SMP 178: Automated Solar Panel Cleaning Increases Production by 30 percent or more

Episode Summary In this episode of the Solar Maverick Podcast, Benoy speaks with Matt Casey who is the Owner of RST North America CleanTech Solutions.  RST CleanTech was established in 2013 and quickly became a global leader in automated solar panel cleaning. Since their inception, RST have installed 4,000+ projects worldwide ranging in size from residential arrays to large-scale utility projects.  Matt speaks about their innovative technology, how panels could have 30% more production, and how he got into the renewables industry. Benoy Thanjan Benoy Thanjan is the Founder and CEO of Reneu Energy and he is also an advisor for several solar startup companies.  He has extensive project origination, development, and financial experience in the renewable energy industry and in the environmental commodities market.   This includes initial site evaluation, permitting, financing, sourcing equipment, and negotiating the long-term energy and environmental commodities off-take agreements. He manages due diligence processes on land, permitting, and utility interconnection and is in charge of financing and structuring through Note to Proceed (“NTP”) to Commercial Operation Date (“COD”). Benoy composes teams suitable for all project development and construction tasks. He is also involved in project planning and pipeline financial modeling. He has been part of all sides of the transaction and this allows him to provide unique perspectives and value. Benoy has extensive experience in financial engineering to make solar projects profitable. Before founding Reneu Energy, he was the SREC Trader in the Project Finance Group for SolarCity which merged with Tesla in 2016.  He originated SREC trades with buyers and co-developed their SREC monetization and hedging strategy with the senior management of SolarCity to move into the east coast markets.  Benoy was the Vice President at Vanguard Energy Partners which is a national solar installer where he focused on project finance solutions for commercial scale solar projects.  He also worked for Ridgewood Renewable Power, a private equity fund, where he analyzed potential investments in renewable energy projects and worked on maximizing the financial return of the projects in the portfolio.  Benoy also worked on the sale of all of the renewable energy projects in Ridgewood’s portfolio.   He was in the Energy Structured Finance practice for Deloitte & Touche and in Financial Advisory Services practice at Ernst & Young.  Benoy received his first experience in Finance as an intern at D.E. Shaw & Co., which is a global investment firm with 37 billion dollars in investment capital. He has a MBA in Finance from Rutgers University and a BS in Finance and Economics from the Stern School of Business at New York University.  Benoy was an Alumni Scholar at the Stern School of Business.     Matt Casey Matthew brings over 15 years of renewable energy experience to the RST Team. Matthew started in the wind industry where he was instrumental in developing over 100MW of wind projects and constructing over 1.5GW of wind projects in both New York, Texas, California, Chile, and Mexico and served on the board of the California Wind Energy Association. More recently, Matthew managed both sales and operations teams for over 70 commercial/industrial solar projects in California. Matthew has a Mechanical Engineering degree from Bradley University and a Masters of Sociology from the University of Chicago.   Stay Connected: Benoy Thanjan Email: [email protected]  LinkedIn: Benoy Thanjan Website: https://www.reneuenergy.com   Matt Casey Email:  [email protected] Website:  https://www.rst-cleantech.com/ Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewcasey/