SunCast

Good companies don't automatically get noticed. And doing good work isn't enough to ensure that customers, investors, journalists, communities, or increasingly AI systems understand why your company matters.
Melissa Baldwin has spent more than 20 years exclusively in energy and climate communications. As Senior Vice President at Tigercomm and host of the Scaling Clean podcast, she's had a front-row seat to what helps companies earn attention and trust, and what causes otherwise strong companies to remain largely invisible.
Melissa and Nico dig into why communications is routinely underfunded, why executive silence is itself a strategic choice, and what the best companies do differently to become useful sources of information for their markets. Melissa shares examples from Zillow and Redfin, explains why proprietary data can create authority far beyond traditional promotional content, and makes the case for giving CEOs a much larger role in telling the company story.
Then they turn to a rapidly changing question: what happens when discovery moves from Google search results to AI-generated answers? Melissa explains how longer, more specific prompts are changing search behavior, why mentions and credible third-party sources increasingly matter, and how companies can begin auditing whether they even show up when an AI system is asked who matters in their category. The conversation also explores why community engagement should be treated as project risk management and why developers need to begin earning local trust long before they need an approval.
Expect to learn:
🔹 Why strong companies can remain invisible despite doing great work
🔹 What useful content does differently from promotional content
🔹 How to evaluate whether your company is showing up in AI-generated answers
🔹 Why community engagement belongs in the project-risk conversation
If your company is doing work worth noticing, this conversation is a useful challenge to ask whether you're making it easy enough for the right people to actually find, understand, and trust you.
Are there other technologies you’ve scouted on the frontlines of the Clean Energy Revolution that you think we should be covering here on SunCast?
Hit us up - team@suncast.me with your feedback & recommendations.
If you want to connect with today's guest, you’ll find links to their contact info in the show notes on the blog at https://suncast.media/episodes/.
Our Platinum Presenting Sponsor for SunCast is CPS America!
You can learn more about all the sponsors who help make this show free for you at www.suncast.media/sponsors.
Remember, you can always find resources, learn more about today’s guest and explore recommendations, book links, and more than 950 other founder stories and startup advice at www.suncast.media.
We'd love if you'd leave us a 5 ⭐ rating & review and it's never been easier: https://www.ratethispodcast.com/suncast
Subscribe to Valence, our weekly LinkedIn Newsletter, and learn the elements of compelling storytelling: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/valence-content-that-connects-7145928995363049472/
You can connect with me, Nico Johnson, on:
Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/nicomeo
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickalus

Solar construction has always depended on experienced crews adapting to whatever the jobsite throws at them. But what happens when the industry needs to build more projects than its best crews can possibly cover?
Cody Houser has spent much of his career on the other side of that problem. Before becoming Director of EPC and Constructability at FTC Solar, he spent eight years running his own construction company, driving piles, building trackers, managing crews as large as 250 people, and experimenting with automated pile driving years before today's wave of solar robotics.
His argument for automation starts with something more fundamental than replacing labor: predictability.
Robotics can give EPCs a more reliable baseline for daily production. But Cody also explains why the opportunity starts upstream, with trackers and construction workflows designed to make installation simpler and more repeatable, whether the work is performed by humans today or increasingly automated tomorrow. FTC says its Pioneer tracker is already producing 15% faster mechanical installation by human crews, an example Cody uses to show how constructability can translate directly into EPC economics.
This conversation explores the shrinking pool of experienced field labor, safety, constructability, AI, and what Cody believes the increasingly autonomous solar jobsite could look like over the next decade.
The bigger question isn't what robots can do. It's what happens when we design solar construction around greater consistency from the start.
Are there other technologies you’ve scouted on the frontlines of the Clean Energy Revolution that you think we should be covering here on SunCast?
Hit us up - team@suncast.me with your feedback & recommendations.
If you want to connect with today's guest, you’ll find links to their contact info in the show notes on the blog at https://suncast.media/episodes/.
Our Platinum Presenting Sponsor for SunCast is CPS America!
You can learn more about all the sponsors who help make this show free for you at www.suncast.media/sponsors.
Remember, you can always find resources, learn more about today’s guest and explore recommendations, book links, and more than 950 other founder stories and startup advice at www.suncast.media.
We'd love if you'd leave us a 5 ⭐ rating & review and it's never been easier: https://www.ratethispodcast.com/suncast
Subscribe to Valence, our weekly LinkedIn Newsletter, and learn the elements of compelling storytelling: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/valence-content-that-connects-7145928995363049472/
You can connect with me, Nico Johnson, on:
Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/nicomeo
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickalus

Australia has spent years ahead of many markets on the distributed solar adoption curve. Now it is giving the rest of us an early look at what happens when millions of those systems move from installation into decades of ownership, maintenance, repair, replacement, and eventually recycling.
Daniel Lazarus, co-founder and CEO of Industrias Services Group, has built his company around that second act. After years in solar construction, he saw an enormous need for maintenance but also discovered why relatively few companies have figured out how to deliver it profitably at scale.
In this conversation, Daniel shares what his team is finding on aging solar assets, from missing documentation and preventable design problems to a 400-kilowatt commercial system that had fallen to essentially zero production. But the larger story is about the business being built around those problems.
Daniel explains how Industrias developed a national service network, why process and data matter more than another piece of software, how EPCs and other partners use Industrias behind the scenes, and why maintenance relationships can eventually create opportunities for system replacement and new construction.
For solar founders, EPCs, asset owners, and operators, Australia may offer an early preview of the service economy that follows widespread deployment, and what it actually takes to build for it.
Expect to Learn:
🔹 Why almost 25% of solar faults found are safety related
🔹 How missing documentation turns solar into an orphaned asset
🔹 Why maintenance, not installs, is the truly scalable business
🔹 How proprietary data now predicts costly system failures early
If this resonates, let us know so we can bring you more on the service economy (or more from Aussie entrepreneurs!)
Are there other technologies you’ve scouted on the frontlines of the Clean Energy Revolution that you think we should be covering here on SunCast?
Hit us up - team@suncast.me with your feedback & recommendations.
If you want to connect with today's guest, you’ll find links to their contact info in the show notes on the blog at https://suncast.media/episodes/.
Our Platinum Presenting Sponsor for SunCast is CPS America!
You can learn more about all the sponsors who help make this show free for you at www.suncast.media/sponsors.
Remember, you can always find resources, learn more about today’s guest and explore recommendations, book links, and more than 950 other founder stories and startup advice at www.suncast.media.
We'd love if you'd leave us a 5 ⭐ rating & review and it's never been easier: https://www.ratethispodcast.com/suncast
Subscribe to Valence, our weekly LinkedIn Newsletter, and learn the elements of compelling storytelling: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/valence-content-that-connects-7145928995363049472/
You can connect with me, Nico Johnson, on:
Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/nicomeo
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickalus

Utilities used to plan around relatively predictable demand. That assumption is disappearing.
In this opening keynote from Intersolar & Energy Storage North America Midwest, Nico Johnson sits down with 3 utility executives; Bria Shea of Xcel Energy, Andy Plenge of ComEd, and Brice Sheriff of Ameren Illinois to examine what happens when electricity demand can arrive faster than the infrastructure needed to serve it—and distributed energy resources increasingly change how power moves across the grid.
The conversation explores the difficult balance between reliability, affordability, and investment; what rising electricity costs actually reflect; the practical constraints to deploying more DERs; and how utilities are rethinking planning for a system with far more uncertainty than the one they inherited.
Three utilities operating in different markets arrive at a similar reality: planning the next grid will require more flexibility, better coordination, and new ways of thinking about both customers and the resources connected to the system.
Are there other technologies you’ve scouted on the frontlines of the Clean Energy Revolution that you think we should be covering here on SunCast?
Hit us up - team@suncast.me with your feedback & recommendations.
If you want to connect with today's guest, you’ll find links to their contact info in the show notes on the blog at https://suncast.media/episodes/.
Our Platinum Presenting Sponsor for SunCast is CPS America!
You can learn more about all the sponsors who help make this show free for you at www.suncast.media/sponsors.
Remember, you can always find resources, learn more about today’s guest and explore recommendations, book links, and more than 950 other founder stories and startup advice at www.suncast.media.
We'd love if you'd leave us a 5 ⭐ rating & review and it's never been easier: https://www.ratethispodcast.com/suncast
Subscribe to Valence, our weekly LinkedIn Newsletter, and learn the elements of compelling storytelling: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/valence-content-that-connects-7145928995363049472/
You can connect with me, Nico Johnson, on:
Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/nicomeo
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickalus

Pepper Construction has survived the Great Depression, World War II, multiple recessions, and a global pandemic. As the family business approaches its 100th anniversary, its next challenge is not simply surviving another disruption. It is pursuing new opportunities without losing the culture, discipline, and sense of responsibility that carried it this far.
Jake Pepper is part of the fourth generation preparing to lead Pepper into that next chapter. His path into the family business was anything but automatic. He resisted joining, studied building science, traded natural gas options, and earned an MBA before returning with a deeper understanding of both the company and the complicated dynamics of a multigenerational enterprise.
Jake went on to build Pepper Energy from an initial construction-only solar project while helping the broader company expand into batteries, powered land, and hyperscale data centers. He and Nico explore how new businesses earn trust inside an established company, why each generation may get only one consequential risk, and how leaders protect the core while adapting to markets that can change almost overnight.
Expect to Learn:
🔹 What Jake gained by building a career outside the family business before accepting the mantle of responsibility
🔹 How his particular MBA program helped him understand the family dynamics behind the financial statements
🔹 How a call from the carpenters union led to Pepper’s first solar project, a new energy business, and an incredible growth curve
🔹 How Jake evaluates powered land, data-center growth, capital partners, and counterparty credit risk
🔹 Why maintaining culture is harder than growing from $2 billion to $4 billion
This conversation offers a candid look at how one family business is preparing for its next century without losing the culture and values that carried it through the first.
Are there other technologies you’ve scouted on the frontlines of the Clean Energy Revolution that you think we should be covering here on SunCast?
Hit us up - team@suncast.me with your feedback & recommendations.
If you want to connect with today's guest, you’ll find links to their contact info in the show notes on the blog at https://suncast.media/episodes/.
Our Platinum Presenting Sponsor for SunCast is CPS America!
You can learn more about all the sponsors who help make this show free for you at www.suncast.media/sponsors.
Remember, you can always find resources, learn more about today’s guest and explore recommendations, book links, and more than 950 other founder stories and startup advice at www.suncast.media.
We'd love if you'd leave us a 5 ⭐ rating & review and it's never been easier: https://www.ratethispodcast.com/suncast
Subscribe to Valence, our weekly LinkedIn Newsletter, and learn the elements of compelling storytelling: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/valence-content-that-connects-7145928995363049472/
You can connect with me, Nico Johnson, on:
Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/nicomeo
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickalus