Driving Innovation in Renewable Energy: Insights from Paces' Solutions Engineers - E131

In this episode, James McWalter interviews Paces's very own Solution Engineers, Gabby Stein and Tony Wagler, to discuss the latest developments in the renewable energy industry and their roles at Paces.
The conversation covers:

• Gabby's and Tony's career paths before joining Paces, including their experiences in solar and battery storage development.
• The unique challenges they faced in their previous roles like navigating permitting and interconnection processes.
• Their motivations for joining Paces and how their industry expertise contributes to solving developer challenges.
• The importance of data efficiency and how technology can streamline renewable energy project development.
• Insights into the current state and future of the renewable energy market, including the rise of battery storage and the need for innovative solutions to meet growing energy demands.
• Hot takes on industry trends, such as the need for sustainable project decommissioning and the role of nuclear energy in meeting future energy demands.

Tune in to hear from developers turned solutions engineers who are using their experience to make a difference for other developers and accelerate the path to a sustainable future.

Paces helps developers find and evaluate the sites most suitable for renewable development. Interested in a call with James, CEO @ Paces?

Transcript

00:26.72
James McWalter
Hello, today we're speaking with Gabby Stein and Tony Wagler, Boat Solutions Engineers at Paces. Welcome to the podcast, Tony and Gabby.

00:34.22
Gabby
Thanks for having me.

00:34.51
Tony
Thanks for having us.

00:36.17
James McWalter
Brilliant. I guess to start, um you know, this is, you know, often we're obviously talking to a lot of our customers and other folks in the industry. um But one of the kind of big changes and paces over the last, you know, few months is starting to kind of add folks to the team who actually have a lot of industry experience themselves. And those two of those folks are Gabby and Tony. And so I'd love to kind of hear, I guess, to start. Let's start with you, Gabby. What was your career before paces like?

01:02.17
Gabby
Yeah, um started off as a chemical engineer. um Very quickly decided I didn't want to work strictly in the chemical engineering industry, ah but always had just a a passion for sustainability. I knew I wanted to be in that in any way. And I found a small little community solar company in New York City, joined that right out the gates.

01:25.53
Gabby
And that was other types of engineering that I hadn't necessarily done before. So a lot of them learning on the job um got to design a lot of really cool installations, build an engineering team, really in the weeds on permitting and interconnection as well.

01:43.73
James McWalter
And how about you, Tony? How'd you get in? What was your career before pasting the link?

01:47.58
Tony
Yeah, I always knew like Gabby I wanted to work in something climate related and chose the energy transition route. I'd studied environmental studies and business in the hopes of landing a job in the renewable energy world.

02:00.98
Tony
And I did what everyone does who aspires to work in renewable energy and joined a massive oil and gas company. I joined Total as an analyst on the renewable energy team. At a very interesting time actually they were building out their internal development arm up to that point they just invested in and buying other renewable energy developers, but I joined actually developing teams internally and worked on ah the Middle Eastern market. And when they opened up the hub in the Middle East to build up their solar division, I got the opportunity to be sent there.

02:35.39
Tony
worked in Dubai for three years developing industrial and commercial rooftop projects. By the time I left after three years, we were in 10 countries in the Middle East and Africa and wanted to stay in the realm of renewable energy, but kind of and get my hands on different technologies. So moved to New York and joined Nexamp, which is a battery storage and community solar developer on their battery storage team working on standalone and co-located battery storage projects in New York.

03:06.80
James McWalter
Very good. And then um I guess from there, ah Tony, what drove you to join Paces?

03:14.09
Tony
Very good question. I've always had an interest in technology. Most of the podcasts I listen listen to on the weekends are are tech related. And so I thought the next natural step in my career progression would be to come on the software side, but stay within the renewable energy world. And one thing that was frustrating about being a renewable energy project developer was just the longer and longer timelines and the more obstacles we seem to face. And I thought if I could be part of the solution,

03:40.42
Tony
in finding ways to shorten those timelines and make that process easier through software and better data. That's something I'd like to be part of.

03:49.96
James McWalter
We'd love to hear it. And how would you, Gabby? I think we first connected, I think it was in April of 2023. And you know I guess what, from your perspective, drove you to two to one of the joint faces.

04:01.03
Gabby
Yeah, um at my previous roles, I didn't necessarily get to choose the projects that I got to work on. And then, you know, that with the physical constraints of them and putting in the man hours, ah but then you you go through permitting and it'll fail for some reason or another. And it was a frustrating process and i but engineers are obsessed with efficiency and there has to be a way to make it more efficient upstream. So I decided to move as far upstream as possible. And just from like ah ah industry perspective, ah country perspective, and I don't know, planet, we don't really have

04:43.32
Gabby
the luxury of being inefficient when it comes to this climate situation, renewable energy development, and being at the stage where you can help multiple developers, ah it's like exponential impact. you know Once you make a change upstream, it cascades downstream.

05:02.48
James McWalter
And I guess some of the changes um that we, or some of the solutions that we try to work on at Paces really kind of comes down to trying to solve specific problems and challenges that developers might have. um I guess what what are some of the kind of challenges that you were facing in your kind of day-to-day, Gaby, when you were like actively working on some of these projects?

05:22.20
Gabby
ah There's just no perfect site. There's always an issue and you can never predict what the problems are going to be. ah But you can choose better sites than others and do your research, gather your data ahead of time so that you're prepared for when any type of problem comes your way. And I think um understanding the different landscapes from a permitting perspective and interconnection perspective is really important because there's truly a lot of variability with ah the types of agencies that you work with.

05:55.29
James McWalter
And I guess for you, Tony, you know, um you've worked on a few different projects around the world, as well as in in and New York State and the US. So are there any kind of particular, you know, examples of projects you worked on where things like primitive connection was pretty difficult and you had to get creative to kind of navigate that?

06:16.40
Tony
sure yeah i mean developed development, you have to get creative across the board. But I did have a particularly challenging permitting pathway with a project here in New York.

06:28.68
Tony
It was actually an RFP that was mandated by utility. So we knew that we could get some kind of community support from the utility, but the community itself was rather conservative and generally anti-technology. So is it was a tough sell to try to ask to bring in these massive 20 megawatt batteries and plopping down their community. um And yeah, the the pathway forward wasn't clear at all. So we had to get creative in ways that we would show the benefits to the community. We decided to hire

07:00.39
Tony
a PR specialist who knew everyone on the town hall board, who knew everyone who was complaining about this project, and it was more of a human problem than anything. They knew the outcomes that we could offer but just didn't quite see the benefits. So I spent quite a bit of time with this gentleman explaining our whole process, explaining the benefits of what having and battery storage project in the community would actually do to them. It would limit the role in Black as they were experiencing. It would allow them to grow the community even more. um So had to get creative and bring in a ah PR and communication specialist who then came to all our town hall meetings with us and got the community on board.

07:39.57
James McWalter
And I guess like how how, you know, even just building that initial ah relationship with this person, like, I guess, like, how did you even find them?

07:45.54
Tony
yeah

07:46.81
James McWalter
And and and I guess how, ah what did that relationship look and how did that that relationship have to evolve in order to get first them on side and then eventually the community on side?

07:56.35
Tony
So it was just a Google search, ah name of the community, public relations agency and found this and gentleman, met him in person and went on ah the very first time that I took him on a two hour drive to one of our projects that was actually developed and built in the ground just to show him the scale of the project and kind of humanize it just to show him what we'd be building. And from there, I just developed a good relationship with him. And he knew how to to talk to talk. So he knew what we'd have to communicate to the community to get this project across the line.

08:24.92
James McWalter
Were there any like specific things that, you know, because obviously coming from them, right, this is going to, you know, a member of the community that's going to obviously have a big impact. And buto was there any like particular ways of speaking or ways of kind of phrasing things or just like focusing specific things that were helpful that, you know, there were things that maybe you as developers hadn't thought of, but that this person from the community could give you that insight for?

08:49.71
Tony
Actually, very good question. That reminds me. um The battery storage project we developed that I showed them, the manufacturer was Tesla. For some reason, this community absolutely loved Elon Musk. So as soon as they saw Tesla on the side of the batteries, they knew that they were safe. So that was a huge unlock that we hadn't really thought of that kind of came out of left field. But yeah, we built that trust to this gentleman. And he knew that Tesla Elon Musk would go far with them. So ultimately took that over the line.

09:16.99
James McWalter
Very good. And then I guess for you, Gabby, you know, I think a lot of your projects um were in the city of New York.

09:19.48
Tony
St.

09:22.81
James McWalter
You have a huge amount of complexity around what you can and can't do in individual places. You know, you mentioned no perfect site. um Yeah, I guess any examples of projects that you worked on that had particularly large challenges.

09:35.47
James McWalter
so

09:37.46
Gabby
um From a community's perspective, we did a lot of projects with co-ops and co-op boards are always really fun to work with. Sometimes they don't understand the technology, they don't see the value.

09:49.47
James McWalter
For those not in New York, we're not talking like yeah utility co-ops, we're talking building co-ops, right?

09:52.78
Gabby
Oh, yes. um But I would say all it took was just attending um a co-op board meeting and explaining that you know, it's a safe technology, there's a lot of engineering that goes behind it, and it's not going to do anything but benefit them. And from and an agency perspective, I would say that um I know we we have a tough time as developers working with AHJs and utilities, but often the actual people that work there are very interested in and being helpful. All it takes is a phone call or a visit. ah We did a couple of projects in Yonkers and we we couldn't get the building permit, but

10:42.09
Gabby
We just had to go to their um Department of Buildings and speak to the nicest woman ever. And she was able to get everything through for us. And with FDNY and ConEd, their representatives are very smart. And they do want to see these projects being built. They just want to make sure everything is safe. And I think approaching those conversations with mutual respect and understanding gets you a long way.

11:12.81
James McWalter
um percent 100%. And I guess, you know, both of you have been working in in the industry a few years, definitely longer than than I have. um I guess, like, how has that kind of changed since you first joined it? I guess, starting with you, Tony.

11:28.49
Tony
Sure. Well, let's address it ah by state. And so New York's experienced a ah rapid growth of renewables in the past few years. And so to bolster kind of grid reliability and customer resilience, I think and battery storage is really going to boom the state. Part of that is also a mandate that was um put out by the the Public Service Commission earlier in the year. um The objective is six gigawatts of installed battery storage by 2030. And that's a lot to get to in the coming years. So I think in the coming two, three years, battery storage development is really going to boom, at least in the state of New York and in other markets that are starting to shape out in the same way.

12:10.05
James McWalter
How about you, Gabby?

12:12.32
Gabby
Yeah, i I'm so on the technology side of things. And just even in the past couple of years, it's crazy to see how much relatively basic technology like solar panels have changed and how that changes both the design and financials of a project. And then obviously we're we're seeing a huge wave of battery storage come in and that's about to hit or is hitting.

12:40.04
Gabby
exponential growth on its improvement as well. And I don't think we're going to see traditional projects anymore. We're not going to see like a plain old greenfield solar project. They're going to have to be more creative with the space they use and the energy they produce.

12:58.45
James McWalter
And I guess i'm on that, any, I guess, hot takes on how renewables ah and the industry is kind of moving, any, you know, I guess, both from like your previous experience, directly working on projects, but then of course you're you're kind of like talking to a lot of different customers, a lot of lot of different development types and a lot of different geos. And, you know, we we we get exposed to ah the ups and downs of of the entire industry. um And yeah, I guess any hot takes, ah Gabby, on on the industry.

13:28.30
Gabby
ah Yes, i I have two, I suppose. on On the note of technology improving, a lot of technology quickly becomes obsolete. And I don't think that um the renewable energy development industry has been focusing enough on what it looks like when these projects start to degrade. And we need to think about either decommissioning or refabbing them so that you know You don't want this land that you put all this time developing into to become useless just because those solar panels are not the highest grade. And a lot of times that is almost pushed off until later in the process. And as we've talked about, um bad things happen when you don't have enough foresight ah at the beginning. And then my other hot take would be um

14:22.72
Gabby
We're seeing a lot of large load development and I think that there needs to be stricter mandates on green power requirements for those on both the development side and the utility side, like take Dominion, for example, it's almost absurd that they have to build new gas peaker plants in order to meet this load when they have so many renewable energy projects in the queue that are just sitting there. There's definitely something that can be done there, but I do think it'll take a lot of smart minds in and many different stakeholders to figure it out.

15:01.98
James McWalter
Yeah, I guess on that second one, um you know, one of the kind of, and and even outside the million, there's other utilities that recently, you know, for listening to this in the future, hopefully this didn't pan out, but not just talking about net new ah development of natural gas, but even talking about net new coal, which I think is pretty surprising. and I think we kind of turned a corner on that. And of course, like once you build a new coal or or gas plant, that's a 30 to 50 year asset. um And so the idea that folks are considering those things is is definitely something we need to keep an eye on. And I guess ah one of the kind of other surprising things for us is yeah only working with a lot of load developers in the last six months is that

15:42.02
James McWalter
you know, when we first started talking to folks, and you know, data center and otherwise is like, hey, we do would like to have 100% green energy, um green power, and that has changed quite a bit. You know, if the green power is going to take five years, but the dirty power, the semi dirty power will take two, we will take the two year dirty power all day long.

15:58.87
Tony
Yeah.

15:59.79
James McWalter
um And we get the, um you know, and obviously we understand the the kind of like commercial and financial considerations that drive those decisions. um But I guess like from our perspective, how can we better enable the cleaner option um so thats that that trade-off is made in a more kind of positive way.

16:15.83
James McWalter
um I guess, yeah, for you, for you Tony, yeah, any any hot takes or or kind of comments on any of that?

16:17.03
Tony
Absolutely. Sir, I'll make it really hot by uranium stock. My heart takes a bit more macro. I think that yeah ah gb GDP per capita grows and energy consumption and grows exponentially, especially in industrialized nations. There's just no way that we'll meet that demand, um even with the the incredible renewable build out that's happening. And this is all even before the the AI build out that's even going to increase demand more.

16:48.45
Tony
um But I don't think there's a way to meet that without nuclear. So as we have to build out a base ah relatively quickly, I think there's a bit of traction gaining in in the SMR world, the small modular reactors. Amazon recently announced that they're investing 500 million in SMRs in conjunction with Dominion. So to your point, Gabby, a lot of build out is happening in that sector. um Yeah, I think it's exciting to show that there are actual buyers of nuclear that Big Tech is putting actual investment in it. I'm not sure how that solves the regulatory issues, but my hot take is buy uranium stock.

17:29.58
James McWalter
So we we're definitely pro-nuclear at PACE. I think one of the things that when I started digging into some of you know the different kind of power types, and particularly when I started looking at nuclear, you know where we've seen like the biggest cost curve ah you know declines in the deployment of technology and you have these learning curves and so on, is when you have some sort of manufacturing-based approach to the development of the ah the actual infrastructure.

17:57.20
James McWalter
So, you know, and and also it's even better if you're kind of like getting on the coattails of a pre existing, you know, industrial or manufacturing space. And so we two classic examples, right. So, you know, solar panels writing on the coattails of chip fabs and lithium ion, you know, batteries for battery storage writing on the coattails of smartphones and, you know, you know, the kind of like increase of energy density required for that use case. so um I think one of the things I've always kind of struggled with is because you obviously you have the permitting restriction, but because even in the case of SMRs, it's the M is the most important piece, right? The modular nature. It's like, can you get these things to actually be modular where you can have them or large components of them coming off an assembly line and then you can like build efficiencies within the industrial base for those.

18:42.54
James McWalter
um And so, yeah, im I'm like cautiously optimistic on some of them, but unless we have actual modularization of the power source, um I don't know, I think ill I'll not quite, you know, i'm not quite short uranium, but maybe I won't go as long on uranium.

18:57.17
Tony
Yeah, sure.

18:59.78
James McWalter
um Cool. And then I guess, you know, flipping to kind of talking about joining paces, you're both solutions engineers. ah What is a solution engineer, Gabby?

19:09.81
Gabby
and What isn't a solutions engineer?

19:11.47
James McWalter
Yeah.

19:14.91
Gabby
um i think it's I mean, there's so much amazing work that happens on the engineering side. It's astounding. um But I think solutions engineering is a little bit of a translation of that highly technical work ah to the customer facing side, as well as an understanding of you know what information and features are important to the customer and how will they interact with that and making sure that all sides are aware and well trained and um well educated on what it can do.

19:48.66
James McWalter
And I guess since joining Paces, any surprises, either about the role, or you know joining a software company, or even how we think do things at Paces since joining us a few months ago.

19:58.45
Gabby
um It has been such a delightful surprise how fast everything moves. You know, you're not waiting for a supply chain to sort itself out or some engineering drawing to get stamped. it's You can make these feature improvements at lightning speed.

20:19.51
Gabby
Um, and it honestly feels like magic sometimes that the things that you can do with the data and it, it feels like you're a fortune teller. It's the closest thing you get to premonition, um, is really manipulating it. And I'm again, so impressed by our engineers every day.

20:37.40
James McWalter
100%. It is also, yeah, I agree, you know, we'll we'll talk to our software engineers and we'll ship a feature request or something that we're planning to do that might drive a lot of value. And, you know, sometimes hours, sometimes days, rarely more than weeks and it's ready to go.

20:53.38
James McWalter
um I guess, how about you, Tony? You joined us less than two months ago now. um I guess, you know, and you, you know, not sharing too much, but you, one of your close friends was already an actual software engineer at Paces.

21:05.36
James McWalter
So you you definitely had like a little bit of context, I think, on um um on joining, before joining.

21:07.54
Tony
z

21:09.75
James McWalter
Any surprises since joining us?

21:13.21
Tony
Sure. I think Debbie kind of copy pasted my answer, but they're all pleasant surprises. One is just the level of the people. Obviously, I had a bit of bias joining because I knew I knew someone in the company, but I've just been wildly impressed and consistently impressed at the level that we have here.

21:30.01
Tony
I ask all my questions and they're answered immediately. I learn something new every day. It's been really nice working with Gabby, who's more on the on the data side, who's just helping me wade through those waters. I'm just consistently impressed by the level of the team. And also to echo what Gabby said, part of the frustration in the development world is just being limited to the built environment um and having delays in things that are out of your control and then seeing a timeline pushed out from two years to three years. And I like seeing, it's quite gratifying seeing the end result of your work. So being able to do that through software has been really fun.

22:06.48
James McWalter
Yeah, i I obviously love to hear about the speed. you know It's something that um you know Charles and I and the rest sort of the early team have always been obsessed by. And you know as fast as we move, it's always, could we move a little bit faster? And I think one of the things that, you know especially when you're coming from zero right like the zero to one phase um we're just in the kind of one to ten phase right and that's not just a revenue number but like that's the kind of stage of the company as well and the ah the ability to you know service users you know on some axes win right and and our projectors were winning if more projects were getting built um developers are kind of like you know

22:46.57
James McWalter
building projects that are more financially valuable. And we just have more stealing ground for these types of projects. um The only way you win is like, you just ship faster, you move faster, you take information. um And you can't ever be too precious about things, right? Because, you know, we have these various theses that are born of talking to a lot of users. um But like, you got to test them out, right? And so I think so it's great, it's great to hear that on the speed, but we can always go a little bit faster. Um, and I guess, you know, you both worked on kind of some interesting things, uh, since joining, I guess. Are there any kind of, uh, either features or projects that you've been working on, um, right now, or you're planning to work on it at paces that are of, you know, kind of, that have been kind of particularly exciting for you? Uh, I guess, sorry about you, Gabby.

23:29.64
Gabby
Yeah.

23:29.94
Tony
Sorry.

23:30.04
Gabby
um ah I'm trying to understand the grid and isn't everyone. um you know It's like the biggest constraint in the industry. And i want I want to understand what's happening on the most granular level. And there's a lot of data and modeling that goes into that. And then it's how do you communicate that to customers and developers so that they can utilize it ah to make better decisions with their projects?

24:01.00
Gabby
it's a big It's a big issue. I'm definitely not the only one who's concerned with what's going on with the grid. But it's been really interesting to learn about what the utilities themselves are doing, um how they're modeling their reliability plans, the types of upgrades that are important to them, and how that corresponds to ever-growing load.

24:23.43
James McWalter
Yeah, it it's especially, you know, coming in for myself not being from the industry at all, the mess that is that all these various systems that like build on each other, you know, you have utilities, ISOs, you know, we have both customers obviously have the distribution systems, transition system on both the generation and the load side and kind of you know just as we're kind of gotten deeper into the data just like thinking through like first of all obviously there there's this grand orchestration already occurring right like these things are exist out there in the world they're being built and all those kind of things but then as you're trying to like you know affect us you're trying to

24:52.77
Gabby
Mm hmm.

24:59.91
James McWalter
you know, move the dial, you're trying to push things in various directions, you're trying to, you know, ideally find the best sites, and then once the site is selected to get it through all the various steps to NTP and beyond, it's like, okay, ah what made sense for a given place from the grid perspective yesterday may not make sense today and may definitely not make sense in two years or vice versa. I'm so fully agree on that. I guess like turning to you, Tony, um you know, what are some kind of things you've been working on or are planning to work on that you're particularly excited by?

25:30.30
Tony
I'm quite excited to start building out more of the battery storage function within Paces. I think you might agree, James, that's something a little bit lighter on and excited to take it in a new direction. Yeah, I can't reveal too much right now that's something that I think there's a lot of potential to do. A lot of risk as well, just needing to understand what what would be a valuable ah proposition to developers that we don't currently have, and then trying to target those.

25:58.53
James McWalter
Yes, fully agree we obviously have some great ah storage developers already on the platform but, you know, to kind of go to somebody or like earlier answers about how the industry is going and how important and core storage will be, um you know, we need to make sure that the product is keeping up. and fulfilling those things. But yes, there's going to be some fun things announced in the near future. um I guess like, but you know, to think through, you know, we could have heard from your pathway into paces, how you kind of hit the ground running and all those kind of things. You know, one of the things, especially when we talk and we run into folks at conferences and at different events, a lot of people are kind of trying to figure out how can they get into the industry, right? There's a lot of people who are very mission driven around the kind of things that we work on.

26:41.23
James McWalter
um And so let's say I'm a young person and I want to be you know that that next version of Gabby who might want to you know work on some of the problems. um What kind of advice would you give them, Gabby?

26:54.75
Gabby
Um, I would say don't disqualify yourself for anything. Uh, imposter syndrome is eternal, but you have to make peace with it and get used to the discomfort of learning something new because you grow to meet what's required of you. So don't eliminate yourself from an opportunity because you don't think you know it now. Cause you'll be surprised at what you learn on the job. It's, it's truly the strongest forcing factor is.

27:25.21
Gabby
stepping into something where you're not entirely sure what's going on.

27:34.36
James McWalter
Absolutely. And I guess for you, Tony, um what ah you know what advice would you give that person who who's trying to get into industry?

27:41.78
Tony
Yeah, great advice from Gabby. But it's just such a broad industry. There are so many types of jobs you can get into. If you're not technical, you can get into something that's more customer facing. If you are technical, there's so many routes you can take. I think don't rule yourself out because it seems daunting to get into it. I went through this exercise myself when I wanted to pivot into something else, but really would love to stay in renewable energy for the rest of my career if possible.

28:09.54
Tony
um But yeah, don don't let those barriers to entry be a final barrier. um The size of the company that you get into can matter. The scale at which you want to do things can matter. There's really so many options within the industry, so don't rule it out.

28:25.39
James McWalter
Yeah, and I guess like being kind of uncomfortable with some of that uncertainty, not knowing everything like that is obviously probably the fundamental attribute of solutions engineers, because you are at the cross section of so many parts of the company and the customer and product and all those kind of things. um So fully, fully aligned there. um I guess before we kind of finish off, um you know, is there anything I should have asked you about but did not Gabby?

28:48.36
Gabby
um You know, we've talked a lot about how the like tried and true bread and butter projects, that era is over and you have to start getting more creative. I would say that um we should start thinking about both low large load development and renewable energy development as an ecosystem. And that example with Dominion, where there's a lot of renewable energy projects in the queue and a lot of new load,

29:18.06
Gabby
What would happen if we start co-locating those two and matchmaking on the grid? I think that that could solve a lot of problems and it's an avenue that would benefit multiple parties and needs a little bit more exploration.

29:35.75
James McWalter
And we might have some interesting white paper coming out with some very interesting and famous partners coming out in the next couple of weeks. um We've been doing a lot on this kind of co location, you know, even kind of large micro grid behind the meter opportunities, and yeah, I think.

29:51.80
James McWalter
for some of the reasons and the constraints that you alluded to earlier, Gabby, like having to figure out some pretty creative solutions to meet the demands and of of low growth, um not just with data centers, but you know we're electrifying the economy. like the the The grid is going to have three to 3 to 4X in the next 20 years. And so we're going to have to get pretty pretty creative. So fully aligned on that. um I guess, how about you, Tony? Anything I should have asked you about that did not?

30:16.52
Tony
Yeah, um I mentioned some frustrations with timelines and just so many obstacles that you hit along the way of developing a project. And that can seem quite daunting and a bit demoralizing.

30:27.77
Tony
But I guess the the positive spin to that is that, once again, with a bit of bias, there are companies like Paces who are helping ease that process and understanding the right steps and having better, cleaner data earlier on can really shorten those timelines and have the critical flaw analysis to eliminate a site that maybe two years from now you find out is just not going to happen. um So having products like Paces has been a very positive spin for the industry.

30:53.79
James McWalter
Well, I won't disagree with that. Um, thank you both. Um, we've been so impressed since you've both joined, you know, your kind of industry knowledge as well as like your, uh, but as people, your kind of, um, general vibe of getting rolling your up your sleeves and like jumping on any, any problem, even when you don't know the answer and having to figure it out, uh, has been super impressive and, uh, we're really excited it tos go to continue to continue to work. Um, thank you so much.

31:19.00
Gabby
Thanks, James.

31:19.86
Tony
Wait, hey James, James, can I redo my intro for the edit?

31:20.11
Gabby
Thanks, Tony.

31:23.83
James McWalter
Um, you just say goodbye first, say goodbye first.

31:26.42
Tony
Awesome. Thanks James, it has been a pleasure.

31:29.69
James McWalter
Okay. And then, uh, what do you mean? you're going to do