The Freeing Energy Podcast

Hosts Bill Nussey and Sam Easterby offer up some of their favorite tidbits from 2020 shaping the local renewable energy story and take a peek at what's in store for 2021 on the technology, policy and adoption fronts.

For the last few decades, rooftop solar was like Ford's old Model T.....you could have any kind of system you wanted as long as it had black rectangles bolted to a frame on your roof. But, what if your roof could generate the electricity directly, without any panels at all? Host BIll Nussey talks with Martin DeBono, President of GAF Energy, about how and why the world's oldest and largest roofing materials company is pioneering the shift from PV panels to PV roofs. Martin shares how the solar-specific technologies and services are woven into the GAF's existing 5,000 roofing contractor partners and what that means to the market.

Many of us think of the US government's role in solar innovation in terms of laboratories, deep science, and long term projects. But, that is only part of the story. Listen in as Dr. Becca Jones-Albertus, Director of the Solar Energy Technologies Office in the US Department of Energy, shares how her office's programs are bringing innovation to market more quickly than ever before and creating greater access for all Americans to clean renewable solar energy.

Hurricanes, wildfires, and even forced outages are highlighting the shortcomings of our century-old grid. At the same time, a growing majority of people are looking to accelerate the shift towards cleaner energy sources like solar and batteries. Microgrids sit at the center of these two huge trends and they are becoming increasingly available and affordable. FEP host Bill Nussey talks with Ryan Goodman, CEO and Co-Founder of microgrid leader Scale Microgrid Solutions. Listen in as Goodman explains how new technologies, designs, and financing solutions are reshaping the commercial and industrial electricity industry and turning our outdated grid into an energy internet.

Rooftop solar growth is staggering. Why are so many going solar? Bill Nussey catches up with Vikram Aggarwal, Founder and CEO of EnergySage, the most popular web-based, solar marketplace and #1 source on solar information in the US for solar buyers. Vikram shares the personal story behind founding Energy Sage and the unique insights gained into the solar marketplace. Choosing the right equipment, financing, and installers are key areas to focus on. Considering solar or just interested? Listen in.

If you are even remotely interested in helping accelerate the shift to clean local renewable energy, this podcast is for you. Why? Getting the right message out there today is tricky...but our guest today has been helping clean tech companies and renewable energy groups for some 30 years and he has some powerful ideas on how to be more effective. Mike Casey, founder and president of Virginia-based TigerComm joins Freeing Energy Host Bill Nussey to discuss how to effectively put 21st Century Communication strategies to work in shaping our clean energy future. Listen in and if you like what you hear, don't forget to subscribe to the Freeing Energy Podcast and let us hear from you!

Heating and cooling the spaces we live in amounts to just over 50% of the energy consumed in the average home in the United States, according to the US Energy Information Agency. Add in water heaters and the percentage climbs to just over 60%. That's a lot of energy and today that energy is supplied predominantly by electricity and natural gas. But, what if there was a local renewable resource for heating and cooling that was as clean as solar and right under our feet? Dandelion Energy CEO Michael Sachse shares how his company is making the renewable technologies of geothermal energy more accessible and affordable to local energy champions.

Once the leader in the technology and manufacturing of solar products, the US lost that lead to China. But, if one company's vision is realized, the US can again lead in this critical industry. FEP catches up with Charlie Gay, solar industry legend and CEO of startup Violet Power. With a game changing approach that almost cuts the cost of generating solar energy in half, Violet Power is poised to re-establish world-class solar manufacturing leadership in the US where the technology was first born.

For homeowners, communities, or commercial users it' s not easy jumping all the compliance hurdles when building out a solar installation: But, how many of those hurdles are just adding cost and time and how many are really needed? Solar leader James Marlow gives us a peek inside the challenging rules and regulations piece of the local energy puzzle and how he thinks we can make positive changes making cutting red tape and cost along the way.

If you think just knowing sunrise and sunset is enough to manage a 21st Century Solar Power generation system, think again. Having accurate weather data can make the difference between being profitable or not. Join us as Nick Engerer, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of global weather data service, Solcast, shares the role of weather data in today's world of solar energy.

Freeing Energy Podcast hosts Bill Nussey and Sam Easterby share four surprising impacts of Covid 19 on our Grid and the Renewable Energy Business.

Listen in as John Powers, the CEO of California-based Extensible Energy, shares how software is helping commercial solar customers boost their ROI and reduce the most expensive parts of electricity bills, all at the same time. Learn how this innovative software approach is leapfrogging slow moving utilities by adding intelligence on the edge.

There is a revolution in clean local energy coming fast and it's a good bet that you'll never even see it. Building Integrated Photovoltaics, or BIPV, ditches the notion of black rectangular panels and instead transforms your house or building into a solar power generator. Listen in as Laura Sartore, the CEO of Italian module equipment firm, Ecoprogetti, shares how her firm is blending engineering, aesthetics, and automation for BIPV. Her firm is revolutionizing local energy, not just by making solar power beautiful and affordable at the same time, but also making equipment that is designed to let companies manufacture solar panels in their own regions and countries everywhere in the world.

Join us for a fascinating dive into how data is unleashing new business models, spurring innovation and reducing risk with special guest, Joshua Rhodes from the University of Texas in Austin. This rock climbing, mountain biking academic with some serious chops in advanced mathematics, engineering, economics and architecture shares insights on how rational, thoughtful, market-based thinking is shaping a bright new energy future.

The foundation that helped shape modern philanthropy and improve health care institutions around the world in the 20th Century is increasingly focused on energy poverty in the 21st Century. In this eloquent overview, Ashvin Dayal, the man who heads the Rockefeller Foundation's Power Initiative, shares his insights on the origins of the foundation's mission, and how they are using off-grid solar+battery mini-grids to tackle energy poverty.

In this exclusive interview, global supply chain expert Andy Klump shares his unique insights on how the COVID-19 outbreak is affecting Chinese manufacturing, the impact it's having on renewable energy projects around the world, and the steps needed to get the global system back on an even keel. Klump's international firm, Clean Energy Associates, is headquartered in Shanghai, China and advises manufacturers, suppliers, and users of renewable energy around the world.

Renowned energy author, academic, and entrepreneur Peter Fox-Penner shares insights from his new book, Power After Carbon. To decarbonize the energy sector is the largest investment opportunity of all time but, as Fox-Penner notes, the moral and social imperatives are just as large. Join host Bill Nussey as they into the changes that must occur to shift our power system to a zero carbon world.

Listen along with hosts Bill Nussey and Sam Easterby as six renewable energy experts share practical tips on what you can do to help get to a clean energy future faster. Plus, in this episode we hear what inspired one retired Nike executive to help take on a giant utility and how he is helping to shape a clean energy future for Taos, New Mexico.

Hosts Bill Nussey and Sam Easterby explore the role innovation plays in the world of energy and electricity today, what holds it back and where innovation is truly making a difference. Choice is expanding the marketplace beyond utilities and including new entrepreneurs, new technologies, and new investors for the first time in a century.

Join Host Bill Nussey and Dr. Greg Nemet, Educator and author of How Solar Energy Became Cheap: A model for low-carbon innovation (https://www.howsolargotcheap.com). Dr. Nemet has created the single best resource on the historical drivers behind the price decline in solar energy and the impacts this will have on our energy future. Listen as he shares powerful insights into how solar energy became so cheap and what those lessons can teach us about driving down costs on other energy technologies.

Join Hosts Sam Easterby and Bill Nussey as they dispel these and other myths around solar energy. From land and raw material requirements to social equity, listen as the team unravels narratives fueling confusion and misinformation about solar power.

Hosts Bill Nussey and Sam Easterby are joined by some top experts in the world of renewable energy to review the biggest stories that impacted the local energy landscape in 2019 and the stories that will shape the local energy movement in 2020. Listen in as these experts share their views on policies, technology and global dynamics that are shaping a new world of clean local energy.

Host Bill Nussey catches up with John Berger, CEO of Sunnova Energy (NOVA), a leader in the residential Solar + Battery service provider market in the United States. John shares insights about how dramatic changes in distributed local energy are rapidly re- shaping energy markets and why the shift is so important. Listen too as John shares how the Sunnova model and focus positions the company to capitalize on that change.

In part three of this special three part series, Host Bill Nussey travels to the mountains of central Puerto Rico and talks with Rocky Mountain Institute's (RMI), Ana Sophia Mifsud. Ana Sophia shares her journey in the world of renewable energy and how by being on site she and the RMI team are helping shape the future of Puerto Rico with microgrids, one school at a time.

In this second of a special three part series, Host Bill Nussey travels to Puerto Rico and talks with Rocky Mountain Institute's (RMI), Roy Torbert. Listen as Roy tells us how the RMI team fostered powerful partnerships to craft long-term, resilient, community based electricity solutions using solar microgrids for schools in remote parts of the island.

In this first of a special three part series, Host Bill Nussey travels to Puerto Rico to visit with community leaders, teachers, and a team of energy specialists who banded together to bring more reslileint power to schools in the island's remote mountain towns using an innovative local energy solution, solar microgrids, making electricity more resilient against future mega-storms as well as the all too frequent shorter outages.

In this episode, Freeing Energy Podcast Host Sam Easterby talks with Jereme Kent, founder and CEO of Ohio based One Energy. Jereme shares his journey from the biggest utility scale wind projects in the United States to the complex world of behind the meter wind energy focused on industrial users and how new distributed energy models allow those users to save on one of their biggest expenses: energy.

In this episode, host Bill Nussey talks with Peter Heintzelman, CEO of Cobb EMC, one of the largest electric membership cooperatives (EMC) in the United States. Peter helps us understand the historical importance of EMCs, how the membership driven model gives them more flexibility than larger shareholder owned utilities, and the early steps some pioneering EMCs are taking towards clean, local energy.

Host Bill Nussey talks with Emily Morris, the founder and CEO of Emrgy, about a radical new approach to hydropower that skips building expensive infrastructure like dams, provides a continuous source of clean local electricity and opens up new revenue streams for customers. It's called distributed hydro and it's here now.

Host Bill Nussey talks with Alan Russo, Chief Revenue Officer for California based STEM. Alan's company is using AI to transform how energy is stored and consumed and even allows organizations to provide revenue-generating services back to the bigger grid.

Hosts Bill Nussey and Sam Easterby team up to interview Mike Dudgeon, Policy director for Georgia's Lieutenant Governor. Mike offers an insider's view on how key renewable energy legislation moved from concept to law in his state and tips on how others can follow suit.

Hosts Bill Nussey and Sam Easterby dig into the debate swirling around renewable energy. Learn about the facts and fiction behind toxic waste, landfills, and insufficient land arguments leveled against renewable energy.

Freeing Energy Podcast Host Sam Easterby talks with Anya Schoolman, the founder and Executive Director of Solar United Neighbors. Listen and learn about SUN programs centered on energy rights, how those rights can be leveraged to save money, support clean energy, and fundamentally change our energy system at the community level.

Folsom Lab founders Paul Gibbs and Paul Grana talk with Host Bill Nussey about how their easy to use software tools help solar power system installers keep pace with demand and create projects that are profitable, safe, and competitive.

Host Bill Nussey talks with Marc Perez of Clean Power Research about their groundbreaking research for the State of Minnesota. That study reveals how optimizing solar capacity and battery storage can help solve seasonal energy demand, save on energy storage costs and still be cost competitive with fossil fuel based generation sources.

In this podcast, Host Bill Nussey talks with Quest Renewables' CEO Finn Findley and Senior Vice President of Sales, Will Arnold, about the enormous potential of solar canopies for land that is already paved and how the innovative designs and construction techniques from Quest Renewables are changing how we think about parking lots.

In this podcast, Host Bill Nussey talks with Steve Kalland and Autumn Proudlove, from the preeminent North Carolina State University Clean Energy Technology Center, about how and why they track legislation in all 50 States affecting energy, what is on the legislative agenda, and what it means for the transition to clean energy.

The electrical grid of the future will seem like a bustling bazaar with millions of clean energy generation sources, all interconnected in a complex web. How can we possibly coordinate all these disparate resources, while ensuring our electricity remains safe, reliable, and affordable? The answer, in part, is an under-appreciated technology called power electronics, which sit invisibly inside everything from solar inverters to electric vehicles. In this episode of the Freeing Energy Podcast, host Bill Nussey talks with Dr. Deepak Divan, Director of the Georgia Institute of Technology's Center for Distributed Energy, about the role of power electronics and his view of the future grid as a digitized and decentralized ecosystem that we will all have a role in sustaining.

In this episode of the Freeing Energy Podcast, Host Bill Nussey talks with a founder and CEO of Volta Energy Technologies, Jeff Chamberlain. Listen and learn how this renowned scientist is using a secret sauce to turn early stage disruptive technologies into commercial successes for energy storage and the new world of clean energy.

The clean energy industry is global, very intricate, and increasingly dependent on China. But, one American and his Shanghai-based firm Clean Energy Associates is helping firms around the world navigate this modern day "silk road". Listen as guest Andy Klump gives us a recap of his two-decade journey through the evolution of this industry: the role of China; why quality, supply networks, and innovation matter; and where this journey is leading the world.

The Times they are a changin. Remember that Dylan song? Well, we are at the beginning of a massive change in one of the biggest industries on earth: the business of electricity. Freeing Energy Project founder Bill Nussey takes us through this change, what lessons history teaches us, the opportunities ahead and how this change will affect us all.

The grid, passive grids, microgrids, islanding, renewable resources, and reliability…. how we get and manage our electricity is complex. In this podcast, Susan Kennedy, the founder and CEO of energy-tech company AMS, takes us on a tour of this complex world and explains how the future of energy will be distributed, digitized, and much smarter than today.

Hosts Sam Easterby and Bill Nussey discuss the biggest clean energy headlines of February 2019 including a deep dive on the Green New Deal, the world's largest battery, and some questionable fossil fuel lobbying.

The grid. It's that giant thing that brings electricity into our homes. Well, right now the electrical grid is a 135 year old behemoth that is tightly controlled by Governments and giant utilities. But, that is changing and changing fast. Now, individuals and businesses have access to clean renewable energy 24/7. Listen and learn as Host Bill Nussey talks to Greg Robinson, the CEO and co-founder of Drift. Drift has built the first real-time green energy-trading platform, and it's the only digital tool that can fuel the electrical grid with 100% renewable energy, 100% of the time.

What do elephants have to do with clean local energy? In this episode of the Freeing Energy Podcast hear the inspiring story of how a passionate wildlife biologist on the frontier in Kenya is pioneering ways to bring electricity to some 600 million people in Africa. Host Bill Nussey talks with Amar Inamdar of KawiSafi Ventures about his journey. Learn how he is using a venture capital investment model and clean local renewable energy to close the energy gap on the continent.

Why are so many coal burning power plants shutting down? Part of the reason is economics. But in this Freeing Energy Podcast, hear how a powerful grassroots movement used data to help spur the big shift. Host Bill Nussey talks with Mary Anne Hitt, Director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign.

What happens when Local Energy Champions are determined to find a solution? In this second part of a two-part series, Freeing Energy host Bill Nussey talks with Chris Riley of Guzman Energy. Listen as Chris talks about finding that solution and how growing up in a coal mining town shaped his thinking.

How did David stand up to Goliath? In this modern-day take, hear the story about how two local energy champions in Taos, New Mexico, took on a giant utility. Bill Nussey talks to Luis Reyes in the first part of this special two-part series about how Kit Carson Electric Coop and Guzman Energy joined forces to bring clean solar energy to their community.

Why on earth would anyone leave a career as a proven, successful software CEO for the unknown world of clean, renewable energy? On the first episode of The Freeing Energy Podcast, founder Bill Nussey and co-host Sam Easterby dive into the details of Bill's personal journey in the world of local, decentralized energy - and where he sees that journey taking him.