Harmon Solar Podcast
The solar energy sector in Arizona is currently oversaturated, which has led to a scarcity of transparency. In response, we've created a podcast to provide an honest perspective on going solar in the state. Join us as we explore the intricacies of utilities, equipment, processes, and more. Our primary objective is to educate and empower you to make informed decisions on your solar journey.
Harmon Solar Podcast
Let's Talk Solar O&M with Amicus
Most people are told solar is “set it and forget it.” We pull back the curtain on why that myth costs owners money, risks safety, and jeopardizes warranties—and what smart O&M looks like when it’s done right. With guest Amanda Bybee, CEO of Amicus O&M Cooperative, we explore the full life of a solar asset from turn‑on to decommissioning, and the simple steps that keep arrays producing at their potential.
The solar energy market has become increasingly saturated, leading to widespread misinformation and a lack of transparency. Welcome to the Harmon Solar Podcast, offering a straightforward, honest perspective on going solar. Each episode dives into key topics to help you better understand the industry. Our goal is to educate and empower you to make informed decisions about solar energy. While solar may not be the right fit for everyone, we believe everyone should take the time to explore it. Our mission is to increase your knowledge, not your builds.
SPEAKER_04:Hi, welcome to another edition of the Harman Solar Podcast. I'm Rob Fromano, VP of Sales and Marketing at Harman Solar. And with me, as always, my partner, kind of my friend, it's Ben Walshlager. Ben?
SPEAKER_01:I'm always kind of your friend. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:You're kind of our my friend.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. A little bit of a different layout here we have today. You can still see our studio. Yeah. It's there. I'm almost sitting in the chair. You're floating above it. It's floating above it. Yes. Well, tell us what's different. Well, it's different because we have a guest, and the guest is not in Arizona, so we could not invite her to the studio. So we decided to do this via um, you know, streaming or Zoom or whatever you want to call it. Restream.
SPEAKER_03:Virtually.
SPEAKER_01:Virtually, that's the word I was looking for. Thank you. So welcome to the podcast, Amanda Bibee, who is the CEO of Amicus OM Cooperative.
SPEAKER_05:Thanks so much for having me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And you're in Colorado.
SPEAKER_05:I am sunny Colorado.
SPEAKER_01:Sunny, warm Colorado right now. And that is not sarcasm we heard earlier. That is a true, true fact.
SPEAKER_05:Yes, it's a weird fall and winter so far. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's a good solar day today, apparently.
SPEAKER_05:Great solar day, nice and cool and very bright sun. Although we can tell that angle of incidence goes down in the wintertime. Like it's such a dramatic shift. And our days are so short, they end at 4 30 is sunset. Wow. Yeah. Because we're we're pretty close to the solstice. So we're nearing the the lowest, darkest of the year.
SPEAKER_01:That's right. So Ben, first. Yes, Ralph.
SPEAKER_04:What are we talking about?
SPEAKER_01:Let's let's get to know Amanda a little bit. Okay. Amanda, tell us who you are, what you do, how you became the CEO of Amicus OM Cooperative, and all great things about you. And end it with a fun fact.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, all right. So I have been in solar 23 years in January. Uh I got my start in Austin, Texas, working at a nonprofit organization that was advocating for solar and uh renewable energy friendly policies. So that was my my start. And then I worked at a solar company in Austin for a little bit before I moved to Colorado. And I moved here right after the state had passed its statewide renewable energy goals. And we were in the rulemaking period before the utility started offering solar rebates. And I joined this little baby startup company called Namaste Solar.
SPEAKER_03:Ah, okay.
SPEAKER_05:So I was like number five full-time employee on payroll. Um, and I was there for over 11 years and got to help grow that company. And it's Namaste Solar is a very cool company. It's employee-owned, certified B Corp, really very values forward kind of company in the way that they conduct their business. Um, so love Namaste Solar and it was a great informative experience. It is, as I mentioned, an employee-owned cooperative. And when we started learning about cooperatives and the cooperative structures, we got really into it. So not only did we convert Namaste Solar into an employee-owned cooperative, but we co-founded Amicus Solar, which is the purchasing cooperative that Harmon is a part of. And then a few years after that, some a subset of the members of Amicus Solar started the Clean Energy Credit Union, which is a financial cooperative. And then right around the time that we got the charter for the Clean Energy Credit Union, we submitted a grant application to the Department of Energy Sunshot Initiative to start Amicus OM Cooperative. So I moved over to run Amicus OM Cooperative full-time in 2017 and have been here now almost nine years.
unknown:Wow.
SPEAKER_05:So that's my story. And my fun fact is that I am a woodworker. Oh I like to make rustic furniture uh largely out of Beetle Kill pine because we have a lot of that here in Colorado, and it's very beautiful.
SPEAKER_04:So those doors behind you, you made those?
SPEAKER_05:I did not make these doors.
SPEAKER_03:Aren't they great?
SPEAKER_01:We'll edit that out. Well, that's awesome. It's good to good to have you on our show. And hopefully our listeners will learn everything and anything about OMs. So let's start off with what is an OM? You know, what does the O and the M stand for? It's operation and maintenance, you know, um, with solar systems. A lot of people think that it's just kind of a uh a set it and forget it. You know, it's it's on their house, it's on their business, and it's just gonna do its thing forever. To an extent, that that part of that is true, but every now and then it does need maintenance. We do need an inspection and a checkup, make sure things are tight and things are you know working the way that they should. And so that's kind of what what you do, what we do. So um, I don't know if you want to expand on that a little bit more, go a little bit more in depth with what an OM is.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I think that you know, historically in our industry, we have tended to talk about solar as set it and forget it. But as we've now been maturing as an industry, we know that that's not entirely true. And that it is just like any other uh infrastructural part of your home or business, they need some maintenance periodically. And so I like to say solar is a low maintenance technology, but it is not a no maintenance technology. And when we talk about operations and maintenance, for me, that includes everything from once a system has been turned on all the way to the end of its life cycle. So, in in that time, you're gonna want to monitor your system. So that type of task usually falls to your OM teams. You're gonna want to do preventative maintenance, particularly on larger scale, like commercial and utility scale systems. And then you're gonna need to make repairs from time to time. And that will cover the the bulk of the lifetime of your system is monitoring, preventative, and corrective maintenance. And then at the end, you may want to decommission your system. And that's where we take it down, recycle all the parts, and um hopefully install the next iteration of your solar system on the same location.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I think as technology continues to advance, there's going to be those opportunities for more and more um OMs. You know, think of the automotive industry. You know, back then you just had an engine and four wheels, and the car would just, you know, ran. You didn't really need a whole lot of you know work to it. But I have a 2023 car, and there are so many electronics things, and there's so many different things that could go wrong, and recalls and this and that. Same thing with solar, you know, back in the old days with solar, you just had your solar panels and inverters. Now you have monitoring and you have this and you have all these other different aspects to it that just tells people, well, that's just more points of failure. That's more things that could go wrong. That means more things that need to be updated and checked on, things like that.
SPEAKER_05:That's true. And I also think that we see as systems age, they tend to need more maintenance. So those early systems, you know, optimally they didn't need a lot when they were first installed. But over time, you know, when you have any piece of equipment sitting outside, it is going to suffer wear and tear because we put our stuff out there intentionally to collect the sun, right? And UV is one of the harshest environmental elements there is. So between the UV, the wind, the freeze-thaw cycles, you know, there's just wear and tear. And that's nobody's fault. It's not a defect, it's just what happens to the best of us, right? Our our bodies are no different. We need periodic maintenance ourselves, don't we?
SPEAKER_04:This is true.
SPEAKER_05:I think that there is, you know, what's interesting when you think about operations and maintenance as a part of the life cycle of a solar PV system, we really cover the longest stretch of time because modules are warranted for 25 years. So theoretically, our OM role is in effect for 25 years until a system reaches the end of its life. And the more systems that get installed, the more of them need maintenance. And so I do think that as a part of our industry, we've historically not gotten as much attention as installation, because installing new systems is sexy. But you know, maintaining the ones that are already there may not have the same sparkle factor, but I think it's every bit as important, if not arguably more important, in that we we're the ones that keep the systems running, right? We're the integrity department of our industry that makes sure that our systems perform the way we said they would. And so I think of our OM technicians as really the heroes of the industry that keep everything going. And when we think about the expectation of what solar can contribute to the grid, it doesn't stop once it's installed, right? You have to count on it to produce that electricity ongoing. And that is what we do in OM.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. And I think it's so much more important now as we are sitting here, was it 2020, almost 26, right? So this industry residentially really took off in 08, is when it really started going. So we're about we're hitting number close to 20 years now that some of these systems have been on roofs. And there's so many big players, as we've talked about, Ben, in the in the last two years that have just disappeared. Oh, yeah. Right. So there's nobody to monitor and service these systems. And now these systems are in need as they're starting to get older and older. So it is critical for things like what you're doing. Now, even Harmon, who's just currently in the process of creating the Harman Service Club, which has all these different options for people that are basically orphaned out there. You know, there's all these orphan systems out there that need help. And so our next podcast obviously will be on the Harman Service Club and the things that we're offering to help people in Arizona. But yeah, I think this is OM is just a critical conversation to start having in this industry because now we're old enough to say, hey, we need help on the these bodies are getting older, right? So these systems are getting older. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:There's time for maintenance. We get those calls, you know, from residential and commercial customers all the time. Hey, my company went out of business. I have no idea if my solar system is working. You know, can you guys help us out? When we're like, well, we have no idea if it's working either. So we we need to go out there and you know do a full OM on your system to see what it is, what it's supposed to do, how is it working, and in and everything. So yeah, it's it's it's an interesting part of the industry right now.
SPEAKER_04:It's the next iteration of solar, right? It's this part now. This is the part I was thinking about 12 years ago, going we're gonna get there eventually, but here now we're there.
SPEAKER_01:Here we are. Always the first one to say, I told you so. Yep, it's my job. So Amanda, go into what typically takes place within an ONM. No, not necessarily all the tiny details, but just high-level. What should a residential or commercial um customer look for when they're doing an OM?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, so within the the scope of operations and maintenance, right? We when we think about operations, a lot of times that includes the desk job part, like monitoring your system remotely to see if it's on. And when I think about operations for residential customers, that's really the bulk of it, is just making sure that your system is functioning and producing the electricity we expect it to be producing. With larger scale systems, you're gonna more frequently have an annual preventative maintenance inspection. And this is where a technician will come out and do a thorough overview of the site following a checklist, you know, just like the auto mechanics do a hundred-point checklist on your car and you take it in for a tune-up. So they go, they take pictures, they document the state of everything, they may do some basic testing to make sure that everything is functioning correctly, clean out filters and the inverters, what have you. So the preventative maintenance piece is to stay ahead of any potential issues that can turn into a safety hazard or a performance impediment. And really, safety and performance are the top two reasons that people are going to conduct operations and maintenance inspections. But the third reason is also warranty preservation, because a lot of our inverters and key components need to be inspected routinely to forestall any issues. And you need documentation of that fact if you ever have to make a warranty claim.
SPEAKER_01:No, yeah, I I agree. Um it's it's not just kind of a visual inspection because a lot of people just look, you know, they think that oh, there's go out there and it's gonna make sure my panels aren't cracked. Well, there's more to a solar system than just the panels. You know, there's the wiring, there's the inverters, and you know, everything inside the inverters, all the inner workings. So we need to inspect all that to make sure it's working. And then the the unique thing about it is, you know, we have these monitoring capabilities. And so all these OMs that I, you know, am personally kind of monitoring on our on our end, I can see the solar production change after we've been out there, you know. So I'll reach out to a client and say, hey, your system's only been performing about you know 75% is what it should be. And like, oh well, my bills have been okay, but like, well, 75% is not 100%. So let's get out there and see what we can we can do. And after we get out there, we find issues, we fix this or tighten that. I go, hey, now your system is bumped up to 95%. So that's kind of a cool thing to see after this OM, the results.
SPEAKER_05:And that's often what we put into the bucket of corrective maintenance, right? So you do your preventative and maintenance inspection, you come up with a punch list of items that need to be repaired, you do the corrective maintenance work, and then get the system back up to its optimal performance.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. And you you mentioned the warranty thing. That's another thing I think a lot of people forget about. You know, they just think they think they have a warranty, so therefore it's just I can again set it and forget it. And if there's anything wrong, my warranty will, you know, take care of it. But yeah, Ralph, I'm sure you've dealt with a lot of warranties in your your industries before. I'm sure a lot of those warranty companies will just say, you know what? No, we're not gonna honor this because you fail to maintain it.
SPEAKER_04:Well, yeah, warranty's a tricky game, right? But I was thinking when you were saying that, you were talking about how people think they want to set it and forget it, which is typically what they're told by a salesperson, especially on the residential side, right? Sure. And they'll tell them it has monitoring, but they don't really know what that means. Yeah. What that means is that it's capable of monitoring. It doesn't mean somebody's actively monitoring it, right?
SPEAKER_05:That's a really important distinction.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it's a really one, it's a big one because we get those phone calls all the time from people that say, hey, my something's wrong. And we find out their system's been down for three months, four months, right? And they've lost out on that opportunity from solar saving them money. Yeah. No one's actively monitoring it. The nice thing about what we do here is we've started using active monitoring now, and we are actively 24-7 monitoring every system that we can that joins this club, this fleet. Right. And that's a big deal, is you have to have some type of active monitoring. Otherwise, that's great. You have a warranty and it'll replace a part that was broken, which typically happen, but that could be 90 days after the problem started. I was just thinking of the friend that I had that um her inverter was out for four months and she didn't even realize it. Yeah. It's like, uh oh.
SPEAKER_05:Average homeowners aren't checking their inverters every day to see if the green lights are on, right?
SPEAKER_04:Right, exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_05:That's a really valuable service that our companies offer is having a person actually lay eyes on the dashboard of your monitoring portal to make sure that it's performing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I've I've said it before on this podcast, and I'll say it again. It's it's like the it's like the check engine light of your car. When the check engine light goes on, the dealership doesn't call you and go, hey, guess what? I noticed your check engine light came on. No, no, no, you call the dealership. So it's the same thing with solar. When there's an alert or some sort of notification that your solar system is down, you contact the the solar company that installed it or whoever's maintaining it to say, Hey, I got an alert, come fix this. But like I was Ralph was saying, now it's you know a two-way street. Now we have the ability to actively monitor it, and sometimes there will be cases where we reach out to you first and say, We noticed it. Um, something's wrong. I'm gonna come out and fix it.
SPEAKER_04:So so as part of an OM, um, are there typical annual like annual inspections that happen?
SPEAKER_05:Is that you know, we typically see the regular annual or sometimes even biannual inspections on larger scale systems. If a residential system is performing as expected, you may not need to go out there and do that every year. I think it's probably wise to have your system inspected every so many years, because, like we said, you know, they're exposed to the elements, these start to break down. But I don't even know that that's become common practice just yet. Um, I think that if for residential systems, we're doing good to get active monitoring because that's line of defense. The larger scale systems, because the economics are just bigger, they better absorb the cost of an annual visit and any corrective work that may result out of that. So you do tend to see that as a more common practice on larger scale systems.
SPEAKER_04:I know Ben on our commercial stuff, especially, we've been doing a lot of annual inspections and stuff. And what kind of stuff do we, I'm assuming you're working with these guys, what are we seeing when we go on those inspections? What do we find out?
SPEAKER_01:What things do we see that go, oh wow, we didn't a lot of it is um panel degradation because there's a lot of older systems. Sure. Um, and you typically don't notice it on the residential side, if you know maybe maybe one panel is is down. It might make a small impact on your bill, but on the commercial side, if one panel is down or degraded, you're not gonna notice it at all. It's gonna be like absolutely no impact. But you'll see it on larger scales, like wow, half of this system. Um, these these panels have just been you know beaten up and they're just degrading. So therefore, you know, it's it's gonna make a huge, huge financial impact on them. So we need to, you know, uh replace these panels. Um, another issue that we see is the kind of the same thing with inverters, they're just old. Yeah. And um, I'm not gonna name any names or anything like that, but there are some that are like, well, that's inverters just not around anymore. This manufacturer is just no longer in business. So we need to figure out well, what we we need to exchange a light for like so that they get this whole system up and running, right? So that's typically what we see on the commercial side.
SPEAKER_04:What I worry about in Phoenix is the microinverters because they're up on our roof at 130 degrees in the summer, and they have to sit there and and get through that heat. And I mean, it's it's kind of crazy.
SPEAKER_05:It is crazy to think about that. You know, the one other thing I would add to what you were just saying, Ben, about what we see. I think the other piece is wire management.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yeah. Sure. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:You know, and when you think about utility scale systems, some incredible statistic, like 95% of utility scale systems are installed on tracking racking systems. And you introduce movement, and that creates all kinds of problems because you've got now your your wires are rubbing in weird places. And that can cause a lot of additional issues. And wire management seems like the simplest thing. And yet it's really not.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:And it's highly impactful in terms of the issues that we see that lead to insurance claims and like the high dollar impacts of failures a lot of times come from wire or connector related issues.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. That makes sense on a moving system. I didn't even think about the tracking systems.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. I mean, an astonishing percentage of the utility scale systems are tracking.
SPEAKER_04:Did not know that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Some of the other things that we're seeing too, um, which is kind of interesting, is a lot of damage. Um, you know, trucks backing up into canopies, or sometimes even vandalisms, thing, you know, things like that, which you don't see typically on a residential home because no one's gonna back into your roof. Um, but yeah, those covered parking, you know, you have the the garbage trucks or other large box trucks that come in, you know, ding it, and that they don't realize that that's a lot of damage. So it takes a lot of work. So yeah, dealing with those as well.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But um, so that's kind of like the overview of OM's, but let's talk a little bit more about amicus, and it's it's a cooperative. What does that mean as you guys are cooperative?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, so I know the answer.
SPEAKER_01:I'm just for our viewers, Ralph. I can't you just get that look. Like, you don't know that I do know.
SPEAKER_05:Why are you here? What do you do anyway?
SPEAKER_04:I've asked about a lot.
SPEAKER_05:So amicus O and M Cooperative, there there are lots of different types of cooperatives out there, and we kind of describe ourselves as a shared services cooperative. So a cooperative structure at its core is a a commercial entity, a for in our case, we are a for-profit business entity that has shareholders, in our case, the member companies that own Amicus OM Cooperative. So Harman Solar is a shareholder and owner of Amicus ONM alongside the other 53 active member companies. So each of you own this company. You are my bosses.
SPEAKER_04:You work for me.
SPEAKER_05:We are here to support you. So Amicus OM Cooperative acts as a hub for all these member companies to help perform OM services more safely, efficiently, and profitably. And that's really our core, our mission officially, is to elevate the stewards of sustainable energy systems. That's you. And so what we do for our member companies is kind of five parts. We facilitate a lot of knowledge sharing through regular meetings, in-person gatherings, an intranet, etc., where you can work with your counterparts at other companies across the country and compare notes on the challenges that you face, the vendor issues, the um, you know, and how to solve all of this so that we keep our systems up and running. Uh, we also provide a lot of tools and templates so that our member companies are literally working from the same playbook. And that allows for a greater sense of standardization across the industry. If we're all doing this and approaching this work the same way, customers get used to seeing a professional product. Uh, the third big thing that we do is training. Amicus ONM Cooperative has been developing a training program for OM field technicians. And this is another huge part of trying to standardize the way that we do this work and to keep it safe and efficient is for our technicians to be really well trained. And so we got a grant from the federal government a couple of years ago to help support this work and to create more standardization. We actually worked with a whole bunch of stakeholders, drafted a four-level technician framework that lays out a whole professional advancement pathway for them. And we shared that with the industry associations, with the solar energy industry association and with American Clean Power. And SIA actually turned it into a bona fide American national standard. So it was published earlier this summer. It's called the SIA 301 ANSI standard. And it's about how we train technicians to go out and do this work in the field. So Amicus ONM Cooperative has been heavily engaged in this type of work. We're really passionate about it because I think that not only does that benefit our companies from having more profitable work, but it benefits the technicians by giving them a way to advance, a way to make more money, and a way to see themselves in these roles for many years because OM work is good work. If you don't want to sit behind a desk, this is really like thought-provoking, it's varied, but it's also really meaningful work because you're helping keep our systems operational for a lot longer. Um, so that's what the training thing I could go on for a long time about that. But the other two bits that we do is um we uh provide a lot of business planning support for the member companies. And then we also do uh some business development work, but I really prefer to call it matchmaking, because I like to take a client when they call me and say, Hey, I need help in the Phoenix area, and I say, Well, you're in luck. I've got a great company there. Let me make an introduction. So I matchmake between clients and members to help them, help them grow.
SPEAKER_01:Nice. Yeah, I like the the standardization aspect of it because even though you know the companies that are in the cooperative, you know, on paper, we're all competitors really. We're competitors on the sales and the install side. But when it comes to like the OM, you know, I think as a a homeowner or business owner, we they know that we're not competing in that aspect because uh the procedures that we follow as far as the OM, it's it's standardized no matter who you go through. Um, we're all going to be following the same process of doing that on.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. And I I just generally think this is part of the professionalization and maturation of our industry. You know, when you look at HVAC or automobiles or hot tubs, I don't know. There's there's a lot more processes in place. And, you know, the same is true for apprenticeship programs or for other like educational and professional development pathways. And so it's just time for us to get these ducks in order and really deliver that professionalism to our clients and to our our own people, right? So I'm really excited about this too. I think it's a it's a big step forward for the industry as a whole. And my first loyalty is to you, my member companies.
SPEAKER_04:What I like about the group, and so I've been more involved on the other side of it with Amacus, is even having all these different different EPCs, just like us, different installers, all get together and talk about experiences that things that they're seeing and tools that you're using that maybe we had a call last week where myself and our director of operations was on a call providing um feedback on a tool that we use that another four companies that are in the group wanted to use. And we gave them our honest feedback about this is what we've seen. Stuff like that's really valuable. And the industry's been such silo, it's been so siloed for years where everybody's just kind of you know, you worry about yourself. Well, you know, we don't want to give away the secrets. Yeah, and this group is is it's sharing everything, the knowledge you just talked about. I think that's that's invaluable because we've learned a lot from it and we've been able to share our experience of doing this, you know, for how many years we've been doing it, and it it really helps the whole group just be stronger. I I enjoy being part of it.
SPEAKER_05:Truly, Ralph, I think that is one of the most special parts of this community. And you you were referring to the Amicus Solar, our our sister cooperative, they do the purchasings for both of us, you know, we we are separate legal entities, but we have a great amount of overlap in our ownership groups. And I think culturally we both really try to foster that sharing. And it's one of the most unique things I've seen. There's you don't see this level of sharing at a trade show or a regional conference, right? And there's a big element of trust in that, that we trust in each other, we trust in the fact that we care very deeply about our customers and about the quality of our work. We're not here to cut corners, we're not here to screw anybody over, you know, and I think that sets us apart from unfortunately some of the actors that have come into the marketplace in the last few years.
SPEAKER_03:Yep.
SPEAKER_05:There is also a real um like a quality stamp that comes with being a part of either Amicus Cooperative.
SPEAKER_04:Yep, I agree. Really good point.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So what what is the future of Amicus ON OM Cooperative? Um, we guys, what are you guys looking to do? Obviously, you probably want to get more and more members, but um, is there a a bigger goal that you're you guys are trying to accomplish?
SPEAKER_05:You know, membership is not actually the number one thing that we look at. I I think that the vision for where we want to go is that we we want to continue growing the community with the right kinds of companies that will add to the collective and bring and be good participants in that community. And of course, they have to uphold our commitment to quality workmanship and to the values that we espouse. But I think beyond that, what we've really seen with this training program is an opportunity to reach to serve our member companies and also serve the industry writ large by bringing a quality, four-level training program to the marketplace because there hasn't been one to date. And when we submitted that grant application to the Department of Energy, that was really a big part of our message was this has been an overlooked aspect of our industry. We don't have a comprehensive training program that serves our technicians. We need to develop one. This is a big part of this professionalizing. And so we are starting to offer our training program beyond the membership to companies across the industry. And it's it's a way for us to expand our reach without it always necessarily being a function of membership growth.
SPEAKER_01:I like that. Yeah. Ralph, you got anything?
SPEAKER_04:No.
SPEAKER_01:That sounds about right with Ralph.
SPEAKER_04:I'm trying to let no. No, it's on you.
SPEAKER_01:No, uh obviously we've touched on that, you know, having an OM is important. And um, but what what happens to say to you know, uh a commercial client, um or even residential client, um, if they decide just to opt out, I don't want to do on it, not important to me. I don't see the need for it. Um, I know we touched on warranties and and everything, but uh I see it's more of you know, you're kind of rolling the dice, it's a risk.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Or people people say that they want to do it themselves. Oh, you laugh, but we have those.
SPEAKER_05:There's that's a contingent of our clientele for sure.
SPEAKER_04:I can see it on the residential side, people saying that, but not on the commercial side. Well, I guess they would.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I guess I won't name any names, but I know one person in particular in the commercial department they want to do it themselves. So like I mean, more power to you.
SPEAKER_04:On the amicus side, how many um I mean, do you have do you know how many customers there are on the entire network that are that are that have some type of OM with? I mean, yeah, you your customer, I guess, is the dealer partners, correct?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, my customer is a member company, but the I I mean, I guess the answer to your question, Ben, is not to be overly cliched, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And there, you know, when I think about what that saying really means, is that by doing a little bit of preventative maintenance to stay ahead of something catastrophic, you're gonna save money on what could turn into a very costly repair. And, you know, imagine if you do have a wire that's been, you know, it wasn't properly secured at the time of installation. And every time the wind blows, it rubs against some metal. Eventually that's gonna wear off the jacketing of your wire, and eventually that's gonna cause a fault. Or if that wire, you know, creates a spark, it could lead to a fire. The damage that you're gonna have to repair from a fire is so much greater than replacing a wire or making sure it's tied down correctly with a cable tie, right? Like you think about that, the cost of that inspection and that cable tie is a couple hundred dollars versus a warranty claim or a you know, an insurance claim of thousands of dollars if there's fire damage. And and I just, you know, I think when you when you contemplate that these inspections are a form of insurance. We all pay for insurance that we hopefully never have to use. But knowing that that policy is there gives you some peace of mind that in the event of anything happening, you're covered, right? And I think that doing an active preventative maintenance visit is further insurance because it means that somebody is who it with trained eyeballs is coming out to prevent those issues from ever happening in the first place.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, you know, and I would I would say this too. We we talk about this in our podcast sometimes, but I mean, as if your residential customer, you've got a power station on top of your house, right? Yeah, yeah. And hopefully Harman installed it. And if they didn't, I'm not saying that no one else knows how to do it, but we've seen the horror stories, right? You just never know. Commercial-wise, the same thing. You're putting a power plant up on your roof, you just never know, right? And it it pays. If you're gonna invest that type of money into something like that, why wouldn't you want to protect it? If I go out and buy an$80,000 car, I mean, I'm gonna buy whatever it takes to protect that car while I'm driving it because I want to make sure it continues to work. Yeah, right. This is probably 10 times more important than that because of the ramifications like you just mentioned. If something was done wrong, number one, you could lose savings and this and that, but also you can lose the building it's on. Right. Um, fires happen all the time. We've seen fires happen. I mean, it's it's a reality, right? We're talking electricity, we're talking a power plant, and as technology is changing, and it is, we're seeing more and more battery storage being installed in different places. Uh, we're seeing more of the microinverters being installed. So now you have a panel with an inverter and you have you know 50, 100, 200 microinverters up on your roof. One little thing goes wrong. I mean, poof. Yeah, so we've seen too much of that lately.
SPEAKER_05:We don't mean it need to make it sound like every solar array is about to go up and no, not the point, but yeah, but I think this is this is exactly why on is important, is that it's insurance. And because we encourage you to do regular visits and to avoid issues, you know, some salespeople will say to me, Well, I don't want to talk about OM up front because it makes it sound like we have this product that's gonna break. It's true, and I I completely disagree with that. As a consumer, I expect that whatever I buy has the potential to break because things break. And that doesn't mean that they were fundamentally defective, it doesn't mean that they weren't well made in the beginning or well installed, but wear and tear happens. And I actually argue that talking about operations and maintenance up front should be a peace of mind for your customer. It is a differentiation from the companies that have not invested in building and training a full-fledged service and OM department. And for me as a consumer, I want to know who do I call when something breaks? And that is absolutely a selling point, not a detraction.
SPEAKER_04:This industry is changing. Um, this industry is going from, and we've talked about this a lot, an industry of I call them trunk slammers, right? Got guys that are out there trying to make a quick buck and just selling solar and getting it done and making their money and walking away. They don't care about the long-term investment of that customer and how it's gonna work for them. They don't want to talk about the things like this because they just want to make the sale. Yeah. So it's a really good point to when you're talking to somebody, whether you're a business or you're a residential, you want to know what hopefully they're gonna talk about. Hey, if something happens, this is what we provide for you as a company. We're in this with you for the long haul. It's not a it's not just to get it installed. That's one of the things right. It's absolutely this is a 20, 30 year relationship that we're creating together, and that's the way to look at it. And so when you're making this investment, you want that company or that group that's gonna be there with you right along the way to make sure that everything's okay. It's just like when you go to the doctor every year to get your health check, right? You want to try to catch something early so it doesn't turn into something major down the road, right? I'd rather catch it now.
SPEAKER_05:So yeah, and that's also that that commitment to the long term and to that partnership is what sets amicus companies apart from the Trump slammers.
SPEAKER_03:Yep.
SPEAKER_05:We don't let those in because that is not the values and that is not the way we want to conduct business. And so I think there's that's part of that sort of uh the vetting process for us is to say we want companies who are committed. They're committed to this industry, to this technology, to their customers, their employees. Like it, it's the whole picture of how a company behaves that makes them a good candidate for amicus, either either amicus solar, amicus ONM cooperative. Because this is a long-term partnership. We believe it should be a long-term partnership because we stand behind our work, we stand behind this technology, and we will make sure it's right.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, love it, love it, yep. So, how can we find you with website, social media? She's right there. Yeah, um obviously right here in front of us. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um personally, how can we find you?
SPEAKER_05:Where do you at least my home address? I am on LinkedIn. You can certainly find me there. Um, and then the amicus on website is amicusom.com. It looks kind of like Amicusalm.
SPEAKER_04:Okay. Amicusam.
SPEAKER_05:Amicusalm. Amicusm.
SPEAKER_04:And they can come to you to look for a local member if in their area if they want to go solar. I mean, that's one of the things you'd offer them, right?
SPEAKER_05:I mean, yeah. So we really focus on all things OM related. Um so while many of our companies are also EPCs, uh, there are a handful of our companies that strictly do OM work. So I think if you're looking for an installer in your area, you're gonna want to go to the Amicus Solar website. But Amicus OM, if you're in that bucket of comp homeowners whose original installers are now out of business, you can come look at the Amicus ONM website. And we have a whole page of our member companies where with an interactive map, you can click on your state and see who's nearby.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, because this is not just a Harman Solar Arizona podcast. We're national. We are national. We have listeners in other states. So if they're out there looking for you know an OM company, I would say check out the Amicus ONM website first to find out who is, you know, in your state.
SPEAKER_03:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01:And go start from there.
SPEAKER_04:Right. But if you're in Arizona, you better look at ours. Only ours. Come on, man. Awesome.
SPEAKER_01:Well, thank you for for coming on our show. We uh we hope you enjoyed it. I know Ralph did.
SPEAKER_04:I know Ralph did. Is there any is there are we missing anything? Is there anything else you wanted to talk about or anything I just want to say before we let you go? I mean, did we hit on everything? Did Ben do a good job or did he miss something?
SPEAKER_05:Because I think he did a great job. I mean, I think what's what's fun to hear from your perspective, you know, it was I enjoy hearing what are the top things that you see and how do we get ahead of those? But um just how do you talk to customers about this? I mean, I obviously I'm super biased and I I have uh a lot of suggestions for how we should talk about this, but what do you find customers care about the most when it comes to the long-term health of their systems?
SPEAKER_01:It's more just it's the financial aspect of it. Um, we have a list of all of our commercial installation installations that we've done and um what I do kind of each month, I take a look at you know what they're producing, what they should be producing. And if they're underproducing, I reach out to them and just say, hey, your system's underproducing, you know, you might need a an O and M. And they're like, oh, well, what what what would happen if I spent X dollar X dollars on an OM? How is that gonna be a return on investment on my bill? So I kind of go over that aspect, like, well, your system's only producing 25% of what it should, so it's gonna be a huge impact to you know, us to get out there and fix whatever's wrong with it. So a lot of a lot of clients, it is the financial aspect. Um, not too many of them are worried about, you know, the dangers and fire and all that stuff. They're more worried about like bottom line, the dollar aspect.
SPEAKER_04:So and on the residential side, I think it's especially now at the impending launch of the Harman Service Club, it's it's more about creating the partnership and more talking about, hey, we want to be in this with you together for the next 30 years. So it's really important that you're part of this. You, you know, we become part of this club. We're gonna be watching your back, we're gonna be watching your system. And when they get that first call from us when they're not expecting it to say, hey, we've noticed something, we're gonna come out. That's that's valuable, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. I think on the residential side, it's not about money, you know, the financial aspect or you know, or fires or whatever. They're more worried about, are you guys gonna be around?
SPEAKER_04:We're gonna be there because they're seeing what's going on the last couple of years, you know, and they're like, Are you guys gonna be there? And hey, you've been there for 50 years, so yeah, a good bet, you know, going forward, you're probably gonna be there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, because a lot of them, their system is fine, working, everything's great and everything. They're just more worried about like if something happens down the road, I need someone to call.
SPEAKER_04:And I think for us, our big story is, and we've talked about this all the time, is how diversified we are in our business, right? So we're not just a residential solar company, you know, it's commercial solar, it's it's commercial electrical, it's it's service, it's all these other pieces. So, I mean, we're not relying on that one thing like a lot of these other companies are, which is why they're no longer around, right? Yeah, we're that bigger, more diversified company that we're we're not going anywhere, we're gonna be around here for you because we understand that big part of our business going forward is servicing those systems and making sure people are getting what they paid for over the next 20, 30 years. We wanna be a big part of that.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, so I think it's just that I 100% love all that. I think it really is for many customers, it's a peace of mind. So you know, absolutely becoming a part of the club offers them that peace of mind.
SPEAKER_04:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_05:I can't wait to hear all the details about the car.
SPEAKER_04:We might give you some couple on our next podcast. I guarantee you, we're gonna probably hit about all that, and we'll send you a couple service club.
SPEAKER_03:Excellent, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:All right, well, um Amanda, it's a pleasure meeting you. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. Um lot of great information. Love the cowboy hats.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you.
SPEAKER_04:Maybe you should put one on. Yeah, I'm not gonna do it. We tried. See, we tried. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for thanks for watching once again, and we will see you soon. We're gonna we are gonna do that Harman Service Club podcast. We got a couple other things in mind, and uh we will keep going into 2026 with you. We got a lot more to talk about. So thanks for joining, and we'll see you soon. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. You've been listening to the Harman Solar Podcast with Ben and Ralph, bringing clarity to the intersection of solar power and smart home ownership. If you found this episode helpful, don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe, and also share the show with others navigating the solar journey. For questions and topic suggestions, call 800 281 3189 or visit harmonsolar.com. You can also connect with the team on social media. See you next episode.
