Exploring International Solar Supply Chains and What Role the US Plays

New Project Media Episode 2

A little over a year after the dip in the international supply chain for renewable projects, many are starting to wonder where the U.S. fits into the world's renewable energy market. Can we really build a clean power supply chain on the home front?

NPM Reporter Michaela Althouse speaks with Andy Klump, CEO & Founder of Clean Energy Associates, a North American-owned solar PV and battery storage quality assurance, supply chain management and engineering services firm based in Denver, Colorado and Shanghai, China.

Podcast Transcript

Michaela Althouse:

A little over a year after the dip in the international supply chain for renewable projects, many are starting to wonder just for the U.S. fits into the world's renewable energy market. Can we really build a clean power supply chain on the home front? Hi, I'm Michaela Althouse, West Coast reporter with New Project Media. I'm joined today by Andy Klump, CEO and Founder of Clean Energy Associates, a solar and battery storage firm that focuses on supply chain management, quality assurance and engineering services with offices in Denver, Colorado, as well as Shanghai and Hong Kong. Before founding CEA in 2008, Andy was the vice president of business development for Trina Solar Limited and is a former board member with the Solar Energy Industries Association. Yeah, thanks for being here today. For all of our readers we mostly focus on the US market, but obviously CEA is focused, and has headquarters in Shanghai as well and does a lot of work in China and APAC. So I just wondered if for anyone that's unfamiliar, if you could start off by giving US a quick recap of just the solar and storage market markets in APAC and kind of where it's at now and what we can look out for in 2021.

Solar and Storage Markets in APAC

Andy Klump:

Absolutely. I am happy to go through that. And I will also tell you, I have a lot of folks who do a lot of business with US in the U.S. But you know, we also do cover over 50, I'm sorry, actually, 60 markets globally. So our team is very used to working across many different areas. So, no problem, happy to talk through what we see in Asia Pacific. So first of all, I should definitely start by talking about Asia Pacific with the world's largest market, which is clearly China. So China has been a juggernaut as, we all know, 2017 was the previous high in China with market numbers as high as 53 gigawatts of installed capacity.

And, that was a record. I've been living and working in China since 2003 and really involved in the PV sector since 2006. So I was definitely involved when it was just literally dozens of megawatts and in 2010 was the first year it hit a gigawatt. So it kind of went through a precipitous spike. And the years from there all the way up to 2017, the market was quite small until 2013 or 14, it became multiple gigawatts and then scaled rapidly to that 53 number in 2017, from there, we actually saw the market decline, in 2018 and 2019 the numbers are that kind of high thirties, low forties. In 2020 was no exception kind of in that area. It actually did eclipse about 45 because of a very strong second half of the year.

And it was, it was shocking to folks that it, it reached as high as it did because of COVID, a number of volumes were quite small. Now, what really amazing is I think the 2021 outlook is extremely strong and that's due to the fact the Chinese government has made some market progress in moving the overall Chinese market demand towards a supporting overall market that will be carbon neutral by 2060. So with this announcement that happened early this year and trying to pledge to be current carbon neutral, we're actually expecting a market to be over 65 to over 70 gigawatts this year. So nearly doubling the output of what it was last year in the mid forties. And so there there's some predictions that could be as high as 80 gigawatts, but I think over the next four -plus years, we'll see a 60 plus gigawatt market.

So China's demand will be extremely strong. If you look at the historically second largest market in Asia, that's Japan and Japan has been solid and in the late eighties, as you probably know, there's one of the original high growth markets in the world and taking a dominant share of the world's largest market. But the real policy supporting solar really peaked several years after Fukushima. That happened about seven or eight years ago, but the market's matured and while it has still been close to an eight or nine gigawatt market in the past, it's kind of trailed off to around four and a half to five gigawatts, I think this year. So still substantial, but certainly pales in comparison to what China's doing.

If I don't walk down the other markets that have been a surprise markets the number three market would absolutely be Vietnam. Vietnam was effectively just a small non-existent market in 2018, but jumped to roughly four and a half gigawatts in 2019. There was a COD deadline of June 30th that year, and then they later extended some deadlines to December of 2019, but then 2020 we saw massive surge with about nine gigawatts and for the Euro and total with the last-minute surge in December of six gigawatts. So completely surprised folks. And, you know it was a combination of both with some utility scale, but a lot of rooftops The rooftop market was buoyed by like an 8.80 cent per kilowatt hour tariff. So the solar surge was massive.

Solar Market Trend Predictions

So I think if we look at 2021, I think the market's not going to be as large, but certainly it could be a four to six gigawatt market. But once again, it could be stable at that level in the mid single digit gigawatts for the next handful of years, just because there's a, roughly an 80 to a 100 gigawatt market in total, but energy needs within Vietnam are growing at 10 plus percent a year and the country is just trying to transition from fossil fuels to other, better sources of energy and lower costs with more reliability. So I'm going to talk through all these markets and sequence on solar, and then I'll go back and make some commentary on storage if that's okay. But outside of Vietnam, Malaysia stays the other market that has a lot of promise.

But clearly not as large, but I think roughly a gigawatt or so a year. There has been some strong tenders that have been put out. I think the LLS for tender was just opened last year. And so the results are gonna be announced the next couple of months. But the LLS five tender will go out in the second quarter of this year. So we're expecting to see a pretty healthy number from those tenders in terms of larger ground mount projects, but still probably 50 to a 100 megawatts of solar installations. So I think in aggregate, we'll see roughly a gigawatt or so in that market. And then from there, I think there's a pretty substantial drop-off you'll see, I think two to three hundred megawatts from markets like the Philippines or Thailand but it's kind of a mix of different folks.

I think that the markets that'll drop a little bit further. I mean, Indonesia's in there, there actually have been some decent sized deals announced in Indonesia. I think four deals were recently announced. So total about 400 megawatts. And there's also a handful of private PPAs that are in place at various manufacturing industrial sites. But Indonesia is an island of many nations, or I should say a nation in many islands. So you'll see a lot of solar deployment in various different islands and tropical locations. But in aggregate, the market still is one to two hundreds megawatts, maybe 300 megawatts at the high end. But then once again, as I said, Philippines, Thailand, each will have some deployments, but not nearly as the level as anywhere else.

And I'd say to round things out there's actually been about 186 megawatts of projects announced in Cambodia. But there's only like two or three project developers that really receive the benefit there. And I think only a third of those are completed. So Myanmar probably had a pretty big announcement of about close to a gigawatt. And I think there are 30 bids they've awarded, 29 of those were Chinese APCs or owners, but with the recent change of governments all those products are more or less put on hold. So I think that more or less covers Asia Pacific, then one's going to conclude and say Australia is the other market that in the past had some strong policy support, particular residential, and there's also been some activity in the utility scale. But there's been some pull back in that market. So it's still moving ahead, but still less than a half a gigawatt, so much smaller than some of the other big multi gigawatt type of markets.

Energy Storage Market Trends

So on the storage side, storage is just still largely not promoted in any meaningful way in or any markets. I would say in China, we've seen some positive news. This is the first time there's been a few provinces who actually made some announcements about storage coming to market. And we're expecting to see a handful of decent storage tenders who are going to yield some growth in the market. But the overall plan for storage hasn't been finalized, but among the four to five provinces that have storage, I think you're going to see some more serious deployments, but there've been a number of pilots that have installed in the recent year or two, but I think this is the first year we're actually starting to see some storage at scale.

And then outside of that, it really varies. There's really no special storage incentive in place and these different markets I talked through, I think at some places like the Philippines or Indonesia, there's some micro grids that are kind of below the radar screen. But there's really not a whole lot of storage that's promoted outside of some microgrid cases. So just in general, storage is not something you're going to see really flow along Asia. But there's obviously some exceptions there's some you know, residentials storage demand in places like Japan and a few other regions, but not much meaningful volume outside of just some off-grid projects in microgrid projects. So that would be my overall wrap on Asia Pacific solar and storage. Are there any questions you have?

US Solar and Storage Market Overview

Michaela Althouse:

Yeah, that was great. I think he did an awesome job of showing how diverse that market is. So, you did mention that there's not a whole lot of storage in that market and obviously the US also gets compared a lot to the European market, anywhere from five to 10 years ahead of US. So how does the US really measure up to the APAC market? Is it, or maybe if you want to focus in on one market in particular, because as you mentioned, they're all very different. So is there anything that maybe that market does well that the US could learn from, or vice versa?

Andy Klump:

Well, look, I mean, so the US is definitely one of the strongest markets globally. And so I don't expect there to be any meaningful comparison just from the standpoint of the amount of solar adoption. It depends on which sources you look at, whether US finished it 16 and a half gigawatts last year or 19 gigawatts is still much, much larger than a lot of the other non China markets in Asia Pacific. But look, the US is still going to pale in comparison to China, and I think that will always be the case, but it still will remain the second market globally. I think the US certainly runs at a very different paradigm. There's clearly a lot of market forces that are completely different in a lot of Asian economies, but the fact that you have 5,000 utilities in the US you don't have a central command and control kind of governance structure that is going to push solar at all costs.

It's a very different framework, but I think overall we're going to see a US market that's very robust. And I think the market mechanisms are much more stable and on a long-term basis in the US. But I think one of the things that makes US very unique is that it still has a primary mechanism of the investment tax credit. So the ITC is still a permanent fixture in the US while a lot of other countries don't have that approach. And so I think it's a more stable financing structure that will lead to long-term success. But the challenge once again, is that I think a lot of markets that have high incentives just like Japan, or like Vietnam, for example, is a market just jumps up from nothing to four to five gigawatts and nine gigawatts, in just one to two years, but that just is not sustainable for the country in terms of the size of the of the energy needs it has.

So we've seen a lot of markets that have gone through a boom bust cycle. In Europe, Spain, Vietnam and elsewhere, but there's always kind of a challenge in terms of how to promote in a stable long-term capacity. So it's best to let the market sort it out itself. So I'd still say that the US has a lot to be ahead of a number of other countries, but, once again, behind China just doesn't have the same weight that China does. So there's a combination. It's that they just more or less differ in approaches and styles. So not necessarily something to study or learn from.

Global Supply Chain Growth

Michaela Althouse:

Yeah, definitely. So I did want to talk a little bit about supply chain, because that's something that you and I have spoken about in the past a couple of times. It's something that CEA obviously is very involved in. So, you know last time we spoke, you told me that after taking the tumble in early 2020, the international renewable supply chain really bounced back pretty well and was kind of pretty strong from there on out for the rest of the year. With that kind of in mind, where do you really expect to see growth from the supply chain in 2021?

Andy Klump:

So we absolutely see a tremendous amount of growth in terms of new supply that's coming online. But it's really, I'd say a combination of a few different factors. So while the direct solar supply chain from a core crystalline technology standpoint, hasn't been inhibited by COVID and really since the full recovery, and say as early as March or April last year, production has not been halted by any COVID factors. Just because China has been largely insulated from a lot of the overall breakout of the pandemic post April, and May. I myself have been in China since September of last year, I did spend about eight months outside of China last year, but since returning to China there's virtually zero cases.

Scarcity of Raw Materials and Impact on Module Pricing

There have been a handful when I say handful, it's literally like a dozen here. But all those cases are tracked. And there's a immediate lockdown put on the city where those cases are at risk. And so it's really been business as normal. So supply chains have not been impacted directly in terms of core manufacturing, but there have been a few shortages that have caused some cost increases.

Glass Shortages

So one example of this is glass. So glass actually did have a prolonged shortage for about four to six months towards the end of last year, and start of this year. A lot of that was driven by the fact that there was such an upsurge in overall module demand within China. There's also been a shift to bifacial. So obviously using two sides of the module being glass, as opposed to just using a standard back sheet, that had an impact. And there was also some limitation in terms of the amount of supply that was available. So all those factors together, cause glass prices to increase quite substantially. But that's started to reign in as some new capacity in glasses has released. And then also some of the demand for Chinese modules, hasn't been quite as strong as it was in Q4. It is still robust right now, mind you. And so the first half of this year is actually predicted to be quite strong in China, by glasses, not as much as pinches, as it was a few months ago. The other key factor that's been an impact in terms of cost increase has been just the cost of logistics. So the cost of containers have gone up dramatically. And there some cases we've seen pricing from China to Europe, that's gone up by four to five X, I think there's others.

Polysilicon Shortages

We've seen pricing, that's increased by three times, but effectively there's a number of factors due to COVID, one to just far less bilateral trade. And I think the other thing is that a lot of containers are backed up at the ports. So that has caused some severe challenges, not just in terms of pricing, but also availability. So securing containers themselves has been a big challenge. We've seen a number of our clients and then suppliers who have faced the same sets of issues. But once again, the supply chain itself has been fairly robust and still continues to grow and expand. We've also seen some additional activity about polysilicon being in shortage. So there has been an increase in polysilicon. Once again due to the large rush towards the end of last year in China. And then also the ongoing demand pushes we talked about with at 60, 70 or 80 gigawatts in China. That's also leading to some potential further increases in polysilicon as the year goes on. I still see there being supply that will expand to meet the market needs, but that there has been an impact on pricing. And I think that's been a surprise to some buyers of solar modules on a global basis.

Michaela Althouse:

Yeah, that's really interesting. I feel like you often hear about people missing critical minerals or something like that, but it's really interesting to hear that people are in need of something as simple as glass or building materials.

Copper, Silver and Lumber Shortages

Andy Klump:

Correct. And I should also comment that there's other commodities that have increased in price. Everyone's familiar with a spike and silver and copper and other commodities, but silver does have an impact and silver base is obviously heavily used for crystalline cells. And so there is an increase in pricing that does have an impact, but glass once again is not something thought of as a limiting factor. But keep in mind that there's many different applications of glass and demand in glass is not just in solar. It's also in buildings and just general construction automotive, etc. We've seen a massive building boom within China. With the kind of post COVID recovery, there's also been a lot of stimulus and from a variety of governments around the world, not just in China, but that demand build has been felt. I mean, we've seen cases once they not directly correlated with solar, but the cost of lumber the forward market for lumber has gone up dramatically at four to five X as well. So a lot of housing boom, that's been caused as folks want to leave the urban center and build outside in the suburbs. So there are a lot of interesting dynamics that are caused by COVID-19, not just in solar that are being impacted,

Biden Administration’s Impact on US Domestic Supply Chain

Michaela Althouse:

But I did want to talk about kind of a buzz worthy topic from the last year, which has been the growth of the US domestic supply chain which is something that president Joe Biden has said that he hopes to boost within his administration. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about where do you see the domestic supply chain going in the US and will there be any impact from new administration as compared to the old one?

Andy Klump:

Absolutely. I think that it's fantastic to see a growth of renewables in all these different areas, and it's only natural there's going to be different manufacturing hubs. And so there have been a few facilities that have gone off in the US our teams have been in those facilities. And I will say we have teams located in 13 countries and so we're continuously doing inspections, not just on solar modules, but also inverters, racking, storage, battery systems. We're really looking at full enclosures and a whole host of other areas around the world, not just in Asia, but also in the US. So we do have a domestic US team that does look at manufacturing facilities. And so we've been at the number of the facilities that are in the US around solar modules and cells, and we've seen the good and the bad in those facilities.

I think it's certainly great to see those facilities operating and improving, but one of the challenges is not just the module facility itself. It's all those core components, whether that's glass, it's aluminum frames, it's all the cell supply. There are just many other factors that go into creating an overall integrated supply chain. It's just not easy to manufacture these products overnight. So building out a supply chain is a multi-billion dollar investment if you want to do this at scale. And so it is a challenge to go through and deploy the amount of capital to really build out tens of gigawatts which will be needed by the US market. So this will take a decade or more to build out some of these broader facilities. If you're really talking about 10 to 20 gigawatts plus, the challenge once again, is like where are the best use of resources?

Domestic Job Creation and Growth

So yes, they can create hundreds of manufacturing jobs, and we've seen hundreds of manufacturing jobs be created for large amounts of investment, but there's also a large amount of investment that just being put into infrastructure and to build out hundreds of different solar projects really throughout the US. That labor generates job growth, that's much greater, it's in the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands. And I think if you look at the newsroom CEO with over 250,000 US workers involved in solar energy, it's a good majority of those are technical, welding, stable jobs. And so CEA as a US LLC, we actually do have a 40 person team in North America that's executing many of these same jobs.

We're doing technical advisory work at the system level, whether it's on a rooftop of a big box retailer or in a large field of a utility scale manufacturing or utility scale plants. I mean, these are all highly technical jobs that require strong labor. They're either technicians or engineers who can go off and perform an energy analysis or energy estimates to make sure that these sites are engineered properly and able to execute according to the plan. And so there's also a lot of brains around the system. It's not necessarily the manufacturing but has to do with system design and architecture. So, engineering related to storage is increasingly becoming common as you'll see more and more solar and storage facilities together. The amount of business we'd had on storage is more than tripled from last year to this year. So we feel very, very excited about the future growth and the supply chain, but we think the holistic view is promoting deployment of solar and storage throughout the US and I think the Biden administration is going to support general policies that promote renewable energy development. So we are very excited about the future and happy to support the growth of our team, as well as the overall needs in the market.

CEA’s Role with Supply Chain Quality Assurance

Michaela Althouse:

That's great. And so should that domestic supply chain grow, where do you really see the role of quality assurance, which is something that CEA is really known for that's kind of bread and butter for what you do?

Andy Klump:

Absolutely. So once again quality control and quality assurance is the work we've been doing since 2008, and we've focused a lot of our efforts in Asian-based manufacturing facilities. But since we've had teams on the ground in the US since 2013, we've been in a variety of solar facilities in the US and I will say, we have aggregated our 75 gigawatts worth of project data and information across all the different countries and operating environments our teams have been in. So we've actually been able to benchmark and compare different manufacturing facilities. And I'd say one thing that is not geographic dependent, it's really more about the age and the experience of the operators in those facilities is that defects happen anywhere in the world. So we've seen massive problems on some of the new facilities that are in the US being built out and run by international companies.

So these are, in some cases, US companies, sometimes it's international companies that are operating in the US but it's just building up any supply chain and taking an unskilled labor force that's not familiar with the manufacturing process. It takes time to learn the craft. And so there is a 6, 12, sometimes 18 month ramp up period. So quality assurance is absolutely a very relevant topic and service offering. We have experts led by a PhD in the US who are in the manufacturing facilities, looking at modules on a daily basis, performing inline quality assurance, in line production monitoring, as well as pre-shipment inspection. We have teams that are also performing work as the product gets loaded onto containers and shipped throughout the country. So the role of quality assurance is still very valid, whether it's a place that's in the US, Canada, or Europe or elsewhere in Asia.

So I think the fact of the matter is operators in many different facilities don't often have a wealth of experience across dozens of different manufacturing facilities. And so the important thing that we do is really viewing the manufacturing as it's actually happening and trying to show best in class approaches to how to improve quality. And so I think the leading manufacturers that are very open to having a third party, independent firms like Clean Energy Associates come in and actually complete the quality assurance work is only to their benefit at the end of the day. We're finding defects and preventing product that is not qualified from going into the factory. And then later on producing warranty claims. And let's keep in mind that the news and the data is much more prevalent. We've seen a number of fires that have happened on top of places like Walmart.

You know, the Walmart fires are documented and known in the press, and there are others who've had problems on various rooftops. So it's not just any one company, but once again, there are plenty of folks on the field who've experienced problems. Utility field plants have had bad problems with inverters and arking, or hotspots do happen. And once again, these quality defects are things that absolutely need to be watched and monitored because this is a very hazardous product. And keep in mind, I'd say some of the risks are even exacerbated when you see more and more storage utilization. So storage is absolutely another key growth trend that we're watching very closely. And so the role of quality assurance is not just on the solar module manufacturing side, it's also on the overall storage system as well. So that's where our teams are capable of both solar module manufacturing, as well as upstream auto components, as well as energy storage. So all those topics are very real and things that we're very knowledgeable on.

US Energy Storage Market Predictions

Michaela Althouse:

Yeah, absolutely. Since you, you mentioned you're watching the energy storage market very closely. What are you kind of expecting from that, seeing especially as standalone storage still doesn't really have its own tax credit.

Andy Klump:

So there's absolutely going to be a massive uptick in terms of energy storage. So we see that industry going through exponential growth. I think if you compare with just one or two years ago, I think the default for all the new systems that are being scoped and engineered today is still energy storage scoped in with solar energy storage. Also paired with wind, anything we've seen. One of the statistics I heard most recently from an insurance company is in the last six months, there were over 20 million US households that have been without power at some point in time. The Texas snowstorm in February was an example. It's going to have a number of folks that were there without power for days and without water for a week or two after the incident.

And so it's the whole sense of extreme weather events is a very common premise. And that's something that we're seeing more and more. And so hailstorms just being as an example, is causing far more damage to solar plants than what was previously expected. So all of these systems are really quite a shock and something that many have not planned for, but extreme weather events, just highlight the need for energy storage. I think the uptake in terms of leading residential players, whether it's Tesla, Sunrun, or Sunnova, they're all embracing a combination of solar plus storage at the residential level, but you're increasingly seeing that at the utility scale level, the grid is weak in certain areas. And certainly ERCOT kind of proved some of the challenges within Texas, but we're going to see more and more storage.

Quality Assurance Necessity With Extreme Weather Increases

Michaela Althouse:

I did want to ask. I'm not sure if your answer might be no to this, but, when you're talking about extreme weather and quality assurance, does, that extreme weather ever like play into that narrative? Does that make quality assurance even more necessary because your products might be in conditions that you weren't prepared for?

Andy Klump:

Absolutely. There's a clear correlation between how a product is built and how it performs in the field. And so the reality is that extreme weather can have a dramatic impact on how a module performs. But once again, there are cases where it's like golf ball sales are greater than golf ball size, hail that one typically doesn't test. So a lot of that, the hail tests are performed are much smaller, more of a large marble size piece of hail just as a simulation. But when all of a sudden you're just seeing a massive golf volume or softball-style hail coming out in certain places in Texas as example, the incidents of these extreme weather events are just happening at a much greater pace than it's ever happened before.

So this has a dramatic impact. The role of quality assurance is not just about having an inspector in the facility and looking at the facility. It's holistically looking at the quality assurance program which is where we often begin really inspecting what the building materials are, and really analyzing the contract and making sure that the contract is foolproof. The bill of materials are already dictated, determined well in advance. And so the inspector walks into the facility knowing what to look at the completed factor audit in advance. They're sure that the equipment is fine tuned and calibrated properly. And we perform over a thousand point inspection checklist as you go through and do these very thorough, comprehensive factory audits and then ongoing inspections on a daily basis.

So, absolutely a very thorough quality assurance program should be able to cover some of the potential product gaps that are affected by extreme weather. But part of it is also out of the country, out of control of any one individual. So that's where those modules are mounted and how they're mounted also makes a difference. That's where workmanship can lead to problems. If an extreme weather event is not planned for or predicted for whether it's hail or whether it's a hurricane type wind forces, they certainly can wreck havoc on grounded or rooftop mounted solar installations.

CEA’s Current and Future Goals

Michaela Althouse:

Yeah, absolutely. So we'll end on a bit of a high note here. So we're talking all about predictions and what's going forward. So what's really the latest from Clean Energy Associates. What are you guys really hoping to achieve in the rest of 2021? And is there anything we can look out for?

Andy Klump:

Yeah, yeah. So absolutely our team is certainly expanding on a number of fronts. I would say in addition to growing our team by more than 25 percent we are also anticipating having new service offerings, I'd say more recently, really as early as 2019 and 2020 we are doing a lot of research around green hydrogen. We've had a lot more inquiries and actually you know, we're happy to say we have paid engagement, self executed on green hydrogen projects ranging from folks who were either investing in green hydrogen pilot facilities here in the US or overseas. We have clients in India and Europe also asking for our services. I myself was just at an electrolyzer supplier visit, just a couple months ago, it's our teams are in touch with electrolyzer manufacturers and trying to find ways to optimize the supply chain.

One of the challenges we've seen in the supply chain as you may be aware is that CAPEX is just one part of the equation. A lot of it is just the cost of the electricity. So as solar has been deployed at much larger scale and lower costs, that's also lower the cost of the input materials into the green hydrogen equation. So that's why green hydrogen is a source of energy that a lot of folks are looking into, but once again, the CAPEX of electrolyzers is also projected to drop by as much as 50% over the next five years. So we already seen some suppliers make a meaningful impact just within the last year. So pricing has dropped by more than 20%, and we're expecting further drops that really lead to lower CAPEX but obviously when one looks at at what the end output is, the cost of the system is somewhat dependent on how highly utilized that is.

So it's not just an alternative produce hydrogen as a by-product every now and then like a natural gas peaker, it needs to be continuously used. And so the greater utilization really leads to lower costs and a greater use of the the CAPEX that goes into those systems. So we're walking through various clients who are developers and looking at green hydrogen applications and helping to support that development. So our teams are growing in that area as well as energy storage and increasingly other demands as our clients need. So I would say expect ongoing growth in services expansion, and as always feel free to visit the Clean Energy Associates website at CEA3.com to see how else we can further support your projects.

Michaela Althouse:

We're also keeping an eye on green hydrogen here and doing a lot of coverage of that over the last year.

Andy Klump:

I would just highlight the importance of having an independent third party to complete a lot of the work that we do, it's extremely important. And there are others who are involved in this industry. I will definitely say we've, seen a lot of folks use test labs. We also have partnerships with independent test labs, both in China, the US and other markets but we have also seen a number of test labs that will have some teams that are doing independent quality work, or they claim to be independent. But the reality is being a US owned entity that is a completely independent suppliers is extremely important. All of our work is entirely focused on downstream IPPs, developers, EPCs, and financial institutions that are the end owners of solar and storage assets.

So that's where our alliance is really on the downstream owners who care about a consistent and reliable and optimized performance. And that's where I think CEA is very well positioned versus others who rely on being paid by suppliers to do various reports. Bankability reports are not our business, and we do not get engaged with being paid by suppliers as we feel that would compromise our integrity and approach to the market. So we're very happy to work with many of our clients on a repeat basis. And that's one thing I'll say is we've had ongoing checks of our net promoter score from our clients. And I'm very happy to announce that we have extremely high rates, well above 80 on a NPS you know, sample sizes, a greater than 50%. So our teams have been very pleased to see such a strong response to our clients are often in working with US on a repeat basis. So very happy to entertain any folks in the industry involved in solar and storage deployment. They're looking for folks to help all the ground at the sight, but also on the upstream side where the products are manufactured.