Not Your Father’s Data Center - Solar Power's Role in the Future of Digital and Energy Infrastructure

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

In this episode, Raymond Hawkins, Chief Customer Officer at Compass Data Centers, sits down with Dan Cook, founder and Managing Director of Solar Stone. Hailing from Cleveland, Ohio, Dan Cook brings a diverse background rooted in commodities and metals trading before moving into utility-scale solar and battery development, overseeing projects totaling approximately 2 gigawatts.The conversation spans the dramatic growth in data center power demand, including how this surge has challenged both generation and transmission infrastructure. Dan Cook provides context from his energy brokerage and commodity experience, discussing supply chain constraints, queue backlogs for new generation assets, and the complexities of interconnection.Key themes include the impact of speculative projects on development timelines, the evolving landscape of long-duration storage technologies, and the role of federal incentives in renewable energy. The discussion also covers PR challenges for data centers, grid-connected versus behind-the-meter solutions, and the nuanced relationship between data center developers, utilities, and end users.Timestamped Overview:00:00 Rising demand for copper mining06:11 Challenges in energy transmission09:50 Challenges with data center power needs11:04 Challenges for Data Center Development16:12 Land strategy for renewable projects18:24 Challenges in grid development collaboration22:14 Rise of renewable energy in data centers25:09 Discussing project site opportunities27:58 Focusing on regional solar projects32:53 Utility procurement and renewable energy trends36:28 Long duration energy storage38:27 Federal tax credits discussion43:33 Discussing solar energy basics

There's really only so many bona fide data center developers that are actually going to go soup to nuts and deliver what the end user needs or what the hyperscalers and, you know, these newer builds are looking for. Everyone else is effectively just a broker. Welcome to another edition of Not Your Father's Data Center. I am your host, Raymond Hawkins, Chief Customer Officer at Compass Data Centers. Today we are joined from the great state of Ohio, Dan Cook, the founder and managing director of Solar Stone. Dan, how you doing? Doing well, Raymond. How you don't?

Good, good. So today we're going to talk about data centers. We're going to talk about solar power. We're going to talk about generation and transmission and distribution and all the things that the data center business is doing to our grid. But before that, we would love to hear a little bit about you is Ohio home. Have you always been in Ohio? Go back as far as you like. We'd love to hear about you and how you decided to get in the solar business.

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate it. You know, at the top level, my company, Solar Stone, we are utility scale solar and battery developers for the most part. We currently are working on about two gigawatts worth of projects. Ohio is home. I'm born and raised in Cleveland, and that's where I decided to set up shop. Really starting Solar Stone, for me, we were always development-minded and focused. Really didn't start developing our own projects until really 2021, 2022.

And, you know, I myself did not come from a development shop. I think that's, you know, somewhat unique in the development world, especially as this industry has grown so much. I got my start, you know, really in the commodities world, I was a metals trader. and started off working base metals, copper, aluminum, nickel, lead, zinc, those types of things. And we had a lot of clients in the physical space. And, you know, it was a fast, stimulating environment. I really enjoyed it. I'm going to get you to pause on the metals thing for one second.

I watched a clip yesterday about, and it was the CEO of a large copper miner, and he made a statement that blew me away. So hearing that your metals background, I'm going to get. you to address it if you don't mind. He said that we are going to have to mine and produce as much copper in the next 18 years as we have in all of human civilization based on how much copper goes into technology today. That number just blew me away, even if it's not 18 years. Directionally, is he right? Is it is the demand gone up that high? Absolutely. I think when you look at the electrification narrative that large, copper really is the winner and copper should

be seen as kind of the biggest concern. I've seen all kinds of numbers and projections on this over, you know, the last four to five years. Those numbers sound, sound accurate. I mean, I'd have to, you know, get into the new grid. Direction that he's right. He's absolutely right, 100%. Because he made the comment about recycling. And I know we're here to talk about solar, but interesting, it's all, our industry is constraining the world. And I had not heard this copper constraint. He said, look, if we took all the copper out of all the buildings in the world, it would help. But he's like, obviously, we can't do that.

They're all, all the infrastructures built. That copper's all staying where it's staying. We got to find all in that new ore. And I just, that blew me away. 18 years, the same amount of copper is in all of recorded history, which was just shocking. Absolutely. And the, the grave qualities have been going down, the legacy mines, the legacy ass. sets, you know, we're all, I mean, it's natural resource economics. There are, there have been

ways to improve, you know, upon those existing mines and technologies. But, you know, the, the mining sector has a, a big outlook and some big shoes to fill to, to really meet that demand. Well, you're, you peak my interest with being in the, in the, in the metals, commodity metals, but keep going because I interrupted you, but I had to, had to ask when you brought it, since you brought it up, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, it, it, it, it still informs my perspective somewhat. I mean, you look at take what we deal with on the battery side and now how critical minerals are such a massive part of our conversation for, I mean, it's a national security issue at this point. And there's a lot of people, you know, in the government and in the private sector trying to navigate that. So that perspective was always and still is incredibly valuable to me.

You know, what really happened as I got that start, and I mentioned it was a small shop. So looking at different channels of business, different ways to grow, at that firm, I started the base of the energy brokerage side of the business, essentially brokering electricity and natural gas contracts, conventional contracts for the most part to our metals clients, some of whom were very large loads. I mean, we talk about large industrial loads today, 20 years ago, even 10, 15 years ago, a large industrial load was an aluminum smelter. It was a steel mill. It was, you know, the typical heavy manufacturing, dirtier industries that, you know, people. Yeah, that was as intense a load as you would get. Absolutely.

Yeah. You might have had 100 megawatts for, you know, a steel mill or, you know, a mini mill and giant arc furnaces and very significant loads at the time. Now 100 megawatts is, you know, year one for a new data center potentially, right? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Our industry has certainly caught the generation business a little flat-footed.

And I don't mean that disrespectfully. I just, it's gotten so big so fast that how to communicate, collaborate, plan, and grow with our industry is really, you know, the power. The power world is spinning a little bit, which will lead us to the business you're in today. Well, absolutely. And I think it's not only caught the generation business a little flat-footed, but the transmission business, right? And for sure. The utilities, I think my understanding is historically, you know, the data center folks are looking for good interconnects. They're looking for speed to power in a conventional sense where the utilities have capacity and they're able to, you know, bilaterally negotiate a good position and good transmission service.

Whereas I'd be hard-pressed to find that that exists today. And even in the last 12 to 18 months since we've become more aware of what the data center industry needs, the transitions to going behind the meter and having to bring your own resources, bring your own capacity, it feels like that even happened quicker, you know, than we anticipated. So when you look at the generation industry, because they are, you know, at least in most of the country, largely decoupled, you know, the provision of power and energy, the interconnection cues for new generation assets are as high as they've ever been. I mean, they've bloated, quite frankly. And the cues themselves have had to deal with an insane amount of backlog.

Cue reform to get rid of speculative projects. They've increased the costs for basically every technology, everywhere in every single market. But the lead times aren't coming down, right? if when I started in this industry, you could still potentially get, you know, a new power plan up and running in certain markets on a three-year timeline. Now, I think that average is easily five years. It's not going the right direction. It's not going backwards. You know, it's really just continuing onwards. And we've got projects that that are part of that timeline six years before they'll have operations.

It's the new normal. Some of that's equipment, right? some of that's gear. What are some of the other reasons, Dan, that you see that Q drawing out so much? I think it's a couple things. It is the sheer amount of projects. I mean, the grid operators themselves, I don't think, were equipped. And the processes that they have were just not equipped to deal with hundreds upon hundreds of Q applications.

So there is that sort of raw kind of headcount, talent, you know, workforce to be able to do the work. But then you also get into, you know, developers or projects that sort of start gamifying the queue, if you will. You know, historically, you design your project, you pick your point of interconnection and say, okay, we're going to see how much it costs, how much of the upgrades we need to shoulder in order to get that project online. Those costs are somewhat socialized across all the other projects in your queue, in your cluster, in that grid operator. So it's hard to get a true picture of what the air connection costs might be if 80% of the projects might withdraw in the middle of the Q process. So that's caused a significant amount of delays.

I would say equipment historically hasn't always been the limiting factor. Now, you know, you look at breakers and transformers. There are some very long lead times for those components now. But just the sheer amount of projects and the way the Q's, you know, the key. process was designed, you know, 10 years ago, even 20 years ago, and how it's continued to exist versus how it actually functions. They broke it essentially. Yeah. Yeah. The industry, we get asked this on a bunch and I always tell people, I say, look, you know, when a developer was building a neighborhood with 800 houses, you know, when he was done, that development

might have needed, you know, five megawatts or, you know, to run the whole development. So, so getting him delivered power fit in the model for the grid and the grid operator on the generation side, right? When you show up and say, I need two gigawatts, that doesn't fit in the model, right? That wasn't like, oh, yeah, we've had two gigawatts on the roadmap. It'll be fine, right? And yeah, it'll no problem. It'll fit in.

We've got to turn this knob here and dial that over there and it'll all be good. The sheer scale has just completely destroyed the models. And then to the point I think you alluded to, the other one is not all of these data center projects are legitimate data center projects. In other words, there's a lot, because there's so much talk around our industry, there are lots of speculative demand in the system, but I still think has to get cleaned out. And I think it's why we see the generation guys asking for so much more financial wherewithal and commitment on the front end to try to weed out so much of that speculation, because I think it's really hard to tell what the real projects are still. Absolutely. It's getting

better. It's getting better, but it's still not perfect, the system for sure. Well, and in some ways, the data center folks are dealing with what we just dealt with or what we're still dealing with on the generation side is having speculative projects, having an incredible amount of incentives offered to the industry three years ago, four years ago, you know, when the IRA came out, and I'm still obviously pro incentives for my own industry and my own technologies that we develop. But, you know, everybody and their cousin who had a backyard 40 acres with a transmission line on, it said, great, we're doing solar, you know, and I suspect at least what we've seen or heard in the data center world is that it's similar. You get a lot of the real estate folks that hear

these, you know, elevated valuations on a dollar per acre basis. And they say, great, I want a piece of that. What do I have to do? Well, you know, just because you might have a potential interconnect and some land doesn't mean you're going to be able to drop a data center down there. You know, from at least what I've seen in interfacing with this industry is there's really only so many bona fide data center developers that are actually going to go soup to nuts and deliver what the end user needs or what the hyperscalers and, you know, these newer builds are looking for. Everyone else is effectively just a broker. Lots of speculators out there, lots of speculators. Lots of speculators. I would tell you,

So when I got, so I've been in the data center business, about 13 years. When I got in, there were fewer than 300 data center companies on the planet, right? Doing data, genuinely delivering data center capacity. Today, there's about 4,000. Yeah. So, and it's just, it's been a mad rush, right? And that's only counting people that have actually delivered. If you count people that say they can deliver, it's probably about 12,000 that have never actually delivered anything.

So, yeah, it's crazy. So I do want to, you mentioned batteries, you mentioned behind the meter. You mentioned everybody who thinks they got in there. Hey, there's a high voltage line running across my property. I'm going to get in the business. Are you? Okay. That's, okay.

That's somewhere to start. So talk to me, because when I pull an electron off the grid, I don't want to say I don't care. I don't know where that electron came from, right? I don't have electrons that show up and say I'm a hydroelectric. I'm a nuclear electron. I'm a solar electron and I'm a coal-fired electron. I just get some energy. Absolutely. So can you talk to me as a done? I'm not an energy guy at all. Can you talk to me about how, where solar stone fits in the model? You know, I think of, so I live, you know, in the deep south. So, you know, I got the TVA who does lots of generation and they, you know, pump that generation out to all kinds of different electric, you know, companies, Georgia Power, Mississippi Power, Alabama.

of power. Can you kind of talk the folks that are listening through, where does Solarstone fit? Because when I think of power, I think of the person who sends me my power bill, or I think of Georgia Power or Alabama Power, who's doing the generation. Where does Solarstone fit in that model? Definitely. And I'll sort of bifurcate this because there's given, you know, the oversupply of renewables projects and how many of them are on the grid, it makes sense that, you know, the average day center is going to be technology agnostic, right? I mean, that's, you know, at the end of the day, those clients have their own, those users have their own requirements, and they don't always have the leeway to be preferencing certain technologies, apart for maybe

a few that are trying to sort of virtually, you know, offset their exposure or manage their, you know, carbon and emissions. You know, but there's two ways to think about this. When we look at the average solar project, obviously we're, you know, not able to. able to ourselves power a full data center for, you know, 24-7 or high up times that, you know, which is my understanding of what these facilities require, you know, and even solar plus storage won't accomplish that either. We've, we can talk about long-duration storage and, you know, it's being piloted. There are projects that are, you know, moving forward. But again, it's,

It's not going to supply on a single or even hybrid technology basis, everything that you would expect a data center to need. But it absolutely, I think, can be a part of the mix. Now, I'll get back to that in a second because there are plenty of renewables developers, power developers in general, whether you look at the large IPPs down to the small shops like Solarstone, where they see the writing on the wall. and they look at, okay, this is a moment for the power industry. These people need power. Great. That's what we do. How do we provide that?

And the shift back to thermal assets is very clear. It's not the dominating technology that's being developed for all of these projects. It's not as if renewables developers are cutting all their solar and wind. But they are looking at. at more of through the lens of a powered land strategy where, okay, well, you guys need a couple hundred acres, you need a good interconnect, you need heavy power. Those are all the things we look for on any given project. Is their ability to transition that project to be something else? Is there an ability to take an early stage position and partner with somebody in order to

provide that? I would be hard pressed to find a single developer in the renewable space that has not looked at their portfolio and said which one, how many of these fit that bill, how many could serve those loads or transition to data center projects. And I say that from my own experience. We're not, we're not exempt from that. We've got one or two sites that look like they check those boxes. Are we going to dive head first into, hey, we're data center developers? No. But when we look at what those facilities need, there is something we may be able to offer. You look at the capital markets. You look at the supply of projects.

And there is a very clear sort of transition or pivot to people now pursuing more gas projects, really going back to those more traditional thermal projects. And at this point, if they're looking to serve data center load, they may not be all that traditional anymore. and that's where, you know, maybe the behind the meter conversation comes in. But back to the solar piece of this, we do see, you know, some hypercellars or some of these loads looking for, still looking for solar, still looking to include that as a part of the generation mix that, you know, they're going to use to serve the load. And whether or not that's still, you know, grid connected, it's hard to say. I mean, all of our projects are grid connected. I don't know how many data centers or developers may be contemplating behind the mirror solar. Can we talk about that one?

Can we talk about that one for just a second? I'm going to run the compass narrative of grid connected versus behind the meter by you. And as a generator guy, a guy on the generation side, I would love for you to either shoot holes in my position or advise us on the way we think about it. We think that there's already PR challenges in our industry, right? We're a big utility user. We're a big energy user, which means that we have a big carbon footprint. And we don't want to be viewed in the industry as, hey, we're here to make sure that the utilities serve us. We recognize that what we're asking of the utilities is lots of development, and we want to go do that together.

We want to say, hey, we're going to show up and we're going to be a rate payer like any other rate payer. And not only are we going to be a rate payer, but we want to help mature the grid. We recognize that our industry has shown up and put a lot of stress on the grid. And what can we do to co-develop, co-plan, co-spend, you know, help build substations and help build, you know, transmission lines and help build, you know, distribution. We want to be part of the solution. And our, we think that that story is harder to tell if we do behind the meter. In our world, would it be easy? Hey, we're going to go build that power plant ourselves.

We're going to set it behind the meter. it feels a little bit like we're going to take our toys and go home and that we're not helping the broader story. That's how we think about it. You are being a generation guide, does that make sense to you? And I want you to hear too, we believe part of what we're trying to do is manage a PR store. We recognize we're heavy power users and we want to not do anything to damage any rate payer in any market. We actually want to help in that regard. There's, well, I think managing the PR is obviously sound. I mean, and all developers to have to do this, even on the renewable side, which you would expect doesn't, you know, run into those same difficulties. We have a whole other

array of issues and feedback and pushback on, you know, permitting and siting and whatnot. So managing the PR, it's an imperative. But then there's also a whole range of, you know, utility kind of positioning or even policy driven largely at the state level. that is making it such that you guys are going to have to do that anyways. There's new specialty, large load tariffs. There's, you know, the kind of bring your own capacity movement and all these different things. I would suggest it's, you know, largely going to be driven by what the end user, what the end customer wants or requires.

You know, at the end of the day, if they're saying, hey, it's speed to power and you go find us the top 10% that can deploy as quickly, efficiently, and reliably as possible. And if they happen to you behind the meter, you know, I would go back to your point of you're agnostic on the electrons anyways. So are you equally as agnostic on the grid? The key, I think, here to sort of point out is that electricity prices are going up. I mean, that's a Main Street narrative right now. And whether or not they're going up because of data centers or not doesn't particularly matter because perception is reality. If they're going up and someone said, great, there's a gigawatt data center up the road and we'll blame them,

then that's what gets the blame. And renewables have dealt with this for a long time where all the issues on the grid, it's our fault because we're intermittent and the cues are clogged and now it takes five plus years to get a project. It's because all the renewables developers screwed it up. Misery loves company, Dan. I'm glad it's not just us. Well, I'll say it happened quicker to you guys than it did to us. There was sort of this incremental rise with renewables where it was economic in certain areas, you know, component prices kept coming down, power prices, you know, gas prices went a different way, you know, over the past three to four years, you know, given some of the macro factors affecting those.

But it happened to you guys pretty fast. I'm surprised even just in the time that I've been aware of more. more intimately what the data center industry needs. You know, I've been in counties where you'll see signs. You'll see, you know, no data centers in our backyard, you know, and I didn't necessarily expect to see that because the projects are just so large in the impact that they have on economic growth is now so clear. Now, to your point on the kind of behind the meter versus from the meter,

I hadn't necessarily thought about it that way. I think there's a really interesting case where that, that owning that front of the meter narrative and saying we're here to make things better, we're not necessarily here to just island everything and say, you know, leave us alone, give us our permits and, you know, we'll pay some taxes or not. I think that's an interesting perspective. I'd be curious to see how quickly, you know, those projects can, you know, accelerate or bring those improvements or really have an impact on the grid. Because again, We're, you know, the grid's the grid.

And what's equal of generation is at least somewhat true of the load side of the equation as well. You'd expect load to be preference at some point. Ultimately, you know, these are the end users here. Yeah. The phrase we're trying to get the industry to say is, hey, we're not here to be served. We are here to serve. There are things that we can put in the context of our projects to help the grid. not just, hey, there's the line.

Give me everything I need on that line right there and just, I don't want to hear anything about it. We recognize we are causing all kinds of downstream challenges and we want to be part of the solution in those downstream challenges. And if anything that we can do to hold the line for the traditional retail rate fare, that's what we'd like to do in every market that we had. Because we also recognize we are usually a pretty special customer when we show up. we're usually the biggest, you know, ratepayer pretty quickly in a state. We develop at the campus level. So for us, you know, we develop anywhere from, you know, 300 to, you know, megawatt to a gigawatt facility. And so we quickly become a very, you know, top three, top five user in the state really fast when we show up and want to be part of solving the grid problem, not just be served.

That's the way we're trying to think about it. I think there is opportunity for that. I mean, when you look at maybe where projects, some of the new areas that you can cite projects, you know, you're effectively creating new load pockets and that's going to, you know, maybe alleviate certain constraints on the grid on one side. And sure, there could be tradeoffs elsewhere. But I do think there is an opportunity, you know, to be part of the solution and not just to have that, you know, being served mentality.

And I guess to go back even to that positioning on front of the meter versus behind the meter, you know, I would imagine, and you would correct me if I'm wrong, if there's a lot of behind the meter, you know, projects that are saying we're going to deploy that way and we want to remain that way indefinitely. My understanding is that's not really the strategy. I mean, there's probably going to be a grid connect being pursued in parallel anyways. So, you know. That's right. Yeah, let me almost out. on that one for a second. Yeah, it's almost always bridge. It's almost always get me there. Give me two years. Give me three. Maybe give me five. And really two things. One is speed, like you alluded to earlier, is, hey, let me get power quickly. And then the other one is, you know, these are long-term leases, but the don't want, you know, a 15-year power agreement necessarily, you know, unique to behind the meter. Let's get on the grid and let's get part of the normal power procurement process. Let's not have our special own thing. that's indefinite. So I think there are a couple forces that keep people away from, hey, I'm

behind the meter forever. You're definitely right there. And I want to remind myself, I'd like to talk about long-term storage because as a solar guy, I'm sure it's on your radar. But before we do that, can you tell me what a solar stone project looks like? You mentioned two gigawatts worth of development. And a couple of things that come to my mind. How big is it? Meaning how many megawatts? How big is it meaning how many acres? What's a normal location? Because I, think of these, you know, I split my time between the southeast and Texas. I go out to West Texas where there's lots and lots and lots of flat land and you see arrays out there. So what, and certainly out on the West Coast. So can you talk me through what does your project look like? What does

a project look like? And then who's your end user? Who are you signing a contract with? Absolutely. So generally our projects, typically 100 megawatts and above per project, if we ran the, you know, the average, probably somewhere around 150. We do occasionally have projects that fall below that threshold. What we look for very much similar things, right? And it's one of the reason we're having this conversation. Flatland is obviously important, but good interconnects to really what drive, you know, the project value for us.

In addition to good offtake opportunities, and that's where, you know, the revenue side comes in. With our shop specifically, we're focused pretty heavily in the middle part of the country. in both SPP and MISO. We have done some projects in WEC on a state-by-state basis historically. And PJM is still a decent market for us. It's not one that we've got a lot of mature projects in, but we'll probably be revisiting. So those are really the three or four markets that we like to focus on.

You mentioned TVA. We do actually have a project in TVA territory as well. When we look at the fundamentals then of what are those products composed of? You mentioned land. I mean, the historical rule of thumb for solar is five acres of megawatt. So when you look at that proverbial 100 megawatt project, it's at least 500 acres. And typically going to be more because you're obviously going to want to have some breathing room setbacks, permitting, you know, any geotechnical issues or anything else you might run into. for storage, that changes quite a bit.

It is a much more energy-dense application, as you would imagine. And we've got storage projects as low, as small as five acres. Now, generally, we like to have 10 or 20 or 50, you know, but that's driven by the land constraints, what you can get, what the Interconnect looks like, and ultimately the size project you're contemplating. But, you know, that looking at what our portfolio is today at two gigawatts, that's down from a peak of four gigawatts that was backed by probably at least 10,000 acres of land positions. So we'd be right to say that's exactly cut in half on the land side. Probably not. We do have, I think we're slightly more overweighted towards storage products now than we have been historically. And we have, you know, from time to time, we do have to, you know, think about selling early stage projects or withdrawing. And so that, you know, dropped from four to two is largely a symptom of that, you know, the oversupply of early stage projects. Utilities reforming their cues.

I mean, when I first started developing our own projects, there were still cues where you could get an interconnection position for, you know, tens of thousands. of dollars. Now most, I mean, it's completely different. It's, I mean, Q reform for 2023. That is the sort of the governing statute there. And now that's from regulated utilities requiring a $5 million letter of credit upwards of seven and a half. Minimum. Minim for each project. Just for a Q position, just to get your name on the list and in the study process. And, you know, in many instances, those letters of credit are irrevocable. So the way I started to describe it, when I started developing projects, we sat down to a $5

poker table. It turned into a $50 poker table really halfway through the hand. Yeah, yeah. We've had Q positions withdraw. We've had, I mean, all developers have you. It went from Thursday night to Friday night really quick. Exactly. Absolutely.

Oh, wait a minute. When did the limits go up on the table? Absolutely. Absolutely. That's exactly it. And so we've seen the short end of that being a smaller shop, but ultimately every developer is focusing and doubling down on their best projects. You know, the highest probability of success, you know, the scale, the market, the technology they like to be in. And, you know, maybe they've already got, you know, procurement locked up for certain technologies or are really strategic in certain markets. There's only so many developers, sort of the top tier senior developers. that are in almost every state. They do exist, but you will find that most shops have a kind of a preferred market or a preferred focus, and we're certainly no different. So who's your end user?

When you're doing a project, and I'm not, don't disclose anything from a competitive standpoint, but just is your end user an enterprise? Is your end user the generation company? Who's asking you to go build a project? If they were asking us to build projects, we'd probably have a lot more built. So it is a competitive industry. I'll say that. Yeah, right, right, right.

Given how many projects and, you know, the speculation and the incentives and how many folks are doing it, you know, it is risk and reward. It's high risk, but it can be high reward on the development side. Our end users are either, you know, large users of power or companies that sell large amounts of power, right? So the two classes are effectively utilities and, you know, corporates. That's what I figure. Okay. Just want to make sure I understood. When it comes to the utility side, there's, you know, often procurement targets, RFPs, you know, utilities that, you know, see what's happening with their generation mix and they're looking to procure different resources, more economic resources. The tragedy of it all is that, you know, solar and wind are still, you know, one of the more cost-effective, marginal new sources of generation. and, you know, business works.

So when the utilities see that and say, well, you can get me power great, it's not the exact profile of power that I'm used to, but it's at a great cost. And ultimately, you know, everything flows down from there to the large customers, then the medium C&I all the way down to the residential. Yeah, generally we're looking at long-term, you know, power purchase agreements with either utilities or larger corporates. I mean, I think there is, at the utility scale, there are more, there's been more corporate interests. Historically, there's been a lot of corporate interest, whether it's, you know, due to the more ESG factors or just due to the sheer economics. And

I think there's more of the latter now than ever before. It's cost effective. So, so you mentioned one other thing that I do want to draw us back to, but let's do long-term storage real quick. You mentioned that you're, you've got storage projects and you're in the storage business. Are you designing the storage subsystems? Are you buying them from someone else and using them to provide flexibility to what you've pulled off the sun in a daytime? Where's, where's that long, tell me the long-term storage story. Yeah, absolutely. For storage, there are now a lot of off-the-shelf products. There are systems integrators and, you know, subsystem OEMs and people.

designing things specifically for grade-connected battery energy storage, whether or not that's paired with solar or not. When I mentioned our storage portfolio, a lot of it is standalone storage. It's not even paired with solar. Oh, it's not coming for solar. Oh, yeah, we've got it. It's just storage. Absolutely. And a very different business model for that. There is, you know, kind of a different nod to the merchant case and understanding the dynamics of how the multiple different revenue streams from the grid, from a grid-connected project are going to stack up. It's probably still too early. I don't think it's much of a risk-on environment for merchant storage projects, but every generation project has to deal with, every generation and storage project has to

deal with merchant exposure. But when it comes to the components, that, that supply chain is now pretty robust. It is still mostly Chinese. That is changing as it is, you know, or has in solar. But, you know, when you look at the, I mean, these products are now largely fully integrated, come with, you know, all the, you know, cooling suppression and even, you know, containerizing the PCS and really having it be kind of an off-the-truck sort of plug-and-play business. Now, granted, there's, you know, obviously you've got to pay the right EPC and have your engineers get the right configuration. But it is a much more streamlined and sort of direct-to-customer product than it was historically.

What kind of capacity can you see and what kind of duration on long-term storage? So for long duration storage, and I guess that's a specific piece. You did mention the long duration. There are fewer long duration sole long duration providers that are using alternate chemistry. So you can create a long duration battery storage project with a traditional lithium ion project. I think long duration used to mean 12 hours or more. It probably is maybe. eight hours or more on what people would consider long duration now. But when you look at the alternate

chemistries, the alternate technologies, you know, long duration could be multiples of that. You know, you look at just the different store technologies that are being developed. You know, there's folks going after upwards of 100 hours. And so long duration being 8 to 12 minimum is probably a good, you know, kind of rule of thumb. Those systems aren't always economic. they are very use case driven. They're sort of purposefully deployed for specific use cases or utilities that might have specific use cases. There are more of them that are looking at pilot projects for long duration or even beyond

pilot projects for long duration. So it's an exciting time to see that develop. But reality is lithium ion is still king. And if you truly need eight hours, that's probably. the system movement of deploy. Got it. You mentioned early in the talk about your pro the incentives for your particular part of the industry. I will say on the data center side, we know there are incentives out there for solar and for wind,

but we don't really understand them. Can you give us a two-minute tutorial on how significant it is? I assume they're all federal, but that might not be right. What's behind a lot of the incentive packages that help to get your projects off the ground? Yeah, absolutely. So it is largely federally driven. And, you know, the, and the way that we do things that we do it the American way, it's with tax credits, right? We use the dollar to incentivize projects and investors. And that's existed for a while. I mean, this is somewhat of a legacy product or a legacy incentive that's changed over time when I started in the industry, for example, the tax credits were stepping down. And people were. discussing strategically how to safe harbor equipment, how to maintain higher tax credits. That was in a world when tax credits were stepping down, you know, four to eight percent per year and were theoretically going to be fully phased out. I believe in maybe 2024, 2024,

2025. Go back to 2022 in the Biden administration with the Inflation Reduction Act. that's when those tax credits got topped back up. They extended the lead times into the 2030s. And then, of course, go back to the one big, beautiful bill act last year. And that's where those tax credits have been abruptly taken away. Not wholly, but there is now a huge impact on projects, on developers. The safe harbor strategies are top of mind for everybody. And this is, you know, including our projects as well.

well, there's a couple ways you can safe harbor equipment, maintain that tax credit. But I do think it sort of feels like this is the first time maybe the industry is looking to a post tax credit world in and of itself. And there's pros and cons of that. I think I'm of the mind that we should get used to it sooner rather than later and make sure we can get projects to pencil regardless. and I think there are other, you know, other parties that feel the same. But the tax credits, they can get complex. The investment structures, the way tax equity investment is historically deployed, the way that changed in 2022. At the top line, what it is, there's really for renewables, there's two generation projects. There's sort of two classes. There's the investment tax credit,

the production tax credit. The investment tax credit is effectively 30% on the total value of the plant, whereas the production tax credit is then production based on how much that plan is generating. And historically, you would see the production tax credits for wind, the investment tax credits for solar. And that's still largely the case today, although those production tax credits can apply to solar as well. Gotcha.

All right. So we talked about the data center business and the energy business and solar and storage. Let's get to the really important stuff. Is Shadour going to lead the Browns to a Super Bowl? If anyone leads the Browns anywhere, I'll be happy. And at this point, we've been through it. It would be fair to ask. Could Tom Brady lead the Browns to the Super Bowl?

I'm not sure. You're not wrong. You're not wrong. The Browns have had it. I mean, I know there's other teams that have had it rough, but I don't think the Jets have a single thing on us when it comes to the factor of sadness that we've managed to produce in Cleveland here with the Browns. It's brutal. Lifelong fan, you know, maybe not even by choice, but, you know,

it's hopefully an exciting time. They're building a new stadium. That's an opt-butt issue. People, people got a new coach. We got a new coach. We got a new stadium. I think they're trying to just bridge to that next level of excitement. But when it comes to the quarterback conversation, I know most Cleveland fans will probably have a similar attitude. We've seen it before. You know, it's kind of just, it's just always enough to keep us interested and entertained, but that's about it. So, I don't know, God bless.

I remember the excitement about Tim Couch. So I know you guys have been through it, right? I mean, that's a long, that's 20-something years ago. It's like, no, Tim Couch is the answer. I'm like, no, it's not the answer. How many, I feel for these. You guys, long-suffering. How many of these quarterbacks have we effectively ruined their careers?

But that's neither here nor there. I wish the best for all of them and whoever steps into the QB1 position. And beyond that, my football is on Saturdays as a Buckeyes fan. Yeah, there you go. All right, Ohio State. I can get with you there. I will give you one ray of hope. So he's retired now, but he was the head of marketing.

here, Steve Flagg. He was a longtime Detroit Lions fan. And that program finally got turned around. Absolutely. So, I mean, the Lions, who I think probably held the distinguished position of the worst franchise in sports, they figured it out. So it can be done. Well, now they pass the baton to us.

Fundamental changes. That's right. Well, you and the Jets are fighting it out. In fairness, but the long-suffering Lions fans, they've had a good run here the last few years. So it's possible. Well, Dan, thank you for talking with us about solar. It's certainly an area we're aware of, but not terribly well-educated on, didn't really understand.

And we appreciate you sharing a little bit and helping us understand better. And, man, our industry is pretty power-hungry. So get out there and get to getting to builds and some stuff because I'll tell you we need more. Absolutely. And I appreciate it, Raymond. Thanks for having me. And we'll do our best. And always happy to be a resource.