00:02.66
James McWalter
Hello, today we're speaking with Ned Horneffer, Vice President of Development at Third Pillar Solar. Welcome to podcast Ned.
00:09.06
Ned
Hi James, how are you today?
00:10.63
James McWalter
I'm doing very, very well. um Well, I guess to start Ned, you're great to learn a little bit about yourself and how you ended up at Third Pillar.
00:17.91
Ned
Yeah, absolutely. So I've spent my entire career about 12 years now in sort of the the clean energy space. It was called clean tech and then climate tech. And I i guess so the the one common thread has always been an involvement with startups and kind of new ideas and the commercialization of new technologies.
00:37.67
Ned
And so I spent about six years focused first on raising a venture capital fund in this space before I realized that that was you know a really tough thing to do and a tough time for it. And from there, I decided, OK, if we're not going to raise a fund to invest into some of these companies, I might as well pick an area that I think is is really interesting and exciting.
01:01.05
Ned
And so from that I got into battery energy storage and spent about five years working in the energy storage space as um you know as that industry was really starting to mature and electric vehicles were starting to see more adoption and ended up spending most of my time focused on working with solar developers and you saw a lot of synergies between battery storage and solar. um We were an integrator at that point who, you know, was was doing a lot of custom integration jobs and one of those that we got pulled into happened to involve a floating solar project and I thought, wow, like that is something that seems
01:41.89
Ned
So obvious, why has nobody thought of this before? Why is this not more of a thing? So I kind of went down the rabbit hole on that sort of mashup of marine technologies and solar technologies, opening up a lot of new space on the map for for solar development to happen.
01:59.90
Ned
And then it was it was just about three years ago that I heard of a new development shop that was being started ah specifically to focus on utility scale floating solar. I was backed by a private equity fund and I was like, okay, this this sounds too good to be true. let's Let's find out more. And it's been a long journey since then. But yeah, that's sort of the the origin story of how I got to Third Pillar as our first developer.
02:26.20
James McWalter
Super interesting. I want to dive into a lot of those bits. I guess one piece on the, ah you know, when you're kind of on the venture side, you know, actually I saw somebody tweet the other day that since the election, and for those listening, this this podcast is a couple, like a week after the election, they'll stop talking about climate tech and it'll go now be grid tech or energy tech.
02:45.40
James McWalter
Just, you know, you have to kind of kind of reposition it.
02:45.33
Ned
Yeah.
02:47.90
James McWalter
um And so I think like the the space has gone through a few of those kind of, you know, remesstaging or repositioning over the years.
02:48.01
Ned
My friends.
02:53.72
James McWalter
um Absolutely.
02:53.73
Ned
Yeah.
02:55.33
James McWalter
I guess, like, you know, I think Floating Solar has been something that you know I think people are generally aware of, developers who listen to the podcasts are probably somewhat aware of. What are, I guess, just at a high level, like what are the pros and cons of Floating Solar?
03:10.42
Ned
So I'll start with the cons. Um, there's, you know, cause this is the, really the reason that more people haven't been doing this is that you're front loading a lot of project complexity. So the, you know, the owners of water bodies tend to be either large industrial companies or municipalities counties. You know, there's not a lot of random agricultural landowners who happen to have large water bodies that they're not already using for recreation, whether that's boating, hunting. you know If they happen to be lucky enough to have a big water body, they probably are doing something with it. So you know we found that the the site control process has taken a lot longer than we anticipated. And a lot of that just has to do with who the types of landowners are and the the the questions that come up regarding development on a water body. You know you need to solve a lot before you you ever even really get to like
04:07.96
Ned
you know basic engineering designs just to get the landowner comfortable with what you want to do. ah you know and So I'd say that is probably the the biggest con is that you know there's just a lot of engineering complexity in site owner and conflicting use complexity right at the start that scares a lot of people away. The biggest pro I would say is that we're we're finding places on the grid that make a lot of sense to install solar where you know if we can get over that initial hump of a difficult site acquisition process,
04:42.75
Ned
we have an easier pathway through interconnection and permitting. and you know that That's a sweeping generalization, but we found that to be true in enough cases. like you know We'll go and look at a hosting capacity map in you know a place like Con Ed territory or Central Hudson, and there will be you know no one on the queue and a ton of um you know capacity on the feeder and the seven were like, this doesn't make sense.
05:09.28
Ned
except for the fact that you look around and you see, okay, there's just nowhere that somebody could possibly develop ground mount or even rooftop solar that can can sort of address that that pain point on the grid. And then we really from a permitting standpoint, we really try to be specific and the types of water bodies that we go after, where um you know people always ask about the permitting. And I would say that you know it can be the most different, but sometimes it can be a lot easier than ground mount and sometimes a lot harder. So it comes down to, yeah.
05:44.15
James McWalter
Yeah, I think one of the interesting things, you know most kind of typical kind of ground-bound developers, ah whether they're using paces or whether they're kind of approach to siting, there's often a pretty large exclusion area area around floodplain, wetlands, and so on. right whereas you know and that's and you know And any sort of water body typically has some form of wetlands or floodplain and kind of related to it. um So yeah, you might end up like having to be two or three miles away from a water body to just get out of that exclusion zone. And that's probably where that opportunity from interconnection place has and you just have less competition.
06:15.32
Ned
That's exactly right. Yeah, going back to front-loading the complexity, we don't really have the luxury of avoiding floodplains and wetlands as much. So, you know, that that's a con. Then the other pro is that we don't have to worry as much about sediment and erosion control or land clearing or You know, so often we don't have to worry as much about forest and delineations because you're in areas that have already been been cleared.
06:41.14
James McWalter
And I guess, like, in terms of, let's say, size, you mentioned utility scale, you mentioned, you know, DG in upstate New York, um you know, how like, how big is generally feasible for these projects? And I guess even, you know, a lot of times, folks think about acreage and, you know, like, there's different ways of, like, thinking about, like, the the large, and you know, people are thinking about how they set up the racks and, like, you can, the azimuth and, like, all these kind of different elements, which may not be as applicable. um So, yeah, I guess, like, how do you kind of think about size and then you know, even like product design and like how that, you know, different decisions kind of impact, you know, end results.
07:13.13
Ned
Yeah, for sure. I'd say it's the the question of what is sort of the sweet spot of sizing for floating solar has been one of the most important questions that we ask ourselves all the time and has probably been the one where our thinking has evolved the most since we got into this space. I mentioned briefly that we were initially funded specifically to focus on utility scale floating solar and about two years ago you know we came to the conclusion that we were at least a couple years early and that you know there was no rush to develop the projects that we were looking to develop at that point because the technology cost curve you know the the
07:50.36
Ned
supply chain, the manufacturing capacity of these floats, like none of that was there yet at that point. um we've We've since really picked up again on the utility scale side and you know we're we're pretty pleased to see that i you know I think a lot has changed in the market in the last couple of years. Most of that has been to favor floating and to support the case that we made a couple of years ago of like we're were coming into the right time, I would say, to start looking at floating being competitive for utility scale. um But when we decided a couple years ago it wasn't, we we took a pretty hard pivot from only doing utility scale to doing mostly community solar projects.
08:31.37
Ned
where I think you know long story short, I think we realized that you you know you lose out on some of the efficiencies that are required for it to be competitive if you go much below a megawatt. um But you know we've kind of found that three to five megawatt size range that aligns with many of the community solar programs to be a really good sweet spot, both in terms of the size of water bodies that you can find and um and the scale of project that's required to get to a level of cost competitiveness with with ground mountain rooftop.
09:08.90
James McWalter
Super interesting. i mean One of the kind of other elements that and throw off projects are you know either reaction from the community or you know the individual landowner or the adjacent landowners as they're kind of thinking through, will this solar project like affect my land values? um Are we changing you know the the way we think about our community from an agricultural community to a more industrial use case community? right and You get all these kind of various objections, NIMBYism, and all these kind of things that developers have to navigate. so um Because you're kind of working with you know a fairly defined set of water bodies, right there's a certain number in in the country. ah They are a mix of private, semi-private and publicly owned. um I guess, you know what are some kind of questions that might come up in those conversations that you know are similar or different to the other questions? I mean, are people very concerned about you know the fish and you know like these other kind of elements that like
10:02.09
James McWalter
people might kind of raise that wouldn't be typical for a typical ground mount.
10:06.75
Ned
So many, I don't even know where to start. Every water body we have found is so different and we will start to generalize things in certain regions, like for instance, Out West, by far the primary motivator for site owners that are interested in hosting floating solar is the evaporation savings. That is really more meaningful to them than lease revenue, renewable energy goals, any of that. um There can be really meaningful savings if we have sort of you know more than 40% or 50% of a water body covered. And if you're talking about some 10, 20, up to 50, 100 acre water bodies, you're talking about saving
10:46.16
Ned
you know, up to hundreds of millions of gallons of water a year. So um that is something that we've really leaned into out west. um You know, now the east coast is in a historic drought as well. So it's not something that we have focused on as much, but it's starting to come around again there. So I would say that that is probably the most um most obvious one. A lot of the others come down to specific use cases of that water body. um You know, there's a lot of effort put into keeping algae out of drinking water. That's an interesting one, especially you see a lot of drinking water reservoirs that are right next to golf courses. They'll have a lot of fertilizer runoff, huge algae blooms, and they're spending tens of thousands of dollars a year just to reduce the algae concentrations in their water because it it makes their their purification process more expensive. So a lot of what we get asked is you know how much can you reduce algae growth
11:44.10
Ned
Then you get to the question about things like fish. Okay, if you're covering enough of the water body to reduce algae growth, are you having a negative impact on the fish population? And you know the short answer to that big question is that it's complicated and it's super dependent on on every individual water body. you know It's like the the the depth, the temperature, the seasonality, the the runoff inputs to the water body. there's There's a lot of factors that we start to take into account when we look at what the environmental impacts of this will be. And the the permitting for that again varies a lot depending on what type of water body that we're working on as well. um
12:28.49
James McWalter
It sounds like that there's new, is there much kind of academic research that sometimes you have to rely on and like point to studies that, Hey, you know, uh, this is the the prescribed, you know, percentage coverage to maintain fish stocks and like all these kinds of things.
12:28.88
Ned
and
12:42.63
Ned
There's not nearly as much as we would like. um And so just you know for a little bit of history, floating solar was invented in Japan in 2009.
12:51.89
James McWalter
Oh, wow.
12:52.33
Ned
The first project in the US was done shortly thereafter in Napa Valley on an irrigation pond. And then no one really bothered doing it again anywhere in the US s for about a decade.
13:04.47
Ned
A handful of small projects here and there. but nothing meaningful you know for about a decade just because there was so much other lower hanging fruit to focus on. um Meanwhile, there's still been a pretty consistent amount of floating solar development all across Asia, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, China, Thailand. India has become one of the biggest players in floating solar recently, Indonesia.
13:29.79
Ned
as well. So it's really spread across Asia very quickly over the last 10 years. And there's a growing body of research, ah largely out of Singapore. And then Europe is all has also really been picking up on it. And I would say the last five years or so. So we're starting to see more research out, you know, especially like English language research coming out of Germany, and the Netherlands, Spain and France. So those are kind of the the powerhouses.
13:57.81
Ned
And just just to put it in context, there've been 40 megawatts or so deployed in the US versus about four gigawatts that have been deployed globally.
14:00.23
James McWalter
yeah
14:06.13
Ned
so yeah we are
14:08.23
James McWalter
And are are your kind of pipeline numbers public?
14:08.55
Ned
very
14:12.27
Ned
they They are not, but I can tell you we are exponentially above what has been deployed to date.
14:14.61
James McWalter
Okay.
14:19.37
Ned
you know We've got hundreds of megawatts of projects under site control that um you know that we'll be developing over the next few years. So yeah, we expect, based on just what what what we're doing alone, not to mention what some others were aware of or doing in the US, we think that the the growth rate will be exponential for at least the next five to ten years
14:41.03
James McWalter
Love to hear it, and and very exciting. I guess one thing, that as you were kind of chatting there, is the maintenance of the of the project you know of the panels. um you know This is something that ah comes up. I know there's some very cool companies doing yeah yeah using kind of like satellite imagery for to understand ah how the panels are doing, companies like Drone Bay, now Zitevue, and related companies. And then you actually have to like get folks out, you know sometimes cleaning the panels, you know making sure there's no dirt on them, all those kind of things. I guess, like what's the kind of maintenance? And how do you you know how is like the potential like difference in OpEx um for those type of projects compared to conventional Brown Mount?
15:20.83
Ned
You'll hear this answer a lot in generality, but I'll get specific. It's all about trade-offs too, right? So you I would say you know the the biggest, we'll start with the cons again.
15:25.48
James McWalter
OK.
15:30.88
Ned
the The biggest challenges that you have with floating are on big water bodies where you're anchored to the bottom and you don't have direct access to the shore.
15:41.54
Ned
You need to have boats and divers involved and those can get pretty expensive. um On the plus side, you don't have vegetation management. So, you know, I'd say those are kind of the the two biggest trade-offs is that you've got more expensive labor, less often with the the boats and divers, but then you don't have, you know, vegetation management is a shockingly large line item for O&M costs for, you know, for most ground-based solar. And so we're able to avoid that.
16:12.51
Ned
Plus a lot of the complexities of having to go on a roof which require replacements and even just getting up on roofs can be complicated sometimes. so
16:20.83
James McWalter
I'm.
16:21.43
Ned
Yeah, ah from a cleaning standpoint, you know, the biggest thing that we tend to worry about more than your average ground mount developer are birds. We're we're much more worried about seabirds. So this becomes a concern in coastal areas where you have gulls and cormorants and the more agile types that can land on top of your panels and see it as a nice fishing platform. um that That can um mess up your panels pretty fast if that gets out of control.
16:48.66
Ned
um But there are there are systems in place that most boat owners will know about um to you know to do what we can to prevent them coming in. For waterfowl, it's a little easier because they're not able to land on the arrays. so And so you you know string up a bit of fishing line to keep them off from you know from around the periphery.
17:07.58
Ned
and
17:07.68
James McWalter
super Super interesting. And and then you know I guess like thinking at some of the projects you've been working on that you've had under site control, and you're kind of moving through the development ah due diligence steps.
17:18.85
James McWalter
I guess in any of them, have you had to get you know particularly creative to you know kind of navigate some specific obstacle?
17:27.29
Ned
Honestly, I feel like every single one we've had to get creative in one way or another, either due to permitting restrictions, you know, landowner and and primary use requirements for the water body, or just like not sort of fitting cleanly in in a box of how they expect solar to be developed. Try to give some examples.
17:49.03
Ned
i guess you know one of the first like we we end up doing a number of projects at active mining sites and so we'll typically try to locate ourselves on the former quarries that are no longer being used and and that can be pretty straightforward but then we have a lot of the complexities of how to actually tie in projects like that to active mining sites where you know land is constantly shifting like we still have we we We almost we often have more challenges in how we deal with our shore side equipment and connecting back into the electric grid, even when we have a perfect water body that is, you know, easy to build on as far as water bodies go, um you know, often it's the last, you know, 500 feet of shoreline where we need to.
18:38.14
Ned
deal with you know protected areas, wetlands, other things like that, even just you know moving heavy equipment across sites. So um you know the shoreside components are one that are easy to overlook until rubber hits the road. um And I'd say that most often comes up at active mining sites. Then just you know from a contracting standpoint, we're doing more and more wastewater treatment ponds now.
19:03.83
Ned
And that's where a lot of the questions come up about how our system will either help or hurt the biological processes that happen there, where you know some are incredibly precise in how they're operated, others not so much. And each operator has you know kind of a a different mix of you know biochemical interactions happening in there and different sensitivities around that.
19:31.58
Ned
They tend to just overcorrect and play it very conservatively. And by and large, for most of them, we have heard that coverage is helpful, ah that, you know, having the amount of shade that we can provide helps their bacteria operate more effectively and essentially compete with less algae.
19:35.42
James McWalter
Sure.
19:50.12
Ned
So, um yeah, those those are products.
19:52.05
James McWalter
Do you do you do many ah yeah are any of those projects behind the meter or um they're even on the wastewater of treatment size that you're so grid connected?
20:00.79
Ned
on the On the wastewater treatment side, we've yet to do any behind the meter. We're we're looking at a few. you know It's funny, most of the wastewater plants that use the most power don't have big open lagoons. it tends to be The more rural you know the the ah high power processes often replace the big lagoons to Uh, so, you know, we're seeing that it's, it's often kind of one or the other there, but they're great for community solar, especially when they're owned by small municipalities. Um, but the, a lot of the mining sites we do are behind the meter, you know, we're finding mining operations that are using, you know, multi megawatt loads and running pretty constantly. So, uh, yeah, those, those are working out pretty well.
20:47.66
James McWalter
And I guess from the utilities point of view, um do they have any kind of like, do they treat it any differently? Or they just say, you know, at least we're getting some projects at a non-constrained part of the network.
20:58.94
James McWalter
Yay. Right.
20:59.91
Ned
i think yeah if if anything
21:00.03
James McWalter
um Or do they, you know, have you had to deal with some skepticism? Yeah. Good.
21:04.19
Ned
No, not thankfully, we have not had to deal with as much skepticism from AHJs, any type of regulators or utilities as much as we would have thought. you know At most, I think the utilities are like, oh, that's kind of interesting. um But you know by and large, they look at all of these the same. And you know I think we've we've yet to find any that are are willing to to do anything different for us based on the fact that we're floating.
21:32.62
Ned
We'd love that, but um but no. Electrically, these are identical. All they really care about is where the POI is.
21:40.85
James McWalter
makes all sense. And then I guess like thinking boat, you know, boat on the floating solar side, as well as the larger kind of renewables industry, you know, if you're looking a couple years out, you know, where do you think it will continue to evolve?
21:54.43
Ned
So the easy answer with floating, right? like I think the projects, well you know the same as what's happened in in Asia and Europe, you'll start to see larger and larger projects going to construction getting commissioned. The largest one in the US now is nine megawatts in New Jersey that's behind the meter to a water treatment plant for for drinking water. And I would expect that in the next three to five years, you'll see projects in sort of the 20 to 50 megawatt size range starting to get built.
22:29.90
Ned
Uh, and then, you know, and sort of the seven plus year timeframe, I think sort of in the 50 to 200 megawatt size range. the The thing that i'm less is less clear to me but I'm more hopeful for is that, um and so all of the water bodies that we are focused on and that we know anybody is focused on here in the US are ah inland. you know Inland manmade water bodies is essentially like the the playing field today. and And we think the most exciting way that that could open up is to start deploying projects into coastal areas. And that's you know where you can find
23:08.37
Ned
um you know big cities with harbors and shallow parts that are not used for boat traffic you know there's just the more you start to look at at coastlines particularly on the east coast there's just an incredible amount of protected shallow areas that have open water and you know a whole lot of permitting challenges to get there now um but it's funny we actually we're looking more into sort of like the the aquaculture playbook and looking at how states have opened up permitting for oyster farming and kelp farming and other types of um you know aquaculture and mariculture. They've made that permitting process remarkably streamlined, considering some of the potential risks and downsides of you know boats colliding with oyster farms and you know other concerns that they would need to prevent. So we're hopeful that you know probably not at the federal level under this next administration, but
24:05.18
Ned
um Looking out a little further, we'd like to see near shore and eventually offshore floating solar start to take off more.
24:13.06
James McWalter
I guess at what level does wave action and those things start to like have kind of concrete negative effects? right like you know If we're thinking about large reservoirs, they're reasonably sheltered, I'd imagine. you know ah They were literally man-made, so they might have you know fairly smooth sides and all those kind of things.
24:30.69
James McWalter
um If you're talking about the Great Lakes or you know ah a cove on the Hudson River, you know you're getting a bit more on the waves. And of course, if you're you know on the coast, you're're you know if you're in the Outer Banks or something, and it's even more extreme.
24:40.08
Ned
Yeah.
24:41.56
James McWalter
um So I guess, like ah ah you know there's is there kind of like a cutoff point or is this more, hey, if you designed these well, it can kind of handle most things you throw at it?
24:49.53
Ned
for For today's technology, for like what we could deploy tomorrow, um we're talking about you know being able to handle six foot waves pretty well and up to you know category five wins.
25:04.02
Ned
That really comes more down to the anchoring and mooring design. And and thankfully, there's been decades to anchoring and mooring design for coastal marinas, you know all over Florida, all over the Caribbean.
25:20.50
Ned
this this is tested technology. So really, you know, at the end of the day, it's being adapted this is marine technology being adapted to solar. um and um And it's really the the the solar industry that needs to catch up on that front. As far as kind of, you know, looking towards offshore, there are new system designs, mostly out of Europe and a few in Asia.
25:45.96
Ned
that are are being made to withstand 30 or 40 foot waves, ocean rollers really, um and and equally high wind speeds as well. so um yeah I don't think any of those problems are are insurmountable. It just comes down to a question of of cost. ah But I would say today still by far the largest barrier for doing any near shore or offshore floating solar is going to be the permitting. You're talking about, you know, five plus years of federal nexus permitting to get any of those approved.
26:21.66
James McWalter
So there was some ah changes to CEQA just out this week that people are still kind of navigating. And and so yeah know and you could have mentioned the potential changes ah at the federal level. yeah One of the ways we've been kind of thinking about things since the election is ah yeah things are going to move much more state focused. Red states have the fastest growing kind of renewables portfolios.
26:45.91
James McWalter
yeah a lot of the often you can actually get by permitting and some of the, ah you know, interconnection and air costs a lot easier than interconnection in most of the places. um And I guess, you know, as you're kind of thinking through like some of the, you know, I think ah we can all kind of imagine the kind of con case with some of this stuff.
26:54.89
Ned
Yeah.
27:01.99
James McWalter
But I guess how are you seeing some of the things kind of evolve? You know, there's obviously a lot of money is poured into our industry. um You know, some of that might might might not always be there. um I guess. Yeah. how How are you thinking about things over the next couple of years from from that point of view?
27:11.48
Ned
Yeah.
27:14.99
Ned
I think we're we're cautiously optimistic that what is solidified at the federal level with IRA and the the tax credits will hold. And there's sort of, there was enough bipartisan support for that and enough red state benefits and just general red state support for renewables at this point that, you know, I think that that is necessary for the whole industry to continue to, to grow and And we're, we're optimistic that that will hold. But I think you're right that as far as where we can be looking for any type of new support, that's really all going to come from the state level. And, you know, for better or worse, that has been the status quo for most of the history of the solar industry, right? Like, you know, there was always this concern of federal tax credits expiring, you know, getting extended here or there. There was never the long-term certainty we've had
28:08.60
Ned
with the Inflation Reduction Act until it was passed. so um you know i think that it's It's easy to have sort of existential fear about anti-renewables I'd like to think we're past that, um but there will be states that manage to differentiate themselves by making an effort to, you know, be, you know, be very pro solar at this time. I mean, Illinois is probably the most classic example where, you know, it seems like and it's just that, you know, so many developers have rushed in there. There's so much state support. They continue to double down on it. um And, you know, that ah ends up at some point almost being a good problem because these markets get so saturated and it comes then back to seeing, you know,
28:57.54
Ned
pushback from um you know local communities that are sick of seeing 50 acre cornfields get turned into industrial solar farms.
29:07.89
James McWalter
were you We also yeah help folks on on the load side as well. And I was having a conversation with somebody the other day who's looking for three to four gigawatts of load to come online in 2028. And so you know when you have such high kind of power demand in certain areas, ah yeah, i think I think if you're in the generation game, um there will still be plenty of opportunities regardless of what happens at the federal level.
29:28.15
Ned
God yeah, that that must be a data center.
29:31.07
James McWalter
but Potentially, yes. There's not too many other use cases, but yes.
29:34.60
Ned
Yeah, yeah.
29:34.83
James McWalter
I was like, oh, thats those timelines are spicy. But you know we'll we'll we'll do what we can with it. I mean, I think a lot of that stuff has to be massive behind the meter. like you We'll get you into connection on that timeline. um And so I think that's that's why I think it's kind of interesting even.
29:48.29
James McWalter
Thank you through some of the kind of behind the meter like opportunities are going from like micro grids to like people talking about very, very large systems. um And so, you know, potentially even as you kind of think about waterways that may not even be near a substation transition line, um there could even be potential opportunities for that kind of going forward with some of these co located off take and so on.
30:04.11
Ned
Yeah,
30:07.81
Ned
yeah our our largest, most active project right now is behind the meter. It's very much utility scale. um that you know it is it's It's at a very large brewery. I think I can say that much, but you know we're talking tens and tens of of megawatts behind the meter there. And that is in a place where they just would not be able to site nearly that amount on any ground or roof roof surfaces, obviously. So there's sort of this interesting niche for kind of, you know, small scale projects by utility standards, but by, you know, from a CNI standard or a behind the meter standard, it's pretty remarkable to see how much load there is in places. We're actually, you know, we've yet to find this with any data centers, but we're very hopeful to, because we hear a lot about how much water use there is from the data center industry.
31:01.98
Ned
presumably they're mostly pumping groundwater for that. but um you know And we don't know data center development very well, but for anyone out there listening who does, you know if there's you know water bodies nearby, come talk to us because we would would love to figure out how to power some of those from floating solar.
31:20.53
James McWalter
Super interesting. and i might I might be able to make some introductions after to the call. um I guess you know before we kind of kind of get towards the end here, um any kind of other kind of hot takes about the industry, you know ways where, you're I guess, as you're kind of thinking about things, you might be like, oh, I have a kind of different view on what some of the folks think.
31:38.32
Ned
Hmm. Let me, let me think on that one. Um, I would, you know, we're on the data center theme. I am actually a little skeptical of the, the synergies between data center development and solar development. I think this is something that is becoming exciting. You know, EVs and data centers are probably the two biggest areas of of low growth on the grid.
32:06.65
Ned
ah from the few conversations we have had with data center developers and data centers in general, it seems like there's just this inherent mismatch where the load profiles really don't match up in the areas. You know, if you look at a Venn diagram of good places for data center development and good places for solar development, development, the area in between those is you know I think probably a lot smaller than one might guess from reading you know renewable energy trades these days. I think there's there's maybe a little bit more excitement about that on the renewable side than the reality is in the data center industry where they're just looking for the lowest cost, most reliable power as quickly as possible.
32:51.47
James McWalter
Yeah, we're actually working on a white paper with one of the big tech companies right now on this um and how it like it's basically the markets deviating. So if you're doing, you know, low latency, traditional data centers,
33:03.47
James McWalter
Renewables are not a great fit. They can. But you can't get pretty much more than 50% total power capacity because you tend to need 99.995% uptime.
33:14.72
James McWalter
um But if you're doing like a lot of the AI training, you don't need that quite as much uptime. So you don't need to have like multiple redundant systems. um So you know often you have the traditional data center.
33:25.74
James McWalter
You need a grid tie. And then if you had any renewables, you'd also need a gas generator. um But on the training side, which is the smaller component of the market,
33:32.57
Ned
Hmm.
33:33.31
James McWalter
but the fastest growing and and the one most urgent from a time point of view, there actually is like a lot of opportunities for Nobles, um, as long as you can go fast.
33:34.27
Ned
Hmm.
33:39.62
James McWalter
So it's like, if you can get steel and ground in 24 months, a data center developer will talk to you on the training side.
33:40.89
Ned
Okay.
33:44.16
James McWalter
Um, but if it's like, Hey, we're just, talking you know, but these are all on the behind the meter side. Um, but I, I agree. I think there's, you know, we've we've seen even amongst our customer base, like a lot of like, uh, you know, press releases saying, Hey, we're all in a data centers and like all this kind of thing.
33:58.07
James McWalter
And, You know, and because we, we have customers on both sides, you know, we've been kind of making connections and all those kinds of things and trying to be supportive. Um, but I think there's like a lot of kind of understanding need to be done about the specific use cases that make sense for solar and the ones that don't basically.
34:10.69
Ned
Yeah.
34:14.04
Ned
Yeah. and And going back to my earlier point, this is one where I would love to be proven wrong. And, you know, at least I know the sites that we find have, have water available too. So to the, you know, it's like, yeah, would would really welcome any of those conversations or other ways that paces can get built out to try to figure out where the the center of that, that Venn diagram is.
34:35.36
James McWalter
absolutely the the Venn diagram of of the logo, right?
34:38.66
Ned
yeah
34:41.00
James McWalter
Yeah, its this has been super helpful in that I guess, you know, one of the things I'm always kind of interested in, like how folks kind of like earlier in your career, you know, you talked a little bit about how you ended up in this space. um But as I was kind of like, kind of looking at your background, you actually, we actually went to the same university.
34:55.42
James McWalter
So you studied in Scotland for four years. I actually also went to, went to standards. Um, so yeah, I guess like, you know, uh, how'd you end up in Southland studying and you know, how did that kind of like drive you into the career that I'm having?
35:07.13
Ned
Yeah, that's a a great question. I went to the University of St. Andrews to study sustainable development. um I got really fixated on renewable energy when I was in high school. I remember just you know the timing of it. and you know for There was a speculative bubble in the oil markets and the price of oil shot up to you know like $130 some odd dollars a barrel at this point.
35:33.96
Ned
and And I got hired by a scientist who'd done a lot of biomedical research to start looking into petrochemical alternatives that can be produced through ah bacteria or sort of through biosynthetic pathways. And it just, you know, that was kind of my first glimpse into, um you know, technology driven sustainability, I guess is maybe maybe the best way to put that.
35:59.84
Ned
And at the at the time, this was really not something that US universities were set up to focus on from an academic standpoint at all. St. Andrews had launched the first degree program in sustainable development out of their geography department. And that caught my attention. um And you know the timing was really interesting in Scotland too, because you know they're they're really they're an oil economy. Not everyone thinks of them that way, but you know they pumped a lot of oil out of the North Sea and continue to.
36:31.39
Ned
But as far as oil reserves go, the North Sea is going to be one of the first to be fully depleted. And so Scotland was a bit of a canary in the coal mine from a Petro state standpoint of seeing that, okay, a huge amount of our revenue or GDP is is literally you know get going to dry up here. And and so you know Scotland made a big push in the early 20 teens to explore any and every renewable energy technology that can work there. Solar is not a big one for obvious reasons, but there's a surprising amount of it in Scotland considering how bad the weather is and how far north it is. um Wind has been huge there, tidal, all of that. so For me, that was really kind of about you know getting a jump on a lot of the innovation that was happening in the energy space in um in the UK.
37:25.92
Ned
And it's funny, I've seen that trend with startups too, where there will be technology companies that, you know, quote unquote corner of the market, you know, that they basically sign up like all five utilities in the UK in a matter of years. And they say, okay, how where do we grow from here? And then they come to the US where there's a few thousand utilities. And then, you know, they go from, you know, market dominance to being a small potato that no one has heard of. And, you know, there's so many,
37:53.60
Ned
more opportunities, but also so much more complexity in how the grid operates here in the U.S. So, um you know, it's kind of nice to see how it was like a view into the future of of how things could evolve in the U.S.
38:07.33
Ned
if they operated like Europe with the massive asterisks that they never do. um But yeah, it was a fun time too.
38:13.54
James McWalter
Yeah, that's a good time.
38:14.76
Ned
yeah
38:17.28
James McWalter
Everyone's upset about the time change recently, and if you're in Scotland, the time changes. It's like 3 p.m. and it's dark, so it's even worse.
38:25.79
Ned
yeah
38:26.42
James McWalter
But going to Net is absolutely great. I really enjoyed the conversation. I guess before we finish off, is there anything else I should have asked you but did not?
38:34.40
Ned
oh Let's see. I guess, you know, one thing that, you know, I'm assuming there's a lot of other developers out there listening. um We are really interested in trying to find more ways to partner with, you know, what we would call her traditional ground map developers. I don't think it's so uncommon for them to find You know, land near water bodies and try to avoid the water. And if, you know, if they're looking for a way to get their feet wet, we we like using a lot of stupid water puns. But um if, yeah, if it is something where there's some interest from developers, but not a desire to dive in headfirst, we're we're very open to figuring out
39:13.89
Ned
ways to partner with other developers that are interested in this space. And even more so, if there's any that happen to have developed floating projects that are looking for a home, we're always happy to look into acquiring those as well.
39:25.99
Ned
So yeah. um
39:27.26
James McWalter
Bye.
39:27.95
Ned
I guess last but not least, we're also hiring. I've been been searching for a developer for Maryland for quite some time in particular, but we're hiring for a number of development and engineering positions across the country. So feel free to reach out about partnering or if you want to come work for us directly.
39:46.99
James McWalter
And I can vouch that um you know we've worked with the Third Pillar team now for over a year, and everyone we've worked with and interacted with has just been absolutely you top of the game, very, very smart people, and a great team to join or or work with. It's been great. Thank you so much, Ned.
40:01.19
Ned
Yeah, thank you, James. Appreciate the time.
James McWalter
Hello, today we're speaking with Ned Horneffer, Vice President of Development at Third Pillar Solar. Welcome to podcast Ned.
00:09.06
Ned
Hi James, how are you today?
00:10.63
James McWalter
I'm doing very, very well. um Well, I guess to start Ned, you're great to learn a little bit about yourself and how you ended up at Third Pillar.
00:17.91
Ned
Yeah, absolutely. So I've spent my entire career about 12 years now in sort of the the clean energy space. It was called clean tech and then climate tech. And I i guess so the the one common thread has always been an involvement with startups and kind of new ideas and the commercialization of new technologies.
00:37.67
Ned
And so I spent about six years focused first on raising a venture capital fund in this space before I realized that that was you know a really tough thing to do and a tough time for it. And from there, I decided, OK, if we're not going to raise a fund to invest into some of these companies, I might as well pick an area that I think is is really interesting and exciting.
01:01.05
Ned
And so from that I got into battery energy storage and spent about five years working in the energy storage space as um you know as that industry was really starting to mature and electric vehicles were starting to see more adoption and ended up spending most of my time focused on working with solar developers and you saw a lot of synergies between battery storage and solar. um We were an integrator at that point who, you know, was was doing a lot of custom integration jobs and one of those that we got pulled into happened to involve a floating solar project and I thought, wow, like that is something that seems
01:41.89
Ned
So obvious, why has nobody thought of this before? Why is this not more of a thing? So I kind of went down the rabbit hole on that sort of mashup of marine technologies and solar technologies, opening up a lot of new space on the map for for solar development to happen.
01:59.90
Ned
And then it was it was just about three years ago that I heard of a new development shop that was being started ah specifically to focus on utility scale floating solar. I was backed by a private equity fund and I was like, okay, this this sounds too good to be true. let's Let's find out more. And it's been a long journey since then. But yeah, that's sort of the the origin story of how I got to Third Pillar as our first developer.
02:26.20
James McWalter
Super interesting. I want to dive into a lot of those bits. I guess one piece on the, ah you know, when you're kind of on the venture side, you know, actually I saw somebody tweet the other day that since the election, and for those listening, this this podcast is a couple, like a week after the election, they'll stop talking about climate tech and it'll go now be grid tech or energy tech.
02:45.40
James McWalter
Just, you know, you have to kind of kind of reposition it.
02:45.33
Ned
Yeah.
02:47.90
James McWalter
um And so I think like the the space has gone through a few of those kind of, you know, remesstaging or repositioning over the years.
02:48.01
Ned
My friends.
02:53.72
James McWalter
um Absolutely.
02:53.73
Ned
Yeah.
02:55.33
James McWalter
I guess, like, you know, I think Floating Solar has been something that you know I think people are generally aware of, developers who listen to the podcasts are probably somewhat aware of. What are, I guess, just at a high level, like what are the pros and cons of Floating Solar?
03:10.42
Ned
So I'll start with the cons. Um, there's, you know, cause this is the, really the reason that more people haven't been doing this is that you're front loading a lot of project complexity. So the, you know, the owners of water bodies tend to be either large industrial companies or municipalities counties. You know, there's not a lot of random agricultural landowners who happen to have large water bodies that they're not already using for recreation, whether that's boating, hunting. you know If they happen to be lucky enough to have a big water body, they probably are doing something with it. So you know we found that the the site control process has taken a lot longer than we anticipated. And a lot of that just has to do with who the types of landowners are and the the the questions that come up regarding development on a water body. You know you need to solve a lot before you you ever even really get to like
04:07.96
Ned
you know basic engineering designs just to get the landowner comfortable with what you want to do. ah you know and So I'd say that is probably the the biggest con is that you know there's just a lot of engineering complexity in site owner and conflicting use complexity right at the start that scares a lot of people away. The biggest pro I would say is that we're we're finding places on the grid that make a lot of sense to install solar where you know if we can get over that initial hump of a difficult site acquisition process,
04:42.75
Ned
we have an easier pathway through interconnection and permitting. and you know that That's a sweeping generalization, but we found that to be true in enough cases. like you know We'll go and look at a hosting capacity map in you know a place like Con Ed territory or Central Hudson, and there will be you know no one on the queue and a ton of um you know capacity on the feeder and the seven were like, this doesn't make sense.
05:09.28
Ned
except for the fact that you look around and you see, okay, there's just nowhere that somebody could possibly develop ground mount or even rooftop solar that can can sort of address that that pain point on the grid. And then we really from a permitting standpoint, we really try to be specific and the types of water bodies that we go after, where um you know people always ask about the permitting. And I would say that you know it can be the most different, but sometimes it can be a lot easier than ground mount and sometimes a lot harder. So it comes down to, yeah.
05:44.15
James McWalter
Yeah, I think one of the interesting things, you know most kind of typical kind of ground-bound developers, ah whether they're using paces or whether they're kind of approach to siting, there's often a pretty large exclusion area area around floodplain, wetlands, and so on. right whereas you know and that's and you know And any sort of water body typically has some form of wetlands or floodplain and kind of related to it. um So yeah, you might end up like having to be two or three miles away from a water body to just get out of that exclusion zone. And that's probably where that opportunity from interconnection place has and you just have less competition.
06:15.32
Ned
That's exactly right. Yeah, going back to front-loading the complexity, we don't really have the luxury of avoiding floodplains and wetlands as much. So, you know, that that's a con. Then the other pro is that we don't have to worry as much about sediment and erosion control or land clearing or You know, so often we don't have to worry as much about forest and delineations because you're in areas that have already been been cleared.
06:41.14
James McWalter
And I guess, like, in terms of, let's say, size, you mentioned utility scale, you mentioned, you know, DG in upstate New York, um you know, how like, how big is generally feasible for these projects? And I guess even, you know, a lot of times, folks think about acreage and, you know, like, there's different ways of, like, thinking about, like, the the large, and you know, people are thinking about how they set up the racks and, like, you can, the azimuth and, like, all these kind of different elements, which may not be as applicable. um So, yeah, I guess, like, how do you kind of think about size and then you know, even like product design and like how that, you know, different decisions kind of impact, you know, end results.
07:13.13
Ned
Yeah, for sure. I'd say it's the the question of what is sort of the sweet spot of sizing for floating solar has been one of the most important questions that we ask ourselves all the time and has probably been the one where our thinking has evolved the most since we got into this space. I mentioned briefly that we were initially funded specifically to focus on utility scale floating solar and about two years ago you know we came to the conclusion that we were at least a couple years early and that you know there was no rush to develop the projects that we were looking to develop at that point because the technology cost curve you know the the
07:50.36
Ned
supply chain, the manufacturing capacity of these floats, like none of that was there yet at that point. um we've We've since really picked up again on the utility scale side and you know we're we're pretty pleased to see that i you know I think a lot has changed in the market in the last couple of years. Most of that has been to favor floating and to support the case that we made a couple of years ago of like we're were coming into the right time, I would say, to start looking at floating being competitive for utility scale. um But when we decided a couple years ago it wasn't, we we took a pretty hard pivot from only doing utility scale to doing mostly community solar projects.
08:31.37
Ned
where I think you know long story short, I think we realized that you you know you lose out on some of the efficiencies that are required for it to be competitive if you go much below a megawatt. um But you know we've kind of found that three to five megawatt size range that aligns with many of the community solar programs to be a really good sweet spot, both in terms of the size of water bodies that you can find and um and the scale of project that's required to get to a level of cost competitiveness with with ground mountain rooftop.
09:08.90
James McWalter
Super interesting. i mean One of the kind of other elements that and throw off projects are you know either reaction from the community or you know the individual landowner or the adjacent landowners as they're kind of thinking through, will this solar project like affect my land values? um Are we changing you know the the way we think about our community from an agricultural community to a more industrial use case community? right and You get all these kind of various objections, NIMBYism, and all these kind of things that developers have to navigate. so um Because you're kind of working with you know a fairly defined set of water bodies, right there's a certain number in in the country. ah They are a mix of private, semi-private and publicly owned. um I guess, you know what are some kind of questions that might come up in those conversations that you know are similar or different to the other questions? I mean, are people very concerned about you know the fish and you know like these other kind of elements that like
10:02.09
James McWalter
people might kind of raise that wouldn't be typical for a typical ground mount.
10:06.75
Ned
So many, I don't even know where to start. Every water body we have found is so different and we will start to generalize things in certain regions, like for instance, Out West, by far the primary motivator for site owners that are interested in hosting floating solar is the evaporation savings. That is really more meaningful to them than lease revenue, renewable energy goals, any of that. um There can be really meaningful savings if we have sort of you know more than 40% or 50% of a water body covered. And if you're talking about some 10, 20, up to 50, 100 acre water bodies, you're talking about saving
10:46.16
Ned
you know, up to hundreds of millions of gallons of water a year. So um that is something that we've really leaned into out west. um You know, now the east coast is in a historic drought as well. So it's not something that we have focused on as much, but it's starting to come around again there. So I would say that that is probably the most um most obvious one. A lot of the others come down to specific use cases of that water body. um You know, there's a lot of effort put into keeping algae out of drinking water. That's an interesting one, especially you see a lot of drinking water reservoirs that are right next to golf courses. They'll have a lot of fertilizer runoff, huge algae blooms, and they're spending tens of thousands of dollars a year just to reduce the algae concentrations in their water because it it makes their their purification process more expensive. So a lot of what we get asked is you know how much can you reduce algae growth
11:44.10
Ned
Then you get to the question about things like fish. Okay, if you're covering enough of the water body to reduce algae growth, are you having a negative impact on the fish population? And you know the short answer to that big question is that it's complicated and it's super dependent on on every individual water body. you know It's like the the the depth, the temperature, the seasonality, the the runoff inputs to the water body. there's There's a lot of factors that we start to take into account when we look at what the environmental impacts of this will be. And the the permitting for that again varies a lot depending on what type of water body that we're working on as well. um
12:28.49
James McWalter
It sounds like that there's new, is there much kind of academic research that sometimes you have to rely on and like point to studies that, Hey, you know, uh, this is the the prescribed, you know, percentage coverage to maintain fish stocks and like all these kinds of things.
12:28.88
Ned
and
12:42.63
Ned
There's not nearly as much as we would like. um And so just you know for a little bit of history, floating solar was invented in Japan in 2009.
12:51.89
James McWalter
Oh, wow.
12:52.33
Ned
The first project in the US was done shortly thereafter in Napa Valley on an irrigation pond. And then no one really bothered doing it again anywhere in the US s for about a decade.
13:04.47
Ned
A handful of small projects here and there. but nothing meaningful you know for about a decade just because there was so much other lower hanging fruit to focus on. um Meanwhile, there's still been a pretty consistent amount of floating solar development all across Asia, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, China, Thailand. India has become one of the biggest players in floating solar recently, Indonesia.
13:29.79
Ned
as well. So it's really spread across Asia very quickly over the last 10 years. And there's a growing body of research, ah largely out of Singapore. And then Europe is all has also really been picking up on it. And I would say the last five years or so. So we're starting to see more research out, you know, especially like English language research coming out of Germany, and the Netherlands, Spain and France. So those are kind of the the powerhouses.
13:57.81
Ned
And just just to put it in context, there've been 40 megawatts or so deployed in the US versus about four gigawatts that have been deployed globally.
14:00.23
James McWalter
yeah
14:06.13
Ned
so yeah we are
14:08.23
James McWalter
And are are your kind of pipeline numbers public?
14:08.55
Ned
very
14:12.27
Ned
they They are not, but I can tell you we are exponentially above what has been deployed to date.
14:14.61
James McWalter
Okay.
14:19.37
Ned
you know We've got hundreds of megawatts of projects under site control that um you know that we'll be developing over the next few years. So yeah, we expect, based on just what what what we're doing alone, not to mention what some others were aware of or doing in the US, we think that the the growth rate will be exponential for at least the next five to ten years
14:41.03
James McWalter
Love to hear it, and and very exciting. I guess one thing, that as you were kind of chatting there, is the maintenance of the of the project you know of the panels. um you know This is something that ah comes up. I know there's some very cool companies doing yeah yeah using kind of like satellite imagery for to understand ah how the panels are doing, companies like Drone Bay, now Zitevue, and related companies. And then you actually have to like get folks out, you know sometimes cleaning the panels, you know making sure there's no dirt on them, all those kind of things. I guess, like what's the kind of maintenance? And how do you you know how is like the potential like difference in OpEx um for those type of projects compared to conventional Brown Mount?
15:20.83
Ned
You'll hear this answer a lot in generality, but I'll get specific. It's all about trade-offs too, right? So you I would say you know the the biggest, we'll start with the cons again.
15:25.48
James McWalter
OK.
15:30.88
Ned
the The biggest challenges that you have with floating are on big water bodies where you're anchored to the bottom and you don't have direct access to the shore.
15:41.54
Ned
You need to have boats and divers involved and those can get pretty expensive. um On the plus side, you don't have vegetation management. So, you know, I'd say those are kind of the the two biggest trade-offs is that you've got more expensive labor, less often with the the boats and divers, but then you don't have, you know, vegetation management is a shockingly large line item for O&M costs for, you know, for most ground-based solar. And so we're able to avoid that.
16:12.51
Ned
Plus a lot of the complexities of having to go on a roof which require replacements and even just getting up on roofs can be complicated sometimes. so
16:20.83
James McWalter
I'm.
16:21.43
Ned
Yeah, ah from a cleaning standpoint, you know, the biggest thing that we tend to worry about more than your average ground mount developer are birds. We're we're much more worried about seabirds. So this becomes a concern in coastal areas where you have gulls and cormorants and the more agile types that can land on top of your panels and see it as a nice fishing platform. um that That can um mess up your panels pretty fast if that gets out of control.
16:48.66
Ned
um But there are there are systems in place that most boat owners will know about um to you know to do what we can to prevent them coming in. For waterfowl, it's a little easier because they're not able to land on the arrays. so And so you you know string up a bit of fishing line to keep them off from you know from around the periphery.
17:07.58
Ned
and
17:07.68
James McWalter
super Super interesting. And and then you know I guess like thinking at some of the projects you've been working on that you've had under site control, and you're kind of moving through the development ah due diligence steps.
17:18.85
James McWalter
I guess in any of them, have you had to get you know particularly creative to you know kind of navigate some specific obstacle?
17:27.29
Ned
Honestly, I feel like every single one we've had to get creative in one way or another, either due to permitting restrictions, you know, landowner and and primary use requirements for the water body, or just like not sort of fitting cleanly in in a box of how they expect solar to be developed. Try to give some examples.
17:49.03
Ned
i guess you know one of the first like we we end up doing a number of projects at active mining sites and so we'll typically try to locate ourselves on the former quarries that are no longer being used and and that can be pretty straightforward but then we have a lot of the complexities of how to actually tie in projects like that to active mining sites where you know land is constantly shifting like we still have we we We almost we often have more challenges in how we deal with our shore side equipment and connecting back into the electric grid, even when we have a perfect water body that is, you know, easy to build on as far as water bodies go, um you know, often it's the last, you know, 500 feet of shoreline where we need to.
18:38.14
Ned
deal with you know protected areas, wetlands, other things like that, even just you know moving heavy equipment across sites. So um you know the shoreside components are one that are easy to overlook until rubber hits the road. um And I'd say that most often comes up at active mining sites. Then just you know from a contracting standpoint, we're doing more and more wastewater treatment ponds now.
19:03.83
Ned
And that's where a lot of the questions come up about how our system will either help or hurt the biological processes that happen there, where you know some are incredibly precise in how they're operated, others not so much. And each operator has you know kind of a a different mix of you know biochemical interactions happening in there and different sensitivities around that.
19:31.58
Ned
They tend to just overcorrect and play it very conservatively. And by and large, for most of them, we have heard that coverage is helpful, ah that, you know, having the amount of shade that we can provide helps their bacteria operate more effectively and essentially compete with less algae.
19:35.42
James McWalter
Sure.
19:50.12
Ned
So, um yeah, those those are products.
19:52.05
James McWalter
Do you do you do many ah yeah are any of those projects behind the meter or um they're even on the wastewater of treatment size that you're so grid connected?
20:00.79
Ned
on the On the wastewater treatment side, we've yet to do any behind the meter. We're we're looking at a few. you know It's funny, most of the wastewater plants that use the most power don't have big open lagoons. it tends to be The more rural you know the the ah high power processes often replace the big lagoons to Uh, so, you know, we're seeing that it's, it's often kind of one or the other there, but they're great for community solar, especially when they're owned by small municipalities. Um, but the, a lot of the mining sites we do are behind the meter, you know, we're finding mining operations that are using, you know, multi megawatt loads and running pretty constantly. So, uh, yeah, those, those are working out pretty well.
20:47.66
James McWalter
And I guess from the utilities point of view, um do they have any kind of like, do they treat it any differently? Or they just say, you know, at least we're getting some projects at a non-constrained part of the network.
20:58.94
James McWalter
Yay. Right.
20:59.91
Ned
i think yeah if if anything
21:00.03
James McWalter
um Or do they, you know, have you had to deal with some skepticism? Yeah. Good.
21:04.19
Ned
No, not thankfully, we have not had to deal with as much skepticism from AHJs, any type of regulators or utilities as much as we would have thought. you know At most, I think the utilities are like, oh, that's kind of interesting. um But you know by and large, they look at all of these the same. And you know I think we've we've yet to find any that are are willing to to do anything different for us based on the fact that we're floating.
21:32.62
Ned
We'd love that, but um but no. Electrically, these are identical. All they really care about is where the POI is.
21:40.85
James McWalter
makes all sense. And then I guess like thinking boat, you know, boat on the floating solar side, as well as the larger kind of renewables industry, you know, if you're looking a couple years out, you know, where do you think it will continue to evolve?
21:54.43
Ned
So the easy answer with floating, right? like I think the projects, well you know the same as what's happened in in Asia and Europe, you'll start to see larger and larger projects going to construction getting commissioned. The largest one in the US now is nine megawatts in New Jersey that's behind the meter to a water treatment plant for for drinking water. And I would expect that in the next three to five years, you'll see projects in sort of the 20 to 50 megawatt size range starting to get built.
22:29.90
Ned
Uh, and then, you know, and sort of the seven plus year timeframe, I think sort of in the 50 to 200 megawatt size range. the The thing that i'm less is less clear to me but I'm more hopeful for is that, um and so all of the water bodies that we are focused on and that we know anybody is focused on here in the US are ah inland. you know Inland manmade water bodies is essentially like the the playing field today. and And we think the most exciting way that that could open up is to start deploying projects into coastal areas. And that's you know where you can find
23:08.37
Ned
um you know big cities with harbors and shallow parts that are not used for boat traffic you know there's just the more you start to look at at coastlines particularly on the east coast there's just an incredible amount of protected shallow areas that have open water and you know a whole lot of permitting challenges to get there now um but it's funny we actually we're looking more into sort of like the the aquaculture playbook and looking at how states have opened up permitting for oyster farming and kelp farming and other types of um you know aquaculture and mariculture. They've made that permitting process remarkably streamlined, considering some of the potential risks and downsides of you know boats colliding with oyster farms and you know other concerns that they would need to prevent. So we're hopeful that you know probably not at the federal level under this next administration, but
24:05.18
Ned
um Looking out a little further, we'd like to see near shore and eventually offshore floating solar start to take off more.
24:13.06
James McWalter
I guess at what level does wave action and those things start to like have kind of concrete negative effects? right like you know If we're thinking about large reservoirs, they're reasonably sheltered, I'd imagine. you know ah They were literally man-made, so they might have you know fairly smooth sides and all those kind of things.
24:30.69
James McWalter
um If you're talking about the Great Lakes or you know ah a cove on the Hudson River, you know you're getting a bit more on the waves. And of course, if you're you know on the coast, you're're you know if you're in the Outer Banks or something, and it's even more extreme.
24:40.08
Ned
Yeah.
24:41.56
James McWalter
um So I guess, like ah ah you know there's is there kind of like a cutoff point or is this more, hey, if you designed these well, it can kind of handle most things you throw at it?
24:49.53
Ned
for For today's technology, for like what we could deploy tomorrow, um we're talking about you know being able to handle six foot waves pretty well and up to you know category five wins.
25:04.02
Ned
That really comes more down to the anchoring and mooring design. And and thankfully, there's been decades to anchoring and mooring design for coastal marinas, you know all over Florida, all over the Caribbean.
25:20.50
Ned
this this is tested technology. So really, you know, at the end of the day, it's being adapted this is marine technology being adapted to solar. um and um And it's really the the the solar industry that needs to catch up on that front. As far as kind of, you know, looking towards offshore, there are new system designs, mostly out of Europe and a few in Asia.
25:45.96
Ned
that are are being made to withstand 30 or 40 foot waves, ocean rollers really, um and and equally high wind speeds as well. so um yeah I don't think any of those problems are are insurmountable. It just comes down to a question of of cost. ah But I would say today still by far the largest barrier for doing any near shore or offshore floating solar is going to be the permitting. You're talking about, you know, five plus years of federal nexus permitting to get any of those approved.
26:21.66
James McWalter
So there was some ah changes to CEQA just out this week that people are still kind of navigating. And and so yeah know and you could have mentioned the potential changes ah at the federal level. yeah One of the ways we've been kind of thinking about things since the election is ah yeah things are going to move much more state focused. Red states have the fastest growing kind of renewables portfolios.
26:45.91
James McWalter
yeah a lot of the often you can actually get by permitting and some of the, ah you know, interconnection and air costs a lot easier than interconnection in most of the places. um And I guess, you know, as you're kind of thinking through like some of the, you know, I think ah we can all kind of imagine the kind of con case with some of this stuff.
26:54.89
Ned
Yeah.
27:01.99
James McWalter
But I guess how are you seeing some of the things kind of evolve? You know, there's obviously a lot of money is poured into our industry. um You know, some of that might might might not always be there. um I guess. Yeah. how How are you thinking about things over the next couple of years from from that point of view?
27:11.48
Ned
Yeah.
27:14.99
Ned
I think we're we're cautiously optimistic that what is solidified at the federal level with IRA and the the tax credits will hold. And there's sort of, there was enough bipartisan support for that and enough red state benefits and just general red state support for renewables at this point that, you know, I think that that is necessary for the whole industry to continue to, to grow and And we're, we're optimistic that that will hold. But I think you're right that as far as where we can be looking for any type of new support, that's really all going to come from the state level. And, you know, for better or worse, that has been the status quo for most of the history of the solar industry, right? Like, you know, there was always this concern of federal tax credits expiring, you know, getting extended here or there. There was never the long-term certainty we've had
28:08.60
Ned
with the Inflation Reduction Act until it was passed. so um you know i think that it's It's easy to have sort of existential fear about anti-renewables I'd like to think we're past that, um but there will be states that manage to differentiate themselves by making an effort to, you know, be, you know, be very pro solar at this time. I mean, Illinois is probably the most classic example where, you know, it seems like and it's just that, you know, so many developers have rushed in there. There's so much state support. They continue to double down on it. um And, you know, that ah ends up at some point almost being a good problem because these markets get so saturated and it comes then back to seeing, you know,
28:57.54
Ned
pushback from um you know local communities that are sick of seeing 50 acre cornfields get turned into industrial solar farms.
29:07.89
James McWalter
were you We also yeah help folks on on the load side as well. And I was having a conversation with somebody the other day who's looking for three to four gigawatts of load to come online in 2028. And so you know when you have such high kind of power demand in certain areas, ah yeah, i think I think if you're in the generation game, um there will still be plenty of opportunities regardless of what happens at the federal level.
29:28.15
Ned
God yeah, that that must be a data center.
29:31.07
James McWalter
but Potentially, yes. There's not too many other use cases, but yes.
29:34.60
Ned
Yeah, yeah.
29:34.83
James McWalter
I was like, oh, thats those timelines are spicy. But you know we'll we'll we'll do what we can with it. I mean, I think a lot of that stuff has to be massive behind the meter. like you We'll get you into connection on that timeline. um And so I think that's that's why I think it's kind of interesting even.
29:48.29
James McWalter
Thank you through some of the kind of behind the meter like opportunities are going from like micro grids to like people talking about very, very large systems. um And so, you know, potentially even as you kind of think about waterways that may not even be near a substation transition line, um there could even be potential opportunities for that kind of going forward with some of these co located off take and so on.
30:04.11
Ned
Yeah,
30:07.81
Ned
yeah our our largest, most active project right now is behind the meter. It's very much utility scale. um that you know it is it's It's at a very large brewery. I think I can say that much, but you know we're talking tens and tens of of megawatts behind the meter there. And that is in a place where they just would not be able to site nearly that amount on any ground or roof roof surfaces, obviously. So there's sort of this interesting niche for kind of, you know, small scale projects by utility standards, but by, you know, from a CNI standard or a behind the meter standard, it's pretty remarkable to see how much load there is in places. We're actually, you know, we've yet to find this with any data centers, but we're very hopeful to, because we hear a lot about how much water use there is from the data center industry.
31:01.98
Ned
presumably they're mostly pumping groundwater for that. but um you know And we don't know data center development very well, but for anyone out there listening who does, you know if there's you know water bodies nearby, come talk to us because we would would love to figure out how to power some of those from floating solar.
31:20.53
James McWalter
Super interesting. and i might I might be able to make some introductions after to the call. um I guess you know before we kind of kind of get towards the end here, um any kind of other kind of hot takes about the industry, you know ways where, you're I guess, as you're kind of thinking about things, you might be like, oh, I have a kind of different view on what some of the folks think.
31:38.32
Ned
Hmm. Let me, let me think on that one. Um, I would, you know, we're on the data center theme. I am actually a little skeptical of the, the synergies between data center development and solar development. I think this is something that is becoming exciting. You know, EVs and data centers are probably the two biggest areas of of low growth on the grid.
32:06.65
Ned
ah from the few conversations we have had with data center developers and data centers in general, it seems like there's just this inherent mismatch where the load profiles really don't match up in the areas. You know, if you look at a Venn diagram of good places for data center development and good places for solar development, development, the area in between those is you know I think probably a lot smaller than one might guess from reading you know renewable energy trades these days. I think there's there's maybe a little bit more excitement about that on the renewable side than the reality is in the data center industry where they're just looking for the lowest cost, most reliable power as quickly as possible.
32:51.47
James McWalter
Yeah, we're actually working on a white paper with one of the big tech companies right now on this um and how it like it's basically the markets deviating. So if you're doing, you know, low latency, traditional data centers,
33:03.47
James McWalter
Renewables are not a great fit. They can. But you can't get pretty much more than 50% total power capacity because you tend to need 99.995% uptime.
33:14.72
James McWalter
um But if you're doing like a lot of the AI training, you don't need that quite as much uptime. So you don't need to have like multiple redundant systems. um So you know often you have the traditional data center.
33:25.74
James McWalter
You need a grid tie. And then if you had any renewables, you'd also need a gas generator. um But on the training side, which is the smaller component of the market,
33:32.57
Ned
Hmm.
33:33.31
James McWalter
but the fastest growing and and the one most urgent from a time point of view, there actually is like a lot of opportunities for Nobles, um, as long as you can go fast.
33:34.27
Ned
Hmm.
33:39.62
James McWalter
So it's like, if you can get steel and ground in 24 months, a data center developer will talk to you on the training side.
33:40.89
Ned
Okay.
33:44.16
James McWalter
Um, but if it's like, Hey, we're just, talking you know, but these are all on the behind the meter side. Um, but I, I agree. I think there's, you know, we've we've seen even amongst our customer base, like a lot of like, uh, you know, press releases saying, Hey, we're all in a data centers and like all this kind of thing.
33:58.07
James McWalter
And, You know, and because we, we have customers on both sides, you know, we've been kind of making connections and all those kinds of things and trying to be supportive. Um, but I think there's like a lot of kind of understanding need to be done about the specific use cases that make sense for solar and the ones that don't basically.
34:10.69
Ned
Yeah.
34:14.04
Ned
Yeah. and And going back to my earlier point, this is one where I would love to be proven wrong. And, you know, at least I know the sites that we find have, have water available too. So to the, you know, it's like, yeah, would would really welcome any of those conversations or other ways that paces can get built out to try to figure out where the the center of that, that Venn diagram is.
34:35.36
James McWalter
absolutely the the Venn diagram of of the logo, right?
34:38.66
Ned
yeah
34:41.00
James McWalter
Yeah, its this has been super helpful in that I guess, you know, one of the things I'm always kind of interested in, like how folks kind of like earlier in your career, you know, you talked a little bit about how you ended up in this space. um But as I was kind of like, kind of looking at your background, you actually, we actually went to the same university.
34:55.42
James McWalter
So you studied in Scotland for four years. I actually also went to, went to standards. Um, so yeah, I guess like, you know, uh, how'd you end up in Southland studying and you know, how did that kind of like drive you into the career that I'm having?
35:07.13
Ned
Yeah, that's a a great question. I went to the University of St. Andrews to study sustainable development. um I got really fixated on renewable energy when I was in high school. I remember just you know the timing of it. and you know for There was a speculative bubble in the oil markets and the price of oil shot up to you know like $130 some odd dollars a barrel at this point.
35:33.96
Ned
and And I got hired by a scientist who'd done a lot of biomedical research to start looking into petrochemical alternatives that can be produced through ah bacteria or sort of through biosynthetic pathways. And it just, you know, that was kind of my first glimpse into, um you know, technology driven sustainability, I guess is maybe maybe the best way to put that.
35:59.84
Ned
And at the at the time, this was really not something that US universities were set up to focus on from an academic standpoint at all. St. Andrews had launched the first degree program in sustainable development out of their geography department. And that caught my attention. um And you know the timing was really interesting in Scotland too, because you know they're they're really they're an oil economy. Not everyone thinks of them that way, but you know they pumped a lot of oil out of the North Sea and continue to.
36:31.39
Ned
But as far as oil reserves go, the North Sea is going to be one of the first to be fully depleted. And so Scotland was a bit of a canary in the coal mine from a Petro state standpoint of seeing that, okay, a huge amount of our revenue or GDP is is literally you know get going to dry up here. And and so you know Scotland made a big push in the early 20 teens to explore any and every renewable energy technology that can work there. Solar is not a big one for obvious reasons, but there's a surprising amount of it in Scotland considering how bad the weather is and how far north it is. um Wind has been huge there, tidal, all of that. so For me, that was really kind of about you know getting a jump on a lot of the innovation that was happening in the energy space in um in the UK.
37:25.92
Ned
And it's funny, I've seen that trend with startups too, where there will be technology companies that, you know, quote unquote corner of the market, you know, that they basically sign up like all five utilities in the UK in a matter of years. And they say, okay, how where do we grow from here? And then they come to the US where there's a few thousand utilities. And then, you know, they go from, you know, market dominance to being a small potato that no one has heard of. And, you know, there's so many,
37:53.60
Ned
more opportunities, but also so much more complexity in how the grid operates here in the U.S. So, um you know, it's kind of nice to see how it was like a view into the future of of how things could evolve in the U.S.
38:07.33
Ned
if they operated like Europe with the massive asterisks that they never do. um But yeah, it was a fun time too.
38:13.54
James McWalter
Yeah, that's a good time.
38:14.76
Ned
yeah
38:17.28
James McWalter
Everyone's upset about the time change recently, and if you're in Scotland, the time changes. It's like 3 p.m. and it's dark, so it's even worse.
38:25.79
Ned
yeah
38:26.42
James McWalter
But going to Net is absolutely great. I really enjoyed the conversation. I guess before we finish off, is there anything else I should have asked you but did not?
38:34.40
Ned
oh Let's see. I guess, you know, one thing that, you know, I'm assuming there's a lot of other developers out there listening. um We are really interested in trying to find more ways to partner with, you know, what we would call her traditional ground map developers. I don't think it's so uncommon for them to find You know, land near water bodies and try to avoid the water. And if, you know, if they're looking for a way to get their feet wet, we we like using a lot of stupid water puns. But um if, yeah, if it is something where there's some interest from developers, but not a desire to dive in headfirst, we're we're very open to figuring out
39:13.89
Ned
ways to partner with other developers that are interested in this space. And even more so, if there's any that happen to have developed floating projects that are looking for a home, we're always happy to look into acquiring those as well.
39:25.99
Ned
So yeah. um
39:27.26
James McWalter
Bye.
39:27.95
Ned
I guess last but not least, we're also hiring. I've been been searching for a developer for Maryland for quite some time in particular, but we're hiring for a number of development and engineering positions across the country. So feel free to reach out about partnering or if you want to come work for us directly.
39:46.99
James McWalter
And I can vouch that um you know we've worked with the Third Pillar team now for over a year, and everyone we've worked with and interacted with has just been absolutely you top of the game, very, very smart people, and a great team to join or or work with. It's been great. Thank you so much, Ned.
40:01.19
Ned
Yeah, thank you, James. Appreciate the time.
