Wild. Like, significantly greater cross- cost reductions than I anticipated he would be able to tangibly dem- demonstrate. I don't see any reason why anyone who isn't in the market for any of those services wouldn't be reaching out to CIR after listening to this episode. Like, the value is just absolutely undeniable.
Jigar Shah: Well, we're gonna put a link, I'm sure, in the show notes, and folks should, uh, click on it and make sure that, uh, they start saving money. I mean, it's important.
Jamie Nolan: Totally. And then also for my other comms and marketing folks, and I know you're listening to this podcast, definitely also go check out Clean Tech Fact Check, which is the new website that, uh, Daniel mentioned just launched a few weeks ago.
Jamie Nolan: I am gonna go check it out and post on LinkedIn about it. Can't wait.
Jigar Shah: Well, and as you know, next up, the Ask Jigar segment that is sponsored by our friends at Octopus Energy.
Ask Jigar
Jamie Nolan: Oh, I can't wait. I'm really excited. Da, da, da, da, da, da. Mm. Energy Empire. Welcome to Ask Jigar, our weekly segment where Jigar answers your questions about energy or anything else you're wondering about.
Jamie Nolan: Huge thanks to our sponsor, Octopus Energy, for making this segment possible. Before we get into this week's questions, a bit of news. We have a brand new merch shop. Very excited about it. Right now it's Energy Empire merch, but we have plans to add more general energy merch. So definitely send us your ideas for what you want to see.
Jamie Nolan: And to celebrate, anyone who sends in a question that Jigar answers on the show gets an Energy Empire hat. So send 'em in. All right, let's get to it, Jigar. Our first question comes from Darren Lehman, and Darren says, "Jigar, I've spent a lot of time on residential roofs installing solar panels and all the electrical work that makes the system run.
Jamie Nolan: So here's what I can't figure out. Data centers keep citing these massive new power needs, so why isn't onsite solar and battery storage a routine part of their plans? I get that rooftop and ground mount solar plus batteries won't cover all of their load, but it boggles my mind that the cheapest new generation we have isn't standard in the build-out.
Jamie Nolan: Why not?"
Jigar Shah: This is such a good point, but basically it is the battery that matters, not the solar, right? And so what happens when a data center comes to town is that they use up a lot of the excess capacity that's left in the grid. And so if you can put everybody on that circuit on batteries, and that when there's like a grid crisis or some sort of emergency, you actually take those loads and have them run off the battery, that frees up capacity for the data center.
Jigar Shah: And what a lot of the, uh, experts are saying is that if you give local residents free stuff, meaning a battery, and then maybe a solar system to refuel the battery, then they suddenly love the data center, and it's less than .1% of the cost of a new data center to provide all of those batteries to those residential customers.
Jigar Shah: And so I totally agree with you that residential solar and battery storage should be part of the solution. One other fun fact, we have about- 6 million residential solar, uh, systems in the United States. That represents maybe 10%, a little less, of all of the single-family residential systems, uh, houses in the country.
Jigar Shah: I think Australia's over 40%, maybe 50%, um, of their rooftops with solar on it. So if we just matched Australia, we would free up so much capacity that we could say yes to all of the data centers and reduce everybody's bills by 10%.
Jamie Nolan: Whoa, those are some big numbers. I mean, I think we understand what the solution is, but why are the hyperscalers not hip to this?
Jamie Nolan: Like, why aren't they doing it?
Jigar Shah: Because the people who understand the grid are not the people who are trying to move fast and break things. And so, like, part of this is actually forcing the people who move fast and break things to understand that their way isn't working, right? I mean, like, 70% of all the data centers that were supposed to be online this year are delayed.
Jigar Shah: They're not even under construction yet. And so their way is not going fast. They have to move a little more slowly to go fast later, and a lot of the energy experts who work for the hyperscalers know what the right answer is, but people aren't listening to them. So keep beating up the hyperscalers.
Jigar Shah: They'll do the right thing eventually.
Jamie Nolan: Ooh, all right. Hot take. Our next question comes from David Savage, and David says, "Jigar, I'm a staffer at a public utilities commission." I'm so happy you're here, David. Thank you for listening to the podcast. "You've talked a lot about the need for commissions to be more proactive, and I wonder where you think the balance lies between a commission taking action on its own versus needing to be empowered to act by the state legislature?"
Jigar Shah: It's a great question, and one that we struggle with all the time. You know, I think that commissions do, I think, have the right to say and to nudge utilities in the right direction and say, "Hey, it'd be good to get more out of the grid we've already paid for using grid-enhancing technologies and virtual power plants."
Jigar Shah: But for a lot of utility commissions, they view themselves as judicial bodies, right? And so the utility goes forward and says, "Here's our integrated resource plan," or, "Here's our rate recovery request," and folks have to go through and say, "Here's what's prudent, here's what's not prudent." They're not really supposed to tell utility companies how to operate their grid, so they want air cover from the state legislators to say, "Hey, you have to achieve this higher grid utilization," which is what passed in Virginia.
Jigar Shah: There's other states that are looking to do the same thing to give their commissions air cover. But I would suggest if you look at what Dan Scripps has done in Michigan, he's absolutely said to consumers and DTE, "Hey, I am not looking at any more of your rate requests unless you pair it with whether this particular project could have d- been done cheaper with a virtual power plant or grid-enhancing technologies."
Jigar Shah: And so I do think that kind of boldness is something commissions have the legal right to do, but totally agree with you that most commissioners don't feel like they have the air cover from their governors or their state legislators to be that bold.
Jamie Nolan: So what's the solution?
Jigar Shah: Well, some of the folks have been bold, right?
Jigar Shah: The Minnesota Commission, the Michigan Commission. But others have been bold like, you know, our friend Marissa over in Connecticut, and she lost her job over being bold, right? And the governor didn't have her back, right? And so you see a, a variety of different approaches, but part of the reason why we're trying to get bills passed across the country to explicitly require higher grid utilization is to give people air cover, right?
Jigar Shah: And to send a signal directly from the state legislators to the utilities saying, "We're watching you. You need to do things that are in the best interest of ratepayers, not just the data centers and shareholders," which is what everybody's accusing them of.
Jamie Nolan: Absolutely, and I'd actually add that if you're interested in this topic, you should check out the work being done by the Utilize Coalition, as well as Deploy Action.
Jamie Nolan: Those are both groups that are working at the state level to try and get more legislation passed, and potentially put together some model legislation around grid utilization. So thanks for the question. That was a really good one. Okay, our next question comes from Steven Scarpulla, and Steven says, "Jigar, I'm a finance professional, and listening to the show has me seriously considering a career change to help move the energy transition forward.
Jamie Nolan: Two questions: What's your advice for someone making that jump from finance, and are there specific people in the industry I should be reaching out to?"
Jigar Shah: Well, it's a great question and one that, you know, I don't know that I know which place you should jump into from finance, but finance is a great place to jump from.
Jigar Shah: Um, but there's a lot of, you know, important roles in our industry. I mean, the beauty in, you know, Jamie, you know this better than I do, the value of marketing and comms is super important. The value of construction management is super important. There's a lot of folks that are figuring out how to use next generation AI tools to reduce the cost of building new, you know, plants.
Jigar Shah: There are folks who become experts in working with regulators and working with state legislators and policymakers to be able to, you know, educate them on finance related issues and how money views certainty or uncertainty or some of those other things. And so I think that no matter what you wanna do, there's room for you in the industry.
Jigar Shah: It's so diverse.
Jamie Nolan: Absolutely, and I would add there are, there are lots of finance jobs in this industry as well. I mean, I'm sitting here today at the offices of Galvanize Climate Solutions. They're, you know, working in this space. Um, Jigar's former firm Generate Capital. I mean, there are a lot of similar types of groups that work at the intersection of clean energy and finance, so it can be done.
Jamie Nolan: Definitely take the leap and you won't regret it. It's very, very rewarding, gratifying work. Okay, our last question comes from Arjun Mehta and he says, "Jigar, you spend all day telling the rest of us to electrify everything, so I have to ask what's actually in your house?" Uh-oh, he wants your setup. Solar on the roof, heat pump, what do you got?
Jamie Nolan: What are you working with?
Jigar Shah: So I've got two houses, one in Bethesda, Maryland, and then we have a vacation place up in Deep Creek Lake, Maryland. The one in Bethesda has a lot of, uh, tree cover on the roof, and so I've had it fully mapped and found the, like, little slivers of places where the sun consistently shines- Right
Jigar Shah: and I put two kilowatts of solar there. So I've done that, right? My house ha- I ripped out the natural gas heating and cooling systems to put in heat pumps, and so we're all heat pumps. I've got a natural gas water heater, and so I'm waiting for that to kick it before I replace it. Um, and I have a natural gas stove, which will never die.
Jigar Shah: I'm sure the stove will last for years, and so we'll see when we can actually shut off that. At the vacation house, though, we actually built that from scratch, and so that's an all-electric house. There is no natural gas service at that house. It is, um, super energy efficient, one of the most energy efficient homes in Garrett County and in Maryland.
Jigar Shah: And so we actually need to bring in fresh air so that, you know, the air is rotating. It's got induction stove, it's got a heat pump. It's got, I think, almost 16 kilowatts of solar on the roof. And so if the end of days comes, um, I'm gonna be able to be a prepper in that house, along with my two, uh, EV chargers, uh, that I've had installed there.
Jigar Shah: And so all my neighbors know that if something bad happens, they can hang out at my house.
Jamie Nolan: Rad. I wanna know more about the setup in Deep Creek Lake. I am looking forward to visiting your home there this summer, um, when I also will just coincidentally be in Deep Creek Lake to see your setup because that sounds so cool.
Jamie Nolan: All right, so that's all for Ask Jigger this week. Remember, you can send in your own questions, and like I said, if yours gets picked, we'll send you an Energy Empire hat. The link's in the show notes. Thanks for listening, as always. You can find us at energyempire.fm and wherever you get your podcasts. If you've got a second, please leave us a r- a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and also subscribe on YouTube because that helps new listeners discover the show.
Jamie Nolan: Thank you.