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In this episode, James talks with Navya Gundeti, Director of Project Development at Engie North America, where she leads the distributed solar and storage development pipeline.
Navya is operating in a market where five-year plans don't survive the year they were written. OBBBA, tariff whiplash, data center land competition, and reshuffled interconnection queues forced her team to rebuild its strategy in real time. Her case in this episode: rigorous quantification on what you can measure, honest intuition on what you can't, and a bet that the next real unlock for the industry is utilities and advanced computing finally meeting.
- Why distributed solar isn't a head-to-head competitor for data center load — but co-ops and munis facing first-time load growth are a real opening
- Competing with hyperscalers offering landowners $25K–$100K+ per acre, and why landowner education (not price) is the distributed developer's advantage
- The interconnection playbook shift: the right technology partners plus deep utility stakeholder relationships, not "submit and wait"
- Her hot take: the fusion of AI, quantum computing, and grid intelligence will flip the script.
A must-listen for distributed solar and storage developers navigating the OBBBA aftermath, the data center wave, and the next phase of interconnection.
Paces helps developers find and evaluate the sites most suitable for renewable development. Interested in a call with James, CEO @ Paces?
