Dual-use solar financing in action: Sunrise Solar's Richard Stoltzfus built a 700 kW behind-the-meter array for Harbor Sales Company. The build stacks a USDA REAP grant with a Maryland MEA grant and drives the customer's levelized energy cost to near zero.

A 700 kW behind-the-meter solar array now offsets 70 percent of the electric load at Harbor Sales Company, a plywood and sign-panel distributor that has run out of Sudlersville, Maryland since 1931.

Richard Stoltzfus, CEO of Sunrise Solar, and Kendrick Tice, COO of Sunrise Solar, join host Tim Montague to walk through their Chestertown-based company's build for Harbor Sales.

Montague and Stoltzfus dig into the mechanics of commercial solar incentives in Maryland, the sunset of the 30 percent federal ITC, and why rural electric cooperatives in the PJM region are capping new solar interconnections even as demand for grid capacity grows.

Here is what you will learn in this conversation about dual-use solar and commercial solar incentives:

• Learn how Sunrise Solar stacked a USDA REAP grant with Maryland's MEA grant to push a customer's levelized cost of energy toward zero on a 700 kW system.
• Find out how a 700 kW array offsets 70 percent of Harbor Sales Company's load and pencils out to more than 3 million dollars in savings over 25 years.
• Understand why the 30 percent ITC sunset and Delmarva Power's tightening interconnection limits pushed this project from planning into construction.
• Hear Kendrick Tice explain why Sunrise Solar sources its racking from one manufacturing partner instead of juggling multiple vendors, and what that does for project timelines.
• Hear Tim Montague weigh in on whether rural cooperatives in the PJM region can keep pace with rising demand for grid capacity and where incentive structures differ from state to state.

Maryland's grant-stacking model, layering a USDA REAP grant on top of a state MEA grant, offers a template for other states as the federal 30 percent ITC winds down. At the same time, rural cooperatives across the PJM footprint are capping new solar interconnections, a constraint Stoltzfus and Tice say is already blocking chicken farmers and dairy operations from going solar. Professionals financing behind-the-meter projects in cooperative territory will find the co-op discussion directly relevant to deals in the pipeline right now.

Connect with Guests

Richard Stoltzfus | LinkedIn

Kendrick Tice | LinkedIn

Sunrise Solar | Website

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The Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com

Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/

The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America’s number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

The U.S. needs 400 GW of new capacity over the next two decades. Michael Grasso, CEO and founder of Grid Rails, tells Tim Montague that roughly twice that much flexible capacity is already plugged in, and explains why only 20% of eligible devices are enrolled in virtual power plant programs today.

Data centers, EVs, heat pumps, and new construction are pushing U.S. electricity demand up by roughly 50%, about 400 gigawatts over the next two decades. The reflex answer is to build more generation. Michael Grasso thinks we are solving the wrong problem.

Grasso is the CEO and founder of Grid Rails, and he spent 17 years getting to that conclusion. He helped deploy the first residential storage batteries at Sunrun, first on LG Chem hardware and then on Tesla, and he ran the largest residential storage virtual power plant in the country at Sunnova, supporting Luma's grid in Puerto Rico. His argument: the flexible capacity sitting inside the devices causing the load growth is close to double the load growth itself. What is missing is the orchestration and settlement layer that turns those EVs, batteries, thermostats, and water heaters into dispatchable grid capacity, and pays the consumer for it in real time instead of months later as a buried bill credit.

Thirty-four states now have some form of demand response or VPP program on the books, and by Grasso's numbers, only about 20% of eligible devices are actually enrolled. Tim pushes hard on why, and on whether any of this pencils for a homeowner who does not want one more app sending notifications.

What you will learn:

• Why 80% of eligible devices are still on the sidelines, and why Grasso calls that a program design problem rather than a hardware problem
• How real-time settlement changes consumer behavior, and what it unlocks for utilities beyond incentives: collateral, cost of capital, bad debt, and new products like prepaid or unlimited EV charging
• Why Grid Rails is built for the moment a customer opts out, not for constant notifications, and how opt-out recovery keeps programs from quietly bleeding participants
• The ERCOT math driving utility urgency: roughly $50 per MWh bought forward against spot exposure that can run to $5,000
• What Grasso says a simple VPP application is worth to a household, around $500 a year in most markets and into the thousands in some, and why he thinks a more dynamic market leaves a lot more on the table
• Why per-device budgets matter, from capping EV charging at $15 a week to holding air conditioning to 20% of the bill

Grasso points to headlines warning that the largest utility in the country is signaling blackout risk as soon as 2027, and treats that as the pressure finally moving utilities toward orchestration. Tim comes at it as a customer, not an analyst: he does not have a battery yet, his own rate just jumped 25%, and he wants a number before he buys. That exchange is the heart of the episode.

Connect with Michael Grasso, Grid Rails
Michael Grasso | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelpgrasso/
Grid Rails: https://gridrails.ai/
Email: hello@gridrails.ai

Support the show

Connect with Tim

Clean Power Hour
Clean Power Hour on YouTube
Tim on Twitter
Tim on LinkedIn

Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com

Review Clean Power Hour on Apple Podcasts

The Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com

Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/

The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America’s number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com