SunCast
by Nico Johnson
Nico Johnson takes you into conversations with those at the forefront of Renewable Energy. SunCast gives an inside look into what is happening in renewable energy. From conversations with the biggest Solar Panel manufacturers in the world to the small startups creating the future of renewable energy, such as carbon capture and battery technology breakthroughs. SunCast is dedicated to providing the knowledge, research, tools and expert guidance you need to understand, grow and be ahead of the curve in the fastest-growing markets in the world. Featuring over 800 conversations, Nico has interviewed people from Tesla, SolarCity, Trina Solar, Meyer Burger, Conergy, SunEdison, Energy Vault and even the US Government... to name a few. Covering topics such as Solar Power, Wind Energy, Batteries, Electric Vehicles, Carbon Capture, Finance, Hydrogen, and more. You can watch SunCast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SunCastMedia...or view the full archive of SunCast episodes here: https:/
Episodes
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980: From Policy to Power: What It Takes to Get Energy Built
America needs more electricity. But between recognizing that need and actually putting new power on the grid sits a complicated mix of policy, manufacturing, permitting, interconnection, capital, and community trust. Recorded live at the CHESSA Energize Summit, this conversation looks at that...
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979: The Scariest Question in Solar Finance: What If Your EPC Fails? | Gage Kellogg
Lenders spook easily. And for good reason. Their job is to protect capital, so a solar project can have solid economics, proven technology, and an EPC that knows how to build it, yet still hit a financing wall if the lender isn’t convinced the project will reach commercial operation when…
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978: Solar + Farming, Part 2: How Developers Earn Lasting Community Trust | Lauren Glickman
Getting a solar project approved is one thing. Building enough trust that the community welcomes the next project is another. In this Part 2 of Nico Johnson’s conversation with Lauren Glickman, the focus shifts from what solar and agriculture can accomplish together to what developers must do to...
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977: Solar + Farming, Part 1: How Solar Can Help Save American Farmland | Lauren Glickman
For years, the solar industry has defended development on agricultural land by arguing that solar can help keep farms in the family and protect them from more permanent forms of development. Lauren Glickman thinks the opportunity may be bigger than that. For nearly five years, Lauren has helped...
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976: AI Can Pay 100X More for Power. Is This Clean Energy's Moment? | Hans Royal, David Siap, & Peter Kelly-Detwiler
AI is changing electricity demand faster than the grid was built to accommodate it. But the more interesting question may not be how much power data centers need. It may be what that electricity is worth to them. If AI workloads can economically justify power prices far above those of traditional...
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975: Powerful Branding: How to Build a Brand Your Team Can Actually Use | Aimee Tuck
A strong brand should do more than make your company recognizable. It should help your people understand what the company stands for, who it serves, and how to make better decisions as the business grows. Aimee Tuck has spent more than 25 years helping clean energy companies do exactly that. She…
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974: How to Make the Case for Solar + Storage to People Who Don’t Speak Energy
What if the difference between winning support and losing your audience isn’t better data, but knowing how to tell the story? In this episode, the tables are turned once again. SunCast host Nico Johnson is the guest this time, joining as a featured communications expert alongside some of the...
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973: 11 Years of SunCast: What Changed, What We Missed, What’s Next | Nico Johnson & Josh Beck
After more than two decades working in clean energy and 11 years behind the mic at SunCast, Nico Johnson has had a front-row seat to an industry that looks radically different from the one he entered. For this anniversary episode, Nico is joined by his business partner, Josh Beck, who shares the...
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972: How Smart Solar Developers Treat Land as Growth Capital | Laura Pagliarulo
Could the land beneath your solar project help finance the next one, without giving up equity in your company? Laura Pagliarulo, CEO and co-founder of SolaREIT™, returns to SunCast to share what six years of financing solar and battery real estate have taught her about how developers grow without...
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971: The Hidden Bottleneck Slowing Solar Automation | Nick de Vries, Matt Campbell & Frédéric Laure
If robotic automation is becoming inevitable in utility-scale solar, where does that thesis run into the realities of actually building a power plant? That's the question behind today’s episode. We start with Nick de Vries, CTO of Silicon Ranch, to ask what an owner actually wants from…
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970: 11 Years, 3 Pivots, and a Successful Exit | Jason Kaminsky
What does it actually take to build a company someone else eventually wants to buy? For Jason Kaminsky and kWh Analytics, the answer was 11 years, three major pivots, a transition from COO to CEO, difficult layoffs, plenty of capital, and learning when to stop chasing good ideas so the company...
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969: Could Data Centers Pay for Your Rooftop Solar? | Barry Cinnamon
Data centers need enormous amounts of power, and apparently they need it fast. What if some of the outrageous sums of money they’re willing to spend to get that power went directly toward putting solar and batteries on homes and businesses? That’s the idea Barry Cinnamon wants to pressure-test in...
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968: How to Make Better Building Technology Investable | Dermot & Aiden Sweeny
Buildings consume an enormous amount of energy. We have plenty of technologies that could make them perform better. So why is the real estate industry often so slow to adopt them? Dermot Sweeny has spent decades confronting that problem from the architect’s side. When he couldn’t convince clients...
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967: Why U.S. Solar Costs 2–3x More Than Australia | Barry Cinnamon
In Australia, residential solar and storage can be installed for about $2 a watt. In the U.S., a comparable system can cost more than twice that. Why? Barry Cinnamon was curious enough to go to Australia and investigate. What he found challenges the simple explanation that America's solar price…
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966: When Solar Works But the Savings Don’t | Charlotte Meerstadt
When Charlotte Meerstadt put solar on her Amsterdam home, the numbers made sense. Then Charlotte moved to the U.S. and rented out the apartment. The solar panels kept doing exactly what they were supposed to do: producing cheap, clean power. But, while the tenant received the lower utility bill,...
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965: 3 Lessons From Germany’s Plug-In Solar Boom | Stephan Scherer
Germany has turned plug-in solar from a fringe idea into a mainstream energy product found in millions of homes. And the biggest lessons for the U.S. aren't really about solar panels. They're about making solar easier. In this Tactical Tuesday, CraftStrom Co-Founder and CEO Stephan Scherer shares...
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964: Why the Best Energy Technology Doesn't Always Win | Sass Peress
The best technology does not always win. Sass Peress has spent nearly four decades learning why. Since entering solar in 1988, he has built companies, introduced new technologies, sold hundreds of thousands of solar products, backed ideas that worked, backed at least one that did not, and learned...
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963: How Exact Solar Keeps Growing in a Shrinking Market | Aaron Nichols
While many solar companies are fighting to stay afloat, Exact Solar is flying. After growing 23% and then 50% in the previous two years, the Pennsylvania installer says it's up another 73% so far this year. That kind of growth in this market raises an obvious question: what are they doing...
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962: What If We Paid Households to Power the Grid? | Ari Matusiak
America needs more power. Data centers are accelerating demand, utilities are planning billions of dollars in new infrastructure, and households will ultimately help pay for much of it. But what if we invested some of that money in the households themselves? Ari Matusiak, co-founder and CEO of...
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961: Latinoamérica 2026: Dónde Poner Tiempo, Capital y Capacidad de Ejecución (Español)
En Latinoamérica, la oportunidad no siempre está donde se anuncia más capacidad, sino donde existe una combinación real de demanda, capital comprometido y capacidad de ejecución. Nico Johnson conversa con Juan Manuel Carbajosa, Director de Ventas para Latinoamérica de Shoals Technologies, y Mario...
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960: Why Good Companies Still Struggle to Get Noticed | Melissa Baldwin
Good companies don't automatically get noticed. And doing good work isn't enough to ensure that customers, investors, journalists, communities, or increasingly AI systems understand why your company matters. Melissa Baldwin has spent more than 20 years exclusively in energy and climate...
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959: The Argument for Automation: Making Solar Construction More Predictable | Cody Houser, FTC Solar
Solar construction has always depended on experienced crews adapting to whatever the jobsite throws at them. But what happens when the industry needs to build more projects than its best crews can possibly cover? Cody Houser has spent much of his career on the other side of that problem. Before...
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958: Australia’s Second Act: Building the Solar Service Economy | Daniel Lazarus, Industrias
Australia has spent years ahead of many markets on the distributed solar adoption curve. Now it is giving the rest of us an early look at what happens when millions of those systems move from installation into decades of ownership, maintenance, repair, replacement, and eventually recycling.…
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957: How Do You Plan a Grid You Can’t Predict? | Xcel, ComEd & Ameren
Utilities used to plan around relatively predictable demand. That assumption is disappearing. In this opening keynote from Intersolar & Energy Storage North America Midwest, Nico Johnson sits down with 3 utility executives; Bria Shea of Xcel Energy, Andy Plenge of ComEd, and Brice Sheriff of…
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956: How Do You Prepare a Family Business for Its Next 100 Years? | Jake Pepper
Pepper Construction has survived the Great Depression, World War II, multiple recessions, and a global pandemic. As the family business approaches its 100th anniversary, its next challenge is not simply surviving another disruption. It is pursuing new opportunities without losing the culture,...
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955: Why Some Companies Last and Others Don't | Marc Lopata
After building and selling multiple companies, Marc Lopata has learned that the decisions that shape a business are rarely the ones people celebrate. They're the small decisions, made consistently over time, that ultimately determine whether a company lasts. In this conversation, Marc shares the...
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954: Can Clean Energy Build Mythic Power? | Tom Matzzie
We know how to build power. Every day, the clean energy industry builds more of it. But there's another kind of power that's far more difficult to generate—and arguably even more important. The kind that determines whether an industry continues to grow regardless of who's in office. The kind that...
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953: The Hardest Part of Solar Isn't What Most People Think | Jeff Spies
Few people have had a front-row seat to the evolution of the modern solar industry quite like Jeff Spies. Over four decades, Jeff has helped shape the industry as an engineer, educator, trainer, and founder of Planet Plan Sets, working alongside installers and EPCs to solve the technical and...
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952: Plug-In Solar Is About to Change Everything | Stephan Scherer
Plug-in solar has the potential to change far more than how or where we install solar panels. I believe it could fundamentally change who gets to participate in the energy transition. I recently sat down with Stephan Scherer, Co-Founder and CEO of CraftStrom, who's spent nearly a decade helping...
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951: Most Solar Problems Start Before the Install | Greg Smith
The most expensive mistakes on a solar project usually aren't made during the install. They're made long before anyone arrives on site. Greg Smith has spent nearly two decades helping installers avoid those mistakes. As one of the solar industry's most respected trainers and educators, and the...
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950: Dell's Big Bet on AI and the Future of Energy | with David Holmes
David Holmes has spent decades at the intersection of energy and technology, giving him a front-row seat to one of the biggest shifts our industry has ever faced. As Global Industries CTO at Dell Technologies, he works with utilities, hyperscalers, developers, and data center operators who are…
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949: The Missing Step in Battery Recycling | Sheeba Dawood
Battery recycling is about to become one of the most important pieces of the clean energy transition. But before we can build a true circular economy, there's a problem hiding in plain sight. Today's recycling process often starts by shredding batteries with different chemistries into the same...
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948: Why Solar’s Speed Is Winning Over Washington | Heather Reams
Heather Reams spends her days at the intersection of clean energy and public policy, helping shape conversations with lawmakers about how the U.S. meets rapidly growing electricity demand. As President and CEO of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions (CRES), she brings an insider's…
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947: The Leadership Habit Fighter Pilots Never Skip | Jason Knapp
One of the most common assumptions in business is that responsibility should be earned only after years of experience. After more than two decades as a Navy F/A-18 fighter pilot and instructor, Jason Knapp came to a different conclusion: capability often follows responsibility, provided...
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946: What Nobody Tells You About Operating Battery Storage | Ty Fenton
A single battery cell can shut down an entire storage plant. It's one of the many operational realities that make battery storage fundamentally different from solar, and one of the reasons software, analytics, and automation are becoming just as important as the batteries themselves. Ty Fenton,...
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945: We're Not Alternative Energy Anymore. It's Time to Lead. | Dan Shugar & Jigar Shah
Last year, solar and storage accounted for more than 80% of all new power generation capacity added in the United States. So why does our industry still behave like the underdog? In this special collaboration between SunCast and Energy Empire, Nico Johnson and Jigar Shah sit down with Dan Shugar,...
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944: The Grid's Biggest Challenge Isn't More Power. It's Timing. | Sean Kelly
For decades, the energy industry has treated its biggest challenge as building more power. Sean Kelly thinks that's the wrong question. As CEO and co-founder of Amperon, Sean spends his days helping utilities, traders, generators, and some of the world's largest electricity users anticipate…
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943: The Data Center Deal That Could Transform Energy Affordability | Molly Bauch
Everyone agrees we need more distributed energy. The harder question is: who pays for it? That's the question Molly Bauch has been wrestling with. As North American Connected Energy Lead at Accenture, Molly helped develop a new model that connects one of the fastest-growing sources of electricity...
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942: What Hundreds of Inspections Reveal About Battery Safety | Kathleen McCaffrey & Jeff Zwijack
What determines whether a battery project performs safely over its lifetime? According to Kathleen McCaffery and Jeff Zwijack, the answer has as much to do with process, preparation, and quality assurance as it does with the battery itself. In this special live SunCast broadcast, Nico Johnson…
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941: Why America Can't Build Big Things Anymore | Tom Fanning
There are 43 years of decisions compressed into this episode. And if you work in energy, utilities, infrastructure, manufacturing, or public policy, it's worth your attention. Tom Fanning spent four decades at Southern Company, including 13 years as CEO, helping guide one of the largest and most...
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940: FTC Solar CEO Anthony Carroll on Scaling, Automation, and What's Next
Leadership transitions reveal what companies value most. When FTC Solar recently tapped Anthony Carroll as the new CEO, they chose someone who has spent more than two decades helping build some of clean energy's most recognizable companies. From helping scale Power Electronics from a small…
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939: Former EPA Chief Michael Regan on Clean Energy and Public Health
What if the most compelling case for clean energy isn't climate change, economics, or energy independence? What if it's public health? Former EPA Administrator Michael Regan has spent his career connecting pollution, environmental protection, and energy policy to the everyday health of American...
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938: The Rare Earth Problem Nobody Talks About | Mark LaVerghetta
Rare earths are having a moment. And if you work anywhere near clean energy, batteries, EVs, data centers, defense, or domestic manufacturing, this conversation should be on your radar. And, when it comes to rare earths (aka critical minerals), it seems everyone talks about mining. But according…
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937: What a 4-Star General Knows About Risk That Most Leaders Don't | Gen. Robert Neller
Risk looks different depending on where you're standing. In Episode 936 (Jason Kaminsky & 2026 The Solar Risk Assessment), we explored risk through the lens of data, operations, and asset performance. Today’s episode looks at it through the eyes of someone who spent four decades preparing...
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936: Which Solar Risks Actually Matter? | Jason Kaminsky, kWh Analytics
Solar projects are increasingly being financed and operated as long-life infrastructure assets. That means the industry can no longer rely on assumptions about risk—we need evidence. In this episode, Jason Kaminsky, CEO of kWh Analytics, walks us through what the latest Solar Risk Assessment...
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935: How (and Why) Clean Energy Wins In Red States | Monika Gerhart
A solar moratorium nearly shut down Alabama’s emerging solar market before most of the industry even saw it coming. For years, the prevailing assumption has been that clean energy growth would be concentrated in politically progressive states while places like Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi...
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934: What Makes Companies Investable Now | David Kirkpatrick
Climatetech is entering a different phase. The era of easy capital, oversized narratives, and growth-at-all-costs expectations is giving way to something more demanding: disciplined execution, durable business models, strong commercialization pathways, and teams that can scale proven solutions in...
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933: Why Facts Don’t Sell Clean Energy | Jessica Fishman
Clean energy has made tremendous progress on technology. Solar is cheaper. Batteries are scaling. Virtual power plants are becoming real grid assets. Electrification is accelerating. But many people still do not understand why these technologies matter to them personally — or whether they are...
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932: The Battery Storage Mistakes Installers Must Avoid | Sam Buffington
Battery storage is becoming one of the most complicated sales conversations in residential solar. Installers are now navigating different sizing requirements, shifting homeowner expectations, changing utility rate structures, evolving battery chemistries, and a flood of new products entering the...
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931: Inside New York's $150B Energy Bet — And It's Bigger Than Data Centers | Doreen Harris
Electricity demand is rising fast. But New York is asking a different question than most states: What kind of demand is actually worth building for? In this live conversation from IESNA 2026, Nico sits down with Doreen Harris, President of NYSERDA, to explore how one of the largest economies in…
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Topics in this show
About this show
Nico Johnson takes you into conversations with those at the forefront of Renewable Energy. SunCast gives an inside look into what is happening in renewable energy. From conversations with the biggest Solar Panel manufacturers in the world to the small startups creating the future of renewable energy, such as carbon capture and battery technology breakthroughs. SunCast is dedicated to providing the knowledge, research, tools and expert guidance you need to understand, grow and be ahead of the curve in the fastest-growing markets in the world. Featuring over 800 conversations, Nico has interviewed people from Tesla, SolarCity, Trina Solar, Meyer Burger, Conergy, SunEdison, Energy Vault and even the US Government... to name a few. Covering topics such as Solar Power, Wind Energy, Batteries, Electric Vehicles, Carbon Capture, Finance, Hydrogen, and more. You can watch SunCast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SunCastMedia...or view the full archive of SunCast episodes here: https:/
Hosted by
Nico Johnson
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