Nick Spicer: Your Eco, Commercial Solar Projects

• Nick Spicer is CEO and co-founder of Your Eco, a B Corp-certified solar and battery storage company focused on commercial, industrial, and remote installations.
• Active in solar since 2011, Nick transitioned from a military career to the renewable energy sector.
• He served as an infantry commander in the Royal Yorkshire Regiment, leading combat units in Baghdad. This military background informs Your Eco’s disciplined project management and safety culture.
• Nick has delivered solar projects in sensitive and post-conflict zones, including:
  • Nepal, following the 2015 earthquake (alongside Prince Harry)
  • Don Bosco orphanage in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo
• His resilience is further shown through extreme endurance feats, including:
  • Canoeing 1,000 miles to the Arctic Circle
  • Running across the Sahara Desert
  • Swimming from Europe to Asia
• Your Eco recently refurbished a 20-year-old Solarcentury rooftop system at the National Trust HQ, restoring it to modern standards for another 30 years of service.
• The company is preparing to deliver the Caribbean’s largest rooftop solar installation, built to hurricane-level engineering standards.
• Your Eco applies military-grade safety protocols, including fall recovery planning, net testing, use of SolarEdge technology, and strict on-site quality checks.
• Amanda Spicer, Nick’s wife and co-founder, plays a central leadership role in the company’s operations, training, and culture. She arranged this podcast appearance.
• Nick’s closing message: The solar industry must scale responsibly. Safety, ethics, and technical quality are essential for long-term success.

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to the future of solar photovoltaics. We are on our 15th guest now. I've got the absolute pleasure of welcoming Mr Nick Spicer from Your Eco Nick, welcome. Hey, how are we doing? You're right. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. I'm very excited to be here. Our podcast is a voluntary run initiative to bring some ethics back into the industry. It's been listened to in over 87 countries, over 700 cities. We are predominantly a business-orientated podcast it's very nice to have you here we try to restore credibility back into the industry. You'll start by introducing yourself, mentioning a bit about your early life and background. Yeah, of course. Well, look, it's great to hear, and I think it's really important. part of the industry is that credibility and the ethics and everything around it. thank you for having me. As I said, in terms of myself, I'm Nick Spicer. I'm the CEO of Your Eco In terms of early life, I grew up in Buckinghamshire, just outside of London. Off to university at Leeds, focused on human geography with a bit of a focus on sustainability there and always a real passion of mine before spending my time as an army officer. went to Sandhurst the Royal Military Academy and I spent my time as an infantry officer in the Yorkshire Regiment, commanded the Longhost combat unit out in Baghdad and I had a wonderful time in the military before I decided that it was time to perhaps stop getting shot at for a vocation and a career and uh move into the sustainability world. Interesting that you say Buckinghamshire because I spent the last four years coaching in Buckinghamshire. Wycombe and Bucks Football League for the Ruislip Rangers? well, I know it well. So I went to school at the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe and grew up just in the village outside of there. So a great part of the world but my sort of life from there took me up to the University of Leeds and then back into London as so often is the case and then the military sort of brought us out to the south west out towards Warminster and then we settled and raised our family out here in Bath. Fantastic. In terms of hobbies and interests? Well, you mentioned football. Football is a big hobby of mine. Hobbies slash, we'll call it, bordering on dangerous addiction. I coach girls youth football and have done for many years at Bath City Football Club. But also, dare I say, for all my sins, all my pain, I like to think of it as escapism, but I don't know sometimes. It's like going to a torture chamber. I'm a big Arsenal fan. and season ticket holder up there, so I do spend quite a bit of unhealthy time to and from Bath up to London and the Emirates watching the football. I'm also a fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, great interest in geography and exploration and environmental issues. And I also have a penchant, I guess, for doing sometimes the weird and wonderful. So I try and do something every year that puts me outside my comfort zone. The other year I decided to take part in the world's longest canoe race where I paddled a thousand miles with my best buddy Dan up the Yukon River up to the Arctic Circle on a 10 days, thousand mile self-supported expedition. I've run across the Sahara, I've swam from Europe to Asia, I've done all kinds of weird and wonderful silly things over the years so hopefully that gives you a bit of an insight into me. It certainly does, there's a lot to talk about. In terms of education background, You mentioned the Army already. Yeah, so I went to school at the Royal Grammar School, as I said. Went to University of Leeds to study human geography, but also leaning on the sustainability front. Moved across to the military from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, as I said. Served best part of eight years in the infantry on that side. before moving across to Your Eco I found myself in the renewable energy industry in about 2011, and the hiatus of the solar coaster and all that brought with it. And then I founded Eurico in 2016 with my wife Amanda. And we are here today almost a decade into the journey. one of the key things for us really is bringing that military background that provides that sort of discipline, precise project management approach that we'd like to hope we're known for at Your Eco That's sort of aerospace, military grade quality and everything we do. But it's really trying to be a business with purpose as well, which is very much at the fore of who we are and what we seek to do. Fantastic. The aerospace stuff is interesting. We could talk about that offline. do a bit of work in Switzerland, so we're quite big into aircraft carriers and other similar things. You started Your Eco in 2016, which is a controversial year because I think was the year of the Brexit referendum. I was into solar, I took it as a bit of a joke and then we took it seriously and I think we're just about recovering from that hangover. what did you do in solar from 2011 to 2016? Yeah, I got headhunted to come work for a company who delivering large-scale volume programme rollouts of solar PV, predominantly around the residential side. So I got involved in that early days from a project management and operation. management perspective helping them scale a business before deciding that I thought there was a way I might be able to do it myself in a way more aligned to my own thinking and what I sort of you know probably have best practice to deliver solar. And what made you want to start your own business? I have always I suppose been a little bit mercurial in my ways and like to uh think outside the box and think how I might do things. And probably I also realised that, as my wife Amanda would say, I couldn't work for anyone else. I think I went for an early interview with Shell after leaving the military and certainly wasn't for me, both the business and the organisation. But, you know, that PLC environment, I don't think would suit me. And I'm very much more geared, I guess, to a more entrepreneurial mindset. So that was very much the focus and really having, you know, the ability to create one's own future and forge one's own path was an attractive one. But also the ability that I wanted to create a positive legacy for this generation, the next and still do and it's very much part of how we see business and the purpose behind it. And it's something that I have strong feelings towards with the young family, two young daughters, Ella and Mila, and very much want to know that when asked by them or maybe grandchildren years to come, what did you do about this? I say, well, at least I tried. I stood up. was counted for. So that was why I really wanted to set up the business and why I wanted to you know do so to create something of my own and yeah as I said probably not have a boss. Although I do have a boss now I report directly to my wife Amanda who seemingly now runs the business but now it's a great place to be so I wouldn't have it any other way. I've been on the road for a very long time in different capacities and sales and procurement and engineering building sites as well. Some people never Did start your own business? Did you talk to your wife about going at it alone? Yea, we did. One of the people I look up to a lot, though, is, and there's probably a story in this later down the line is Richard Branson. I think of his books is screw it, just do it. I am sure that was the title of his book and it really sort of inspired me on that entrepreneurial side. Just to say, dare I say, you know.. you know, what's the worst that could happen? But also, you know, I do think, like you, so many people don't do it because they look at the risks and say well actually this could happen or this could happen but you know flip that narrative upside down and I'm probably in the main quite a glass half full and actually is probably often ah positively overflowing that glass with with my own views on things you know actually what's the best that could happen and there's a lot of good things that can happen so it's sometimes it's well they say the juice is worth its grace How did you get into Solar? got head hunted to come help, as I said, a company I was worked before heads hunted me to come in. They were seeking someone from an ex military background to corral multiple teams, multiple fronts delivering large scale programmes. So I'm sure for all of us who remember the early days of solar feeding tariff-based programmes, they still give a sleepless night and some twitches that we want to forget about. But, you know, yeah, that's how I got into it, really. great and it was a great transition coming into solar and being able to now scale a business focused on PV and storage for our more corporate C &I clients. And I think that military experience in the challenging environments naturally translates to deploying renewable energy in remote locations as we have as part of our business, especially in the early days where we were doing an awful lot of that. And actually was probably one of the key elements of the business that differentiated ourselves was working in more remote and extreme environments. often post-conflict or disaster. mean, for instance, after the Nepal earthquake, I found myself a year later taking Prince Harry out to install solar with me for a week as part of an ex-military disaster relief organisation I was leading and involved with at the time and leading one of their teams. And so I spent quite a lot of time in Nepal delivering solar next to the epicentre of the earthquake and also restoring a hydro turbine in one of the key villages and valleys that had been affected as a direct result. Fantastic, there's a Dutch chap on a podcast with us earlier, name is Mr Arnoud Klaren he lives in Malaga in Spain now. used be the technical director of Foresight. He got into solar by going to Nepal as well, developing solar cells where they usually concentrate sunlight and all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff. But this is about you, as we said earlier, introducing your business. Do you want to tell us a bit more about that? Yeah, so Your Eco is a multi-award winning B Corp certified solar energy company. We specialize in solar. PV and battery storage systems. The company we've got a head office in Bath, a main operational office in Bristol and satellite offices in London and Cornwall and we operate with a mission of working with you towards an energy independent low carbon future and our mantra is very much focused around people, planet, profit. we have our own philanthropic arm, Reduce Our Carbon, which we support to make sure we're involved in agroforestry. schemes and smokeless stoves, which is how we take that carbon neutral position ourselves. And we really just wanted to be a business with purpose that do things correctly. I think, you know, since we've continued, we've wanted to take much more of position of advocacy in the market. And I link back to your earlier comments talking about ethics and really being at the fore of things. I think my view I always say to people is, and I say this to clients a lot, is I recognise as a business that we can't do every solar project and nor do we want to do every project and some projects aren't for us and some projects aren't for other people. I said but what's really important to me is that trying to be a voice hopefully of advocacy and try and communicate some of the key concepts that we need to be talking about so clients can make informed decisions. I am mindful that the industry has had low barriers to entry and it has had dare I say some of the charlatans of the world in it in the early days, maybe there's still elements of it. But I think with low barriers to entry, without training and without appropriate guidance and or mentorship programmes or officially recognised training, I think there's a lack of clear standards and I think as a result a lot of people are self-taught. And I think you only really learn what's good by understanding what's wrong. And so I think, know, over a decade, you know, almost 15 years of experience, you start to really understand where things can go wrong in solar, what looks right, what's good solar looks like. I talk about what does good solar look like? that for us is, it's warranties, it's bank abilities, it's building with an enduring nature in mind. We're telling our clients we're building 25, 30 year enduring assets. So we need to make sure that's thought about. Thought about from O perspectives, how are we going to access and maintain these systems over the years and actually the bankability and provenance of the equipment we're putting in. And so I think all of those come into play. And so for me, is that, It's that advocacy piece and something that we really want to be part of in helping continue to shape and positively enhance the industry. Well, recently I was asked to draft an article for Forbes magazine about solar. I enormous amounts of research and what I learned was there's over 2.2 terawatt solar installed worldwide. The value of solar that's already installed is more than the GDP of certain countries like Russia and Spain. So there's tremendous volume. already out there. Also the NREL, National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the US, they forecast we another 75 terawatts of solar. it's going to be an explosion in volume. Yeah, it's huge. And people might not see the importance of ethics now, but any failures that get made get replicated hundreds of thousands of times. Yeah, if you build on that, think as Desnest have said recently, that at a high level, I think it's something like we've got to treble our capacity of clean energy by ... 2030 is the target. You and actually you think what we've done to date and .. the volume and actually we now want to treble it in the best part of five years and actually that's a monumental undertaking not least when you if you think power wise that's the same I think as you know roughly 20 Hinckley points so we need to build 20 Hinckley point equivalents of power in five years and we see how slowly and methodical that sector builds because of for some so obvious reasons but you know we're going further and faster and we need to go further and faster as part of this approach and so we need to do things with certain key parameters in mind and understanding you know the requirements of it. started your business in 2016 we're coming up to around nine years. Are you able to tell us a bit more about your eco, how many people work in your companies, which kind of contracts you work with? Yes, Your Eco operating across the UK and indeed internationally, and I think I'll touch upon that later and some of our more interesting projects and areas of operations. We've got about 30 employed persons within the organisation working across from the field team throughout the office and support side, and provide a whole host of services We predominately are delivering rooftop solar uh in the commercial and industrial space along with construction. but also on the agricultural side as well and what we call private estates which is sort of a mixture of perhaps high net worths or large properties. We do do an element of ground mounted systems but those are predominantly for self consumption purposes, some of those with aesthetic consideration let's think on listed or heritage sites particularly on the private estate space or indeed it might be that a particular building needs more capacity and it has some redundant space around it. We're certainly uh more in favour of the self-consumption model and working on solar on that basis. And as you said, we're going nine years as of this month. So one more year to push to our decade birthday. We've got a great team in place. We, think, you know, probably over 50 % of our team are ex-military across from the three services, so from the army, the Navy and the Royal Air Force. uh And I think that's really important for us to champion some of those values and what we call our military approach to project management. m We've recently been recognised as a silver member of the Armed Forces Covenant, which is a real privilege and hopefully testament to the work we've been doing on that front. And I think when you look wider and further afield at our business, know, as I said to you, what makes us different and where we are, we're very much committed to what we're doing. We talked about that people, planet, profit, and I'm a firm believer that, you've got to look after your people. And actually profit shouldn't be a dirty word because by making profit, you are able to look after your people and you're able to look after the planet and we can make those. So actually we want to make sure that we've got a good team around us who are buying into what we're about. And also that we're leading from the front. We certainly seek that high performance standard. As I said, we're a B Corp and that means a lot to us, but we're also ISO accredited across all of their suite of ISO accreditations, which we hope to be a kite mark of quality. We don't seek to be badge collectors, you know, sort of like the Scouts organisation where you see the children with a thousand and one badges down the arms or along the side of the vans. We want to be the creme de la creme really and be a position of advocacy and that high performance and a brand that people can trust and go to. Fantastic. What is the Armed Services Covenant? What does it entail? It's in effect supporting the armed forces and the reserve element of the armed forces. So it talks about how you will support former service men and women and how you will continue to support those who are operating in the reserves by enabling them additional time to go do activities or training or support and indeed should someone be mobilized how you can support them throughout their period along with their family and indeed you know giving them comfort and job security around all of those areas. And it's an interesting time you've chosen to start business just just after the turbulence of Brexit there was Covid in between which was still kind of recovering from the Ukraine energy crisis you know we just seem to be starting one crisis after another how did you navigate your company culture do you have people working remotely in the office, how have you managed to create a team, chemistry? Do you know what's interesting? I don't think there's ever a good time to start a business. I don't think there's ever a bad time to start a business. I think it is what it is and it's the realities that you know if we all had a if we all had a crystal ball and could see the future probably none of us would do what we did I guess who knows. It could be scary, could be enlightening. I think the reality though from the start is we were very much a small lean and agile team and we were working remotely. And actually it's only been over the last couple of years that the team have come back together in the office at their own wish. Before that all of our team were working remotely and it was a great ability for us to really be able to pivot and be a lean organisation and be nimble, especially in a time where there were cost uncertainties and you did have economic conditions that made things challenging. So we've taken that approach, which has hopefully been the right approach and sees us today as a strong financially performing business, which is always where we wanted to be. But I think, you know, those times are always challenging, but you have to adopt. And I think you need to spot trends and understand where things look. When we were doing, throughout COVID, we were delivering some large programmes for a supermarket store, you know, and actually, I think the key worker classification went down and we carried on, you know, and actually it was quite good. The roads were clear and, you know, we got on with what we needed to do. So, and in some ways it was a positive time for us. crisis was obviously positive from an economic perspective for us, albeit it did create another sort of flashpoint high point. And actually I think what we all crave in the renewable sector is very much a straight line of work and income generation and opportunity. hopefully that stability will now entail a little bit more. But I also think more recently with the changing government, I think there's perhaps an element of economic uncertainty at the moment and I think there's a bit of a lack of confidence. We certainly saw a dip and a strong lull in inquiries and opportunities when the budget was being announced. So October through to January, February was very quiet for us. But now we've really seen it pick up. And I think there's certain drivers and factors around that. I think one is noting that people know that they need to go on a net zero journey. Their clients are demanding them to be more sustainable. Their stakeholders their employees and people know that it's right to be, you know, a more, to transition to more of a low carbon society. And I think that's one of the drives that people do. And I think solar has an economic benefit that helps enable it. And so I think that is driving things. I think there's very few carrots at the moment and very few sticks, if you like. So actually for some people where you had a closing date of feed in tariff and you had a hiatus of work and people said, if you don't move now, you won't be able to do solar. I think solar is one of those things. say it's like a merry-go-round. It sits on the merry-go-round until someone's ready to jump off. You can give a great proposal, your sustainability manager might think it's great, your ops director might think it's great, your finance director might want to buy or add to his fleet of trucks or lorries or whatever the assets they're investing are in. But there will be some stage where it goes, actually, no, this is the right time and we need to do it. And so I think, as I said, that roller coaster or the sort merry-go-round continues and people continue to drop off at various stages. Although I do think it changes industries or sectors very drastically. think we saw agriculture, which I think, you know, farmers are always at the front of maybe entrepreneurialism is a fair way of saying it for the farming community. They moved early with solar. They recognised the role, you know, especially when you still look at, you know, people like the poultry sector, they're very shrewd operators who understand the returns. And I think, you know, when Ukraine came around on the heightened energy prices, is those who hadn't gone did go. And I think now you're left with people who are waiting for something to give an economic opportunity. um Or, you know, it's people who are at the right time that they're redeveloping a farm, you know, they're upgrading the capacity, they're changing or regeneration or something's happening. Or indeed a change of changing of the guard when a new generation of farmers coming through and actually they want to do into it. So I think some people would say that they saw an 80 % reduction in agricultural know, delivery of solar systems over the last year. So I think there's so many factors at play, but I think now the sector's in a healthy place and I think people's genuine net zero drivers is pushing the industry along. And obviously I think public sector money is becoming more more applicable to that. Fantastic. You've got a triple whammy of discipline. You're a football coach. were in the army. You worked with your wife. You know, you've got a team of about 30 people. And, you know, I'm not against working from home at all. I nearly always work from home. Yeah. And what I've learned is everyone's different. Some people can't work on their own. No, no, no, absolutely. So how do you drive discipline and focus within your team? I think this is where we come, you know, we bring that sort of military as we call it and we talk very much about this concept of mission command which is by telling people what you want them to do but not telling them how to do it and being prescriptive. You almost need to give people a left and right of arc so you know if you were on a military range you would say you can't shoot that way and you can't shoot that way but you can shoot in the middle and I need you to do this. So it's by defining those arcs and enabling people creativity and empowering them to work within. Hey your budget for this job is this, your constraints are this, this is how I need you and this is what we want the project to look like at the end. And using terminology like the main effort, we will say the main effort this week is to secure this contract or to deliver this. And then people know and can align themselves to what's needing to be done. But I think it's important not to be prescriptive, but give people accountability and ownership. But ultimately, and Amanda will always wear that broad shoulder of accountability that sits with us. And we will make sure that we have empowered our teams, but they know that we will we will shoulder it and that they are fully supported because we work on that basis of shared understanding and trust and aligned objectives. Fantastic. We are in the age of disinformation and I've done enormous research recently going down the AI rabbit hole as well, so I'm verifying myself as well. I write a small blog and in this research from the Office of National Statistics that the UK in 2019 used about 1644 terawatt hours of energy. That's a lot. It's quite a lot and predominantly it's fossil fuel. The number one energy use was electricity generation from gas. Yep. So this is controversial because of what's going on. Ukraine we are in a literal energy war yeah and it would be an actual war if there was a nuclear involved and what I learned in this research was if the UK electrified everything that could be electrified like such as heat pumps and electric cars then that's 1644 terawatt hours of energy could be reduced to 500 terawatt hours so profit and purpose are very much interlinked and it's not always a level playing field because we have to be honest once we when they're cannibalizing people's PPAs and revenue models and people live from fossil fuels, the tensions are tied to them, and it may not always be a level playing field because if you put like for like a . electrification you essentially bankrupt the fossil fuel industry. So what are your views on that? How do you stay competitive? Oh do you know it's a myriad of... you know complex questions and understand this great book by uh... Jeremy Leggett who founded Solarcentury carbon war rooms and it talks about the unrealized uh... few reserves on balance sheet sitting as assets that can't be realized because of the fact that could help construct into that way of bringing down the fuel industry fossil fuel industry i think i say to people we live in a perfectly imperfect world at the moment and what do i mean about that i think lot of things that are not perfect. There's a lot of things we think are good, but I think there's challenges in everyday life. You know, we talk about electric vehicles and people talk about, you know, the embodied carbon in an electric car or the embodied carbon in a battery or actually the ethics around solar panels. Actually, I flip that question to people though and I say, you when I look at my mobile phone, you know, like many people have an Apple device, you know, where's that come from and how does that fall in the same bracket? Where do our clothes come from? Where are our clothes made? What are we deciding to be ethically conscious about or sustainably conscious and mindful about versus other items? And I think that's driven by items that perhaps other industries might not want to be seen as stand on their own two feet. so this whole disinformation, you look back to history, we'll always say that those industries with strong abilities to lobby will lobby other industries or against others and create a groundswell of support or disinformation to be able to work against. And I think we find ourselves in that position at the moment where there is so much information day that if you went down every rabbit hole or took it into your mind you'd just be wrapped up wrapped around your axles. You mentioned AI, I don't think AI could probably tell you what's right or wrong and I work on the basis that I'm you know put all of that politics aside and the information just go you know what sometimes it's trying to do and break things down for simplicity. I'm not a huge I say fan that's probably the wrong term. I'm not someone who engages much with you outer space and the planet system and everything else because my little brain boggles and is already overwhelmed just dealing with this one planet, let alone the others. You don't want to colonise Mars? No, no, I think let's focus on what we've got first before we're looking at our escape option to Mars and let's try and do what we can here. And so I think one step at a time, but some things make sense to do and I think when they make sense, you do them. I also think politics and the nature of short term politics in this country does not help. and I think it slows us down. You you've only got to look at inter-party views at the moment and where stronger voices are coming from, other players who are perhaps making more of a play and gaining some successes and the rhetoric there is very much anti-renewables. I think, you know, the human individual is making greater change with their own feet by demanding and delivering change than we are at a level or strategic level and I think there is just a fundamental lack of cohesion. think unless you are in a sort of more dictatorial approach then I don't think you can apply that. I mean if you look at China for instance and what China has achieved and the way it's transforming its infrastructure, its cultural view on energy and transport and logistics, I mean it is just fascinating, incredible and off the scale for what has been achieved. you compare what we achieve in the UK on a similar basis. Now, people will talk about politics, or talk about ethics and all these things. I'm not talking about any of those and I'm setting those aside for one moment because I know they're factors. But fundamentally, you have to have strategic buy-in and it has to be driven if we want to achieve that huge transformational change. So I think what we're doing at the moment works. I think it's perfectly imperfect. It's definitely not perfect. But at least I guess we're doing something. Fantastic. Well AI is a double-edged sword because I think it has the same flaws as humans and I've recently taken up the £200 per month subscription because I've been exhausting it too much with the rabbit holes I've been going down. There's a specific reason for that. The company which I represent in Switzerland, Studer Cables, they used to be called LEONI before, have delivered to 100 gigawatt of solar worldwide in pure cable volume. About 2.5 gigawatts in the UK. 100 gigawatts sounds like a but it's less than 5 % of the global solar install base and big doesn't mean better at all and it's frightening for me because there's an element of personal liability because there isn't a shutdown device that can switch solar panels off very easily and I've felt personal responsibility to develop some safety so AI is good in that sense because now I can upload 10 attachments, Single Line diagrams, IEC standards and ask detailed questions so it works in that regard because it can quickly deliver a lot of information that will take you a year to get. In the other sense, AI can also go down the rabbit hole and it mirrors your personality and your mood. You can change what it thinks. So if someone's not of self-aware, they can totally go down the disinformation rabbit hole. But you've had nine years of your own business, you seem very happy with what you do. What would you say are your most memorable projects? I think it's probably some of the international projects. I touched upon Nepal and I think uh refurbishing a 30kW Hydro scheme out there meant an awful lot in delivering a programme of solar around the schools in locality, especially from a purposeful and seeing the direct aftermath and effects of that. you know, of the natural disaster in the earthquake that hit Nepal back in 2015. And also being involved in some other projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Varunga National Park. There was a scheme we did on the electrification of Don Bosco, which is, think, it's the largest orphanage in Goma. I think it's listed as one of the most dangerous countries in the world. And so actually being on the ground there and delivering positive effects certainly has a event. I, you know, also I mentioned earlier. Richard Branson and some of that inspiration. I actually had a chance encounter with him after Hurricane Irma when I met him at the airport in the British Virgin Islands and actually since then we've been doing quite a bit of work for Virgin and their charities including him opening one of our off-grid systems we delivered as part of an off-grid school we helped build, a temporary school fabricated from shipping containers which we built to provide immediate aftermath and positive effect, not something we'd done prior albeit we'd made an office previously. out of a shipping container and knew we could turn our hand to it. And so I think that meant an awful lot. actually there's much more, there's so many rewarding projects and programmes we've been involved in. And I think, you know, in the UK we've got some wonderful projects at the moment, you know, where we're involved in megawatt plus rooftops as part of a rollout for a particular company, a PLC firm on that side, which is great, and some other well-known PLCs. And I think for us, you know, Delivering projects for the likes of the NHS has been really meaningful. We've done a large project and programmes down in Cornwall for them across that trust there which has been great. And we've got more to come there and other areas of everything from schools we've been involved in too. We have recently done an exciting project which certainly was a great one for and actually was quite a fitting one and meant a lot where we took an old system off the roof for National Trust at their head office in Swindon which was initially a system installed by Solar Century probably two decades ago and actually it was really meaningful in a way because I ended up doing quite a lot of installs for Solar Century early days and I think they were actually one of our suppliers and we were even installing on their IKEA program and other things in prior history and so it was really fitting to come back to an install and almost refurbish it for the next 30 years and what was refreshing was actually we talk about standards and everything else and there being some challenges was this system was Great. It was working well. It was performing. It was well labeled. The drawings matched what we saw. The workmanship quality was high. And actually it was great to tell the story and hear from others, you know, who previously had worked at Solar Century, who are now, you know, working in senior roles across the sector, who are all reflected fondly on this project and for us to sort of repurpose it and reinstall it. um and bring it up to present day standards and give it a new lease of life for another 30 years was really quite powerful, I think, and a really proud project on our side. I think that and some of the international ones are great. I think we're also about to do the Caribbean's largest rooftop. which is a project we're starting in October, which would be a tremendous accolade, another SolarEdge . project on the international scale for us, and of that size. So yeah, a huge amount of memorable projects, a huge amount of amazing projects forthcoming as well. And I think so many to talk about and wonderful clients and people we've worked with along the way. Fantastic. I've worked in the Congo remotely through Solarcentury in the past, also Kenya and Eritrea, which was an project itself. for yourself, because you work in some of your terrains and locations, and we have loads of people listening to our podcast as they're learning tool what is your thought about technology such as Victron or off-grid systems versus on-grid systems? you have any specific views? No, not hugely specific views. I think it goes back to the provenance of the equipment and making sure it's good. think, you know, without doubt Victron really are a market leader and off-grid systems and if anyone said to me we work closely with an off-grid provider a company called leading edge who we partner with and who supports us on all our off-grid systems and I know predominantly that they will use Victron and we will use Victron when it comes to it. We don't do so much off-grid ourselves as we partner with those guys to do that element of it and but I think the critical element is is making sure the kit is fit for purpose but also it's got the ability to be maintained and looked after. I say I've just been in the British Virgin Islands, as I said we're doing a programme of about 3-5 megawatts at the moment on some of their key infrastructure for the government and their national grid. And I've also been asked to go look at some old systems that aren't working for other parties out there. And what's commonplace is that a lot of these are installed with technologies that are not well known and don't have readily available spares and not easy to understand. Often come linked to the marine environment let's say because of the nature of the environment to which they're in and actually I think we need to look at you we can't say global standardization but it is making sure that you know the kit we're using is you know fit for purpose and is bankable and it's going to do what it says on the tin I always call Ron I always called solar the Ron seal of renewables I remember the advert that it does what it says on the tin and I think it does really in so many ways so I think you know look for us we we predominantly only use Solar Edge. We're one of their, I think, premium partners in the UK and have worked with them extensively over the last decade and it's all we will use as an installer and we promote it for so many other, you know, important elements in particular on the safety side and the likes of RC62 and looking at the compliance there and the rapid shutdown and all those favorable elements. But you know, for me it's just about getting the right equipment. I often say without wanting to dumb solar down, it's a mechanical no set. You've got to do it well. You've got to have the right tools for the job. um It's important, know, torque settings, you know, all these right things that everything from the engineering calculations to ballast plans to torque settings, you know, actually, you can't just get your impact driver out and whiz up a screw and, you know, just whiz it in and, you know, grind it out. These things have tolerances and they need to be built in accordance with it. And that's a real focus for us on the way we try and manage and proactively undertake take one of our key elements is all of our site managers who are all as a minimum triple STS although most of them SMSTS qualified is having those points of contact and all our sites who oversee the minutiae, the daily reporting and the testing to make sure that what we do stands the test of time. as I said with a lot of this solar that we've installed overseas we call it expeditionary solar. We stick it in a shipping container, ship it to somewhere in the world, we get it at the other end. Although what the key I always say to people and this is an oversimplification is panels panels mounting we make sure we work to you know hurricane strength engineering with our partners there so we're designing to cat3 strength and a lot of these which is required by mandated by grids but also insurance requirements and national rules in particular in the Caribbean and it's something we comply with and spend a lot of time on but it's also then understanding grid codes so you know if we're installing in the Caribbean it's making sure that we're bringing solar edge with the appropriate grid codes in from the United States market to meet with their requirements and the same with other areas. So you know there's so many things to consider but also so many opportunities. I think it's just about getting it right and using good equipment. How's your business split between export and domestic? It's predominantly I would say you know what as of the international market was very high and almost 50-50 in the early days of the business when we were looking at a lot more of delivering the solar post-conflict and disaster and it almost became a niche of the business I guess. But that's probably also startup and understanding where you are an opportunity. I would say over the last couple of years it's been a lot less actually and it's been negligible really whilst things are developing. But at the moment you could argue that it's perhaps 20 % at the moment of what we're doing and we're seeing that rise. But I think that's also a result of uh a surgence in demand with a particular opportunity versus a slightly flatter market in the UK but although that's now seemingly ramping. So I think you know we're probably a of a surge internationally but you know core core market is UK very much commercial industrial rooftop. And health and safety is an important area and I don't want to get into the grim details but there's been lot of injuries of solar falls from high electrocutions and people thought it was just Lego just fit in and it works and the issue we've got is you've got DC electricity if it catches a worker it's not letting them and people underestimate the dangers as I there are fewer injuries in 132kV substations than with solar worldwide because people underestimate what they're dealing with and so how do you ensure a strong health and safety culture with respect to dealing with DC electricity falls from high handling for example the modules themselves that are needed 40 kilograms solar panels are getting to over a ton per pallet there has been crushing injuries with unloading unsafely. You have to be rigorous with it and I think again it comes back to our military approach and it comes back to being very clear that we expect no less than health and safety comes first and is at the fore of what we do and actually everyone deserves the right and it's not just the right it is a mandated necessity that the best conditions possible are afforded with all risks mitigated so that people can go home each day after work no one should ever go to a unsafe place of work. And I think that's a really key element of it. You're absolutely right on all of those features. And I think unfortunately, the low barriers to market without regulation and without people having experience just creates such heightened risk. And I always say to the team, you don't know what you don't know, but when you do know it, you can deal with it. And over the years, of course, we've refined as a business, but it's making sure things, simple things such as you know, if you're dealing with a fragile roof that it's netted but also making sure the nets are tested. If anyone were to fall through what is your policy and process for retesting those nets and actually to this extent where we look at a lot of our rescue plans and actually how you follow them through, through actually if someone falls from a roof and falls into a net, most safety, most rams will say oh we're going to mitigate the risk and we're going to have a net in place. My question is always so what and the army asks you this question, so what does that mean and how do you create an action on to deal with it? The reality is if you fall into a net, how do you get someone out the net? You can't just leave them there. What if they've got a threatening injury and they need some urgent attention? It's really looking at how does that work? So we've practiced and we've sent our teams on courses on fall arrest and actually recovery plans, spinal boards on site, everything you need to be able to lift an operative out. That's just one instance, but actually how you demark, how do you make the area safe, you know, and also testing. We had a quality and standards day the other day, which we do every sort of quarter where we bring everyone back in and we do another mandated day of full training. You know, before large projects, we will ask teams to make off an MC4 and crimp it, put it in a bag so we've got samples so we can know and testing those conditions. But also for me, it's also where a real peace of mind and comfort comes in with the technology. And as I said, We use SolarEdge as standard and it's all we do use really because of some of its safety features. You know, the low voltage system that it drops the optimizers and the DC runs to, the module level isolation, you know, the rapid shutdown. It's both beneficial from an installation perspective, but also from a client perspective is massively advantageous. And I know people will say to me, but you don't need that. And actually it's not mandated. And you're right, it's not mandated. But I say a huge but. If you look at instances or events that have been, a lot of them are occurring in string level systems that are poorly maintained, might have been poorly installed at the time without huge foresight. We've got to learn from those. actually we talk about, you know, RC62 and we've been doing a lot of work with our clients on this and, know, we put a fire risk assessment into all of our projects before we start. And I say to people, there's some really clear benefits you can do. You know, bifacial modules, remove them. plastic back sheet. Great. You've removed the fire burning element, know, stainless steel, metal. You know, one of the things that I know is a real concern and we work with one of our partners, Sun Fixings on the mounting side. We've just installed a system on an in-roof system, which is in effect a trapezoidal sheet that goes down on top of the battens and the rafters and then the panels go on top of it. Simple, but ever so effective because, you know, if you look at a traditional in-roof system, we're putting a plastic tray into someone's roof. and then a plastic back sheeted module on top of it. Now there's no regulation that says you know that's not fine or warranted but it does make you go surely there's a bit of a risk here where we're putting high DC voltage and stuff that's hot and warm and prone and so I think for us we look at how we mitigate that you know how do we deliver safe systems how do we use things like you know bifacial modules as standard how do we use solar edge as standard and other areas we can continue to work safely in all those realms and I think that's a real key area for us as a business. Regulation is that's left intentionally flexible because there's infinite different ways on how you can wire an electrical system. A badly designed system is a toaster. and a solar rooftop can literally be a fire. In London Underground they changed and improved the standards after the King's Crossfire. I think it was 1989 where the escalators used to be wooden and people used to smoke on them. And then they've learned, know, by these things that are low smoking houses are free. And I agree with you, there is a sort of regulator missing that regulates the market and it allows people who have no empathy, no care, care for their fellow human being to get into solar and they will. sell you something that might cause a danger and then fold the company. I choose very carefully who I work with as a result but at the same time because there can be poor regulation sometimes through things that are unavoidable such as lockdowns, labour shortages, may not be enough people to get around, is inflationary aspects that more and more people are leaving engineering and construction kind of jobs, know, why be an engineer when you can be a banker? Absolutely. uh and six figures without doing anything, without taking any design risk. And so you talk a lot about safety, but how do you be competitive against the cowboys? I think you have to recognize that, you know, safety... doesn't have to be a huge premium and it just has to be part of the process of what's done. So I think there's a clear requirement to inform customers and clients of their requirements and their own roles within what's set out under CDM regulations. And I think it's important that you embed that culture within the business, but equally that we make sure... you know, when we're looking at this, that we factor it into our costs and we look at how we can deliver it this consistently and routinely and like anything, how we continue to, you know, seek to be competitive whilst maintaining that element of standards, which is so critical. I also think, you know, we're very clear that we will, if ever required, tell a client, no, we're not doing this project and I'm not afraid to walk away from projects and I'm not away and I won't be. Your customer always comes first they say, I would challenge that and say they do until it comes to the safety of my employees and I will not let a customer undermine the safety of my employees. And we had that recently with a client on a project and it was a very shoddy scaffold there, erected over uneven ground and they were asking us to do things that the team weren't comfortable with. And I say to the team, I say, I give a note out and I try and record voice notes at least once, twice a week and try and give everyone a real, you know, understanding what's going on in the business. And I always, always finish by saying, please always remember my phone is always on 24 seven. If you need me, call me. And I sincerely mean that and the guys called me from sight and said Nick we are not comfortable with this. you know, for them to come to me, they obviously had concern, which is all I need to hear. And so for me, I called the client, I said, we're not doing it, you fix it, or else we don't carry on. Clients said, yeah, but you're contracted to do this. I said, I will not let them work in an unsafe condition. And I wouldn't And I think it's about having really clear boundaries. You know, and one of the Sandhurst principles is, you know, there's this whole serve to lead, lead to serve analogy with what it actually represents. And sometimes I say to people, You need to have this, well, serve to lead is the motion and the phrase. actually sometimes I call it the need to lead to surf and sometimes you need to be strong and say no this is this is what we're doing and making a call on it and that is in particular with health and safety but as you said going back to technology there are a real lack of standards you know it's interesting we're delivering over in the Caribbean and their standards are much tighter you know through their sort of town and country planning which is their regulatory body you know and you're almost looking back to NEC 2017 when that was implemented in the US you know calling for rapid shutdown and module level isolation. you see things like, I think Zurich Risk Resilience recently wrote a paper, a white paper on things, you know, talking much more about, you know, the need for rapid shutdown module level isolation. And I think, you know, If you want to remove risk, you have to go that way. And a lot of people will say to me, yeah, but Nick, but we're not cost competitive if we use those products. And I say, yeah, but equally, you're not delivering the best system you can and you owe it to clients. And I think for as long as there are no standards, then of course, suppliers and manufacturers make products that might be sub market requirement or not necessarily fit for purpose. And I'm not saying all are, but for us, it's a very firm view. we we use SolarEdge and we mitigate risks this way. I also talk about installer error and Amanda's been doing a lot of work with colleges and Somerset, doing training programmes for new installers coming into the market because I think we need to train this rather than just bringing people off the streets and saying, hey go plug in some solar. And people say to me, know, there are risks with technology and installation when we look at O&M when we look at systems. But if you solve technology and installation, you mitigate a lot of the risk for through life. And I think so by using these technologies that provide rapid shutdown, safer features, safer solar, how key is that? And looking at fire safety, then that's a huge element. And also by using this technology, you can remove some of the risk around people. Because with the best one in the world, I might be the best installer. I very much aren't and I'm not allowed to use power tools. state that now, the guys will always happy for me to carry a panel on site and that's about as far as it goes. But you know, I might be making off an MC4 and if you call me and I quickly pick up my phone and I've made off a thousand MC4s and all of a sudden I get lost, that's a point of weakness that creates a point of weakness in the system if I get that MC4 connection wrong. Now for 10 years nothing might happen, but that is still a point of weakness. I've created. Now I might be the best installer bar none, but I have to be on my A game and perfect 100% of the time, which we know we're not all perfect and we know we have off days, you know, be that illness, be that, you know, tired from kids or whatever it might be. You know, we're all, you know, we're all human beings. We can't be perfect 100 % of the time. So I do believe we need to use technology to remove and mitigate some of the risk of people. absolutely and uh... know I studied Law for five years in the past and there's a proverb that sticks with me which is power corruption absolutely power corruption absolutely and in energy there's money and there's literal power as well and there's a detachment in the services industry with what goes on for example some of larger inverters you can have you know twenty four strings in parallel and People don't understand what damage you can do. can blow someone's hand off 1500 volts DC, 1000 volts DC. so the voltage is getting dangerously high and it's getting even higher soon with 2kV 2000V modules coming soon and above 2000V having unshielded string cables it becomes a hazard that if touch it you can get electrocuted. There is a huge design risk but the greed that feeds the loop is if you're an EPC and you're taking design risk the developer has a mighty skin in the game this one will just move the project on, get the commissions from... getting funding which often banks on the EPC and so there was a point where Solarcentury also just stopped the EPC for other people because of that they did their own projects. So how do you manage your sort of design and professional indemnity and liability risk? What size projects do you work with? Well we typically install on projects from 30-50 kilowatts through to 1-2 megawatt projects so we're certainly not taking it to some of those scales and actually I think it's about also recognising one skill set. We have a Huge wealth of technical understanding, technical competence, and track record in those areas and we're very comfortable with it. If you took us outside of that, you, and you start asking us to do 10 20 megawatt, you know, solar farms, we're going to say no. because actually that's not our area of expertise or comfort. Now, I think a lot of people will say yes, because they see an opportunity or a cost. megawatts with millions Yeah, but the reality is that the risk is too great within that. Um, and so for us, it's about staying in your lane and knowing what you're good at you're good at, but also understanding what you're not good at and where you have a blind side. And then you need to ask yourself, can you mitigate that by bringing in partners and specialists? And if so, how do you align the risk and what does that look like and how do you know they're good? And also ensuring you have the right competency to deliver it and indeed insurances and everything else that goes with it. know, we, we like everyone, you pay a lot of insurance, but it's important to get it right. You know, professional services. and supporters as well and specialists who might be able to provide elements of design or CDM support. You need to get it right and so actually you don't know what you don't know but there's a lot of people who do know a lot and you can call on their support for what is a very small sum in the grand scheme of things and so I think it's very important to have good people around at all levels both within the business and to partner with outside. A lot of people are afraid of C&I or commercial industrial projects because they may be below 2 megawatts but the engineering challenge can be greater than a solar farm because if a transformer blows up in a field there are hardly any witnesses, there isn't a building at risk. I'd like to mention the names of some projects but I've worked on some high profile ones. One of the biggest challenges are the electrical system. the powerflow or within the grid of an airport or a factory maybe actually influencing the production? Do you get involved with the more detailed electrical studies within the commercial sites? absolutely. We will take on all elements of those projects. And where we have a huge amount of in-house competency, our technical director comes from a charted background, so we bring a wealth of experience on that side and also within our own team across the operational level, uh including our development manager, Lawrence, who comes as a trained commercial electrician himself. So we've got a lot of in-house knowledge, but we can also bring other specialists to bear for that. And I think it's about bringing the right partners to bear. But you're right, the electrical element's key. You can oversimplify, and I suppose I'm often guilty of oversimplifying solar and saying it's a meccanno set set with some electrical connections that plugs into the grid, which it is in its fundamental form. But people can take that too fundamentally and that's where it goes wrong. It's understanding that that is the case but there's a huge amount of electrical design and elements that have to go in it to make sure it's right. And the sizing and the calculations and understand the loads and what things look like. We've been developing cable engineering software for last 10 years and I can tell you it's very complicated. Some engineers spend seven years becoming chartered electrical engineer or more and certain projects are day one for them. chap that works with me on this is called Stephen McFadyen he's got 40 years experience he's been all around the world and one of the things that quite advanced that people miss on is like power factor correction yeah essentially how the electrons move around an airport or a factory if the system is inefficient you're gonna lose 30 % of your solar just operating the system so those things are quite heavy we can get into that in the future but what do you think about batteries and EVs? I drive a hybrid myself. I don't drive an EV because I would have too much range anxiety with the amount of mileage I do. know, one day I might be in Cornwall, the next I'm in Norfolk or London or the, you know, northwest of England. So that that that precludes me. I think, you know, ethically, you look at, know, especially having worked out directly in the Congo and you know, looking at the continued conflict we've only seen in the news between, you know, Rwanda and conflict, Rwanda and the Congo that, you know, continues to enable the flow of minerals outside of one country into another. You know, we look at the ethics around it and let alone the sustainability. There's a whole element around there and it goes back to the perfect, imperfect reality of what we look like and actually of how we see it through lenses, you know, through to how do we get our clothes and all those elements and cars. You it's, it's, you open up Pandora's box if you start trying to compare one to the other. But they certainly have a role to play and I think the electrification of the grid is an important one. My view always with um electric vehicles is if I had one comment would be you know people need to understand that by having an electric vehicle you are not saving the planet just because you have an electric vehicle. It has to be the consideration of how you use it and fundamentally you want to be charging it from a clean renewable source with on-site generation. wonderful cartoon in the Telegraph which was simply someone had their electric car and plugged it into a coal-fired power station and I think they say you save something like three percent carbon you know on electric vehicle and that's all if you don't use a renewable source so I think you do need a renewable source absolutely. Batteries again we go back to the same the constituent parts of a battery, ethics, sustainability all those around them and you know we don't have to look too far even in Europe these days to see conflict and never evolving and I think em One of the recent Russian advancements has taken a large mineral deposit, which of course was also subject to Mr Trump and his views with Ukraine and mineral deals and how that all evolves now. the proliferation of conflict over raw materials is only ever increasing. And you see that the land grab in Africa and what that looks like and what that's driven by, or up in Antarctica at the moment and all these claims to territory over perceived mineral rights. It's huge. But again, the role of the batteries is huge. But I think we also go back to the enabling conditions that batteries are not as uh commercially viable as perhaps we want them to be. think they stack up from a utility scale demand side response where there's certain carrots to install them, which is why we talk about carrot and stick. There's a lot of carrots in that sector to deliver demand side response capacity and why people are building it out. I think if you looked at domestic setting, think batteries make sense. Much more because I think there's also a more personal view on self-sufficiency. Can I be more self-sufficient? I talk about electricity grown at sources, organic energy. Can we grow organic, seasonally produced, environmentally friendly energy at source? And you want to put that in the battery and use more of that rather than bring stuff in. But commercially, there's less and less. And I think when I do the numbers, and I think if you run storage at about 350 pounds a kilowatt, for instance, or you you might be up to 600 pounds a kilowatt hour, the cost of putting a unit of electricity through a battery is anywhere from I would say seven to 15 pence a kilowatt hour. Now if you then talk about the cost of growing your organic electricity kilowatt hour over the system's lifespan assuming it runs as forecast you might be looking three to five pence. So add that to a battery. So the cost of electricity going through a battery is somewhere in the region of 10 up to 20 pence. per kilowatt hour. So your savings based on current market rates is not always huge, but it can be depending on the threshold. I think there's a huge piece on energy security and what that looks like, but again I don't think there's regulation that calls for it, mandates it, nor do I think there's a character using it, nor do I think there's a stick for not using it. And with a big capital expense, with a lot of players moving into the market battery sector and without huge confidence as always necessarily in which product's right. I think the early adopters move and others will go but we will see a groundswell of battery storage being installed in due course. And I also think there's notions around do you entertain DC coupled storage now or AC coupled storage which you can easily retrospectively plug and play into the grid. But the challenge is always around DNO constraints. My view is we should slightly change that system. I believe that you should, I always say a well sized solar system should see about 70 % of it self-consumed and 30 % of it meeting your on-site demand. So on that basis I would always advocate, I would like people to, you know, someone said what would your key for success be Nick? I would say you should be able to install a grid limited system to zero on your site without DNO requirements so long as it meets these stipulations and it doesn't go above 25% of your maximum import capacity maybe or 30 % of your import capacity to be confirmed. what that number would look like. You know that gives people the ability to hit their self-sufficiency very quickly, which is one of the key pieces. I know we look at faults on the grid and take those into account as well, but there's a huge amount of areas to be looked at. And then I think the other thing that we need to look at is much greater... stability around export rates, which I don't think we're seeing in the market. And I think the rise of utility providers also becoming installers is making an uncompetitive challenging landscape for the buyer who is stuck between this when they might want to use a local installer, but actually are being offered a very high rate. You you look at some of the domestic schemes being offered, and I saw recently without naming names, someone who was offering, I think, 40 pence export rate for your first year on domestic system. Now that's staggering because that doesn't stack up because you're only buying electricity So that's just a commercial ploy to gain more consumer base. And in doing so, if you said that that system exported 50 % of what it used or something, it might work out to be 500 quid. I bet there's a clever marketing ploy there that someone's just stuck 500 quid on the cost of the install to cover the excess costs of the export. But you know, it works and it attracts people to that without it being explained. And at the end of 10 years, at the end of the first year, 12 months, it goes back to being Four or five pence. So, you know, lot of it is about customer acquisition strategies for people at the moment So again that whole perfectly imperfect piece and actually what's the reality and when you look behind the look behind the screens? What does things look like? You know, there's a commercial reality that it it's a driver and so I go back to EVs and batteries and go the same is the case with them really as to what actually stacks up and makes sense and what's commercially viable and when do others go and I suppose my last point being we look back to the feeding tariff days in the early teens of the years there and most people wanted German made inverters. European German made inverters they were seen as the go-to. SMA. Yeah and you go back to so many of these now how many of those brands are still, I know SMA obviously is, but how many others brands are still working where so many of them fell by the wayside and couldn't compete with the Chinese be it the panel manufacturers or the inverter manufacturers. So actually it comes back to that economic stability that underpins your warranty. And again, that's where you have to balance off the whole ethics, sustainability and bankability piece to understand what a good project looks like. I think there's a very good reason why we've got global tensions, because China's is still 100 gigawatts a year and just in Shenzhen they might have 27,000 electric buses and our whole country doesn't have that many buses. So the scale is at a different level Because we do detailed cable engineering, we quite often laugh because it's not intuitive. Someone has 10 EV chargers, 350 kilowatts each, from ABB or any brand, And they go, we want to feel green. We everything to be solar. And I'm like, Mr. Customer, do you understand what you're asking for is a seven megawatt solar farm to power your... 10-20 charges. Yeah, because it's 10 times 350 kilowatts three and a half megawatts Yeah, and that's without the conversion losses and you want to fit a several megawatt solar farm on a petrol station Do you see the challenge with these? Yeah, absolutely and one area we were lucky enough to deal with was Braintree electric Forecourt which was featured on Top Gear EV Awards We did the cable sizing for the AC and DC input Because civils is most of the cost but if the design done wrong you can dig the road up again or If they got TV cameras there and charging all trucks, you don't want your charger. No, completely. It would be quite embarrassing. So it's quite interesting in that respect in terms of scale and what makes sense and how many of the electrons are actually green electrons gets you thinking about demand management because solar is going to work in the 10-11 % capacity factor, 10-11 % of time. And if you're charging EVs in the nighttime, you might not have any solar. So companies like Octopus are doing great things in that area. but as we come towards the end of our podcast the last two things I want to ask yourself is What kind of people do you want to collaborate with and what do you think is the future of Solar Photovoltaics, which is the title of this podcast? Yeah, think, look, for us, we're keen to work with end clients, know, SME, business owners, those working in the sustainability field looking at, you know, that decarbonisation journey, facilities managers, but also banks and lenders. You know, we do a lot of advice to these types of peoples on what the market looks like and where it might be going. You know, in terms of the future, think for me, one of things I really want to advocate again is that the ethics and getting things right, but also the importance of good, high quality solar, you know, doing solar. What does good solar look like and how do we get there? Helping try and educate in my own way and hopefully bring some of my experience to bear and, you know, be an advocate ideally in this sector. And I think it's essential for that energy independence and economic resilience. You know, we've got a 25 year passive income potential, you know, through these solar assets, 25, 30 years. We need to see solar as a hedge against energy price volatility, but also as a part of that decarbonisation piece. And as a result, we've done an awful lot. But if I was to say one final piece, I would say we have to go further and faster. Fantastic. Nick, I've certainly enjoyed listening to you. listening back to this podcast to reflect on my thoughts and thank you very much for joining us today. No really thank you very much thanks for having me it's been great and hopefully it's resonated with some of you. perfect and hopefully we'll have your wife Amanda on the next podcast. Yeah that'd be great another insight that side. Thank you. Cheers.