Kevin welcome to the hometown podcast. Hey, man. Thanks for having me on Thanks for making the trip all the way down here in order to make this happen. So super excited. I love it down here Do you? Yeah, really cool. Yeah, it's good California. You love it in Texas. Yeah, yeah, the heat is typically just way it's a lot of people but We're coming from perfect weather To Little warm, but yeah awesome. Yeah, the people that's the main things that people. Yeah Yeah, and the weather is of course important, but I'm Most excited about you guys, you know you and Deek Deek was just on for the second episode. Yeah, and we covered a lot about his background About CLS about the home Dow and it's good getting the other co-founder To now be able to share a very similar trajectory, but from a new lens from a new perspective, right? So this is super exciting. I want to read out Kevin Warren's background for you guys We'll be talking about solar energy EPC and so much more So he's co-founder and COO of CLS sustainable multinational solar developer and EPC with over 35 years of energy experience specializing in CNI utility and community projects Kevin has originated designed and or engineered over 155 megawatts of photovoltaic installations ranging from small commercial to utility scale projects throughout Texas Cali, Colorado, North Carolina Illinois, Ohio, Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland and DC and CLS most recently came on board as developers of home Dow which unifies the best people idea systems and funding and sustainability Bringing real-world assets to web 3 so you can find the CLS sustainable comm link in the bio below Also Kevin's LinkedIn profile if you want to connect with them there and all the home Dow links Kevin lets a blast off with your journey in energy. Take us through that my journey in energy so I would school for electrical engineering and Coming out of that I Wanted to find a Space in in And their energy or just in the engineering field that I Thought was on the forefront. I wanted something cutting-edge something that was on the upswing So through that I took off to Colorado northern Colorado, Peonia to Go to solar energy international which is kind of Just this at that point. It was just this like kind of little commune style school that Very few people attended and because the solar energy was so expensive and so difficult to to make Financial sense of so one of their did my first training in solar energy Came back to Texas kind of Started tracking what exactly I wanted to do Got on a couple of rooftops through my first solar panels and Figured a few things out and then met my wife Here and One day, I guess maybe a little after we started dating I said I Wanted to go all in In the solar field, so we moved to Durango and I think we talked about it earlier and we bought a 1964 Airstream and gutted it and turn it into you know a complete off-grid and we found this little spot of land on the river there and Yeah, so I would commute up to SEI For a week every month for the first five months we were there to do my naps up training and She would hang out and our In our trailer with our two cats and our two dogs and not a month not a lot of space, but So from there You know you started you start You start seeing where this is gonna go as far as the the energy side of this and by the time I started throwing actual panels and making any money doing this and Caveat that it wasn't a lot of money, you know, we still had to bartend on the weekends and things like that There was no there was no full-fledged solar Career at that point. It was almost a hobby that that you made money elsewhere and It was a labor of love for sure And not a labor of you know financial sense really so But We could see that there was a wave coming module prices energy production prices the way that we were producing energy was starting to Drastically fall we were installing at nine ten dollars a watt at one point And now we're coming down to being able to sell this stuff at about 450 and obviously now You know we're down and see and I utility space where we're down in a dollar or fifty range and in certain markets And so and even lower elsewhere. So so I really thought that Maybe I was on the on the front, you know Maybe on the front of a big upswing in this new this newer energy production field and Obviously we had the We had the feeling that If we were gonna make a lot of money, that's fine, but we want to make money and feel great about it We have kids now, but you know at that point they were just a plan in the future or maybe a thought But whatever we did I always say we because my wife and I gonna work as a team so But whatever that venture was and just wanted to make sure that we left We didn't make a lot of money Harming our children's future. So came up with this idea of doing well by doing good and Great and just rolled with it man And it's been it's been like a 12-year adventure and in the solar industry and I've seen I've seen Massive trade shows like like solar power international and things like that go from just you know 30 of us getting drunk in Vegas to now there's just thousands of people there and it's just Grown hundred fold since we were first in it But you know, it's it's just been I Spent it's been a wild ride and I think we're finally at this point where we set the table to to a point that Some major major things can happen in the next several years We got through a lot of difficult times And watch this entire field change. So it's an exciting man But and not so much of a nutshell. That's why that's my history And renewable energy So yeah, I love when you're sharing there was this This is a draw in a sense to solar at such a like a young Places trajectory in such an early time and then to sort of to actually get up do installs at When it wasn't even making that much financial sense necessarily right and then to see over time photovoltaic efficiency increase To see the price of production decrease to see the price per watt of energy decrease so much And to see these conferences go from 30 of you guys to thousands This is so cool that the time is totally now and that you it's been a labor of love Yeah, yeah, there have been doubts Down the road Yeah, we definitely I have definitely doubted myself several times in this industry, but you know, we stuck with it and and Like you said the time is definitely now. I think we're definitely hitting the precipice of Where it's just gonna make so much financial sense in so many different markets and Yeah, I think home down is only gonna help that, you know explosion. Yeah Let's hit this From what you ended up? Building with deek. So you guys built CLS sustainable So deek kind of gave us a nice perspective on that. We'll also link The episode 2 with deek in the bio of this video and we'll link episode 3 in deeks video So you guys can get a nice perspective on a CLS from both of their angles So then how did CLS blossom and how could you also like kind of recap it in its essence? Sure. Yeah, the CLS came to bow came came to be My wife was tired living in a mountain town and and thought let's let's get back to our roots Which was doubts for worth Be around the family a little bit more and obviously we were we were at the point where we were gonna side have kids and Wanted them to be around grandma grandpas and and also we we move back here The Texas market was As far as CNI is concerned was just not not exactly flourishing The energy cost in the state of Texas is very very low in most cases and Kind of difficult to make some of the CNI stuff pencil so I was still Consulting back Colorado, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona those markets and Ran across a They had they had hired a head hunter basically to go out and look for somebody to start a Commercial development team in their deeks residential firm, which was circle L. Solar and so I Went sat down with them Get a great vibe really felt like this was and the team I wanted to work with and the spot I wanted to be and Kind of turned out that that Circle L the residential firm didn't really want to dive that deep into commercial Understanding how long these sales cycles are and these dev cycle into sale cycle into construction cycles, you know, they're just really long processes and so deek and I were like so, I mean we had developed kind of a yin and yang kind of You know the situation with one another and we work perfectly together and we're just like let's just go out and start our own so Not gonna lie. We open an office less than a quarter mile away from circle L and just moved our Moved our laptops down the road a little bit and and then voila there was CLS sustainable, but I Think our think our purpose with see with CLS one The the residential game is is is a pretty saturated environment and CNI game was something that had just kind of and especially in Texas. I mean it was just starting to creep So any time that I dive into something I wanted I Wouldn't be on the forefront, you know, I want to be an early adopter and I want to Get skin in the game before it becomes a convoluted mess That's really the only way that I think you can escalate yourself to to being on the top level of professionals in your field. So so I Mean whether it was smarter or not, you know at that point in time. We just dove straight in and We We caught some traction early and and Quick quick traction for a typical CNI firm and You know through a couple of night. What's pretty quickly guys started flowing and We were we were trying to Navigate that and then covered it and we're like, you know all right, well, this gives us a time to at least step back and and Organize processes procedures and and you know kind of re-visualize exactly how we want to take this leap because In these industry in this industry if you you've got, you know, two guys in an office that can develop and Oversea building a Megawatt or two. Yeah, but if you really want to step up and it's Probably more than that, you know seven eight ten megawatts and now you've got you've got to build a team Yeah, you can't just be you so I mean cove it gave us a The ability to step back and kind of evaluate where we wanted to take CLS What the true vision was instead of just such a rushed Frantic set the table and go and that's kind of where we came up with setting the table is let's let's Get every relationship possible put it on the table. Let's let's Let's make sure that we're prepared To take the next step and And yeah, so I mean and then over the last year we've got our Manufacturers in place we got our direct contacts in place. We've got all of our installers all over the country in place We've got our development partners in place. We've got our sales team up in Chicago in place We've got everything in place now and then over the last year. It's just kind of Blossomed. Yeah, we're super excited, but sweet cool, so You are already going into all of these components. So let's say I do that. I love it. I love it Let's unpack the components. So What is it like then for Like a classical, uh, whether it's a school or city factory, etc That wants to come on board cls. What does that process look like? Um, so as of right now, so we've got when we We didn't want to oversee a bunch of sales people. Um, just simply because That's just a hectic nature coming in and out of our office So what we decided we really wanted to do was set up a sales office our origination office sales in c&i and Yeah, sales and c&i is is extremely difficult. Um, and You have to have technicians. You can't just have closers and and people that you know um Set people up on an emotional sale. You've got to have like really technical people that understand the development of this or you can mess up 25 years where the financials for these people and and make yourself like very bad very quickly. So, um, so we wanted was originators and then from origination we would funnel into a uh a more organized and um Experienced the dev team And then we would pass that through our process So deke oversees the development side. It would go through deke's group and then get a signature And it comes over to my group for engineering construction and and final build-outs. Cool. Um, so Yeah, so as of right now, we've got about a hundred. No, no, what do we have? 48 trained originators around the country And then but we have a group that has um 124 or so Commercial sales guys that are beginning that training process. So yeah should should bloom Whoa Sweet. Okay. So then the originators, um, a bit like start off the relationship. Right. Yep. So then Um, then what does it look like then for them to begin getting funneled into deke and his team and then to get funneled into you and your team And to actually get the install the next gen technologies how they pay it off over time Um, yeah, create that microgrid there, etc. Right. So They really just go out and seek people that are looking for solutions um A myriad of different solutions, whatever we can offer. Um, but They they know If they walk into a school They just ask, you know What can we help with? You know on the energy side, what are your what are your reasoning for for Looking into this, um, technology to begin with And once we figure that out now, we can really design Based on what they're looking for if it's financial if it's just environmental goals if it's a combination of both Now we really understand what we're looking at and then we, um Get all the relevant information energy bills energy contracts, um long-term interval data and Drop that into the development bucket From the development bucket, they'll do all of the analysis and and initial designs from there um The uh And try to get an understanding of different technologies that we can mesh To uh to make this work Um, it was mentioning solar and chps kind of primary, right solar chp. Obviously ESS uh batteries and and things of that nature, uh, but you know we We do send it to companies like gce and things like that to analyze controls and hvac and all that as well But uh, but yeah our bucket is typically going to consist of the three major components either solar chp or Uh, ESS or a combination of the three And ESS stands for again energy storage solutions energy storage solutions cool. So batteries. Yeah batteries. Cool um Okay, so then, um Does the so it's really tailored like you said to the um to the actual client themselves and what their needs are Um, and then based on what their needs are then there's a design of what the next gen technologies would be like at their facility And to make sure the financials would work out for energy generation. Um, how much? That they would actually pay less per month to then cover be covering the principle Of the construction So so then so let's yeah, let's keep exploring that the mechanism itself. Yeah, and I I think that's I think that's so important to our process Is tailoring it to the client Because so many companies will drop in and just say this is what We're good at so this is what the solution is. We really have so many options. Um and For especially on the financial side Uh, we can make things pencil in ways that straight solar can't by adding these other elements. Um So yeah, it's it's very very important to us that we Mold All of these solutions into Something that fits each individual client. Yep and then so then the The process like I like the idea of talking about it like no brainer in a win-win-win. So how how is it then that? The school muni factory etc has a They're currently paying more for their energy bill to a utility, right? Then they have a specific Does they have a desire for next-gen technologies, whether it's financial environmental mix of both etc and then they're able to Have you guys? assist them with the transition The epc side of it the financial side of it all of all of that stuff And they're able to then over time actually Pay less money per month instead of to the utility. They're paying To or towards the principle of the next-gen energy project that was constructed on their property And so then it becomes a A no brainer for them to make the transition and to then own the renewable technologies over time Oh, sure. Yeah, we we produce energy at a Cheaper rate than anyone on the planet right now and in the solar field. We're uh, wow Yeah, there's there's it's really not even much of a comparison. So In most cases And you know We'll be Completely upfront and honest if it's not a feasible project financially feasible project If that's what it's all about is financials then, you know, you walk into a situation and you just say that's not gonna be financially viable But The idea is obviously to save significant money. Not just, you know, pennies. You're you're looking at 25 year projects 30 year financials that uh, you know These these models you can produce for the next 25 to 30 years They'll produce longer than that, but they're actually warrantied to produce for 30. So The uh, if your payback's eight years six years five years four years now you've got You know the Whatever 30 minus that payback year you've got that worth of free energy. So it's uh And then if you're looking at long term Payouts as long term leases long term PPAs things like that then, you know It's not gonna be really financially viable if you don't save, you know 10 to 15 percent off of your future energy bills Yep, and I think we can hit those numbers really easily Um average municipality or average school systems probably gonna save around You know 1.5 to 2 million dollars over the lifespan Cool, so over the span of 25 or so years. Yeah, wow, and that's in um savings based on energy expenditure Right cool Um and then they have the next gen technologies on the premises as well um And it um it creates an energy independence also, which is nice. Absolutely. Yeah Um, so there's not a reliance on drawing from the utility, which is great. Right. Yeah So there's so many core components to this. Um This abundance of solar energy versus a fossil fuel drawing from that right, right Yeah, the uh the old adages, you know If if we ever stopped drawing energy from the sun, we're all in much bigger trouble. Yeah That's great. This is like like um The uh in cosmology, there's like a cartish of scale of like civilizations and how far advanced they become Yeah, and uh to hit sort of the first big threshold, um, you have to Draw your energy from the local star Right Instead of from the local on earth Yeah resources, right and it makes sense There's many futuristic ideas about Dyson spheres and all these other different types of technologies that can harvest even more power from the sun Sure, you know, we're probably on the verge of some of that But yeah, it's cool because now we're like hitting a cosmological threshold of drawing energy from The sun the star instead of from the fossil fuels on the local Right local plan which was important In the transition for the industrial evolution and all the stuff we went through But now is the time to make the transition to Getting the power from because the technology is there and the technology is is cheap enough and the technology is understood the the biggest The biggest hurdle we have transitioning to renewable energy is is the the grid itself and and upgrades to the grid Mass upgrades are going to be required in order for us to interconnect enough of this To to really make huge dense. So I think I think upgrading our infrastructure next into Then installing many more solar panels as many as we possibly can But yeah, I think that that's I think that's definitely the next step That's a really cool analogy Yeah, so what's the efficiency up to now On photovoltaics is like 25 percent or something? Uh, I mean you have certain models hidden much higher than that But yeah, I mean anywhere from 22 to 28 And then potential to go up to 45 or something some Theoretically, yeah and then supposedly some of started approaching You know that range, but cool nice, um and then the um So so for example on many of the um The solar installations typically end up happening in areas. They get a lot more frequency in sun, right? So um Have you have you guys noticed that um, there's a tremendous amount of increased Cells to c&i in the southern part of the united states versus the northern Not really interest. So The the biggest driver On the c&i side it's going to be supply rate electricity so In the southern states you you're We're sitting here in texas ton of um ton of sun ton of natural gas ton of oil You've got lots of different energy sources and the That drives down the cost of energy So your average supply rate here in texas is going to be somewhere in that 4.8 to Six and a half cents a kilowatt hour But your average supply rate up and say The northeast it's going to be closer to eight and a half to You know up to 11 Your average supply rate in california is going to be 15 and a half um, so interesting So texas five cents approximately kilowatt hour northeast 10 cents approximately kilowatt hour california 15 cents Yeah, and in sheer supply rate. So that's the biggest driver. It's it's what what What's the avoided cost? so When we install in texas we've got to install at a very low price and then california obviously is typically Much higher from a labor perspective from a you know equipment perspective But you can still make it pencil a little bit better Different states have different incentives Illinois has a massive incentive program that you can shave You know three to four years of payback off damn, you know, yeah, and um Same with maryland same with dc same with these other markets. So There are there are lots of There are lots of variables when it comes to where to where to build You know and and exactly the financial It's not just more sun equals more solar. Definitely not that's cool So the I wish one of the one of the big variables is is uh the incentive programs that are a part of those areas That's a big one incentives and avoided costs are mostly the biggest Avoided cost. What does that mean again? Uh, whatever the client is avoiding paying for electricity.  Oh, you've got you've got a three cent avoided cost I see. Okay. So the delta of what they'll save right kilowatt hour of is avoided cost. Okay So, so that's the main thing you guys want to prove cls wants to prove to the to the prospective customer that the Amount per kilowatt hour is going to be a penny two three less As part of the right. Yeah, right. And you know, you see and I it's such a different World, you know a lot a lot and people think emotionally about their homes and they they say, you know You have a sales guy come in and be like it's going to be a 10-year payback But then you'll have these on here for 20 years and you won't pay anything and they're just like They they start thinking about their home emotionally and can be driven into an emotional sale or an emotional close Can't do that and see and I, you know, you're going to be sitting in front of boards and You're going to go to the cfo and you've got to make financial sense in order for this to happen So that is our responsibility first and foremost is to prove that There's a financially viable project That when it hits the cfo's desk, they're going to look at it and say, okay, we're going to We're going to save x amount over the next x years and and make it a Financially feasible situation for them. So yeah, that's the first thing we have to prove. Yep Yeah, that's cool. That's a big difference. And then also they're um There's something about like when you go for cni projects. There's also a greater like the e pc itself has to scale Tremendously because you're not just putting up. Um, I don't know how many average panels go up on a home 20 um Yeah, so you're probably looking 20 to 30 in texas. Um, yeah, and then on a factory or school I mean, what a thousand two thousand On a factory Um, probably closer to about 2,500. Yeah, maybe 3,000 Um, depending on the size schools We're looking at probably 1,500 or so. That's so cool. And then um, wow. Yeah, so like production facilities stuff like that But it's just like warehouses. You're looking at about 1,200 Yeah, somewhere in that range. So yeah a lot more cool a lot more. There's a lot more juice Flowing up on that rooftop than the the typical house. So you've got to have some specialized a specialized e pc and a skilled e pc and to pull it off And so then over time there's been like an accruing of um, the partners that can do these processes Oh, goodness. Yeah, that's what that's why I'm the mentioned earlier of setting the table. Yeah, let's go to this Yeah, we really didn't want to get into this Without A significant amount of backing from strategic partners Located all over the place. Yeah um And highly skilled knowledgeable partners um Shockingly and not shockingly in some cases, but I mean I I didn't think it was going to be this difficult to find them Both from manufacturer direct contacts, you know, we We decided a long time ago that we we can't use distributors ships to Buy product and make this pencil for hardly anyone on the c and i side so we We order You know manufacturer direct products now we have manufacturer direct relationships and and setting that portion of the table just the procurement side was was an absolute beating and Really thought it would be easier But so when we talk about the p in e pc the p is the direct relationship with the manufacturer The direct relationship with the manufacturer. Yeah our procurement relationships. Exactly. So you want to get the solar panels at As close to the cost where it's a win-win for the producer right of it and for you guys to then be able to Sell to right It's just like any other thing where you know You've got you've got a contractor that buys wholesale versus you go into lows and buying your own plants or something You know, like it's uh, it's just a significantly different price. Yeah And making it a lot more plausible through that relationship that you've established with the procurement Sure, because then it becomes easier for the school of the factory to come on board Right, and I think it also just gives them a little more ease of mind that We've got Enough skin in the game for manufacturers to deal with us directly. That's great.  They're like, oh, you guys know the manufacturer directly That means when your team's also serving Servicing Over over the years that if you have any questions if your people have any questions you talk directly to the People that make it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it does give it It does give a lot of peace of mind and that was kind of an unexpected reward of setting the table with all these manufacturers You know, we we sit down in a boardroom and all of a sudden there's like, oh, that's really impressive You guys are doing directly to the manufacturer and we had no idea that that was even going to be a A reward that came from that. We just wanted to make sure we could get the cost down low enough to To convince them and to move forward on the financial side. So Uh, but yeah, that's just one part and then of the table and then like I said Where we got to this portion was the Construction side, right? So let's hit that one shocking amount of people do not know how to build CNI solar so it was a It was A lot of work to set up Our strategic partnerships around the united states We went from market to market And there were some swings and misses on our part with certain partners and You know, and it just kind of a scramble for a little bit, but you know, we've we've got it to the point where we've got I think we've got 27 different strategic partnerships in the united states with solid construction Great construction. We've got We've got two national construction firms that build some of our bigger bigger stuff on the construction side and then Like I said, we've got our crews around the nation Covering 35 states That's big. Uh, yeah, and we we have a partnership in in hawaii, but That does some island work Caribbean work stuff like that, but We don't we kind of just we don't we're not active in those areas necessarily Um, if something comes along then we we send it over to them. But uh, so are you so when you bring together the The e and the p let's the e p and the c but when especially let's say the Is would you say that like deke and his team on the table are doing the e side of it in terms of the designs No, so they'll do preliminary designs preliminary designs. Cool. The uh, once something goes to Construction and it comes to my desk in my team. Okay, cool Yeah, so preliminary designs then to you and your team on construction, which then you guys interface with the partners on the right Okay, cool. Yeah, so all all construction engineering Actually all engineering procurement construction all comes into my My my bucket so then you're sourcing also through the manufacturer partnership you would get The let's say 2,000 panels for a factory or school or whatnot You would get them and then you would have a preliminary Engineering and design visualization for the construction partner And then the construct would the construction partner also sort of like contribute to The sort of the field Visit to know for certain that those designs are going to work in implementation and in construction right and the design software that we use on You know original unlike The first designs It's fairly accurate. We we just come in and clean things up at that point. What's the software that's used So we use aurora, which is a pretty well known Design software and then we use helioscope, which is probably the most well known sweet But then All the cat drawings all the you know permitting plans all that stuff that that comes later So basically what'll happen is we'll run all of our financial models and our production models off of The helioscope or the aurora layouts then Get through the client saying yes process the financial paperwork all that but as soon as we get a a Either an mo u or an or you know some side of some sort of agreement then it'll go into engineering and my My side of the office basically um, cool, and then we'll just clean everything up And make sure that everything's gonna fit correctly make sure we don't have any kind of uh Yeah, make sure we don't have any like snafus with the fire department or you know the Ahj's that then and permitting and all that so we we deal with more of that clean everything up and then We'll move into procurement around that same time Make sure that our Products are gonna land inside of the a week time or something like that if we need a crane to go up if we need storage there You know coordinate all that And then uh, whoa coordinate with our uh, so cranes with that construction.  Yeah, so you see some so sometimes you're um, the the best way if not Always the best way to actually lift them Up so you would have to store them securely And then you have to raise them to the roof, right? And typically that's best with what storage containers For the storage that are secure and then for raising them up Is through just cranes that are maybe not the same ones that we see for The big skyscrapers, but cranes that are kind of more like mini cranes like 100 foot cranes. Yeah, something like that earn 100 foot booms and then they just drop down but like our 60 foot booms, but um It doesn't always require a crane But sometimes it does and it's a little more coordination because wind and things of that nature, but uh But typically just the sky tracks gonna load it up, but like we have a project down the road Going on that has a Has a 12 foot pair of foot wall So a really high pair of foot wall and we can't just put a sky lift over it and unload So we have to get a crane and drop it down so But Yeah, it's uh It's never a dull moment on the construction side. Yeah, that's so cool. I love that. Yeah I love getting into um, how do you do most of the time? Yeah Yeah, it's not it's not always rainbows and unicorns, but yeah, it's um, yeah Yeah, so the site visits are so important to make sure that all of the incredibly important incredibly important So yeah, we'll get our strategic partners to go ahead and uh, do that But under our terms, we have we have our intake forms that they need to send to us On on the site visit and if there's anything on the structural side that that might be even remotely Ify then we'll send our structural to site to do a structural review. Cool It's really it's really fun. Um, just feeling like you said this table um And how you guys even after your first um couple mega lot projects that you still Had to like take a step back and like analyze the table And that in doing so you could set up all of these components in a greater With greater scalability and with greater relationships, right and now you said 27 of partners across 35 states to Your ability to be able to right construct That's really really cool. Trust it after several hit and misses too. I like that Yeah, because it does it does take that like adapt adaptive side, but it was very biological also. Yeah I mean construction it it does and but Construction especially this construction, uh, which is Not a new commodity, but it's relatively unknown or relatively new, you know There's you're gonna have to have thick skin and and learn how to fail and say i'm sorry on a couple of occasions And then just make it right. Yeah, uh, and so we we had to go through that those growing pains were You know prevalent and and they they uh, weren't Always the greatest of uh of times, but no, I mean, I think it's I think it's good to have a I think that has learned earned us a lot of respect to you because we're really open with the fact that we we've not been You know that we've been knocked down a couple of times. We had to find the right people to do these jobs and And now that we were there, it's uh, it makes my life a lot easier A lot a lot less anxiety. Yeah So then what um, what is this like when uh, you have the procurement then of let's say 2000 or so panels and then you have the construction of it how give us an also an idea of An approximate time scale for a project like that in it's like most let's say Average but also it's increasing in its speed because of all these pieces On the table becoming more optimized. Sure.  Yeah, definitely about two to three months Somewhere in there. Whoa, even just that bit like created a new little cambrian explosion of interest It's so cool, bro. So um By the way, is it approximately a is approximately a megawatt of solar? Is there an approximate to how many panels that would equate to? Uh, right now you're looking at probably you're looking about 2,500. Okay, 2,500 sweet I mean kind of on average with 400 watt panels. So I mean anywhere in that 2000 2,500 range and about 400 per panel 400 watts per panel. Yeah, okay Generative that's pretty good for per panel. Wow. Yeah, the the first the first solar panel I ever put on the roof Was 70 watts So and it and it weighed It weighed in a shitload it did and um Like these panels are like half the weight and producing, you know Six times the energy. So damn That's so cool to hear about it because we're only Usually only focused on like Moore's law and transistors and sometimes in biology will be taught about Oh, yeah, well actually the speed at sequencing is also decreasing and the cost of sequences decreasing Um, but hearing it in renewables is awesome. Yeah. Yeah, the uh, the technology boom has just been Kind of unbelievable to watch especially over the last several years these modules just keep getting you know Uh higher rating and higher ratings and uh, I mean we've got 540 watt modules out there. They're not Typically ideal for c and i But Yeah, and it won't be long before, you know, we've got them like A single kw and inside of one module. That's so cool. Yeah, it's gonna be that's gonna be weird. That's great, bro Okay, so So it's interesting when you started sharing this so much began Coming up as threats to pull on but so you have a to install a megawatt of solar You have about 2,500 panels and then you have okay, so the mounting goes up first You have all this it's usually is it steel or what is the aluminum because that's so much less than weight Right aluminum mounting And then You have the panels that go on top of the aluminum mounting, but even before that you run the actual All the wire rings that are needed. Well, that's what after the You mount the panels first right and then you do the wiring right interesting And so then the sole the panels themselves are receiving dc Locally and then that's then that an inverter is converted to ac Into the school or the factory or whatever right? So then okay, so those are the primary in a sense components mounting Panels taking the dc primary components racking modules Inverters racking modules inverters. There it is. You heard it here I love it. Yeah, I love it we're I can I can feel the Sustainability ecosystem and the home dial ecosystem learning about this and it feels really good Yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's a I think we had touched on this earlier that us being a part of the home dial is uh I'm going to have to learn a lot more about the home dial ecosystem and I'm hoping that we can you know Uh be available and that's really what we want to do through this is be available to to You know share our knowledge on on our expertise and and learn more about the the home dial ecosystem as well, so Let's let's um, let's play on this because this is a good transition into it. So so then um What will it look like? Let's say, um Um With let's say the streamlining let's say that we really knock out. Um the integration of web 3 with uh sustainability assets And then we just create a Just a super facilitation of funding into Um the epc scaling So how would that affect cls? Oh, I mean tremendously and and on the epc side Maybe not as much as the the development side the uh, I mean obviously they they go hand in hand, but The on the development side. Yeah, but our uh The epc is always gonna be a part of the development They're gonna deal with the financials a little bit more and try and trying to to find funds um From You know the majority of this is funded by private equity already um And the hoops and the red tape from private equity is uh Is something that is is uh hindered um the Pride the the the non-profit aspect of you know, non-profit entities Schools municipalities things like that things that uh, it seemed to be very very difficult to get through private equity This is going to open up. Yeah a lot more freedom cool to bring extremely financially viable projects into uh the home dow Into the home dow, but um that are Cost way too much to get into the uh the private equity stuff Private equity money is very very expensive So Because that money is so expensive It really negates a lot of the positive financial liability of these projects If you have this funding mechanism that uh That like home dow, then um now we've got access to Easier cheaper free flowing money. Yes That doesn't have the red tape. It doesn't have the red flags That doesn't have the high interest rates. That doesn't have all of that. Yeah All of these things that hinder us from being able to make projects pencil and pencil well. Yeah, so Oh, that's so cool. Now I see this feel the streamlining more. Yeah. Yeah, and I think you know Dick Andy and I have talked about this a lot about just I mean if you You We've always you know, we've got several like home offices and things like that that we deal with that They're always looking for projects always like those projects always like projects, but Have this is the ir we need this is how much this money is going to cost all of that We're viewing home dow as a massive community Home office. Yeah, that's cool that the the money isn't expensive the money is Free-flowing all we have to do is Provide the oversight and the financial viability of these projects. Yeah. Oh, that's so cool. So, yeah, it's incredibly exciting on our side And we're just one developer. Exactly. Yeah, I mean as the Like you say the ecosystem starts to grow and other development firms and and people that see exactly what's happening here it's uh Skies limit. Yeah Cool. So there's with the existing Old old money. There is there's a bit the red tape Red flags these things they inhibit and create friction in a sense with this process and then the Let's say the web three and the tokenomics The smart contracts the blockchain model enables a more fluid less red tapy As much as possible Yeah frictionless process for developers from all around the world to bring on Because you guys already have if you want to say the know-how you have the know-how of installing the The next gen energy assets So you have the know-how of the who's interested and getting it done and then just the funding mechanism itself Is then yeah in I would see I would even add you say who's interested and into the construction portion But I would I put in the middle there. I would be we Knowing who's interested The ability to prove the value Of it and then build it and the funding That's cool. Yeah the viability. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we we were talking about that and visualizing it as vetting In essence the vetting process. Yeah, the vetting process is Exactly Man, this is so good. Okay. Um, yeah, let's uh, let's come let's come do a close here soon. Um Yeah, and I'll be on again. So, you know, we can we can do another hour Totally later that this is this is the beauty of the home dow podcast and ecosystem Is that we have like the first round gets to cover a lot of the like the history and the existing the Like cls sustainable and and then all that we're doing with home dow Is still and it's like kind of it's nascent like stages of birthing the ecosystem. So it's still it's still a little like fresh and new but then When the second round drops, it's going to be a lot more Oh my gosh, we're actually have implemented this and this is Succeeding. Yeah, that's the exciting part because we're going to move from background and getting to know one another and like a you know We've just met But we're going to start moving into the growth phase of home dow and the The analysis and the discussion of the future And that's that's the exciting part. That's that's what I'm looking forward to. I don't I don't want to just sit around and talk about What we've done. Yeah, I want to talk about what where we're going exactly what we're going to do. Yeah, and uh, Yeah, so the future conversations will be Directed towards that and that's super exciting and it's crazy because by that point there will have been um already like Potentially deployment across multiple chains nft drops People that actually have home tokens. Yeah Energy assets that are being built through the home dow ecosystem, right and That's the sky's the limit like yeah, and I mean like The americas and africa and europe and asia all coming online with this mechanism and developers coming on board from those continents right That's cool. I know we'll be doing this on stage and at seminars with Token holders, you know That's the part that's awesome. Like what's happening is awesome. You know the um We look back at what we've done in this industry and we still look at it. It's just you know Grinding, you know, we're just this is the way we've chose This is the direction we've chose, you know, and to us it's not always worked But technically it is it's our job and we don't look at it as anything special um We look at the future of what can happen with home down like that's that's special and we We can't wait to start discussing, you know more of that but almost like the the past um Where renewables began birthing and uh fossil fuels sort of like ended up decreasing their Kind of their their grasp on the energy systems um That it was it was a little bit like It kind of had a little bit of roughness in a sense to the birthing of the renewables. It was very rough I was there. Yeah, I mean in a lot of it. I was there like it was it was incredibly rough. Yeah, um, yeah the What's happened over the past 10 years in the renewable industry is uh is what Anyone of us that was in it 10 years ago The most we could have hoped for or dreamed for Uh, if that was the direction we were taking our lives that's what we were dedicating our lives to it was renewable energy 10 years ago We couldn't have scripted it much better And it's cool because now we did we scripted it perfectly this whole movie of a universe is just so beautiful Yeah in the way it's expressing locally on earth um And then this other the other component to that is as Renewable sort of birth the models of how it would get executed is kind of still like the old central money model Of the execution of it, right? And now that also dies. It's not kind of it is Fully reliant on that old Money model and now the birth of the new web three money model. It's Yeah, yeah Yeah, this is and so we're here at the beginning of that one You were there at the beginning of the love it I told you I told you We discussed that on you know 30 minutes ago, so when I get into something I want it to be at the forefront and like that's why we're so excited about what's happening here Is that we're on The first wave we're early adopters in this at this point. So Uh, yeah, I mean we're really excited about it. Can't wait to come back on and discuss More more of the future In the past, but yeah, what a what a profound story though about the past and Also about where we're going with all of this. I love it. This is this is why we do this It acts like a magnet like this Podcast is like a magnet for people to get involved in the ecosystem Developers people from web three right all of the good stuff. Yeah, and they're like I want in because this is it We're looking at looking forward to it. I I agree Yeah, people have been looking for something that really Their heart is sort of screaming for Something that serves people planet profit. Yeah in essence and this is it like this is this is the thing It is. Yeah. Yeah, perfect Kevin. Thanks so much for coming on It's been a really cool first episode together. Love it. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. Thanks everyone for tuning in. We're super grateful for you guys watching You guys can find all the links in the bio below to clsustainable.com also Kevin's LinkedIn If you want to reach out all of the home dow links the home dow.com our twitter youtube You can subscribe follow there also discord as well if you want to join Um, one of the best things you guys can do is actually share this video If you guys found this video to be an awesome resource Informative then take it and share it among on social networks with friends family, etc Let's get the word out there about home dow and also You can like the video that helps the algorithm. You can subscribe to Home dow also simulation if you would like the links down there And that is all we love you so much. Thanks for tuning in everyone And we're super grateful love


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That's what we're going to go over today in Godot. We're actually going to create a very simple background, it's not going to be beautiful, but that way we have a seamless background to scroll and then I'll show you really it's just one line of code once you set up the nodes in Godot. So let's go ahead and check that out. Okay, here we go in Godot, got a new project going here. And so let's go ahead and start creating our scene. I'm going to create a 2D scene. So it's 2D node. We can rename that if we want level or you know, this might be a space level. So we'll say call it space, whatever you want to call it. That's fine. Let's go ahead and save that control S and save it wherever in your project.  Okay, so we're going to add three nodes here, one under another. We're going to add a parallax background and then to the parallax background, we're going to add a parallax layer and then to the parallax layer, we're going to add a sprite. Okay, so make sure that the parallax background has the parallax layer underneath that and the sprite is under that. Okay, next we're going to need an image, a seamless image that will scroll forever. So I'm going to go into Gimp real quick and I'm just going to create something real simple, just like a background here.  We got 1080p here. I don't necessarily need it to be that high of a resolution. So I'm going to do, I'm going to do half that. So I can just, most programs, if you have a number like this, I don't know if you know this, but you can just do math in here. So if I want exactly half of a 1080p, I do that divided by two and then I'll do the same here divided by two and it will do the numbers for me. We do want to remember that this is 960 high because that's, we need to know that for when it's looping that we wanted to mirror itself seamlessly at 960. Okay, and here I have a black background and I'm going to choose my paint brush and I'm just going to put some fancy stars like so. And it really doesn't matter for this tutorial, but let's go ahead and try to make it look a little bit nicer. We'll blur those out, maybe blur them out a little bit more. And just for fun, we'll make it seamless. So we'll go down to filters, mapping, and we'll go tile seamless and it makes it a seamless image in this case, both left and right and up and down, even though we are only worried about up and down at this point. I'm going to export this and I'm going to save it to my project as background.png or jpeg, whichever you prefer. And then we will go back to Godot. Now in Godot, we have our sprite selected here and I'm going to drag over that background right to there. Okay, if I hit F6, it'll load up this scene. You can see that our sky is up over this way. Let's go ahead and close that. If I scroll back, we can see our viewport here. But even if I place that somewhere in the middle here and start up the scene, again, F6, it's not centered. It's not filling up the whole screen. That's because my screen is resizing here. Let's go ahead and go to project and we'll scroll down here and we'll go down to display window. Now you can set your project height. Again, if you don't know, you want some intervals of or something evenly divisible of standard screen widths and heights. For 1080, we can again do divide by 2 and we'll do the same thing here for height, 1920 divided by 2. Of course, this is going to give us a tall window, which is something we kind of want for this video. But we also need to come down here to stretch mode. We're going to set this to viewport and we are going to set this to keep the aspect. Close. Okay, now I have this. I can center this up on here and I can hit F6. And you can see it's now there. We have blackboards. Now, if we didn't want the screen, since most people don't have their screens on a phone, that would be pretty good there. But on a desktop, we would have these reversed, right? So this would be 960 and this is 540. I'm going to show you this just so you're aware of both ways. And again, you can see the purple here is our screen. I'm going to turn on snapping here and just try to center this up a little bit. Does that look good? Maybe a little more over here. Okay. And if I hit F6 now, you can see it's centered up. But I want this to fill the whole screen. So there's a few different ways you do that. If you have a camera, you can zoom it in.  So we have our image here. It's not moving and it's not repeating.  I'm going to go to motion. And we're worried about why in this scenario, why is up and down? Remember I said it was 960 was the height and that's important. We're going to put that in there. And now you can see that it just mirrored it. So we have it mirrored, but it doesn't move yet. To make it move, we're going to attach a script. So I'm going to attach a script to our parallax background here. I'll just call it parallax background. And under the process function, I am going to say dollar sign, parallax layer dot scroll. You know, I'm sorry, it's not to the parallax layer, but to the parallax background, we're going to say scroll offset. We'll have that. And we want it to scroll on the Y again, up and down. And we're going to take what it currently is at and we'll add 10 to it each time this loops. So we'll go ahead and we'll hit F6 now. And we have our scrolling background. And it will scroll forever and ever. It is now infinite, but we still have the black sides here. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to choose my sprite. Now I'm going to transform it and I'm going to double its size on both the X and Y to keep it. But now you notice the seam doesn't look right, right? If I run F6 now, it does fill up the whole screen, but we see that line and then it kind of jumps. We don't want that. Well, we know that we doubled it in size in the transformation. So if I go up to the parallax layer here, this Y now, we want to double that. So if it's not a round number that we know, we can just say times two and now it's 1920. And if I hit F6, we now have an infinitely scrolling background that fills most of our screen. I'm not full screen now so there's black bars on the side, but there's different ways depending on your setup to handle that. But yeah, that is how you create an infinitely scrolling background.  Just throw yourself a seamless star background. And even though your objects aren't really moving up on the screen, it looks like it. So, oh, no, there is something else I want to go over. We did this and it works, but there is something that's not quite proper. We want to use Delta. Why do we want to use Delta? If you're older like me, you may already know the answer. If you're younger, you may not. Or maybe you do, who knows. So back in the day, people made games on old hardware. They made it run as fast as they could because the hardware was slow. Then what happened was computers got faster. The games would run too fast and they were unplayable. What we have here is Delta is basically the time elapsed since the last time this looped. And if we, so in most cases, it will be a fraction of a second. And what this will do is it will keep the speed of the background consistent on all machines. If the machine is running slow, the background isn't going to slow down. If it's running super fast, it's not going to fly super fast. The thing is we're now multiplying the number we had before by a fraction. So it's going to be a fraction of what it was. So before it was 10, now we're going to do 100 times Delta and it's still going to be pretty slow. So I'll run this and you'll see it's moving rather slowly. We'll go back into the script. Let's bump that all the way up to 1000 and have a look at it. There we go. But now because we're using Delta, regardless of the speed of the machine, we should get a consistent speed. Now if the computer is running really, really slow, it's possible it will look jerky but it will move at the same distance per loop. So there's that. Just doing things properly. So that's it. I hope you found this tutorial useful. Please visit filmsbychrist.com. That's Chris of the K. There's a link into the description. And as always, I hope that you have a great day.