Watt It Takes: Why Steph Speirs Wants Solar For All
Energy Gang
Wood Mackenzie
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 23 October 2020
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on Watt It Takes: Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Solstice CEO Steph Speirs.
Solistice is a community solar company trying to make PV accessible to everyone.
Steph Speirs grew up one of three kids, first generation, in Hawaii. Her mom had immigrated from Korea. She knows what eviction feels like, and what it’s like to skirt homelessness. And she knows how a poor credit score can sink a human being.
She got a scholarship to a private high school, became a National Merit scholar and accrued three masters degrees at Yale, Princeton and MIT.
In this interview, we’ll hear how her time in the Obama administration led to a summer internship with the non-profit impact investor Acumen. She worked on solar lanterns in India. Her time in Yemen, India, and then Pakistan led to an awakening about energy injustice in the United States.
Solstice has now developed demand for 100 MW of community solar and just closed its biggest funding round so far.
To learn more about future speakers and attending a live event, go to Powerhouse.fund and click on the events tab. You can listen to all of the episodes of Watt It Takes here.
The Energy Gang is also brought to you by KORE Power. Based in the U.S., KORE Power is situated to meet the growing global demand of the energy storage market. KORE Power is building the first large-scale battery cell manufacturing facility in the U.S. owned by an American company. Once it’s operational, the 1-million-square-foot facility will have 12 gigawatt-hours of scalable manufacturing capacity. Learn more.
The Energy Gang is brought to you by Sungrow, the leading global supplier of inverter solutions for renewables. During these uncertain times, Sungrow is committed to protecting its employees and continuing to reliably serve its customers around the world. Sungrow has also leveraged its extensive network across the United States to distribute face masks to communities in need.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The Sun G it where it's needed. Sungrove's cutting-edge technology for residential, |
| 0:13.3 | commercial, and large-scale energy generation uses state-of-the-art equipment. |
| 0:18.6 | To find out more about Sun-grows inverters for solar and storage. |
| 0:22.6 | Go to Sun Grow Power. |
| 0:23.6 | We're also brought to you by Core Power. |
| 0:26.2 | Core Power is a leading US-based developer of battery cell technology, serving |
| 0:30.3 | utility, industrial, and mission critical markets across the globe, |
| 0:33.6 | Corepower is dedicated to widespread energy storage adoption |
| 0:36.8 | while keeping manufacturing domestic |
| 0:38.9 | in order to stabilize and protect the US grid. |
| 0:41.7 | Find out more about Corepower's modules which are now on the market at CorePower.com, K-O-R-P-P-O-P-P-O-P-O-P-O-P-O-O-P-O-P-O-P-O-O-O-T-O-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T Tech Media Podcasts. Step. |
| 0:53.0 | Step was |
| 0:58.0 | Step Spears was raised by her mother on minimum wage. |
| 1:02.8 | She saw energy poverty close up while selling off-grid solar in India. |
| 1:06.6 | And she carries those experiences into every decision she makes as CEO of the solar company's |
| 1:11.5 | solstice. I at first didn't know what to do with that privilege. |
| 1:15.0 | I don't know why I get to be in these elite rooms, |
| 1:20.0 | but my mom doesn't get to, or other folks who want to be in that room too don't get a seat at the table. |
| 1:27.0 | Then you begin to see that there's not that much that separates those two worlds and those two types of people other than opportunity and chance. |
| 1:39.0 | Welcome to what it takes, an interview series produced by Powerhouse and Green Tech Media. I'm Stephen Lacy. In this series |
| 1:45.7 | we hear from founders and executives at the most influential clean energy companies. Their |
| 1:50.2 | backgrounds, their passions, their passions, their deals, their |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Wood Mackenzie, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Wood Mackenzie and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.