Jeff Spies  00:00

When they sent two guys in three-piece suits to Humboldt County to find out why people were buying these solar panels, it was that clash of cultures-the corporate oil industry that was making solar panels at that era-meeting the barefoot hippies with fistfuls of marijuana-smelling cash to buy their panels, and that that really, in my opinion, was the point at which this technology turned into an industry, which it's become today, which is home power and power for businesses and utility scale solar effectively grew. In my way of looking at it, from that early concept where homeowners said, "Yes, they're very expensive solar panels, but they work, and interestingly, they were still cheaper than what people had been doing to get electricity in the back country.

Nico Johnson  00:52

Solar has come a long way in what feels like a relatively short time. An industry that started with a handful of pioneers is now installing millions of solar panels around the world every year, yet many installers still run into the same friction points: delays in permits, bottlenecks of engineering, and plan set backlogs that slow projects down. Few people have had a front row seat to both sides of that story, both the early days of the industry, how it grew, and the operational realities installers face today. The many constraints that come along with it. Jeff Spees has spent decades building in the solar industry, helping scale engineering and permitting and workflows, products and installers, and he's now telling the story of how our entire industry began and helping along with his own company. His new documentary Solar Roots is going to be out later this year. We're going to talk with Jeff about the documentary as well as the work he does with Planet Plan sets. Jeff, great to have you here.

Jeff Spies  01:49

Good to be here, Nico. It's good to see you again,

Nico Johnson  01:50

Jeff. I'd like to start with the the documentary. Actually, had the chance to see the earliest version that we released. What was it? 2018 2019

Jeff Spies  01:59

2017 That we released what I call the draft version of the documentary. That went to

Nico Johnson  02:05

Willits.

Jeff Spies  02:05

Yeah, the story is largely intact. It's we've at that stage that was thrown together hastily and had imperfections to say the least. Yeah, and that's what we are getting fixed and finalized with a little bit of new content, but the story remains pretty much intact from what you had seen in 2017. Yeah,

Nico Johnson  02:24

and it's largely in an anthology of the earliest founders of the industry and the why and how the industry sort of birthed from the different factions that it did. When you started digging into that history, interviewing those early pioneers, what surprised you the most about who actually built this industry from the beginning?

Jeff Spies  02:44

Well, I guess the first time I had ever heard the story of how the PV industry started, I was walking through the streets of San Francisco with David Katz to the Nico trade show in 2007 Wow, where he told me about how the hippies had started the solar PV industry, and I had kind of heard a bit of rumors about this, but was really intrigued. and And David told me the story that I thought characterized the moment at which I consider the modern PV industry to have been born, which was that that point where the solar home power market was already underway, but it was discovered by Arco Solar, an oil company that that was making solar modules. And when they when they sent two guys in three piece suits to Humboldt County to find out why people were buying these solar panels, it was that clash of cultures, the corporate oil industry that was making solar panels at that era, meeting the barefoot hippies with fistfuls of marijuana-smelling cash to buy their panels, and that-that really, in my opinion, was the point at which this technology turned into an industry which it's become today, which is home power and power for businesses and utility scale solar effectively grew in my way of looking at it from that early concept where homeowners said yes they're very expensive solar panels but they work and interestingly they were still cheaper than what people had been doing to get electricity in the backcountry

Nico Johnson  04:16

oh isn't that wild yeah yeah I mean the economics are wildly different today than they were back then, but what you're saying is that the motivation was still essentially offsetting the alternative options they had for electricity. What were some of the stories that you uncovered that sort of under undergird not just the installers and early entrepreneurs, but all of the homesteaders, and why solar became the most viable option?

Jeff Spies  04:39

Yeah, and there's so many interesting stories, but the one I think that really helps characterize why solar panels were embraced by these early off-grid homesteaders is that there was this movement called appropriate technology or appropriate power, which effectively implied that you were using resources that you had readily available. To generate electricity, and the precursor, if you will, to solar panels was people were adapting their automobiles to two battery charging systems because they didn't have electricity in the backcountry. They could power their, they could heat their homes with the firewood that they were chopping down from trees on their property, they could get lights with kerosene lanterns, but they couldn't get electricity outside of buying what at the time were very expensive standard D sized batteries, flashlight batteries, as we often called them. And even if they could, radios didn't work in the backcountry because the radio signals didn't carry through at that time, it was mostly AM radio, which didn't carry in the hills. There were no TV stations, so the only way for them to get entertainment through life was either play an instrument or play at that time in the early days records on a turntable or eight-track tapes in that that old-timey way of that that predated cassette tapes, which you kids probably haven't heard of either, that predated DVDs, that predated MP3s. Anyway, so what happened was there were some of these off-grid homestay companies that were helping people convert their automobiles to a two-battery charging system, so that after they got done with their drive, where they get in their car, they drive the car for about five or 10 minutes to charge their car battery. Flip a switch on their dashboard; it would divert that power to a second battery in the back seat or trunk of their car. They would get back to their home and literally plug their house into that car battery simply so they could have two things: lights and music. And I would argue music was more important because you could get lighting with kerosene lanterns, which were dangerous, but it was still a cost-effective way to get lighting. wasn't the best lighting. It really contributed to indoor air pollution. But when I learned that story, essentially that's what laid the groundwork for PV modules simply plugging into the existing electrical infrastructure and admittedly crude, yeah, basic. But that was that was the step just prior to the home power boom. And if it hadn't been for appropriate power, appropriate technologies, I think it might have been more time would have gone by before solar panels were looked at as a viable way of generating power in a remote homestead application.

Nico Johnson  07:20

For folks who are unfamiliar, when did the industry-and that was all that you're describing-was kind of the 80s and 90s, even back into the late

Jeff Spies  07:28

70s.

Nico Johnson  07:29

When did the the trace engineerings and Zentrex of the world enter into the picture to start converting the sine wave and turning that DC power into AC power?

Jeff Spies  07:40

So I guess just to establish some quick timelines, you know, the concept of solar photovoltaics was first scientifically identified in 1800s. The first solar cells were made in the 1800s. The first rooftop solar array was in the late 1800s in New York City, of all places. But these were very low output, expensive selenium solar cells. Didn't make much sense, and then Albert Einstein finally just you know described this photovoltaic concept, the photovoltaic effect, for which he won the Nobel Prize in the early 1900s. But flash forward to the 1950s when the silicon solar cell or solar battery was developed, and that's what really started the the industry on its way to where we are today. But it took quite a few years after the development of solar and solar cells actually went into space very quickly, but it remained a space technology until the '60s when Hoffman Electronics and Spectra Labs started to develop these very expensive solar cells for terrestrial power applications. That then morphed into home power, which then turned into the industry that we know today, so that the the transition to home power, you're right, did occur in the very late 70s, early 80s.

Nico Johnson  08:46

Yeah,

Jeff Spies  08:47

efficient inverter. In fact, in the early days, inverters weren't a thing.

Nico Johnson  08:50

They weren't. It

Jeff Spies  08:51

was DC powered. People were using tail light bulbs to light their homes, and they were using in that time in the early 80s when this technology started to come in, eight-track tape players were starting to get displaced by cassette tape players. So they were taking these cassette tape decks out of their homes and putting, or out of their cars and putting them in their home. So it was all 12-volt DC for the first several years that Home Power started to utilize solar photovoltaics. And it was in the late 80s that the well, they were there was an interest in AC power to run conventional appliances. At that time, they weren't trying to run things like refrigerators. That was still a bridge too far, too heavy of a load for battery powered systems. But things like blenders and other appliances couldn't be run on DC, so that's those were being used with really inefficient trip light inverters, which were like 40% efficient. So you were you were wasting 60% of the energy, and there was this there were two individuals that were significant in developments of the early inverters, and that was Hart Ackerson with Art Interface. Yeah. Down in Costa Rica, and then Steve Johnson with Trace, and those two were working with one another. There was a relationship. Essentially, the way it worked is Hart was Hart Ackerson was considered the genius of the development

Nico Johnson  10:15

ground. Yeah, yeah, huge genius. He he was,

Jeff Spies  10:17

and like many geniuses, he it was an interesting conversation when you talked with

Nico Johnson  10:23

oh always

Jeff Spies  10:23

so Steve Johnston I think was more of a business person and took what Hart had developed and turned it into a solid reliable super reliable long term performing efficient inverter square wave not as efficient as a true sine wave inverter, but functional enough for people that needed AC power. So that was the 19 early 90s where we saw the development of the first functional efficient inverters that weren't a pain in the butt to get operating part. Yeah,

Nico Johnson  10:55

and they were for those who were tracking. There was the heart interface and the trace inverters. Trace ended up becoming Outback.

Jeff Spies  11:02

Well, Trace became Xantrex boss. Zantrex

Nico Johnson  11:05

and Outback left. Yeah, to

Jeff Spies  11:07

open a business Outback of Trace, which is how they got. Yeah, that's

Nico Johnson  11:10

right. So many other fun stories. I'm sure that will show up in the documentary. When are folks going to get a chance to really see it?

Jeff Spies  11:18

We will be debuting on october 31 Halloween in Grass Valley, California, at the Solar Roots party. And when people say that's Halloween, I'm like, that's right. Come spend Halloween there. Dress up as a hippie because the hippies started the industry, and you will find out why I contend that the hippies did start the industry when we try to explore what is a hippie and understand if those main characters that we interviewed about we had conducted interviews with 45 people. It was 55 different interviews, 45 different people interviewed. Sometimes we interviewed folks twice.

Nico Johnson  11:55

Sure.

Jeff Spies  11:55

Say the way I look at it, all these people were hippies, even if they didn't identify as a hippie, because I think part of the interesting thing that we explored in the documentary is what is a hippie, and did they consider themselves to be hippies? And one of the things I didn't fully grasp, because I'm a generation behind the hippies, was that being called a hippie was considered a derogatory term. But as Wendy Dankoff said in in the interview that we show in the film, he said at the time I didn't really look at myself as a hippie, but he says, "But now I guess I could be characterized as an old hippie.

Nico Johnson  12:28

Yeah, interesting. Well, I hope the folks will take you up on the offer. I have small children who would sacrifice me on Halloween if I wasn't present to to be with them on on Halloween. But I made it to the first one, and I will certainly support as you roll it out and do viewings around the country. Before I let you go, I want to talk about sort of fast forwarding the industry that we've watched sort of mature and the road bumps along the way. Solar's now, by many, I think, respects and mature industry. I feel like installers still run into a lot of bottlenecks right now, in particular, around getting projects out of engineering and in into the field. Right from your perspective, what are the biggest operational hurdles that installers get slowed down by today?

Jeff Spies  13:12

You know, there there's a number of them, and I would say that many of the problems are less related to jurisdictional oversight and oftentimes more a function of interconnection complexities.

Nico Johnson  13:22

Yeah,

Jeff Spies  13:23

I guess there's a few different phenomenons. One is that we've got increasing amount of complexity with solar and storage projects. As energy storage is coming into play, and the myriad of electrical services one must adapt a solar system to. So I think the added complexity is making challenging for solar contractors to do things in a way that they feel comfortable with, and then I think that there's a lot of project complexity because there, you know, every solar or every electrical service is kind of like a snowflake, just a little bit different, and oftentimes that's not a problem, but at times it does require awareness of where these differences are, so that you can adapt that configuration to be safe and functional. Because the safest system in the world, oftentimes, is one that doesn't work.

Nico Johnson  14:10

Yeah,

Jeff Spies  14:10

but that doesn't mean that the customer is going to be happy with a system that's safe and doesn't work. So I think contractors are, as energy storage is coming into play, are starting to realize this is not a simple five kilowatt rooftop system and a backfed breaker. That's fairly straightforward. When we first started Planet Plant Sets in 2018, that represented a pretty sizable percentage of the projects we do now. I would say easily at least half of our systems, if not more, are energy storage projects, and many of those are extraordinarily complex because they're big. Maybe have complex electrical service, or what the customer wants to do may have some unique elements to it. I tell people most projects we do are easy, except for one thing. And here's the problem: that problem is that one thing changes on every project.

Nico Johnson  14:53

Yeah.

Jeff Spies  14:54

So you have to have awareness of: is this a roof attachment problem? Is this a conductor wiring or a conductor? Routing issue, you know. Sometimes you have conductor length limitations that have that result in where equipment has to be positioned. So there's a there's a myriad of challenges that I don't think AI is going to replace anytime soon.

Nico Johnson  15:14

You help a lot, in particular through your business plan and plan sets, help installers sort of overcome the growing pains of going from relatively few to at scale dozens, if not hundreds, of projects per month. Where do you often identify you need to sort of begin to surgically remove pain points for installers? Like, how how have you started to think about the product of product of Planet Plant sets as a partnership with installers to help them scale.

Jeff Spies  15:47

It's a great question that I had to. It took me years to really think through this for our business. When I started, like most people that start in business, I felt I didn't know very much about what I was doing.

Nico Johnson  15:58

Yeah,

Jeff Spies  15:59

and as I've gotten all these years of experience behind me, what I've realized is I didn't, but people around me that were doing this knew less than I did.

Nico Johnson  16:08

Wow!

Jeff Spies  16:09

And that didn't necessarily make me feel good. That made me feel like, oh my gosh! I think that there's a lot that our industry needs to learn, and I think that's one of the things that's great about the NABCEP conference is because NAPSET prioritizes education of people that care to do it right. Yeah, and that's where we differentiate ourselves with the work we do because we're not looking at this as a for at least for our business as a volume business. We're looking at this as a as a long term service of technical professionals that can help contractors tackle the difficult projects. What I see is those companies that have the desire to scale are probably best to to do so by filtering out the complex projects that would come to contractors that are more focused on those, and oftentimes use a company like ours to do the work that we do. And I think that the folks that want to do hundreds of projects a month are best to actively avoid the complex projects because it it takes it's a different kind of a business. So I think recognizing what business you're in and what projects when those red flags just when there are too many red flags step aside and let that project to go to a contract that's that's experienced with some of these complexities, so that's where I see the industry is evolving and has already evolved, but will do some more in the energy storage realm. Is that these large companies that want to do energy storage projects are going to probably be best served with doing the non-backup battery projects because those are less complex. They're doing something like a meter socket adapter project, which while easier, has its own host of technical complexities with utility compliance and approvals. So it's it's we the sometimes I wonder why I do what I do. I I equated my work to being a janitor, where I'm cleaning up all of the disgusting messes in the bathroom and the vomit on the floor that people don't want to touch, and and and and if you ask me, do I like that? I like that I can help.

Nico Johnson  18:06

Yeah,

Jeff Spies  18:06

it's not glamorous work to any by any stretch of the imagination, but it's important work. And let's say it this way: without those janitors in high school that did that dirty work, your high school would have been a much less pleasant place to go to school.

Nico Johnson  18:18

That's right,

Jeff Spies  18:18

and that's that's what I look at what I do, I'm a janitor of of codes and standards in the solar and storage industry.

Nico Johnson  18:24

A lot of folks, as we have become a more global industry, have rightly said, "Well, one of the ways that we can reduce overhead, reduce complexity, and certainly reduce the burden on our balance sheet is by outsourcing a lot of this work overseas, be it India, Pakistan, even South America lately. What have you learned about when that works well and when it doesn't?

Jeff Spies  18:51

Well, the first thing I'll say is the best drafters in the world live in India.

Nico Johnson  18:55

Yeah,

Jeff Spies  18:56

plain simple. When you watch somebody that's skilled in AutoCAD do their work? It's like amazing. Holy mackerel! Look at how fast they're going.

Nico Johnson  19:03

That's amazing.

Jeff Spies  19:04

So they're phenomenally talented plan drafters that don't understand a couple important things that are important to the end customer. Which is number one, they don't understand the codes and standards and the technical aspects of the products, and equally importantly, they don't understand some of the cultural nuances. We've got 30,000 AHJs in America, 3000 different utilities. Think about that. 3000 utilities. We are not Germany. We are not Australia. In Germany, you have a relatively small country whose climate is similar around the country with a very highly educated technical workforce, right? So they don't have some of the complexities that we have in this country. So when you're dealing with 3000 different sets of rules for utilities, and there's about 18,000 building departments in America, it complicates matters. So a lot of the work we do is understanding the fundamentals of codes and standards, and. Adapting it for the unique local challenges that contractors inevitably run into.

Nico Johnson  20:04

Well said. When you step back and kind of look at how the industry's grown, where we've come from, and and where we're going, is there anything that you think the industry really doesn't fully appreciate about the opportunity that we've got in front of

Jeff Spies  20:16

us? Yes, and it relates to the premature expiration of the tax credits, and this whole concept of tax credits. Now, first of all, what I want to say is, I want to defend tax credits for solar and storage. We are the most practical, cost-effective way to generate electricity today. Full stop.

Nico Johnson  20:32

Right.

Jeff Spies  20:33

I'm looking at that camera right there, so you can use that

Nico Johnson  20:35

one,

Jeff Spies  20:36

and we're the quickest way to bring new power online.

Nico Johnson  20:40

Yeah,

Jeff Spies  20:41

and the competition-the 30 competition that we're up against, whether it be coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, yeah-you know-we have-they get heavily subsidized in really institutionalized, deeply ingrained elements of our society. We don't even appreciate how much money we're giving to the oil industry, how much money we give to coal still today? You know that nuclear is the only industry that's got an exemption from liability insurance. Essentially, we, the taxpayer, underwrite the the potential of a nuclear accident.

Nico Johnson  21:12

That's nuts.

Jeff Spies  21:13

So we have massive subsidies going to our competition, and our our residential tax credit has prematurely expired. And despite that, we're still the cheapest form of electrical power generation and the quickest to come online. So that, to me, is an amazing fact: is that we have the most cost-effective kilowatt hours, even without the tax credit. And I think everybody's like, "Oh, solar's too expensive. Like, no, we're still the cheapest. It's just that I think there. It takes time for people to absorb the loss of a quote-unquote tax credit, and I guarantee you, because this week it was like minus one degree last night when I got locked out of the convention center without a jacket, minus one windchill. I think it was eight.

Nico Johnson  21:54

Yeah,

Jeff Spies  21:55

minus one, and it was it was there unpleasant. But you know how hot it's going to be in Phoenix, my hometown, this week, 107. We hit 100 degrees in february. 1 time that I think that has ever happened. We're going to hit 107 in March. We usually don't get that till May.

Nico Johnson  22:11

Yeah.

Jeff Spies  22:11

So come summertime in California and Arizona, when people open up their utility bills, I think what's going to happen is they're going to say, "Holy $1,000 electric bill. How much is solar again?

Nico Johnson  22:22

Right,

Jeff Spies  22:23

that's going to be the game changer right there.

Nico Johnson  22:25

Yeah, the opportunity cost continues to go up. The opportunity cost of waiting

Jeff Spies  22:31

and and there's whole new segments opening up. We now have 9540 certified battery systems for small three phase commercial projects. This is opening up a new range of market opportunities that never were able to get solar and storage, such as a restaurant that doesn't want to shut down their business if there's a power outage, or a mini market that doesn't want to, you know, have food that would go bad if they're out of power for a day or two.

Nico Johnson  22:57

Totally.

Jeff Spies  22:57

So there are there are new opportunities opening, even as the tax credits are expiring, causing a lot of turmoil. Probably necessary flushing out of the old bad blood turmoil. Yeah, but this is the stage that we're in right now. And one thing that I'll say is, when I talk to the people at this conference, which gives me confidence, is that there are people like myself. I'm committed. I will be. I told somebody months ago when we realized tax credit was going away. I said, "Listen, if all the big trade shows only have like 10 people show up at a table and they're talking about solar, I'm going to be one of them 10 people. And the thing that's nice is the people at this NABCEP conference. I'm confident will stick in it, and we are going to win long term because we're still the cheapest kilowatt hours in the industry.

Nico Johnson  23:41

Yeah, that's right. In the energy industry, and

Jeff Spies  23:43

lowest cost, I should say. I don't like the word cheap. Yeah, we are the lowest cost of energy.

Nico Johnson  23:48

Yep,

Jeff Spies  23:49

even with battery systems, compared to it takes seven years to get a gas turbine. You want to hear something really interesting? Brian Maholic told me that they're now raiding the airplane graveyard in Tucson for jet turbines to repurpose them to bring more capacity online, and I just thought, glad I don't live next door to those data centers that are going to have the jet engines, you know, burning horribly, polluting natural gas, so that they can get their AI online. They should put solar in. Yeah, for goodness sakes, it's quiet at least.

Nico Johnson  24:20

Couldn't agree more. There's so many opportunities that are going to be become more readily abundant and apparent as the cost of solar and solar plus batteries gets closer and closer to $0 per kilowatt hour. When when solar is effectively free, the layer of of business opportunity that we can lay on top of it is limitless. It's going to be a fascinating time, and we've been able to document it from the beginning, and not only watch but help it grow. Jeff, I think thank you for all the work that you're doing. Not not only chronicling the work that has come before, but helping empower the installers to move forward.

Jeff Spies  24:57

Well, I I want to see it done right because. In my view, when the customer who buys that solar is happy, they become our salespeople. Yeah,

Nico Johnson  25:05

Jeff Spees is founder of Planet Plan Sets and our resident industry bibliographer, biographer, historian.

Jeff Spies  25:15

I I gotta say that John Perlin, in my mind, is the solar industry historian. Okay, I am the solar industry documentarian.

Nico Johnson  25:23

Perfect, the solar industry documentarian. We'll have to have you back again soon.

Jeff Spies  25:27

Yes, sir. Thank you.

Nico Johnson  25:28

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