Solar and energy storage experts debate the current market: what have we seen in the first quarter of 2025?
Interchange Recharged
Wood Mackenzie
4.8 • 535 Ratings
🗓️ 24 April 2025
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Wood Mackenzie’s 18th Solar and Energy Storage summit is back, in Denver this week. If you can’t make it, don’t worry – we have all the debate and key insight you need to know here on the podcast.
Recorded live on day 1 of the summit, host Sylvia Leyva Martinez talks to four industry leaders in solar and storage to answer these questions:
Can the U.S. solar industry keep up with demand amid trade wars and policy chaos? Discussing this is David Carroll, ENGIE’s Chief Renewables Officer. He warns that policy uncertainty and tariff whiplash are stalling U.S. solar investment. Sylvia and David look at sodium-ion batteries; are they a safer option? Plus, more domestic energy storage is needed amid growing calls for stable tax credit policy to meet growing electricity demand. A must-hear for developers navigating today’s volatile energy landscape.
What about VPPS? Can they scale fast enough to provide a real alternative? Answering this is Sarah Noll, She shares insights on regulatory challenges, customer trust, and tech adoption, showing how the Arizona Public Service is turning grid flexibility into a real growth strategy.
Are storage operators leaving millions on the table because they don’t understand their own batteries? That’s the big question Shyam Srinivasan, CEO of Zitara, answers with Sylvia. He reveals how poor software integration is holding back storage performance. As storage scales rapidly, Shyam stresses the need for better diagnostics and real-time decision tools to optimise revenue, reliability, and resilience - especially in merchant markets.
Finally, Samantha Frisk from Pivot energy sits down with Sylvia to look at models for community solar development. Sam explains how early engagement, local benefits like agrivoltaics, and trusted partnerships can turn sceptical communities into solar advocates - proving clean energy can uplift as well as decarbonise.
This episode is brought to you by Foss & Company - a leader in tax equity investing. At the forefront of clean energy finance, Foss helps developers and investors unlock capital for solar and energy storage projects across the U.S. If you're navigating the tax credit landscape or looking to maximize project returns, partner with the experts. Visit fossandco.com to learn more.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode is brought to you by FOSS and Company, a leader in tax equity investing. |
| 0:05.5 | At the forefront of clean energy finance, FOS helps developers and investors unlock capital |
| 0:10.6 | for solar and energy storage projects across the U.S. |
| 0:14.0 | If you're navigating the tax credit landscape or looking to maximize project returns, partner |
| 0:19.2 | with the experts. Visit Pawsandco.com to learn more. Foss and Company, investing in tomorrow, today. |
| 0:26.6 | Need a word to characterize what is happening and how to think about the outlook for solar? |
| 0:31.8 | Unfortunately, it might be uncertain. |
| 0:34.9 | The renewable space is a very crazy area to be in right now, and the riding the solar coaster has been no exception. |
| 0:43.3 | Welcome to Interchange Recharged. |
| 0:45.3 | I'm Sylvia Liva Martinez, principal analyst at Wood McKenzie, and we're coming to you live from the Solar and Energy Storage Summit here in Denver. |
| 0:53.3 | One of the key themes that we have been discussing over the past few sessions is data centers |
| 0:58.0 | and how this wave of new demand is going to be served. |
| 1:02.0 | So to discuss more on this topic, Dave Carroll is joining me today. |
| 1:05.9 | He's Chief Renewables Officer and Senior Vice President for the North America region at Angie. |
| 1:11.4 | He's heading up a global team driving innovation, resilience, and sustainability, with the goal of reaching net zero carbon by 2045. |
| 1:19.4 | In this conversation, we'll explore what is next, forest law and storage, how to plan through volatility, and what it takes to keep your eye on the long term whilst you're delivering in the short term. |
| 1:29.3 | David, welcome to the interchange, so excited to have you here. |
| 1:33.3 | So it's been the very first hours of the solar energy storage summit. |
| 1:38.3 | You just did a session with Chris Seibel, so could you tell me a bit about the solar storage technologies? |
| 1:43.3 | Are you excited about right now? And if they're getting the investment that they need so they can be massively adopted. Well, Sylvia, thanks for having me here. And it's been a great show so far with Wood McKenzie. Really, in terms of the technology we're really watching, I'm really most interested in the sodium ion technology associated with batteries. That helps decouple us. We're in this trade war right now, right? That really starts to help decouple the supply chain. Yeah. But also provides, for utility scale storage, it really does help provide us some more certainty in terms of supply chain. Yeah. Sodium is much more available than lithium. Than lithium, yeah. You decouple from a lot of areas of the world that can be very problematic to get your supply |
| 2:18.7 | chain out of. |
| 2:19.7 | And I think in terms of the technology, it's safer from the thermal runaway perspective. |
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