Building Winning Teams and Revolutionary Products with Bryan Wagner | EP276 - Clean Power Hour

Episode Transcript
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Bryan Wagner (00:00):
I think the best team has to get trained, has to

(00:03):
build rapport, our winningculture, we spend a lot of time
on to ensure the team gets thebest training in the whole
industry. And by doing that, indeveloping the team, by
developing the individuals, oneof the first places you start
with is becoming a productexpert.

intro (00:20):
Are you speeding the energy transition here at the
Clean Power Hour, our host, TimMontague, bring you the best in
solar, batteries and cleantechnologies every week. Want to
go deeper into decarbonization.
We do too. We're here to helpyou understand and command the
commercial, residential andutility, solar, wind and storage
industries. So let's get to ittogether. We can speed the

(00:41):
energy transition.

Tim Montague (00:46):
We're here at inner solar San Diego, in the
chimp Power Systems booth withnone other than Bryan Wagner,
the president of CPS America.
Welcome back to the show, Bryan,thank

you, Tim.
Appreciate you being here. Whata great show. It's been it's

always good to see you and the team. What a team,
the team at CPS is the keydifferentiator, in my opinion,
and the opinion of yourcustomers, as I've been talking
to them today. So Bryan, you'vegot some cool products here in
three phase string inverters.
You now have a single phasestring inverter, and you've got
a very new CNI storage product,aka Gonzo. What are the things

(01:26):
that your customers may not knowabout, that they should really
know about your product line? Iwould

say the hardest thing about launching new
products and even new categoriesis everything's a priority. I
think, as a company, youmentioned having the best team,
I think the best team has to gettrained, has to build rapport,
our winning culture, we spend alot of time on to ensure the
team gets the best training inthe whole industry. And by doing

(01:58):
that, in developing the team, bydeveloping the individuals. One
of the first place you startwith is becoming a product
expert. Start with the productsthat do sell, things like our
5060, kilowatt or 101 25 theworkhorses of our business. Last
year we did over one gigawatt inthe 600 volt category. This
year, we're really excited aboutour 250 600 volt, which we got

(02:20):
UL on in November. Our skiddedstring is really, I would say,
game changer. No one else thatwe know of is doing this,
meaning we're putting a 250,kilowatt, 600 volt string
inverter in a centralized stringapproach, because we offer two
options, distributed ortraditional string inverter and
centralized string inverter andthe centralized what's nice is

(02:41):
you can put the remote DCcombiners out in the field,
which we make, all that we makethose, or we're launching that
product as well. We'll make theremote DC combiner. And then you
can have all of your inverters,you know, it on one pad. You
don't even have to lay likethere's no wiring needed,
because we factory wireeverything now, so that'll come
and drop in, very much, ready tofinally compete with central

(03:04):
like, from a labor perspective,with that product, I would say,
truly, that's right up therewith Gonzo, in terms of my
interest level and how big weknow that business can probably
go from one to even maybe doublethe business this year, gigawatt
wise. But Gonzo is a categorythat, if you look at string
inverter, probably from 10 yearsago, when we got into it, I
think that's where CNI ESS istoday. Can you make the complex

(03:28):
simple? Can you make a bunch ofparts and pieces? We used to
have a PCS and a batterycabinet, two separate pieces,
double the shipping, double thelogistics, double the labor, and
now it's all in one, and so wecall it the all in one. And I
feel like we can, we havecapacity to make over 3000 units
this year. We're talking thegrowth in that category will be

(03:51):
tremendous. We just want a jobwhere it's 25 car car
dealerships, and in our wholehistory, probably in the last
five years, we've only done 20to 30 energy storage projects.
Now we have one single customerthat has almost the entire
install base, and it's startingto scale. So I'd say seven,
eight, maybe 10 years ago, it'ssimilar to that. Every project
in California that's new now fornew builds gonna add storage. So

(04:15):
we're excited that

car dealership portfolio. Is that in California
by chance? Yes, yeah, I figured.
And we have an upcoming webinaron the 13th with alexity, great
partner of yours in the buildingmanagement space. I think I
heard you say, Bryan, that younow have delivered over 10
gigawatts of inverters in the USmarket. Yes,

we had some minor errors and calculations, and so
we did the math. We finallyworked with overseas team, came
up with the final results isapproaching 10.5 gigawatts. So
yeah, this year will definitelysurpass probably 1213, gigawatts
deployed. We're aiming for 15gigawatts deployed, probably the
next big milestones, 20. Thatwould sound cool.

So if you're working in. Commercial, but not
doing large commercial yet. Youmay not even know about CPS, but
they are the number one threephase string inverter
manufacturer for large CNI. Soreach out to me at Clean Power
hour.com. I love talking toEPCs, installers, developers,
about large CNI and solar andstorage is the peanut butter and

(05:22):
jelly, of course, and withthings like nem 3.0 and frankly,
this trend is nationwide. Bryan,right, the value of solar
electrons is being devalued byhJS and utilities, and it's
okay, because we have batteriesnow you can store those solar
electrons and use them at alater time. Batteries are so

(05:44):
valuable, there's a stack ofvalue in a battery because a it
works 24/7 unlike solar, we lovesolar, but a battery works 24/7
if it charged up and it providesgrid services, it provides
reliability in the case of anoutage. So tell us a little bit
about the Gonzo, and that youtalked about how the container

(06:04):
is now a single container,right? There's this constant
push towards making productsmore cost effective, Money
Talks. Tell us about the Gonzo,why you were able to go to a
single container on this it's a250 260 61 261 61 kWh.

It's a 125, 125 sorry, 261, kilowatt hour
battery all in one, and meaningthe PCs and the battery cabinet,
which used to be separate, arenow combined in one. And so it's
simple for shipping, forinstallation, labor is one last
thing to install. And I thinkwhat we're excited about, we
launched CSPs, our chintz smartpower services brand, so we'll

(06:48):
be offering a service packagewith the battery. So like long
term service agreements comealong with the package, and you
get a company like Chint that'sbeen around a long time, but
yeah, it's a really, it's it'snot a light product compared to
what we're used to in string. Itis about 2000 pounds. But we
just got creative. We were atone of our partners this week,

(07:10):
and we said, hey, can you skidthis? And so now we can. We're
thinking we can pair four ofthem make a one megawatt hour
offering, and American skids. Wemake the product overseas. For
right now, we make everythinginto the pack, the rack, all the
cooling. It's liquid cooled.
Everything's from us. And theonly thing that really we source

(07:30):
in that product would be thecell. What I'm excited about for
storage, commercial energystorage, especially more so than
for commercial solar is, I lovereal estate, and I feel like
commercial building owners havenot really thought of their
commercial building as a trueenergy asset like they can in
the future, meaning you canactually look at energy

(07:54):
arbitrage when you want to sellthings. We have software and
hardware combining withelectricity that can you know,
using algorithms predictionsfrom the past to predict the
future and take advantage of allthe different load profiles that
exist in the different buildingsthat are out there. And if you
think about all the data centerand all the things happening in
AI and all these things that areleading into this perfect kind

(08:15):
of next decade, the Clean

Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America,
maker of North America's numberone three phase string inverter
with over eight gigawattsshipped in the US. The CPS
product lineup includes stringinverters ranging from 25 kW to
350 kW, their flagship inverter,the CPS 350 KW is designed to

(08:40):
work with solar plants rangingfrom two megawatts to two
gigawatts. CPS is the world'smost bankable inverter brand and
is America's number one choicefor solar plants, now offering
solutions for commercial utilityESS and balance of system
requirements go to Chint Powersystems.com or call

(09:05):
855-584-7168, to find out more.
We love technology,sustainability and people, but
as we started this interview,really it is the people that
make the world go around in ourlast few minutes together,
Bryan, tell us about yourapproach to team building and
making sure that you'reproviding the absolute best

(09:27):
service of any company inAmerica. You

really have to train your your team and your
individuals on the team as ifthey're your number one
customer. They're certainly yournumber one asset, your people.
But then how the interactionworks with the team is really
important. So I'm a formerathletic background, so I think
of it very much as any goodorganization. You have to be

(09:54):
able to think of that playerthat may not be on the field,
contributing Day in. Day out,but wants to be I was talking to
one individual in particular.
They felt underutilized, andthey had a great engineering
background and things. And sowhat do you what do you want to
see your career progression? Todo? It sounds very basic. It
sounds very simple, but I thinkpeople fail to be human and

(10:15):
realize you got a human you'reworking with. Everyone has a
special talent. Sometimes theydon't know what that potential
is inside themselves, and yougot to look for that talent that
maybe you know the business alittle bit better than they may
be more experienced. So how doyou tap that talent that gets
that out of them? And I've beenhere almost 10 years, just like
breakthrough, we look forceilings. How do you find that

(10:39):
ceiling and break through thatceiling and unleash that kind of
energy that you have to growyourself? Right?

Indeed, everyone has their special talent. I'm
Tim Montague, check out all ofour content at Clean Power
hour.com. Please give us arating and a review on Apple or
Spotify. And Bryan, how can ourlisteners find you

they should listen to clean power hour. And I do
think you do a tremendous job,and we're super thankful for all
the hard work you put in foreducating the solar plus storage
audience out there. So that'scertainly one way we have a lot
of good team, Evan and Joe andKelly all on your show. Good way
for your audience to engage withus, but also chin Power

(11:23):
systems.com, like all the normalsocial outlets, you can find us.

I truly couldn't do it without you. So thank you
for the partnership. I'm supergrateful. We're just getting
started. It's true. And withthat, I'll say, let's grow solar
and storage. I'm Tim Montague,thank you, Tim. Hey man, thank
you. Yeah, you.

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Building Winning Teams and Revolutionary Products with Bryan Wagner | EP276

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