Want to grow a billion-dollar business? You need better systems, not just better ideas. Adam James has had a front-row view as Energy Impact Partners has scaled from a $500M fund into a multi-billion-dollar force as a clean energy VC. But, as he shares, the secret to success isn’t capital or flashy pitch decks. It’s an obsession with infrastructure, team building, and doing the messy work of aligning people and process. In this candid conversation, Adam breaks down his methodology for scaling fa...
Feb 03, 2026•20 min•Season 17Ep. 897
The solar industry scaled faster than almost anyone expected. But in the rush to deploy, one part of the system never fully got built. In this episode, Nico Johnson sits down with Suvi Sharma , founder of Solaria and now co-founder and CEO of SolarCycle, to talk about what happens after solar works. Suvi explains why end-of-life planning, repowering, and material recovery are no longer edge cases - they’re becoming core infrastructure challenges for the industry. This conversation goes beyond re...
Jan 30, 2026•1 hr 5 min•Season 17Ep. 896
What goes through Alex Honnold’s mind when he’s thousands of feet off the ground without a rope? After his first-ever Taipei 101 Live Broadcast ascent of one of the world’s tallest buildings, we thought it’d be useful to revisit what we learned from Alex about mental fortitude and his singular admonition to “do the thing”. Curious how Alex channels discomfort into growth? This episode explores the surprisingly grounded mental habits that drive one of the world’s most extreme athletes and how tho...
Jan 28, 2026•17 min•Season 17Ep. 895
Clean energy should be easy to finance. The money exists. The technology works. The demand is real. And yet, projects stall. Deals drag. Capital gets stuck. And with the IRA crumbling under our feet, everyone is right to ask “how will these projects actually get funded?!” So what’s actually broken? In this episode of SunCast, I sit down with Alfred Johnson , CEO and co-founder of Crux , to unpack how clean-energy finance actually works once a project leaves the slide deck — how pricing gets disc...
Jan 23, 2026•1 hr 4 min•Season 17Ep. 894
Data centers aren’t the problem. They’re the stress test. As AI-driven demand surges, the grid is being pushed in ways it was never designed for. But instead of asking how to slow data centers down, today’s conversation asks a better question: Is the grid fit enough to handle what’s coming next? In this Tactical Tuesday episode, recorded live with the Smart Electric Power Alliance, we explore grid fitness — a new way of thinking about flexibility, planning, and speed to power. SEPA’s Ann Collier...
Jan 21, 2026•30 min•Season 17Ep. 893
What does a modern energy company actually look like? In this episode, Nick Chaset, CEO of Octopus Energy US , joins Nico Johnson to explore a question that sits at the center of Octopus’s strategy: Is it a utility with great technology—or a technology company operating inside energy? Nick’s career spans California energy policy, years running East Bay Community Energy, and now scaling Octopus in the U.S. He brings an operator’s perspective on what it really takes to build and run energy busines...
Jan 15, 2026•1 hr 15 min•Season 17Ep. 892
Big things come in small packages. Could something smaller than a deck of cards be instrumental in our ability to meet the needs of the energy transition? In the ever-evolving landscape of power electronics, one material has been steadily gaining prominence due to its exceptional properties and transformative potential: Silicon Carbide (SiC). This remarkable semiconductor has revolutionized various industries, from automotive to aerospace, with its ability to operate at high temperatures, voltag...
Jan 13, 2026•18 min•Season 17Ep. 891
The power grid isn’t just growing (at unprecedented rates!) It’s becoming more complex, more distributed, and harder to manage. In this episode, Marc Spieler, who leads NVIDIA’s global Energy business, explains how AI and accelerated computing already support grid operations, solar and storage forecasting, and infrastructure planning across the energy sector. Nico and Marc explore why electrification and data center growth are reshaping demand patterns, how software-defined infrastructure helps ...
Jan 08, 2026•54 min•Season 17Ep. 890
The energy grid is facing a challenge unlike anything we’ve seen before. Think about this: one Virginia co-op has over 20 GW of demand in its queue. That’s more than the energy demand of New York City. As electrification and data center expansion accelerate, public power and electric co-ops are on the front lines of solving this surge. Electric cooperatives and public utilities are facing a wave of electrification, data center load, and manufacturing demand that rivals the size of major cities. ...
Jan 06, 2026•30 min•Season 17Ep. 889
2025 was a year of hardship for many, yet it was also a crucible for entrepreneurs, developing grit, resilience and perspective. We were able to capture some phenomenal conversations on the SunCast Podcast, and wanted to highlight a few that stand out for their vision and which also got among the most downloads of the year. In 2025, the clean energy industry was finally thinking like Amazon, building like Ford, and investing like it’s personal. Today’s episode highlights some of the key moments ...
Jan 01, 2026•36 min•Season 17Ep. 888
What do a struggling mom in Georgia and a solar installer named Jim have in common? Their stories can change elections and shape public perception of clean energy. In this final episode of 2025, Aaron Nichols returns to SunCast with a mission: rescue storytelling from corporate cliché and remind us why one emotional story is worth a thousand graphs. His viral LinkedIn article Four Rules for Storytelling Corporate America Desperately Needs takes aim at how we confuse content creation with actual ...
Dec 30, 2025•57 min•Season 17Ep. 887
🎄 Pull up a chair and pour some eggnog. It’s time for the first-ever SunCast Christmas episode. This special holiday edition brings together the full SunCast leadership crew—Nico Johnson, Jeremy Pingul, and (drumroll, please) new team member Josh Beck—for a reflective and lively roundtable you won’t want to miss. What made 2025 so memorable? From Alex Honnold’s surprising passion for solar, to technical deep-dives and industry revelations, this episode is packed with powerful moments and bold p...
Dec 24, 2025•44 min•Season 17Ep. 886
Can the city known for oil & gas become the center of clean energy? In this powerhouse episode, we meet Jane Stricker , SVP of Energy Transition at the Greater Houston Partnership and Executive Director of HETI (Houston Energy Transition Initiative). Jane shares a front-row view of Houston’s bold strategy to stay the energy capital of the world – not just in oil, but in all forms of energy. Jane breaks down how Houston is scaling clean tech faster than ever before, attracting startups and co...
Dec 22, 2025•24 min•Season 17Ep. 885
Solar is finally getting smarter. And faster - thanks to…robots? Recorded live at RE+ 2025, this episode takes you behind the scenes of solar’s most advanced innovations — from automation in engineering to AI-driven O&M and digital twins. Hosts Amy Norstedt and Josh Beck sit down with some of the Industry’s most forward-thinking executives to talk real-time transformation across the project lifecycle. Featured in this episode: Tyler Nelson, CEO at Revamp’s outlines how their new software sui...
Dec 20, 2025•28 min•Season 17Ep. 884
Most people in solar avoid the uncomfortable conversation: what happens when systems age, warranties expire, components fail, and the original installer is long gone. Cesar Barbosa — founder of NuLife Power Services — has built a business around the part of the industry nobody wants to talk about: decommissioning, system remediation, and repowering . In this episode, Cesar breaks down why aging commercial solar is becoming a massive opportunity, the common failure points he’s seeing in the field...
Dec 18, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Season 17Ep. 883
The rules of the game have changed. Have you figured out the OB3 playbook? From massive tax credit shifts to permitting bottlenecks and foreign entity restrictions, the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” has reshaped the future of clean energy in America. At this year’s RE+ 2025, top minds from GoodLeap, Infineon, SEIA, and Wood Mackenzie broke down what OB3 really implicates across solar, storage, and grid infrastructure. Recorded live from the PowerUp Podcast Stage, this episode captures the p...
Dec 16, 2025•27 min•Season 17Ep. 882
AI is pushing the grid to its limits — and transformers are now the critical path for both data centers and renewable projects. Today’s guest, Doug Banty , EVP at Forgent (and former CEO of MGM Transformers), sits at the intersection of these two worlds. Half of his week at RE+ was spent across the strip at the Yotta data center conference, where the only topic on everyone’s mind was power . In this episode, Doug explains how AI-driven rack density is rewriting the entire powertrain, why hypersc...
Dec 11, 2025•17 min•Season 17Ep. 881
What’s your plan when the power goes out? If you think a generator is your only option, think again.Today’s conversation, live from our RE+ PowerUp Live stage, Rachel Stotts of Jackery breaks down a new category of home energy backup: flexible, modular systems that you can easily scale and take with you . Whether you're facing tornadoes or planning a weekend tailgate, portable energy solutions cover everything from your fridge to your CPAP machine, and they’re becoming increasingly popular with ...
Dec 09, 2025•15 min•Season 17Ep. 880
“Speed to Power” is the new race — but can the grid keep up? Hyperscalers, AI, and industrial demand are pushing load growth from flat to vertical. Yet most projects still take five to seven years just to interconnect. That’s the bottleneck Hugo Mena is tackling as Chief Growth Officer at Electric Power Engineers (EPE) . This live conversation addresses the forces shaping the grid of the future — and what it’ll actually take to deliver power at the speed innovation demands. Hugo shares how devel...
Dec 04, 2025•20 min•Season 17Ep. 879
This Giving Tuesday, SunCast brings you three powerful stories of how clean energy is transforming communities, saving lives, and unlocking local climate action. Host Nico Johnson sits down with leaders working across three different fronts of the climate fight: • Robin Swanhuyser — Twende Solar Electrifying community hubs in places like rural Ghana, turning schools and clinics into resilience engines for entire villages. • Will Heegaard — Footprint Project Deploying portable solar microgrids af...
Dec 02, 2025•57 min•Season 17Ep. 878
Can getting a solar permit be as fast as ordering takeout? Permitting may be the most boring part of solar, but it's also the biggest bottleneck. That’s what Matthew McAllister is working to fix. As CEO of SolarAPP , he’s leading a quiet revolution that helps installers skip the paperwork and get to work faster with instant, automated approvals. In this episode, we dive into Matthew’s journey from the West Wing to the frontlines of the clean energy transition. With a background in government tec...
Nov 27, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Season 17Ep. 877
America’s about to make a big bet on critical minerals and rare earths. In case you missed it, the DOE just reorganized and announced a major initiative around the refining of this critical element in our energy and defense future. Why? Because the energy and defense sectors are dangerously dependent on China’s refining power; but, what if we could change that without opening a single new mine? We recently covered a company that’s rethinking rare earth and critical mineral supply chains from the...
Nov 25, 2025•35 min•Season 17Ep. 876
In 2008, Fluence installed one of the first lithium-ion battery systems ever connected to the U.S. grid. Back then, the idea of a domestic battery supply chain felt distant—almost theoretical. Today, it’s real. John Zahurancik, now President of Fluence Americas, has spent nearly two decades pushing the storage industry from “interesting pilot projects” to critical grid infrastructure . The last time he was on SunCast, he said domestic content would happen. This year, Fluence started shipping it....
Nov 20, 2025•31 min•Season 17Ep. 875
Most solar projects are still built the hard way—treating structure, electrical, and software as separate scopes that have to be stitched together in the field. But the teams delivering gigawatts today know something different: solar plants work best when they’re designed as systems, not parts. In this Tactical Tuesday, Nico sits down with three of the people shaping that shift inside Nextpower: Jake Morin (Chief Product Officer), Ryan Schofield (VP of Electrical Systems), and Jyoti Jain (Head o...
Nov 18, 2025•40 min•Season 17Ep. 874
Batteries aren’t just supporting the grid anymore, they are defending the grid. Chris Finley, CCO of TruGrid , joins Nico on stage at PowerUp Live to explain how battery storage has shifted from a “nice-to-have” to a mission-critical asset class. Whether it’s enabling arbitrage in ERCOT or powering hyperscale data centers, battery systems are now leading the charge, literally. From the complexities of supply chains to the myths about lithium tech, Chris shares a practical, from-the-field perspec...
Nov 13, 2025•29 min•Season 17Ep. 873
A Powerwall delivery truck flipped. No fire. No smoke. Seemed safe. They tossed those Powerwalls into a landfill. Four days later—explosion! That incident didn’t just make headlines; it changed Tesla’s fire strategy. In this Tactical Tuesday, retired Battalion Chief Kathleen McCaffery explains how that one mistake led Tesla to create a Global Fire Liaison role—and why every developer, EPC, and AHJ should borrow the playbook. Kathleen walks through the real science of lithium-ion incidents and th...
Nov 11, 2025•21 min•Season 17Ep. 872
This episode marks ten years of SunCast - and the return of its very first guest. In 2015, a young GTM Research analyst named Adam James joined host Nico Johnson for the debut episode exploring the rise of solar in Latin America. A decade later, Adam is a Partner at Energy Impact Partners and Chair of the Clean Energy Leadership Institute (CELI) . Together, he and Nico reflect on how far both they—and the clean energy industry—have come. This isn’t just a reunion; it’s a conversation about how w...
Nov 07, 2025•1 hr 46 min•Season 17Ep. 871
“Is your project really compliant?” That’s the billion-dollar question developers across the U.S. are asking as Foreign Entity of Concern (FEOC) rules tighten their grip on clean energy tax credits. If you are(were) banking on the ITC, PTC, or 45X, you can’t afford to miss this Tactical Tuesday deep-dive. The rules are shifting. Supply chains are murky. And guidance is still evolving. Host Nico Johnson pulls together an expert panel to decode how FEOC is reshaping the way projects are sourced, e...
Nov 04, 2025•56 min•Season 17Ep. 870
What happens when a builder and a coder decide to fix solar’s biggest disconnect? In this episode, SunCast host Nico Johnson sits down with Maksim Markevich and Ben Callam , the co-founders of PV Farm —a platform born from frustration with designs that look perfect on screen but fall apart in the field. Maksim, a self-taught engineer from Belarus, learned to code his way out of rebar spreadsheets and into a global following on YouTube. Ben, an architect who traded drawings for job sites across A...
Oct 30, 2025•1 hr 17 min•Season 17Ep. 869
Roofers are entering solar. Solar pros are adding roofing. How are these trades getting the training & resources required to level up and provide the appropriate level of service to homeowners? Is the future of residential solar trades consolidating int a new kind of contractor? In this RE+ 2025 live session, Nico sits down with James Mason , VP of Renewable Energy at ABC Supply, to explore the once-in-a-generation convergence of two massive industries—and why the right strategy (and the rig...
Oct 28, 2025•23 min•Season 17Ep. 868
