Matthew Xenakis: UK Market Update

In this engaging episode of The Future of Solar Photovoltaics Podcast, host Vikram Kumar welcomes back Matthew Xenakis, UK and Ireland Sales Manager for JA Solar, for a deep dive into the rapidly evolving solar industry. As the podcast celebrates its 14th episode, now listened to in 83 countries, the discussion highlights global milestones, industry challenges, and forward-looking trends.

Key topics include:

• Global Growth: The leap from one to two terawatts of global solar capacity within a year, led by China’s unparalleled scale and innovation.
• UK Market Analysis: Insights into the UK's 1.7 GWp solar deployment in 2023, labour shortages, rising costs, and the challenges of meeting ambitious government targets.
• Compliance & Safety: How JA Solar ensures ethical sourcing, traceability, and safety standards in an increasingly competitive and regulated market.
• Technology Advancements: The rise of bifacial and higher-capacity modules, the evolution of energy storage, and innovative solutions to unlock constrained grid connections.
• Lessons from the Past: Reflections on the industry's cultural shifts post-Brexit and COVID, the critical importance of skilled labour, and fostering collaboration to meet global energy security needs.

The episode also pays tribute to industry colleague Stuart Bradshaw and emphasizes the significance of maintaining standards and honouring those who paved the way.

Whether you're an industry veteran or a newcomer, this episode offers valuable insights, practical takeaways, and an optimistic vision for solar's future.

Transcript

welcome to the future of solar photo attics podcast I'm joined by my co-founder of this podcast who was our first ever guest we've completed now 12 episodes plus one theme track this is our 14th instalment our industry-led podcast is now listened to in 83 countries 45% of the listeners are in the UK ranking consistently high on uh Google um I start first by introducing myself again my name is Vikram I've worked on over two and a half GWp of UK solar projects I cooperate with a Swiss company called Studer, who've delivered to over 100GWp of projects worldwide. Matthew would you like to start by introducing yourself? Yeah thanks very much Vikram for having me on the podcast again it's uh yeah been a year and lot has happened in a year it's been great my name is Matthew Xenakis I'm the UK sales manager UK and Island sales manager for utility scale solar uh working at J solar fantastic and um Matthew do you want to tell us a bit about JS Sola um uh their footprint their capacity turnover organization yeah so J solar is a um massive um solar panel manufacturer um Global capacity of 100 GWp about a 15% global market share in store panels globally in over 165 countries they listed on the Shenzhen stock exchange um and they've got over 81 billion RMB in revenue from 2023. Well life is short and we have a tragedy to cover one of the key figures in the industry Mr Stuart Bradshaw unfortunately and shockingly passed away this summer it reminds us you know that you know don't take anything for granted and and it has shock was through the industry and we try with this voluntary R podcast to to uphold standards but also to remember our colleagues and partners that that you know were with us in the past and unfortunately no longer with us uh that aside it's been a very exciting year uh very much developer driven uh we will talk about the UK pipeline in a bit more detail shortly but Matthew how was last year for you at JS solo and and personally yeah it's been a very busy year um I'm sure for everyone in the industry um every time you have a call with someone they it's now customary to say how busy you are um but it's it's a good thing in the industry um and yeah just shows the the progress that's been made in the in the Solar industry at the moment you know there's more conferences um the the industry is growing there's um sort of people moving from different Industries into solar uh which sort of shows how how the industry is growing which is which is great to see and what were some of the things you said in the last podcast you had a forecast about the industry would you say your expectations have we met so I think I said that we are likely to hit about two GW of solar in the UK this year I think we may fall short of that um I think um in 2022 we did about 1.3 GWp in 2023 probably about 1.7 so it's likely that we'll fall just short of 2 GWp again but I think you know in the years to come 2 GWp is going to start becoming 3 GWp and 3 GWp 4 GWp so I think it's going to grow quite fast fantastic and compliance is a huge topic right now in um you mentioned you had compliance training earlier today do you want to tell us a bit about how JA solar making sure they compliant to UK and European regulations yeah so um obviously it's become a major topic and rightly so um we're obviously trying to ensure that we've got a transparent supply chain you know showing the origin of all our materials particularly um in the polysilicon sort of side of the supply chain um you would notice now JA solar now um marketing an IT strategy which stands for integrated traceability system if you flip a panel over you'll see that it's got an ITS number with sort of four numbers on the back each number corresponds to the factory and it shows that it's come from a sort of customized supply chain which um sort of gives the customer a bit of confidence that the the panels are ethically sourced and that you know J just doesn't stand for any sort of modern slavery or anything of the sort fantastic and now um when we first recorded our first episode with you we were talking about a terawatt of PV Global cumulative capacity being hit uh I think within a year we've now going past two terawatts this is hard to imagine the figures what is your view from generally your headquarters about the grow growing Global deployment of PV and and what kind of impacts does it have on on JS Sola yeah I mean uh J solar is really well poised in the market uh being one of the larger manufacturers um they tend to be really conservative you know um especially in the sort of day and age with um squeezed margins for for for PV manufacturers so Jay's been very conservative and um they're well poised to sort of um keep expanding in this for ever growing Market um I mentioned that we've got 100 GWp uh capacity um and that's completely all anti topcon um and we we think you know like the Market's just going to carry on improving um so for example the the panels two years ago were 550 Watts now we're looking at about 630 640 watt panels so the technology is getting better um production's increasing quality is improving um markets becoming more standardized as well which obviously helps developers and EPC with with install so it's all looking very positive in in in in the Outlook fantastic I've got here some very specific notes about the UK Market uh I'm focusing heavily on official government data which may lag behind what's really going on in the market there's been an enormous developer focused activity uh we've been faced with numerous challenges with um Rising material costs uh labour costs solar panels seem to be going in the opposite direction but if we extrapolate the data from the Department for Net Zero and energy security which some of you may know previously as Department the department for business energy and Industrial strategy and in the early days as the department for energy and climate change it's the same government department just the name's changing it's the department from Net Zero now uh the UK is a very transparent country anyone can go have a look and download the figures which drives transparency through the market and the sector uh one of the reasons what what uh it makes London a financial Powerhouse is is the transparency which allows investors to have some kind of confidence despite the turbulences we've uh endured with Brexit with covid with the Ukraine energy crisis and and the labor shortages that have come some of these are uh replicated throughout other European countries as well so if you look at the overall picture there's approximately 9 1 12 GWp of solar Farms installed in the UK If we talk only about operational assets above one megawatt not looking at domestic not looking at private wire which might not be visible behind the meter the market started you know almost from nothing I've been in this uh sector for about 20 years 12 and 1 half years full time 2011 we started only with uh 50 megawatt 2012 75 megawatt then that jumped to the peak in the UK at 2 and 2 GWp in 2015 of course in 2016 we had the BW Brexit and the pipeline dropped to you know 1 and a half gaw in 2017 and almost just falling off a cliff Edge in large scale at 36 megawatt in 2019 and uh you know 53 megawatts in 2021 it was a low point but started to recover after covid you know starting to go to 22 and 23 megawatts operation operational solar farms in 2022 240 megawatt in 2023 and at the moment you know we had forecasted there was 1.6 gaw in construction of live solar farms at Large Scale we're forecasting only about 400 megawatt of that might go online this year uh this is the official government data Matthew you might have a different view on that because you talk a lot earlier to some of the developers and and the investors what is your view do you think the figure of 370 MWp by the end of this year it sounds a bit too low I think it could be accurate um although it's as you you mentioned that the the information sometimes lags um things may be built but not finished yet well in the in the process of being built but not finished yet um so sometimes the module shipped doesn't equal finish bu so there's definitely lag time there but there are also very clear instances of project delays so um projects haven't been turned on yet for whatever reason um but we do see that quite a bit in the industry at the moment where projects that were going to get built in 2022 are not even built yet they still in the process of being built so um for numerous different reasons each each is each one's sort of unique but yeah so I'm sure that data is pretty accurate but the the the the the actual finished bolt solar projects that's answer about right absolutely and to to separate you know real projects from a lot of pipeline torque uh we saw this time last year approximately 1.6 GW solar Farms were in construction and it looks likely that about 25% of that will go in operation this year uh some of the data that is lagging may not be covered in the government figures just yet the report is quarterly so the last report will be out at end of December but if you apply the same logic that 25% of solar Farms may go into operation this year from the 1.6 gig in construction now the the department for Net Zero Energy security shows 2 and a half GWp solar in construction about 25% of that will be approximately 600 megawatt so if you set a conservative forecast of large scale solar by 1 megawatt not considering uh small rooftops and domestic then we can conservatively forecast 600 MWpto go operational next year um that will be the highest number since 2018 which was 627 megawatt now if you put that into perspective you know only one solar farm the largest one or the second largest in construction now is cleave Hill solar farm 373 megawatt Peak DC potentially you know open to be corrected if I'm wrong so more than 50% of next year's pipeline may be cleave Hill solar farm uh there's Longfield which is 400 Mew solar 100 megawatt battery potentially could be another one but there are you know huge huge uh uh labour challenges and uh you know the government Target is to hit 70 gws of solar within the next 10 years or so which means we going to be doing 5 GWp per year and we're not getting anywhere close to that we're approximately 90% behind budget so something needs to change you know if you I will leave a link uh in this podcast to the pipeline data which is all NDA compliant and public data at the moment in not considering the 200 GWp of grid applications you know there's going to be pressure now to you know separate the real projects from the ones that never intend to be built or can't be financed there's a huge number of I would say almost spammy grid applications which are highly speculative if you separate those from the real projects that have some meat on the bone you know some real investment behind then we could say approximately 26 GWp of solar is in advanced planning stages uh of which 6 gwatt is about 50 me size projects if you reel off some names you've got a 600 megawatt project in planning now called cotum solar project gate birt is 531 megawatt Sonic energy farm easn West is 500 megaw till Bridge is 500 megaw long field is 500 megaw including the battery so perhaps that's the grid connection heckington Fen is another 500 megawatts but all in all majority of this 26 gaw is made up of projects that on average 35 megawatts in size what are your thoughts about the 26 gaw in Pipeline and clearly not a lot of this is entering construction so how do you call a spade a spade and identify the real prospects in the market so I think the large larger projects come with more risk obviously um and obviously some communities you don't want fields and Fields of solar panels surrounding you so there's more um sort of Hoops to jump through in order to get those consented and um you know have the communities all agree um for those things to to happen um The Sweet Spot does seem to be around the the 35 megawatt Mark um it seems to be easier for planning um not as much risk and in terms of of price you obviously don't need as much upfront capital or you know take on that much debt to to to to to get these solar Farms built um so I think that you you will consistently see these 35 megawatt um Farms be built out in the next 10 years just consistently you know um kind of thing and then you will get the odd cleave Hill sort of project where these these will get installed and uh yeah obviously it's it's it's all a thing to to make sure that the UK has um energy security given the the sort of geopolitical land landscape at the moment one of our early episodes was by a very popular figure in the industry he's a very nice guy Mr Clive Cosby he was involved in the construction of the previous larger solar farm called shotwick solar farm uh some other large ones called 's hatch and he was uh good enough to be one of our early guess because you know clearly you got 26 gaw in planning not a lot of is actually getting shovel ready or even in construction and those in construction are not achieving their cood or contract on delivery when they maybe generating the First Energy when it becomes a real project and people can listen to Clive's podcast and my motivation for convincing Clive to come on and he took a considerable risk on himself working for EDF the largest energy Trader in the country uh you know this is a charity Leed podcast so you know it's for everyone in the industry that's involved ask Club how did you construct the largest solar farm in the past you know 72 mega short WG landw maybe 75 megawatts commission potentially in 2022 there's hardly been any action happening you know to hit our targets you know solar may not be the Magic Bullet but it's a big part of it and we need to do volume and we need to do it compliantly not upsetting land owners engaging with the community is a huge uh undertaking and and I asked Clive very bluntly I said Clive how were your team was your team so successful before and why are we struggling now and we have to reflect on the culture because obviously brexit created a lot of uncertainty it upset a lot of our European partners and now there's more uncertainty in Europe so there's interest again in the UK Market but then there was covid which was a worldwide pandemic you know people doing hybrid working in delhi now they're asking half the population to work from home because of pollution so the world has changed not going back to where we were pre-2020 but one of the realities are if you've got a 50 megaw solar farm is it's like having 50 million in a suitcase left in a field and you know if you haven't got site managers you haven't got dedicated teams people are working in silos you're not going to get a delivery team effective enough to actually deliver something that has value what are your thoughts on on some of the challenges that we're facing and what what do we need to do to drive culture towards delivery yeah I think you've hit the nail on the head there um one one major shortage I think at the moment is labor um you know getting good workers in um which brexit obviously hindered quite heavily um there's there's some really good UK epcs out there and also some some good European epcs that that are entering the UK Market which will I think will help um accelerate the builds of these um and then you've got some companies that are developing and building which are both UK based um and they're doing really well at the at the time being um just because you know they develop when they're ready and then they build when they're ready um and they're able to get things moving at their own pace where um developers looking for EPC sometimes have to work at the epc's pace um so yeah I think uh one of the the the major issues is skill and labour um trying to get the right people in the right places to make sure that the the solar farm gets built properly and up to the right standard um and in time fantastic J have a strong name in the industry I've been working as a self-employed uh small business uh obviously part of larger manufacturer manufacturers as an agent uh but the reality is profit and loss you have to hit your sales budget you have to hit your profit and loss and unfortunately this there seems to be up uptick in uh redundancies amongst the financial sector now because you know a lot of these projects that uh development heavy ultimately they need to go into construction to realize their cash flows and you know the market is extremely volatile because um you know people talk about how much does it cost to develop a solar farm depending who you talk to some people say it cost 10 to 20 megawatt to develop a green field site by the time it's shovel ready it's £100,000 a megawatt some people had said it costs £200,000 a megawatt to get solar farm shovel ready to a stage where it's it's rtb another acronym people use ready to build wherever way you put it you know developing solar farm is more than modules you know selling at a high end at 20 p a watt EPC prices are fluctuating on smaller scale it's a lot more probably double below uh 5 megawatt sites but you know large sites some of the big epcs and investors they're not interested in anything below 20 megawatts they want scale to justify the economies of scale so say for example you develop very expensively for 20 p watt your EPC very cheaply for 50 p a watt you've got 70 p a watt to to have a site that's fully developed and in operation of course there's feeding tariffs there's fluctuating Energy prices we are in the middle of an energy War which seems to be getting worse and worse uh hopefully things will stabilize but there is this big transaction where you know the tucon portfolio was sold for almost £140 a watt so potentially you know in the best case there could be 50% margin for doing things properly however the trend I'm noticing is that the epc's come under enormous pressure they don't benefit from owning the asset they've got you know small margins you know 8 to 20% you make one mistake you know there's cost overruns you can easily go under what is your view on how these projects can be financed given that there is a massive exit strategy but a huge amount of risk between going shovel ready and and going into operation well I think there's a lot of money that's going into solar at the moment um you've got Pension funds you've got you know private Equity companies you've got a whole lot of different companies that are providing Finance um for these solar farms and I don't I honestly don't think money is the problem because solo are showing the right returns for people that are holding the projects I think you mentioned there the twoin P portfolio got bought for £140 um and yeah there's obviously still um money to be made in Solo hence why the industry is growing so fast like we can call a spade a spade again and say that you know the the industry wouldn't be growing unless there people were making money and it's it's really good obviously that it's helping their environment which is why I hope most of us get into it but it it helps the industry growing to grow where where where the money is so I think um a big part of it also energy security um knowing that with the the Ukraine crisis that you mentioned that you know once we've got energy security um and we've built all our solar farms and everything um solar will just keep ticking on and and as as the sort of UK grows absolutely the numbers are approximate anyone can go have a look on the shoulders green Co like acquisition of tuen about approximately 500 3 megawatt was purchased for 700 million some of my investor friends in the industry would tell us you know they may be under more lucrative feeding Tara regimes now we may have cfd which uh may be lower in values but whatever the case we need to accelerate towards uh solar deployment also for other renewable energies but the focus of this podcast is the future of solar photovoltaics this is what we are here to discuss and with an enormous pipeline you know the reality is you know we've hit two terawatts worldwide this almost entirely being driven by China what is your view on that with respect to the volume that's going active in China in terms of new solar Farms well China is the industrial Hub of the world at the moment um they have the most energy demand MH hence why they're installing the most uh solar panels they also produce 90% of the world's solar panel so make sense for them to use it um they obviously also um building out Coal Fire plants and everything at the moment too um but it's good to see that it's going in the right way they're looking to Peak their carbon emissions by 2030 um so meaning it's still looking to increase the carbon emissions but by then it's looking to to be completely um kind of Net Zero by 2050 uh so with the rate that they're going um anything sort of possible if you think about it uh we were talking about 2 to three gws in the UK M um they're installing 200 gaw uh so it's yeah it's lucrative fantastic and then China just leaving everyone in the shadows with the volumes they are establishing especially in the renewable energy space there is now um a lot of um discussions with the unions in in Germany about Volkswagen potentially reducing in capacity because uh in China not only in solar but also in battery storage the prices of batteries are collapsing as well and lithium prices may have come down by 90% you know no one would imagine these kind of situations only a year ago and so there is a force you know which is China has taken its U Net Zero commitment seriously you know they are building coal power plants but equally installing more energy than anyone else in terms terms of solar in terms of battery storage in terms of e they've got now probably the largest e Electric Vehicle Manufacturer and this has a KnockOn effect with our relationship with China and our colleagues in the industry there's now a logistical reality where there's a overs supply of uh solar panels um there's an extreme price pressure on modules there's of course a lot of anger because if you are a wholesaler or you know a contractor and you've bought in modules and the prices are dropping so enormously what do you do so there is a logistical reality and a lot of tension also mentioned on the PV magazine blogs about the prices of solar panels as it stands what is your as one of the market leaders in the UK and Europe you mentioned 100 gigawatt worldwide that's huge what is your view on the current pricing situation in modules and how should your colleagues and clients in the industry perceive that so as you mentioned it's uh supply versus demand um the whole problem stems from an over supply of polysilicon in China um if we look back into let's say beginning of 2022 the price of polysilicon was 310 R&B per kg now it's sitting at 45 um which is a massive decrease um and this is because there's excess polysilicon in the market excess polysilicon enables you know more manufacturing from other other well more players to enter the game of manufacturing um which then sort of floods the market there's now over supply of solar panels compared to the demand we also mentioned that people aren't building as fast as they um were um sort of expected to so this has caused a a sort of global Trend where where panels are in excess so rather than holding panels people are are willing to sell them at you know a sort of as at cost price that it so what this is doing is um forcing the price downward um in these sort of situations it's it's it's yeah really important to just make sure that you've got good relationships with manufacturers um that can sort of help wether the storm um I'm sure as a as a cable man um uh manufacturer you you you understand that too mhm mhm absolutely um I think the whole uh Market is very exciting um what I've noticed is people that were Market leaders in the past working for very big companies such as Sentry um worel um you and and other similar companies um now the the markets changed entirely there's been merges and acquisition activity and there's been entrance of huge companies from the energy sector with EDF from the oil and gas sector uh with total and BP and so on and you know there's also smaller investors that were development heavy but may not have the credit rating to build by themselves so naturally they look for a large EPC a large big con conglomerate you know with 100 billion turnover in that region to come in and take on the construction Finance risk and you may get companies that don't have much Sol experience but look at the huge sales numbers they can achieve from building a solar plant if you build a you know 300 megaw solar farm at 50 P of what what is that 150 million turnover you know so it's in one order some companies can do more than the entire business unit but good projects do come at a cost and this creates a lot of legal tensions when people go into build they realize they've got local tensions Community engagement still to do a huge logistical challenge a 300 megaw project can need a small container ship 1,000 shipping containers of modules it might collapse the roads and you know then you got uh a human resource issue you have very small teams you have to suddenly grow 300 people teams and suddenly you realize your margin is not enough to cover the risk and so the people who are more experienced they may not want to take on the risk themselves um so they look for a large company to take on the risk but we can see from the data that there are no winners if the doesn't achieve commercial operation and no one wins from litigation so um in terms of the the future ideal project how do you see that taking shape I think as times progressed we've gotten more experience in delivering solar Farms if we look at the freedom tariff how big the projects were then compared to what's getting built out now um so confidence is obviously growing in the in the larger projects and the the norm back in the day was consistent sort of five megawatt Farms we're now talking consistent 35 megawatt Farms so I think it's just going to get it's all about experience and that you know um upskilling people it all comes back to labor and skills I think um so the more experience we get the more um these sort of things will be achieved if you look at the successes in the past unlike many other Industries in solar you have to be um lean you have to procure directly you know contract with a labor directly one of the issues with relying on the bank of a party to get your project finan from the bank is that they need to then subcontract the same laborers the same Engineers the same materials and just the exchange rate can be more than people's margin or the fluctuation in the metal prices or the module prices you know some of the top Engineers are getting ,000 pound a day you know you you can't replace them with with laborers so you know we have to think about that that in the past so centry was successful is because they were managing everything almost directly when you go through a big company they might have a great sales team but then their CFOs will not be happy when they're looking at Red figures and then the bank wants to come after them because you know people have got Financial models that they need to deliver us given number of megawatt hours to hit the financial models to return shareholder investment and if you're not able to deliver in the end if you got a capex of you know 250 million plus for 500 megga single site that's enough to take some companies under so one of the things I respect about JS Sola and I've noticed this over the last 10 years or so that they have a tremendous name in the market it seem to have a disproportionate market share to me it looks like you're talking to more than half the market if not supplying to them so it's no wonder that you you guys are still around you seem to have a very stable team with alista and Alexa and obviously yourself Matthew but for me from my own learning perspective and also for our colleagues in the industry how did J differentiate themselves in the market given the price situation and how do he keep such a loyal client base yeah so I think one big aspect of it is obviously we stay competitive um it helps being vertically integrated we we manufacture everything from the Ingot all the way through to the module which which helps you know control costs M um alist has been very good at pushing the traceability side of things um he came up with the it scheme with Alexa um and that's really helped show the market you know that we're not hiding we're willing to to sort of um you know uh put ourselves out there show that we're transparent show that we're compliant um so yeah there's there's that and then there's the the obvious aspect of um just interaction with clients and and making sure that the the sales is done the sale is done right um after sales support pre-sales support um and one thing that ja has done very well is is they they tend to be really conservative in the market so um we we we we try to come across um knowing that we can deliver MH um and don't overpromise um that way no one's no one's losing art at the end absolute trust is a huge currency because one of the funny terms people use in the pub is Brag Awards you know there's a lot of people that you know do talk about huge numbers it's very easy to go to Google Earth and draw a red line and say I've got a terawatt pipeline but to understand the magnitude of what people saying and to separate the serious players from those that are just just learning about the market I wouldn't say anything negative about them I think they're learning about the market it takes over 20 years to make another s of century and to bring up a team like that from scratch it's not so easy you need to develop people a lot of senior uh uh uh people in the industry are retiring you know and now if you face the reality of hybrid working or some people completely working from home or different countries they're not in team environments where they get to bounce off their colleagues and with solar it's a changing game uh this leads us nicely to you know DC fire safety um you know because if you look at sadic solar farm from over 10 years ago we were building with 250 watt J modules and 26 kilowatt string inverters now some of these big National significantly infrastructure projects or NPS as they're known or even the smaller ones which is like 9 megawatt Mega means Millions so nothing with mega is small but 9 megaw is considered a tiny project with respect to the you know 6 gaw in construction that's over 50 megaw right so now we have projects with JM and also other modules like Trina and others Canadian Etc you can have bifacial solar panels which are you know 630 Watt peak double-sided modules the AL be is a reflector generation you can have 400 kilow string inverters and you are work in in sales now but I remember from our previous podcast is that you did study engineering electrical background if I'm not mistaken and one of the known issues in the market is you know if you're going only on Price is that it is a power plant you are dealing with a couple of solar panels can be enough to start welding with and there is a enormous DC fire safety issue because solar panels are current limiting devices I did cheat bit I did read up on this last night solar pan are current limiting devices they're not like AC sources that are fluctuating frequency that can you know interrupt the circuit if something goes wrong they're not batteries which can drain the entire capacity so you blow a fuse with solar panels if the fuse rating is 20 amps and it the maximum a string of solar panels in series can generate for example 15 amps and you have a insallation failure on the modules or on the string cables on the mc4s or any anywhere in the system if the electricity starts to leak to ground there's no way you can interrupt the circuit what are your thoughts about the actual engineering side of things no you're you're 100% correct and that's something that's being highlighted in the industry more and more at the moment um we're seeing fires on rooftops we're seeing fires in um solar Farms um I think as you as you know um and as we've talked about is that you got to do things properly you got to make sure you use the right components you got to make sure that it's everything's checked and part of the checks and part of the safety parts of it are um on site you you really don't want any casualties on the solar farm when things are being installed let alone 5 years later um 5 years later when no one's on site's probably better than when the thing has been built so um yeah a lot of things is about training and making sure that things are done done correctly with the the right certifications like we have to go through very rigid um fire certifications for our modules so if using a module Without fire certificates then um you're asking for trouble absolutely and people from outside the industry they may not be aware that it is a boom and bus cycle because uh you know I'm a big believer in a just transition you know oil and gas or energy is the largest sector in the world and if you're changing everyone to Electric vehicles to solar panels to wind turbines we have to take people forward with us because you know a badly designed solar farm may not necessarily be better than oil and gas asset and now you know we are facing an energy crisis you know there were people queuing up for fuel and so you have to take people forward with you and a lot of things were done very very fast because of the changing nature of feeding tariffs and other things and and now we're in a situation you know that you know that the market is screaming out for a delivery team that is able to you know deliver good projects um so you know I very much respect the work that you do and uh now if you talk about few few more fun things less serious topics actually before we go on to that there's another thing I do want to say when we were walking in the Gold Rush before brexit I I won't mention any specific names to keep everyone out of any controversy but we were walking around Mountain structures and some of the innocent questions people would ask I'll be one of them why do we need earthing on solar Manti structures you got so many piles deep into ground it's natural earthing why do we need any Earth thing and and the thing that's sobering is if you got 1500 WT strings you know 373 Mega solar farm can have 23,000 plus strings at 1500 volts you can have 26 strings like into one string inverter you 500 amps could be the potential at, 1500 Vols that can't be interrupted all the inverter can do is switch off if there's insulation failure but the string carries on generating to ground and so for example if you've got insulation failure on a connector or modules or string cable for example and you're bleeding 1500 volts to one mounting Rail and another mounting rails at zero potential and a poor worker that's cleaning that module or installing a new load of solar panels they can be subject to enormous electric shock so people should not underestimate the health and safety undertaking sure because if there is an incident you know it's not going to be good for anyone and so that that is the heavy part of things that we will cover offline with our engineers and our clients but the fun part is you are a co-founder of this podcast um probably 10 years younger than me you gave me the idea to start this podcast and I think I think it's been an enormous success it's been listened to in 83 countries our podcast now been transcribed on Apple podcast for accessibility so if someone wants to read uh the transcripts whilst listening they can do so our podcast is also available on other popular platforms like Spotify and Amazon audible we're being treated almost like a eBook uh so it's actually enormous and you know now listen to in 83 countries 45% of listeners are in the UK this podcast is not designed to be a clickbait or some kind of marketing gimmick but rather to deliver collaboration uh within the industry to let people have a voice uh what has been your feedback on the podcast since you did the first episode yeah I think um you saw yourself short vicam I think um it's it's been fantastic and you've really pushed this this podcast forward very well um and yeah I think the the industry loves it um it's good to hear people's opinions and and also just to you know brush up on some of the information that other people have like for example you know listening to John Davies about the quality side of um modules and and that sort of thing was was really good to hear um despite even me being in the the PV side of things I definitely learned a lot from John um and yeah from a lot of the other guests as well so yeah I encourage anyone that wants to come and uh and give some information on the podcast to come to to put the hand up fantastic and you've designed the logo as well so you should give yourself some credit oh that was sponsored by Chachi B well artificial intelligence is another massive topic to to get into and I've been told by a former client of mine now good friend Mr David wnis who was basically to me a chief engineer at Soul entry uh you know that he can have very long drives to site visits and he finds it refreshing listening to you and other guests and reflecting on the past and you know is all in positive spirit and because a lot of us are working remotely now it's a way for us to communicate with each other to get us back working together on site in offices remotely as well and so uh before I thank you for participating in another podcast in Know video for the first time um what are your views and what what message would you give out to people listening to this and and and future participants well uh future participants um looking forward to hearing what you what you have to say um hopefully we can we can turn out a few more podcasts this year and make it a monthly thing um and yeah I think the information is King you know the more we can share amongst the industry the the less problems we're going to have you know we've talked about fire safety that might prevent some some accidents happening in the future so yeah I think information sharing is is really important in the industry especially um with the way we're about to see this ear industry grow so yeah fantastic and you know I've been asked to write articles for fors magazine um you know I find it daunting you know how how to go about it and it's it's amazing how the Market's changing now because grid connections are a gold rush now you know it's hard to get a grid connection for people so that can sort of create a bust in the development game and now I think there's going to be a trend for building solar Farms you know I'm at the moment working on a 110 KV grid connection you know the grid connection itself might be small but it may connect a you know 90 megawatt project and there's also an enormous space for power engineers wanting to get into the sector because you know as the feed and tariffs are reduce and we need to have lower level of cost of electricity we need to take you know our studies about the power studies uh from the solar cell all the way to high voltage grid if you might have for example siren is a Sol form if your grid is only connection is only 10 megawatt with a 50 Mega hour battery with Mr mro vasic is a grid serve he could solve you connect a 20 megawatt project with a 50 Mega hour battery you know that is Real Genius thinking in my book because some people didn't want to build the project because the grid connection is too small and now with the dropping battery projects we can unlock new grid capacity we can work with different voltages and also there is an enormous aspect that's gone missing with uh still essentially not building projects anymore which is you know working on product development which makes the whole system work so I'm very much excited for the next year ahead do you have any forward looking statements any forecasts for us to look forward to well um maybe we underachieved this year reaching two gaws but I think next year we we should push for three gws maybe even four fantastic and the positive is the market share for jsol is very high so that's a testament to you and uh thank you for joining another episode thanks very much for having me Vikram thanks Matthew