How Denowatts & Portside Systems Are Revolutionizing Solar Monitoring | EP271 - Clean Power Hour

Episode Transcript
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intro (00:00):
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 are 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

(00:22):
energy transition.

Tim Montague (00:26):
Today on the Clean Power Hour, I'm welcoming back
an old guest, Dan Leary, andwe're talking with a partner of
here, of a partner of his portside port side systems, who is a
technology integrator forDenowatts. We're at re plus
Boston, talking with a lot oftechnology companies here that
are speeding the energytransition. So let's get into

(00:47):
the conversation. Welcome back,Dan. It's great to see you. Tim,
how are things going atDenowatts?

Dan Leary (00:52):
Denowatts has been very busy. We're we're growing
our base. We're offering newservices, where we've just added
in an important new accreditedtest, which is the energy test.
So this is our whole concept ofenergy accounting, which is the
generally accepted accountinggap for solar. We're bringing
standardized reporting to theindustry. So we've continued to

(01:14):
build our core technology andoffer accredited, ISO accredited
services. Very

cool. And I know you as a company that works a
lot in the community and smallutility space is has not changed
at all for you. In the lastcouple of years,
Bamberger, welcometo the show. Tell us a little

Dan Leary (01:30):
we're supporting projects 200 kilowatts to 500
megawatts now, nice. So fullspectrum, we can scale up and we
can scale down. Yeah, excellent.
And Marcbit about portside. And how did
you meet Dan? Definitely. So

Marc Bamberger (01:48):
portside systems is a small integrations company
that's located in Portsmouth,New Hampshire. We've worked with
Dan for a couple of years now,installing the den Watts systems
on solar sites throughout thestate of Maine. So we've gotten
to know his product line, hisofferings and his capabilities,
along with our site services, wedecided to kind of move up to

(02:08):
the next level and offer our owndas product line, and that's
kind of what we brought to thisconvention today, is showing
everyone that we have Theability to build these das
systems, integrate them,commission them, and work with
MLS team to get the data back toyou so you do the analytics you
want your solar

site. And were you working in the Indus in the
solar industry before you metDan Correct? Okay,

I actually worked across the hall together
back in North Andover 1015,years ago. So we go way back,
but then, you know, I moved on,and then here we are again, come
back together to kind of bring anew, new product line to the
industry. Okay,

cool. Well, I'm just curious what are your
thoughts about the way theindustry has changed in the last
five years? So

we were extremely busy in the last
couple years with the main CMP,DG market that really spooled
up. We've seen that kind of takea little decline in the last
year, but we're seeing otherstates start this program up. I
know we're talking about NewYork and Pennsylvania, Maryland
starting so what

is CMP,

central main powers? So most of our work is
in the main territory right now.
We're based out of NewHampshire, so it was a little,
you know, it's convenient, butnow we're probably gonna be
spreading our wings a littlefurther and move into some other
states. Yeah, we're seeing somegreat things.

And what is it that makes this partnership
work?

So since we've done so many installs on these
das systems, really learnedabout some of the issues that
we've seen on some of theproduct lines out there. And our
idea is to go from aninstaller's perspective on how
to get these installed quicker,faster and cheaper. Partnering
with the dental lot system, theyuse a lot of ZigBee
communication, so we don't haveto run conduits throughout the

(04:03):
field into the center of thesolar site to get our pyromaniac
back. But rather, we just putthe sensors out in the field.
They all talk to a central padlocation. Within a couple days,
you have a whole dash system. Soefficiency is number one. And
when you're working in harshenvironments in northern in the
winter, it's important to havean easy and

Dan Leary (04:25):
it's done right the first time. And this, this is
what really drew me to beworking with Marc's teamwork.
The typical recipe is get aturnkey monitoring package. It
arrives with an electricaloutfit, and the next thing you
know, you have a thing thatneeds to be untangled, but when
you start with an integrator whosays, Hey, there's a better way

(04:48):
of doing this, we add in ourcore technology to ingest data
and do testing and things likethat, it gets done right the
first time because the Marcs'team builds the box. Show up
with it. They commission it. Wework with them through the
capacity testing, and it's justbeen a seamless project. So
we've, this is a recipe we'vebeen building for the last

(05:09):
couple of years. It works reallywell. I think this is the
future.

And before Marc came along, it was being done
more piecemeal in the field,

correct? So and Dan could probably better
explain this. So he would, hewould essentially ship his parts
to another company, and theywould put it in their das
equipment, and he would readtheir communication strings for
what he can and what informationwould get. But it really was
tough, because, yeah, he wantedto get all the site information.
Maybe he wasn't able to just buysystem architecture, so having

(05:41):
the den of watt system be thecentral processor and really
lets his analytics fly.

Very cool.
Anything else you want ourlisteners to know about you or
Denowatts Definitely.

Feel free to reach out to port side systems.
Or Denowatts to get some moreinformation on this, and we're
happy to field calls or or dosome

custom builds. And is that your URL? Portside
systems, com, portside, sis,com, very good. And how can
people find you? Dan,denowatts.com,

Dan Leary (06:11):
it's not hard. It's real easy. And we work with
folks all around the US. So wework with other integration
partners and O and M companiesand IPP. So it's very exciting
to be working with people thatreally are good at what they do
and can get the job done.

Excellent. I'm Tim Montague, check out all of our
content at cleanpowerhour.comPlease give us a rating and
review on Apple or Spotify.
Connect with me on LinkedIn, andwith that, let's grow solar and
storage. Thanks guys. The CleanPower Hour is brought to you by
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(06:52):
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(07:15):
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How Denowatts & Portside Systems Are Revolutionizing Solar Monitoring | EP271

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