Carolyn Schnare:
Welcome to Convenience Matters. I’m Carolyn Schnare with NACS.

Paige Anderson:
And I’m Paige Anderson with NACS.

Carolyn Schnare:
So, Paige, I’m just going to admit right now, I don’t know a whole lot about solar energy besides what Bill Nye, The Science Guy and my high school and college teachers taught me. So what about you? Do you? Is this a huge knowledge source for you? Do you know a lot?

Paige Anderson:
I won’t say that I know a lot, but coming from California, obviously a sunshine state and sort of a leader in solar energy thats sort of where I learned, but I can always learn more and I’m so excited about today’s guests.

Carolyn Schnare:
So I have a feeling our listeners, some might be really knowledgeable in this and some might not be, so we’re going to start kind of with the basics on this. So our guests are going to help us out a little bit. I spent a little time with them a few weeks ago on the phone and they just blew me away with their knowledge on solar. So I said, Hey, come on my show and give us a rundown. So we have two guests from Amerlight Energy. We have Partner John Zimmerman and Founder and CEO, Jim Vincent. Thanks guys for joining us.

Jim Vincent:
Thank you, we appreciate it.

John Zimmerman:
Thank you, Carolyn.

Carolyn Schnare:
So as many listeners know, and Paige, especially, we’ve been doing a lot of work with Energy Star and the NACS Research team talking about energy management in the last couple of years and finding savings for retailers, but solar didn’t really make the list when I reached out to retailers when we surveyed them about what power sources they’re using. I know of a couple companies that are using solar power, but I think it’s more, I would almost say in the experimental stage than the rapid adoption at least nationwide here in the United States. So John, I’m going to start with you, can you tell me…we’re gonna jump right into retailers. Can you tell me uses of solar energy for convenience stores and gas stations? What are some of the things that…well, that’s a kind of a huge question, I guess, but in a nutshell, what can convenience stores take advantage of or how can convenience stores take advantage of solar power?

John Zimmerman:
Well, I think the simplest answer Carolyn is, think about anything you use electric for. So you have, you have lighting. You have your air conditioning in stores. You know, anything that you’re using electric for within the footprint of that user in this case, a convenience store, solar can potentially replace some or all of that power and substantially lower your electric utility bill.

Carolyn Schnare:
Well, there you go. You had me at hello, but it definitely sounds simple, but I know it’s not necessarily simple to start or maybe it is. And I know there’s a cost associated with it. So I guess Jim, now, I’m going to ask you a little bit, like how does solar work?

Jim Vincent:
Well, just to add onto what John said, number one, anything that uses heat inside a facility or refrigeration uses more electricity and credit to you guys, I’ve listened to some of your previous discussions about Energy Star and you know, even the, the roller that heats the hot dog inside the convenience store, they use a tremendous amount of energy and there’s always a push to make those appliances more energy efficient. What happens with solar is we’re putting a panel on the roof of the building or on the adjoining property and/or on the gas canopy. And I want to mention that because it is completely okay to put solar panels on top of a gas canopy. We do that every day inside our business. You are taking photons are coming from the sun and you’re converting those to DC energy, which is coming into the building through wiring.

Jim Vincent:
And we call that PV wiring. It’s a little different than AC wiring, but that comes into an inverter that can be mounted outside. I know space is precious inside a store, so we can mount those in different areas. We just really don’t want them to be directly exposed to the sun, which is kind of funny because it’s solar. But when you heat an inverter, you potentially derate its ability to generate power. It’s inverting DC power to AC power, which is what the store is used to using from the utility. So in a simplest sense, we are shaving power by using the power of the sun to bring that energy into the building and we convert into AC, which is the language of all those appliances that we’re talking about that are running, that are Energy Star related or refrigeration.

Paige Anderson:
So Jim, when I first was on Capitol Hill and was working on solar energy issues, I remember that in its infancy, and this was over a decade, maybe 15 years ago, those photovoltaic cells or those solar panels were really expensive. We were talking about hundreds of dollars to generate these megawatts, but my understanding is the costs have really come down and the technology has improved dramatically. Can you share a little bit about those costs and the technology improvements that have taken place that people may not be aware of?

Jim Vincent:
Paige, great question. And, and two things have happened fundamentally in the last five years. So, put this in perspective, it’s really dramatic. The format of most commercial photovoltaic solar panels is a 72-cell panel. There are still some panels out there being sold that are maybe 60-cell or less, but those are usually used on homes or on RVs, things like that. In a commercial setting, we always use a 72-cell panel. So what’s happened in the last five years is today our starting point for a 72-cell panel is about 450 watts. Whereas five years ago, the starting point for that same exact amount of real estate, 72 cells was about 210 watts. So it’s more than doubled in five years, the actual ability to produce power. At the same time, there’s kind of a Moore’s law process that’s been happening with efficiencies, for manufacturing, and to produce that panel, the cost is less than half of what it was five years ago. So fundamentally, we’ve more than doubled the power output and we’ve more than halved the cost. So as a result of that, even small spaces like convenience stores with gas canopies can probably generate enough power today that would offset 50 to 60% of their power footprint.

Paige Anderson:
That’s a good point because for convenience retailers, the cost of electricity and generation to run their businesses tends to be – depending upon what part of the country – can be the third highest cost of operation. So any opportunity to reduce those costs is a huge advantage. I know that when you look at other generation of electricity – nuclear, coal, natural gas, other types of renewable energy – solar is really become competitive hasn’t it?

Jim Vincent:
Absolutely has. And like I said, a lot of times we hear over and over again. Well, we looked at that three years ago and it just didn’t make economic sense. And I’m going to say that about eight months ago is when all the lines crossed, where if you have a rooftop or canopy and you are not utilizing solar or energy storage as part of that facility, you’re making a huge mistake. This is the first time that I can remember that a fixed cost, something that on your accounting, your balance sheet and your income statement that you think of as a fixed cost can actually be dramatically impacted on a day-to-day basis. And you know, it’s all about the statistics, right? There are thousands and thousands of rooftops and canopies that today, are not part of the solution. You know, they’re just sitting there being exposed to the sun and arguably, they’re aging. So your rooftop is being exposed to UV. If you have panels up there, not only are you generating solar power, you’re reducing heat load on the building, which has an effect on your HVAC costs and you’re also protecting your roof. So it’s really fascinating, the things that can happen.

Carolyn Schnare:
Let me ask you this – I did do a little research before we get on the call about solar – and much like wind, you need that weather to be there in order to make them work. And I know you can store some, but I don’t know if you can store everything. So convenience stores being open 24 hours a day, unless you’re in some parts of Alaska or Scandinavia at weird times of summer, you don’t have sun 24 hours a day. So what happens at night?

Jim Vincent:
Great question. So again, solar is not the answer to all your energy needs. You’re still going to be connected to the grid, but the whole point is working as a team to find ways to reduce your reliance upon higher-cost energy. Let me just make a comment. We all know that inflation is happening right now, and it’s real. Energy right now in the United States this year has increased 6.2%. That is incredible. I mean, that is an incredible number because a year ago we were projecting a 1% increase for this year. So we’re way behind in our projections in terms of how that cost is increasing. But to your question in the summertime, June is actually the highest month for solar energy. We call that irradiance. And whenever we look at your building, you give us the longitude and latitude, and we can tell you very accurately exactly how much power that location is going to produce for the entire year.

Jim Vincent:
So that’s really important because we demystify solar in the sense that we will tell you, we will not only tell you, we will guarantee that you receive the amount of energy that we project. And that’s something that I think is really going to help solar grow because a lot of owners are like, ‘yeah I’ve heard this, but I’m not sure I believe it. Are you really gonna give me that amount of power?’ Again, we will guarantee that amount of power because we understand looking at about 35 years of history of weather conditions for that location, exactly what it’s going to look like. We give you a curve. So it’s a bell curve for everybody who didn’t like statistics, this has a little bit of statistics. There’s a bell curve that peaks in the summertime. You have more hours of sunshine and you have higher levels of irradiance.

Jim Vincent:
I want to make a comment too. Everybody probably thinks California, Phoenix, that’s the best place for solar. It’s really not because in a lot of parts of the Midwest where the temperatures are cooler, let’s say 70, 80 degrees and further north, that optimizes your ability to produce power. So to your question, you will bank power, depending on how much space you have and how many panels you have certain times of the year. And this gets into the question of net metering, which a lot of people also need that to be demystified. And that’s relatively simple. We can explain it, but some utilities allow you to give them the excess power and they will give that back to you in the winter months when you don’t have as much sunshine. And I want to say out loud that this is a real call to arms in terms of if your utility offers you net metering, you should take advantage of it because we’re talking about probably more than double or up to threefold increase in the payback if you can get net metering with your utility. And guys, I want to be honest, it’s a war out there in the sense that the utilities, a lot of them are asking the government agencies to allow them to stop net metering because they don’t want to give you even credit. They want to give you wholesale credit. And honestly, I think the fair answer is somewhere in the middle where the utilities have a job to do, and they make sure you get your power every day. And we should all appreciate the quality of the grid that we have. But at the same time, we want to have a fair value for the excess solar power that we might pass to them. This is the segue also into energy storage. The other part of it is, if you can afford a battery, then don’t pass the power. If the utility does not allow you to net meter store the power in your building and use it at night. So that’s a little bit of a segue into what do you do with the solar energy.

Paige Anderson:
So you answered one of the questions I was going to ask you, what type of relationship exists with utilities and trying to build out solar capacity for businesses? And it seems like it’s really important that for convenience retailers looking at adding solar energy, that you understand and have that relationship with your local utility, I’m curious, are there other…whether it’s local zoning, state regulation programs that may have an impact on how easy it is to put in solar energy into your business? I know a state like California has a renewable portfolio standard. So obviously the state as a whole is really trying to encourage renewable energy like solar and it’s great to, to encourage that. But when it comes to actually implementing and installing this technology, sometimes there can be challenges and I’m wondering if there is a city or an area that has a really good regime to help businesses who want to put in solar.

John Zimmerman:
Hey, Jim, I want you to tackle that question, but let me just say this Paige. The question that you just asked was complicated enough. The answer is very complicated. And the reason why is because all across the country, depending on where your store is, you’re dealing with different utilities. You’re dealing with different weather patterns. And a lot of times I think that whenever you have a convenience store user that is considering, ‘how do I implement solar power?’ Everybody’s got this problem, right? They know solar power is out there. Everybody’s hearing kind of rumors that, it’s coming of age. How do I take advantage of this? The challenge is when you start researching it, there’s an ocean of confusion out there about solar and how to get it done and get it done right.

John Zimmerman:
A lot of people that have looked at it, it was many years ago and the technology wasn’t quite there and utility rates were really cheap. Well, now everything’s changed. So at the end of the day, the right path is to find a qualified provider that can come in and really it’s just three steps. You do an initial assessment, you design an appropriate plan, and then you execute that plan with a qualified provider. And it’s literally different on a case by case basis. Every situation is different and there’s no one size fits all answer.

Carolyn Schnare:
So I can’t put it on my roof myself? You’re saying, I can’t just like DIY this?

John Zimmerman:
I wouldn’t recommend it, Carolyn.

Carolyn Schnare:
Okay, thanks. Just checking.

Jim Vincent:
I will say part of her question is the incentives are different by state. There is a Federal incentive that we all know about probably called the Investment Tax Credit and that’s uniform across the entire United States, the new administration, when they took office, extended and froze the rate at 26%, there is a rumor. And I don’t think it’s a rumor, I think it’s going to happen that it’s going to go back to 30%, which is just great for the implementation of solar. But there are certain states in the U.S., California being one, Vermont being one, Wisconsin being one, New York being one, that have been really aggressive about providing subsidies at the state level, in addition to the Federal level. So John said it really clearly, if you have 50 or 60 store locations and they are even within a given state, you probably have different utilities even within a given state.

Jim Vincent:
So each situation is totally different. And the strategy that we would suggest would differ, for example, if you’re going to net meter, we’re probably not going to suggest energy storage, unless you’re in a place like California where you had some rolling blackouts. In Oklahoma and Texas, I think we all know, back in November of last year, when there was this three-day outage that was weather-related because of the cold temperatures. And I’m assuming if anybody wants somebody to be open, it’s a convenience store. So I can get in there and get the things that I need. We can actually run a convenience store for more than 24 hours just using energy that’s solely gathered from the sun. So that sounds like a dramatic statement. It’s really all just a function of these gains that have happened in efficiency and performance.

Carolyn Schnare:
I actually had another question I was going to talk about, which was emergency preparedness. So I mean, everybody should have a plan. We’ve talked about that on the show before, but especially some of those areas are more prone to know fire and breakdowns of electrical grid, but electrical grid breakdowns can be anywhere these days. But that being said, could it replace generators or and others might even be more complicated. I know Paige, some localities require stores to have a generator on site. Are there provisions for making that solar power or am I getting all my power sources confused?

Jim Vincent:
No, you’re not. It’s a great question. And one of the great things about energy storage is that it’s instantaneous. So unlike switching over to a generator where somebody may have to go and flip a switch or go out back and start something or hope it starts…cross your fingers. Am I fueled up, do I have enough propane or so forth and so on. When you have that energy storage, it is instantaneous in terms of your lights, don’t go on and off. So if you think of a generator as a supplemental component, if I want to run for days on end, and I may have three days of rain, then a generator can come in handy to supplement the power on the energy storage system. Our systems automatically call the generator when needed and tell it to turn on and off. So it’s really automated now, and I’m not going to say it’s not complex, but any electrician that works with our technical staff would be able to put the system together. So Carolyn your question about, can I DIY this, if you’ve got a qualified electrician, heck yeah that you can put a system together and be able to install it because the basic tenants of how it works is understood by most of the people. They just don’t know how to design it or how to put it together.

Paige Anderson:
So, John, I’ve got a question for you. Oftentimes when convenience retailers are looking at new energy sources or to implement some type of new technology in their store, sometimes it’s easy to put that new technology if you’re basically tearing down and rebuilding or you’re actually constructing from new and it’s tends to be more difficult if you’re retrofitting an existing store. Does that matter in the case if a store owner is interested in putting solar energy, whether or not they’re doing it in a new store as they’re rebuilding, or if they just want to retrofit an existing store?

John Zimmerman:
Well, that’s a great question Paige. I’ll answer that in two ways. I mean, there’s pros and cons. If you have an existing store, the nice thing about that is, you’ve got a long track record of what your utility usage has been at that location. And so that makes it somewhat easier to come in and do a fair assessment of the size and the scope of the system that should be installed in order to get that user the ideal and maxim return. Having an existing store does create challenges, sometimes. Jim, you and I have talked about this, where maybe you have an existing store, you’ve got a large gas canopy out front, you’ve got the store, obviously, how do you get the power from the canopy to the store without going in and digging a hole in the parking lot at disrupting the business?

John Zimmerman:
Well, sometimes a simple way to do that is just to a connection with the overhead canopy. We’ve seen users go that route. Sometimes the answer is you’ve got to dig a trench and run the line somewhere and there might be a little bit of a disruption. But I think generally speaking – and I just had this conversation with a prospective customer of ours yesterday building a store out on the in Washington state – and he’s in the design phase right now, he’s gone through design and planning with his architect, with his engineer and with a lot of third-party services and not one time has anybody raised a question about, ‘hey, how can I use solar and potentially battery storage in order to lower my operational costs at this location forever. They haven’t even in all of the expert guidance that he’s in good counsel that he’s been around, nobody’s raised that question. And now is absolutely the time to talk about that when you’re in the design and construction phase.

Paige Anderson:
So basically what you’re saying is, regardless of whether you want to retrofit an existing store, you’re building a new store, there are opportunities for solar energy. It’s just slightly different steps and considerations that you have to look at, but in either case it can be done. , I want to change the topic just a little bit. Obviously supply chain issues have been top of mind, whether it’s labor shortage, transportation, and delivery issues. We’ve heard about huge challenges in getting semiconductors and the cost of aluminum and steel and glass increasing and all those are components of solar panels. What are you all seeing in the supply chain in being able to deliver this to customers and build that out and how do you see the long-term on this, especially as demand and interest is going up for solar panels?

Jim Vincent:
Good question. The supply chain is a problem today. Although companies like our own, we have all our relationships in place and they go back decades. So we’re really not having problems with components. What we are seeing is upward price pressure inflation. And this is the first time I think in probably the last six years that there’s been actually increases in the cost of solar. And that’s projected not to go for another year and we know things like lumber and other components are seeing similar situations. So I will say this, that a lot of people like ourselves still have access to components and stock that are based on prices that predated what’s happening at this very moment. And it’s a great opportunity for people who are really interested in us to jump in and probably still beat some of those cost issues.

Jim Vincent:
I just want to say this really simple, everybody should look at their bill and you need to understand your electric bill because that’s the fixed cost. And it’s made up of a cost per kilowatt-hour and the cost for demand. And maybe on a future discussion, we can talk about demand, because that’s a really technical subject and people are seeing their demand charge, keep getting bigger and bigger. In some situations that demand charge is higher than the kilowatt hour, but I just want to give them metrics to kind of close this. Somewhere between 3 to 4 cents is what’s your cost of ownership. Your levelized cost of energy would be for the solar power. If your bill right now has a charge on it, that’s higher than 4 cents, you’re losing money.

Paige Anderson:
Jim and John, there’s so many different directions we could go with questions. I mean, we could spend another half hour or two hours on this topic. So hopefully we can do this again, because there’s just so many great issues and opportunities here for our industry and more to learn.

Jim Vincent:
I personally love the push you guys have for Energy Star because these two things go hand in hand. Energy Star reduces your reliance on electricity or usage and what we do is we come in and give you electricity. And I know you’ve talked about this on previous talks, but lighting inside the building, anything that’s still fluorescent is not efficient. You’ve got to get the LED and we tell people, and we do that in our own company, we are not going to have to produce as much solar energy if we’ll reduce the reliance on energy by upgrading your lighting at the canopy and inside the building.

Paige Anderson:
Well, especially as we move towards electrifying our transportation sector and our members more and more offering EV charging for EV drivers. That’s an increase in electricity use and therefore cost and demand charge issues and the whole shebang whereas this might be an opportunity to reduce some of those costs and make offering EV charging perhaps a little bit easier and affordable and certainly more green than other forms of electricity generation. So lots of opportunity here.

Jim Vincent:
Here’s the reality, the faster you charge – and everybody’s going to want to charge like they refuel with gas – the faster you charge, the more energy you use and that demand charge goes up. So we have ways to mitigate that demand cost also, and it’s more technical, but it’s relatively simple to understand. And it goes hand in hand with solar power.

Carolyn Schnare:
And I think, as I mentioned at the beginning too, sustainability is a huge issue for a lot of consumers, knowing that their business that they’re supporting the brands that they’re working with, are doing things that help the long-term environment or their path forward. So seeing a solar panel on top of a gas canopy, or maybe off on a side lot or something like that you couldn’t smack someone in the face with more ‘hey, look, I’m trying to do something for the environment here.’ But on top of that too, for the retailers listening, as we all said here, and you said it right at the end with the demand charge, you’re saving money. And really when it comes down to it, you want to save money.

Carolyn Schnare:
You want to do things efficiently and in the grand circle of things, we’re also doing things to help the world be a better place. But it’s telling that story to customers that Paige and I, and working with Energy Star and all at NACS, we’ve been trying to hammer home, which is tell your story, because if you’re not doing it someone else is. And if you can just do it with solar panels or something that’s very visible on the outside, recycle bins, solar panels, things like that right there, they don’t even need to like come in yet to see that you’re giving back. So that right there, just making sure you can tell that story is important I think just on the visual side of things. But the saving money is very important and like you said, through Energy Star, we have tools on Convenience.org that help you measure your usage of energy and help reduce that. There’s a Treasure Hunt on there. And if you haven’t been to the website, check it out. If you haven’t listened to some of the previous episodes, check those out because we’ll give you some ideas on how to even save thousands, literally, off your annual electricity bill. But I think solar is really interesting. Jim, I love that you said that we could talk more about this in the future and Paige, I know we could go for another hour, but I know we have run up on time. So John and Jim, I really thank you for your time on everything. Paige, I just want to shout out that as we are recording here at the end of 2021, there are some things happening in Congress. And Jim, you, you mentioned that too. So keep an eye on NACS Daily and should anything come up. We certainly always are alerting you to new credits or new developments as things might help retailers. So I really thank you for your time today. Thanks for joining us on the show.

Convenience Matters Outro:
Convenience Matters is brought to you by NACS and produced in partnership with Human Factor. For more information, visit convenience.org.

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