Green Giants: Titans of Renewable Energy Podcast
Welcome to Green Giants: Titans of Renewable Energy, a podcast dedicated to unveiling the stories, insights, and strategies of the most influential leaders in the renewable energy sector. Our mission is to offer a platform where the voices of innovators, pioneers, and visionaries in renewable energy are amplified, sharing their journey, challenges, and triumphs with a global audience.
Green Giants: Titans of Renewable Energy Podcast
Howard Wenger, Nextpower: Building the Utility-Scale Solar Integrated Platform
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Episode 100 of Green Giants: Titans of Renewable Energy marks a major milestone and captures a pivotal shift happening across the solar industry.
In this episode, Wes Ashworth sits down with Howard Wenger, President of Nextpower, a company delivering a utility-scale solar integrated platform designed to improve performance, reliability, and speed at scale.
With more than four decades in solar, Howard brings a rare perspective. He has helped build and scale companies from the earliest days of the industry to today’s global deployments exceeding hundreds of gigawatts. At Nextpower, he is leading the transition from fragmented system design to a fully integrated approach that combines hardware, software, and data into a unified platform.
This conversation explores how solar power plants are being redefined in response to rising electricity demand, increasing system complexity, and the need for long-term performance certainty.
Key topics covered in this episode include:
- The shift from individual components to utility-scale solar integrated platforms and why it matters
- How disaggregation helped scale the industry and why integration is now the next phase
- Where projects break down today when systems are not designed holistically
- The role of software, AI, and automation in improving plant performance and decision-making
- How Nextpower is investing in engineering, robotics, and system design to optimize outcomes
- Why resilience is now directly tied to financing, insurance, and long-term asset performance
- The impact of data center demand and electrification on the pace of solar deployment
- What could constrain growth over the next several years, including grid and policy dynamics
- How utility-scale solar paired with storage is shaping the future generation mix
Howard also reflects on key moments that signaled solar’s ability to scale, including the development of one of the world’s first 10 megawatt solar parks, and how the industry has evolved from a niche market to a global energy backbone.
A central theme throughout the episode is accountability. When systems are fragmented, responsibility is distributed and performance can suffer. An integrated platform approach brings design, execution, and operations into closer alignment, improving reliability and reducing risk over the life of the asset.
Looking ahead, the conversation outlines what a fully integrated solar power plant could become by 2030. Systems that are engineered to work together from the start, supported by software and automation, and capable of delivering consistent, insurable performance over decades.
As solar continues to scale as one of the fastest and most cost-effective sources of new power, this episode provides a clear view into how the industry is evolving and what it will take to meet the next wave of demand.
Links:
Wes Ashworth: https://www.linkedin.com/in/weslgs/
- Email: wes@leegroupsearch.com
- https://leegroupsearch.com/green-giants-podcast/
- https://leegroupsearch.com/
