Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 03-19-25_WEDNESDAY_OPEN4BIZ_8AM

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

03-19-25_WEDNESDAY_OPEN4BIZ_8AM

And what's great about Open for Business, it's the opportunity for you to know about yet another great locally owned and operated business. And in this particular case, we're talking with Ryan Westfall from Max, now it's Max Energy, they get that right? Yeah, Max Energy Solar Cleaning. Max Energy Solar Cleaning. There are a lot of people have roof solar, a lot of people have backyard roofs, backyard solar, a lot of that going on here.

I don't think most people realize that the cleaning of a cell is kind of a big thing, right? It is. Yeah. What we find, especially in this area, is you get a lot of pollen in the spring, you get a lot of ash from the wildfires throughout the summer that just settle on that and block the effectiveness of the transfer for energy. How did you get into the business in the first place?

Or how did you see the need? I'm just curious how that worked. Yeah. Well, by trade, I'm a financial advisor. I've been doing that for about 20 years. of the transfer for energy. How did you get into the business in the first place? Or how did you see the need? Curious how that worked. Yeah, well, by trade, I'm a financial advisor. I've been doing that for about 20 years. But on our anniversary trip, my wife and I were jumping waves over in Maui, looked up and I saw just great big Hawaiian dude

with his earphones on and scrubbing solar panels. And I thought, I wonder if anybody's doing that back home with the big push with all the tax incentives for solar install and came home, nobody was doing that and decided let's do that, we'll fire it up. Okay, all right, so much for the dealing with the stocks and the financial planning, I'm gonna do my own stuff, right? Yeah, you know, there's some calculations in there figuring out what the efficiency levels are and those types of things for consumers that have solar panels on their systems and I grew up in

the roofing industry, Stephen Westfall is my brother. Oh, okay. So it's sort of like he's on a roof, you're on a panel, on the roof. So there's some simpatico there. There is. Yeah, absolutely. What is it? And I've often wondered about this because with big commercial style solar deals, I would imagine that if those things get dirty or if there's something going on,

the efficiency drops dramatically. And I'm just wondering, maybe you can tell us what's the difference, what happens between when it's dirty, when it's clean, how bad can it get sometimes? I'll bet in fire season it could get really bad. Yeah, absolutely. So we've done some local testing just on our own

through apps and run efficiency testing and we have seen Improvements up to 50% on back-to-back days same temperatures same conditions up to 50% Efficiency 50% more power coming out of it than what you were dealing with. Yeah, that's pretty big deal It's huge and and the big thing is is that people don't realize is that all summer long you're collecting power and if you're not using it, you're stacking that for credits in the winter months. And so people get into solar. You know, I didn't think about that. I don't have roof solar yet. I keep okay I know I know what you want to talk about you've been coming back here 40 times, you know over the last year But still this is this is about making sure that you get all of your energy credits, too Even if you are not using the power that you're generating, right? That's that's correct. It behooves you then to keep your your your solar cells clean about

You know in your experience about how often do you need like kind of like a regular schedule? you then to keep your solar cells clean. In your experience about how often do you need like kind of like a regular schedule or do you deal with people and they call you when they need it? Tell us about the service that you provided Max Energy Solar Cleaning then. So we provide for the residential customers typically we clean once a year. It's just the annual schedule will come out, we'll set it up whatever month we're setting you up. We will talk to you next year at the same time and we'll do the cleaning. And that typically does the job. We do have some

clients that are on a quarterly basis, especially our commercial locations. Commercial locations, they're running large systems, they're relying on that power to get back to their unit. So we're definitely on a quarterly basis with most of them. How do you actually clean one? Because you were talking about a guy on the roof with a broom. I would imagine it probably takes more than just spraying it with water. I could be wrong. No, you're absolutely right. So we do use only water, but we use deionized, reverse osmosis water, so we take all the particulate matter out of it.

Yeah, so you're not putting any more gray stuff on the... Bingo! Yeah, absolutely. And then we have solar specific brushes, and right now we manually scrub them. There are rotary brushes and those types of things that are available out there. We just haven't gone into that. Robots for large commercial operations that just roll on the panels themselves. Just rolling and brushing, huh? Yeah, but it's all water, so it's eco-friendly. We're not putting soap on them. We're not doing anything like that to ruin the environment. You don't have to worry about it killing the birds or anything else? No sir. Underneath that. No some of

the things speaking of birds is they will get under a nest underneath them or they'll perch on top of them and you know they make a mess so we also do bird proofing and pest proofing for the panel systems to make sure nothing's getting underneath and messing with the wires or creating a toxic environment with all the stuff they leave behind. Yeah, well, birds, bird stuff, not good. No, and bird stuff on the, uh, I mean, it's bad enough to have bird stuff on your car, right? But bird stuff on your solar cell, pretty bad idea. That's correct. All right. Very good here. So where can people go to find out more about this? And do you have like sort of, uh, you know, different tiers of service plans? How do you price that out for someone?

Do you have to get an estimate first or? Yeah, it's always... Because you know, one person has just a panel or two and other people may have everything covered. I don't know. Right. You're absolutely correct. And we do free estimates.

So if someone's interested in talking about that service, we're happy to sit down with them, go out to the location, look at what that job would entail and give them a catered specific plan. And our website is maxenergysc.com so max energy solar cleaning but just SC. Our phone number 541-646-7776 for calling in. So those are our two offices. And I'll put this up on my blog today folks you know just so you can look this up. Now you're going to be at the expo this weekend right right? Yes, sir. Yeah, home show. What's going to be going on there? Yeah, so we have a booth so we can just talk with

people, interact, and just, you know, give them the information about why we clean, what the importance is of that, so that, you know, they can just see us in person, meet and talk in a non-pressured environment. We're not knocking at your door. Yeah, with the clipboard, right? Yes, sir. You know, that kind of thing. Hey, Ryan, I'm just kind of curious. Do you have people that call you up not realizing or thinking that they have bad cells and not realizing that they're just dirty? I'm just wondering if people know about that kind of stuff.

Yeah, that is one of the ways we get... The other thing is we work with installers. And when they call their installers and say, our production is down, we think we have something wrong with our system they will look and see if the system's good and if the system's good they say well you might just have something impeding your energy production call Ryan at Max Energy. Yeah, do the solar cell computers or the inverters and all the other controllers that are there do they tell you that there's a problem or do you

have to actually look at it visually to determine that? There are apps and there are ways that people can go and actually check them. And so if the homeowner or business owner goes in and actually utilizes the app, they can see what their production is, where it started at.

There is some loss year over year, but it should be only about a half a percentage point per year. Yeah, just the aging of a cell will have a little and that's like anything like that. Absolutely. Everything gets a little more inefficient over time. What is the you know on the newest cells right now how much life are you getting out of those these days? Well I don't know a lot of the companies are warranting them out to 20 years and but if you're if you're warranting them out to 20 chances are

you can get more than that then if they're If they're going to guarantee it for 20. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Very good. And that's the thing we want to have maximum efficiency for the maximum lifespan of the panels. That's what we're trying to get out of it. Okay.

So what you do, you get in touch with Ryan, you can call him at 541-646-7776 and it's maxenergysc.com and you're going to be actually giving away some packages this weekend. Tell me a little bit about that when you're at the show. Okay, well let's start off with from this spot, we're going to give one free cleaning, solar panel cleaning. We also do gutter cleaning, some rooftop maintenance. So we're going to give away one free.

Oh, you do the gutter cleaning. I love you guys already. Alright, so we're going to give away to your listeners, we have a radio button on our website already set up for you guys, that we're gonna give any listener that calls in and puts in, I heard on KMED, that we're going to offer one free cleaning on there and then through the home show we'll do one free cleaning giveaway per day. Now this is residential, it's solar cleaning or gutter cleaning, not the other services. Yeah, yeah, you're not gonna clean the Facebook data farm, right?

Yeah, bingo. Okay. For free. Yeah, no sir. But that's where you can enter and... So enter on the website right now. Yes, sir. Is what you're saying.

Okay, so go to maxenergysc.com, click on the radio button, and then say, hey, you heard about this on KMED, and then you are in for a free residential cleaning. Yes, sir. Yes sir. And so you don't have to do the cleaning, you do the cleaning instead. Well my kids do the cleaning but yes. Oh your kids do the cleaning. Yeah it's a family business. So I have three sons that do the cleaning. My daughter helps me in the back office doing paperwork and invoicing. So it's a family business we're just growing up. Even my 10 and my 12 year old come with me to talk to people and they

have their little Max Energy shirts that fit them too cool. It's a family business. Okay now do you enjoy this now? Because you say you saw this with them cleaning cells in Hawaii and you got the idea. Are you more relaxed now? Is it one of those things where you sleep better at night? Because sometimes being a financial planner, is that what you said? Yes, sir. Yeah being a financial planner. I can be kind of stressing. Yeah, it is It can be if you take long-term plans that that's good But I do like the the workout part of it. Although my kids will say he doesn't do much work anymore So I started doing a lot of the work right out of the gate, but they're doing it all Yeah, see he's the head of the business and then you have the younger guys that are doing

more of the working out but hey, it's the natural order of things. It should be. All right. Hey Ryan, great getting a chance to meet you and we'll send people. Once again go to maxenergysc.com and click the radio button, get your name and number and just make sure and let you know that you heard about it here on KMED and we'll get you in for that, okay? That'll do it.

Thank you, Bill. Good talking with you.