Clean Power Hour

Revolutionizing the Grid: Smart Technology and Energy Storage Solutions with Dr. Zhehan Yi | EP217

July 02, 2024 Tim Montague, John Weaver
Revolutionizing the Grid: Smart Technology and Energy Storage Solutions with Dr. Zhehan Yi | EP217
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Clean Power Hour
Revolutionizing the Grid: Smart Technology and Energy Storage Solutions with Dr. Zhehan Yi | EP217
Jul 02, 2024
Tim Montague, John Weaver

In this episode of the Clean Power Hour, host Tim Montague welcomes Dr. Zhehan Yi, Utility and ESS Product Solutions Director at CPS America, for an in-depth exploration of cutting-edge utility-scale energy storage solutions. Dr. Yi shares his journey from electrical engineering to becoming a key player in the renewable energy sector, offering unique insights into the evolving landscape of energy storage technology.

The conversation centers around CPS America's groundbreaking 5 megawatt-hour battery storage container solution, a game-changer in the utility-scale storage market. Dr. Yi explains the innovative string structure approach employed by CPS, drawing parallels with their success in the PV inverter market. He delves into the benefits of this modular design, including enhanced controllability, easier maintenance, and the ability to perform rack-level augmentation.

Dr. Yi and Montague discuss the concept of the "smart grid" and its role in revolutionizing power distribution. They explore how advanced communication and controllability are transforming the century-old grid infrastructure to accommodate the growing integration of renewable energy sources and smart devices.

The episode also touches on current trends in utility-scale storage projects across different US markets, from the smaller projects on the East Coast to the massive installations in the Southwest. Dr. Yi provides valuable insights into the various applications of energy storage, including energy arbitrage, peak shaving, and supporting EV charging infrastructure.

Listeners will gain a deeper understanding of CPS America's commitment to providing comprehensive solutions, including balance of system components and medium voltage transformers. Dr. Yi emphasizes the importance of localized support and customer service in setting CPS apart from competitors in the energy storage landscape.

Whether you're an energy professional, developer, or simply interested in the future of renewable energy, this episode offers a wealth of information on the cutting edge of energy storage technology and its crucial role in the global energy transition.

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Zhehan Yi
CPS America

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The Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com

Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/

The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America’s number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

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Show Notes Transcript

In this episode of the Clean Power Hour, host Tim Montague welcomes Dr. Zhehan Yi, Utility and ESS Product Solutions Director at CPS America, for an in-depth exploration of cutting-edge utility-scale energy storage solutions. Dr. Yi shares his journey from electrical engineering to becoming a key player in the renewable energy sector, offering unique insights into the evolving landscape of energy storage technology.

The conversation centers around CPS America's groundbreaking 5 megawatt-hour battery storage container solution, a game-changer in the utility-scale storage market. Dr. Yi explains the innovative string structure approach employed by CPS, drawing parallels with their success in the PV inverter market. He delves into the benefits of this modular design, including enhanced controllability, easier maintenance, and the ability to perform rack-level augmentation.

Dr. Yi and Montague discuss the concept of the "smart grid" and its role in revolutionizing power distribution. They explore how advanced communication and controllability are transforming the century-old grid infrastructure to accommodate the growing integration of renewable energy sources and smart devices.

The episode also touches on current trends in utility-scale storage projects across different US markets, from the smaller projects on the East Coast to the massive installations in the Southwest. Dr. Yi provides valuable insights into the various applications of energy storage, including energy arbitrage, peak shaving, and supporting EV charging infrastructure.

Listeners will gain a deeper understanding of CPS America's commitment to providing comprehensive solutions, including balance of system components and medium voltage transformers. Dr. Yi emphasizes the importance of localized support and customer service in setting CPS apart from competitors in the energy storage landscape.

Whether you're an energy professional, developer, or simply interested in the future of renewable energy, this episode offers a wealth of information on the cutting edge of energy storage technology and its crucial role in the global energy transition.

Social Media Handles
Zhehan Yi
CPS America

Support the Show.

Connect with Tim

Clean Power Hour
Clean Power Hour on YouTube
Tim on Twitter
Tim on LinkedIn

Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com

Review Clean Power Hour on Apple Podcasts

The Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com

Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/

The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America’s number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Zhehan Yi:

Yeah, I think I think it's quite often a product I know like our competitors are also following us, you know, getting similar products out. But we believe that we have this unique structure not only from the battery cyber CPSS also good at electronics. Sure. So we bring the whole system including the battery, and the PCs, and a medium voltage transformer together to kind of as a turnkey, and test it out. You know, with the best of our engineer, we have a world class engineer, globally, not only in China, but also in the US but also you know, Europe, rockets, Australia market,

intro:

are you speeding the energy transition? Here at the Clean Power Hour, our hosts, Tim Montague and John Weaver bring you the best in solar batteries and clean technologies every week, I want to go deeper into decarbonisation. We do too. We're here to help you understand and command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get to it. Together, we can speed the energy transition.

Tim Montague:

Today on the Clean Power Hour, battery storage, my guest today is Dr. Z Han Yi. He is the utility and ESS Product Solutions director for CPS America otherwise known as cin Power Systems America, I want to welcome you to the show, Dr. Z.

Zhehan Yi:

Yeah, thank you, James. I'm glad to be here. Really

Tim Montague:

looking forward to this and bringing you to my audience, you know, as all solar professionals now know, and recognize solar is wonderful technology. But storage is even more important, right? Because you can only generate electrons from sunlight during certain hours of the day. And storage gives us the flexibility to then deliver those to absorb them and deliver them on demand at other times of the day. And they truly are a multifaceted value stack for the grid. And the grid needs lots of solar, and lots of storage. And so it's very heady days in that combination of things. And cient is known as a inverter manufacturer. But you also make other products, including now a five megawatt hour, you heard that right five megawatt hour storage solution. So you've been building out your CNI storage solutions, and now going after utility scale storage, which is just wonderful. And we are going to do a deep dive into some of that. But first, tell our listeners a little bit about your background. Dr. Z, how did you get interested in electrical engineering and solar and storage?

Zhehan Yi:

Yeah, that's, that's a good question. So I got to know radio Bose since college, when I was doing a major of electrical engineering. And at that time, it was more about traditional power generations. And most renewables are more about wind power, Evie, solar and energy storage, we're still new at that time. And my focus in the light the last two years in college was on product tronics. From where I, you know, started to understand IGBTs and most vatting voters covers. And after college, I went to pursue my PhD and that one was more focused on renewable, especially like controls and protections for PV and a storage. So I did a couple of the r&d projects on that and which later became the start of my career. Very cool. That's Yes. Hi. Basically how to get into this era.

Tim Montague:

And you are the author of more than 30 peer reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings, holder of six patents. So you have a very long track record in the r&d, space research and development. So yeah, we'd love to hear a little more about that work. You were you were with an organization called the Global Energy interconnection Research Institute. Giri otherwise known as Geary, North America, and which is not, which is not an organization that many of my listeners would be familiar with, except more on the utility side. But yeah, tell us a little more about your background and your research interests.

Zhehan Yi:

So I actually just start with my PhD, right. So in order to get graduated, you, you got to publish paper, otherwise my advisor won't let me go. So I like the most most of the time at school was like, you know, except for doing TAs or tutors for the undergrad courses. We have the door a lot, a lot of research. Actually a lot of them are sponsored by like companies. Renewable companies. So yeah, we started published a lot of paper out of it, you know, from the research. And, and after graduation, I joined this company called Global Energy interconnection researching Institute of North America. So it's a research lab more focused on the light, the great reliability and smart grid technologies, r&d. So my research, actually, from my PhD started to the My first job was focused a lot more on the Smart Grid side, and which includes a lot of renewables. Like, from a growth perspective, like how you deal with the renewables, what's the impact of that, and how you introduce renewables to the power system, to improve the reliability of the system, rather than bring in the negative impact. So you have done a lot of research of that, and especially the company was in the Silicon Valley, where, you know, AI and IoT have been a big thing here. So we have a lot of research on you know, how to utilize AI and an IoT technology improve their renewable energy performance in the grid operation with, you know, the uncertainties brought by these resources.

Tim Montague:

Yeah, you know, the grid is a is a about 100 year old technology, right? We've had an electric grid here in North America for just over 100 years. And for most of that time, it's been very, very similar. Right, you got power, you've got power plants, like coal, gas, and now solar, wind, and battery storage, power plants, and then wires connecting that, you know, source of power to the consumers of electricity, right, our built environment, homes, buildings, etc. And it's at face value. It's not that complicated. Mind now, right? We're, a few things are happening, we're consuming a lot more electricity. So the demands on the grid are getting bigger and bigger. And, and we're Greening the Grid, right? We're replacing those traditional sources of coal, gas, and other traditional sources with wind, solar and batteries, which wind and solar being very intermittent. And so the grid is becoming much more dynamic. Exactly. Meanwhile, we have all these smart things, like inverters. Inverters are computers that are also converting electricity, you know, from the DSC of the solar to the AC for the grid. And, and so there's kind of a revolution happening in grid technology, right? We have a lot better technology today than we did 100 years ago. And this is a good thing, right? Because we need to triple the grid, to electrify everything, including transportation and heavy industry and HVAC, etc, right. And we're integrating all the smart devices, and renewables into the grid. So it's a very exciting time. I wonder if you have any kind of a simple way to communicate that to lay people who are not grid experts? So how do you define the smart grid?

Zhehan Yi:

You know, that's, that's a great question. So that a grid is becoming smarter, like, in multiple ways, right? Not only from the generation side, but it's like kind of a read, like a revolution from generation to transmission to distribution and even to the lows. So generation you like for example, we have this smart inverters for when or for solar, and also batteries, like we're adding a lot of batteries on a kind of generation sign also transmissions that but in the distribution network, we also have a lot of like residential, solar residential, ESS, and Evie, charging stations. And also like, for example, a lot of lows like nowadays at home, like they are also smart, like appliances, like you can just control it. For example, your your h of x x and Ray like before it was like scheduled, but now you can really control it. So these are all resources for the great operator, like a power system, the best for persistence, always balance. So you always have to balance the load and regeneration. And balancing those is not only from the generation side, but a lot of time. You can also do it from the low side of for example, demand response using a lot of these aggregated resources, including, you know, residential batteries, and so ESS and also those lows so I think a smart way is like is forming the system from multiple layers, but it's in general, why is getting smart is because of the communication and a controllability.

Tim Montague:

Indeed, yeah, communication and controllability. I like that. Yeah. So let's talk about your role at CPS, that is really the thrust of this interview. How long have you been with CPS? And what was it that got you excited about that opportunity? And, and tell us what you do there?

Zhehan Yi:

Yeah, so I joined CPS in 2022 as a utility and ESS product director. So I work closely with our r&d team, of course, on a new product roadmapping product strategy, product development and improvement. And at the front end, my team also work very closely with application engineering, to support a sales team, like from mostly technical side, make sure that our like our solution is providing the best for the customer. And we're providing the best technical support for our customer projects. So it's a combination of product and also like front end support for customer projects, to my, my day to day. Got

Tim Montague:

it. And tell us a little bit about the evolution of the of this. Well, I guess, of the family of storage products that that CPS has been rolling out here in North America, which, you know, has really crescendo for lack of a better expect expression with the release of the five megawatt hour container solution. But walk us through just a little bit of how CPS is interacting with the energy transition, how customer pull through and demands is, you know, leading your product evolution. Yeah,

Zhehan Yi:

so any storage actually, I know that CPS was most probably well known for like string inverters for PV. But like globally, we also have a lot of like energy storage deployment, like the CPS gobo, we probably have already deployed more than two gigawatt hour of batteries. Before the US the utility battery was like new to our team. But we've done quite a few of like CNI storage before, in the US probably 2020 projects of the CNI systems, the legacy products, and we're like growing our team to that, you know, ESS era as well, as we develop our new products. So this year, we actually from last year, we start to have this five megawatt hour battery, which we would like to bring to the market to the utility market especially. And which we believe would disrupt the market because that was the first one actually, in a 20 foot container with five megawatt hour, pretty high energy density, and especially using our string structure, which, you know, CPS being very good and well known for it. We brought the string structure to the ESS as well. And we have been, you know, researching a lot in the markets. And we believe this technology will also you know, picks up the ESS rockin as well. Yeah,

Tim Montague:

think of you can think of CNI storage being at the 100 100 kWh scale, and then multi 100 kWh and then megawatt scale right? And a five megawatt hour correct me if I'm wrong, but a five megawatt hour battery is just 5100 kilowatt hour batteries put together into a container, basically, right you're, you're taking that building block and scaling it up. I'm sure there's, it's more complicated than that. But But why Feb font, why five megawatt hours is that just the amount of batteries that you can get in a convenient container or something like that,

Zhehan Yi:

but that that really depends on the size of the battery cells. It's like the PV module the wafer is getting bigger like before we had a 166 millimeter then 182 And nowadays people using 210 Sure, is the same like if like the same evolution for battery light, from you know, 280 MPa, our the LFP battery cells, and nowadays, we have this like commercialized 314 ampere hour so When we were designing the system, we kind of want to balance, like the maximum, of course, we always want to maximize the power density or energy density. But you also got to consider, like the safety margin and the reliability of the product. So you not only want to enter as much as possible, but you want to make a reasonable product that hosts as much as you know, power, as well as balancing its performance, and energy density. So we think the five megawatt hour would be a good balance for this. And CPS also was, you know, the first one to make a five megawatt hour container with LRP batteries. And we got a UL, from last September. And yeah, I think, I think it's quite often a product. I know, like our competitors are also following ours, you know, getting similar products out, but which I believe that we have this unique structure, not only from the battery, cyber CPSA is also good at electronics. Sure. So we bring the whole system, including the battery, and the PCs, and immediately transformer together to add kind of as a turnkey, and test it out, you know, with the best of our engineer, we have a world class engineer, globally, not only in China, but also in the US, but also you know, Europe, markets, Australia market. So, yeah, I think it's, it's a pretty nice building block as a five megawatt hours well, right. So for a lot of like, five, five megawatt 10 megawatt project, you can use it and even up to 100 megawatt larger project, you can also use it so I think this five megawatt hour is, is kind of a balance of a lot of stuff, including for design perspective, from application perspective.

Tim Montague:

You mentioned that, you know, CPS has already deployed gigawatt hours of storage internationally. And that's what sometimes we Americans forget is that there's a whole global market for energy storage and solar to write. And we're just a small fraction, actually, we're about 10%, I think of the global PV market, for example. And China might be 70% of the global PV market, China's a human, you know, humongous consumer of PV not just manufacture. And the same for storage, of course. So we're in some ways playing catch up here in North America, to what's going on internationally. And their their reasons for that, right. We are very technology forward here in the US. We also have a very entrenched traditional grid technology industry, right? The the fossil industry is a major force here, and a major economic driver. So this five watt five megawatt hour building block that what if you're a solar and storage or storage alone developer, what else should you know about this solution? And I guess I'm just curious, like, what kind of questions do you and your team get that that you can share with our audience to help our audience understand the value that this is bringing to the energy transition?

Zhehan Yi:

Yeah, so he the most question that I got wrong customer is, can I use it in like, small project or it has to be in big projects. So actually, this like five mega, like I mentioned earlier, is like a balance of a lot of different aspects, like from product to application. So I think the first is, we have this five megawatt hour together to pair with our 2.4 megawatt PCs, as a to our system for standard, but we can also, you know, parallel different or multiple batteries with that PCs, to make it a longer duration, for example, four hours, eight hours, and we are we have UL certified, you know, for all of this different applications. And I think one thing I would like to mention is the, like the string, the string structure that we've been using for the, the ESS which I think is unique, and especially for CPS, it's a gem in CPS, like we have been focused solely on strength. Right, we were Yeah, we were the number one market share leader for three phase string in the US for the last seven or eight years. So I mean, to get the first place for one year may be easy, but To get the first place in the, like, consecutive years, like multiple years, it's actually recording another work and a lot of, you know, charts from customer as well. So, we, we brought this, you know string structure, also to our ESS, we have this 2.4 megawatt system, which actually is the integration of 12 200 Kw PCs on this gate is a highly integrated product. So, you can use these 2.4 megawatt PCs with our five megawatt system for my five megawatt hour battery, so, you can have, you know, individual connection connections from each of the 200 megawatt piece 200 kilowatt PCs to the rack of the battery directly. So, the five megawatt hour battery is actually operating as a combination of 12 racks independently so, you can kind of control the rack independently. And that means you're reducing the mismatch loss and you have a lot of more like controllability over the 12 racks. And you can even you know, do the rack level augmentation in a third like five year for example, like the traditional way when you are augmenting a berry you will have to add an entire container. But with our strategy and our structure, you can also just add strings like for example, at the beginning you can reserve some space in the battery container and on the PCs skid. And in the fifth year, you can just add one more string with one more PCs like 200 kW to improve the to keep the power density and the energy density of the entire system. So a lot of benefits our Veda and also including the Oh nm and oh nm is a big thing, especially for battery because you are one battery to be available. The availability uptime. So with the string structure, you kind of share the same benefit from the PV string battery you can when you know for example, if a PCS modular style you're talking about only 200 Kw instead of the entire 2.4 Mega and you can just take the bet one out and then just you know replace it with swap it with a new one. So the O nm will be pretty straightforward. The entire PCs module is is swappable. You don't have to wait for like CPS technician to show up. Usually the OEM team they can just do it by themselves, which is pretty straightforward and easy.

Tim Montague:

The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America. The maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over six gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS America product lineup includes three phase string inverters ranging from 25 to 275 kW, their flagship inverter, the CPS 250 to 75 is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts the to 50 to 75. pairs well, with CPS America's exceptional data communication controls and energy storage solutions. Go to chintpowersystems.com To find out more. Tell us about the state of the art. I mean, I love this flexibility and scalability aspects of the product. What is the state of the art for the expected lifetime of of lithium ion batteries? You're using LFP chemistry? And I'm interested in lifetime and also supply chain like if if a customer were to call today and say okay, I want to order you know, a 10 megawatt hour battery. What what is the what is the life cycle of getting a product delivered like that?

Zhehan Yi:

Do you mean a lead time or the? Yeah,

Tim Montague:

the lead time? Yeah, how long does it take to actually get your get your grubby hands on these things.

Zhehan Yi:

Our lead time for our battery is usually around six seven months for the five megawatt hour including the the battery and a PCS. So pretty quick. Yep. as well. We have been doing the install as well like for four to six weeks for our PD booster. So we're adding fast got

Tim Montague:

it? And the expected lifetime What is that for? For state of the art ESS? Yep.

Zhehan Yi:

So So you really era P is it have a degradation over the years like depending on how much you're charging like hot the charging cycle for example. You're charging like 360 cycles per year or you're charging 720 cycles per year the lifetime will be different. Sure. But typically, for example for like a battery usually is designed for at least 20 years and then what we've been seeing from the customer side they usually require a 20 year 25 year battery. So over the year the battery will have degradation like we will provide the degradation curve Based on a battery and augmentation plan, if the customer will add to keep, for example, 80% of the SOC 80% of the energy in the number like 20 year, we will have a plan of, for example, at a 10 year or at a 15. year, you will have to add, how much of the battery into in order to get to that point? Yeah, but usually what we're being seeing is like 2025 years.

Tim Montague:

And in the in this use case, you know, I mean, this is a utility scale battery, often being paired with a utility scale storage, right, so you're, you could charge the battery during the day from from sunlight, and then discharge the battery, when energy is a premium, you know, in the evening, for example, to maximize the value of the battery, but what what are you seeing, you know, in terms of, what is the expected use case? Or the or, and are we talking like 10,000 cycles? Is that the life? Or is it more than that? Now,

Zhehan Yi:

that depends on how, again, how you use the battery, like you're charging at full power, or like you just like charge between a small bandwidth of the SOC in that case, but but for application, I mean, battery has a lot of different application, right? Like, what you were mentioning, for example, the energy arbitrage or peak shaving or low shifting for PV. That's more a typical market, where you try to bury only like maybe like a once a day for for like one cycle a day, for most of the case, but we also see some emerging markets, for example, to use a very paired with a recharging station, you know, the goal of the EB charge underlie the goal of the E V, in the US is getting bigger, like the Eevee. You know, you'll see a lot of more and more EVs on the on the street, but Sure, but the Eevee police station is outside is not still not available, not not that available as our like, gasoline charging stations, right. So a lot of the data like Evie train stations are being built over the highways. And like I mentioned also earlier, the infrastructure for the transmission line, the power system, we're Oh, so adding those Evie charging stations as a lot of burden for the grid. Right. And especially like the sometimes like the example the transformer is not sufficient for the amount of power you want to add. So we've seen a lot of cases like customer asking for battery together with to pair with evey charging stations. And those are like, a little bit different than, you know, PV plus storage. Because those application usually required a battery to discharge a large amount of power within a short time. Like, for example, like, one hour battery, mostly same in that case, yeah, but they want a pretty high power density within a short bandwidth. So those types of application would use a different type of steel therapy, but different type of cell, which can give more power within a short period of time. So I would say like different application would have expectations for life cycles, and, you know, the durations and lifespan for the battery. Yeah.

Tim Montague:

I mean, since you have you have a pretty unique purview into what developers are looking at doing and where can you say anything about what markets what geographic markets in the US are hotter than others? I know, you know, for example, there's as much storage now being permitted in Texas in ERCOT, as there is solar, right. So ERCOT is a very hot market. Of course, there's California, which is, you know, on the bleeding edge of the energy transition, so a lot of storage happening in California. And then you have states where you have certain incentives, like New York has an incentive for storage, Illinois has an incentive. Are those truly the shortlist of hotspots for storage? Or just curious what are you seeing?

Zhehan Yi:

We actually think everywhere, but like, the size are different, like in on the East Coast, mostly the project size are smaller, maybe due to the you know, the language restrictions. And on the East Coast, also the solar like smaller life, a lot of five and 10 megawatt projects or 223 megawatts, but the Southwest projects that usually, you know, maybe they depends on location, but most of the cases like we're seeing 100 megawatt 200 megawatt and like bigger projects, So yeah, I'd say I mean, generally, if we're talking about capacity, the Southwest is heavier. And that's also a very, you know, PV dense area. In the US and a lot of PV are being overbuilt as the you know, the module price is getting down, people tend to want to have like a higher DC to AC ratio on their system. And the best way to, you know, to match that is to add battery storage to save that clip energy. So you can fully utilize it and maximize the the investment in the PV system.

Tim Montague:

Yeah, indeed. You know, I mean, I think this is a great concept overbuild the now cheaper and cheaper PV and add storage to store the extra power. So what else should our listeners know though about CPS and your energy storage, like, you know, you host a annual Innovation Day at your Dallas headquarters, which if you're listening to this, reach out to your local CPS representative and get on that invitation list because that is a really wonderful event. It's great networking with other EPCs and developers and asset owners. Really fun event. And you get a behind the scenes on you know how CPS is doing things as a company and you know, the latest and greatest tools and technology. So really wonderful event there. But what else should our listeners know about CPS? What is it that separates you from your competition?

Zhehan Yi:

Yeah, I think I think, of course product like we have ready to have a product, that's the first. But I would also want to emphasize that our team is pretty localized, we have a great service team and engineering team. Of course, also sales team in the US. We have strong teams that are ready to help our customer day to day in their projects. So you don't have to, like wait for because of timezone a lot of suppliers in different timezone area. We have people across the country, from the west to the east, to ready to serve our customers. So just a call to us, we'll just you know, get on and have the with the design and, and also our service team in the service and service center in Texas. We also have a lot of people over there ready to serve our customers. And I would say service is a big thing in NPVs. And also storage, because nobody can guarantee their product is like 100% running for 20 years. So any product can go wrong. But can you get help if something's wrong, right? So we are always ready like to serve our project customers like we have more than 20,000 projects probably in the US for PV. And our team has been supporting every one of them. And we do have this Flex OM system that is pretty se convenient. Sometimes, for example, if something's wrong, customer give us access to remotely check the bed, check the PV inverter or like the battery inverter. Sometimes you would avoid like a trap row just by simply resetting something in the system remotely. So yeah, I think those are like a lot of small things. But I think it's very important to separate us from, you know, our competitors.

Tim Montague:

Yeah, it's not enough to have a great product, right? You have to have a great team supporting that product. From sales to operations and maintenance and service. And that truly is a huge differentiator for CPS. The loyalty I saw among EPCs at the Innovation Day was just off the charts. It really was. It was it was very unique. So what what else should we know? You know, I don't know what I don't know Dr. Z. And I'm, you know, I'm very excited that CPS is rolling out such wonderful utility scale products now both inverters and storage, but what else would you like our EPC and developer listeners to know? Yeah,

Zhehan Yi:

so So I guess, CPS. We were also like a solution provider not only just like a PV inverter manufacturer nowadays slideway provide not only the invalid Excel but will also provide a solution like the total solution, including Balance of System and medium voltage transformer. I know, the lead time for transformer had been traveling a lot of projects like in the last couple of years, but we can say is our lead time is like 24 to 28 weeks, which I would say is pretty good considering the market. And for sure, yeah, yeah, also is our team is like, for utility projects, we always start early with our customer like to help their engineering team to collaborating together to, you know, on the drawings and to design the system to make sure that our inverter is, is used using the right way and best supporting the project. So, yeah, I think I think those are pretty much what I would, you know, let us say to the listeners is, if you have anything at all, just feel free to reach out to us anytime, we're always ready here. And our products are ready to, we have this 350 Kw PV inverter in stock in the US lead times four to six weeks, including balance of systems. Yeah,

Tim Montague:

you know, there's probably over 50 companies that sell energy storage solutions, globally. But there's only a small handful that make this solution that you're referring to right this full wrap products that play together, your own transformer, your own BLS, your own inverters, and of course, your ESS. So that is also, I think, a game changer for EPCs. And developers who are looking for a very easy to procure, and reliable and cost effective product. Well, with that, Dr. Z, I want to thank you and encourage all our listeners to please check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify telephoned about the show. That is the best thing you can do to help the clean energy transition is Tell your friends and reach out to me on LinkedIn. I love hearing from my listeners, you can connect with me also at cleanpowerhour.com. Where all of our content lives. Dr. Zhe, how can our listeners find you

Zhehan Yi:

can always I mean by there's on our website, we have all the you know the most updated product material out there as well. And find me on LinkedIn if you'd like to, you know, get more information. Specifically,

Tim Montague:

yeah, we'll put a link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes. And I will look forward to seeing you in Anaheim at Ari plus this August. All right. Well, with that, let's go solar and storage. I'm Tim Montague. Have a great day. Hey, listeners. This is Tim, I want to give a shout out to all of you. I do this for you twice a week. Thank you for being here. Thank you for giving us your time. I really appreciate you and what you're all about. You are part and parcel of the energy transition, whether you're an energy professional today, or an aspiring energy professional. So thank you, I want to let you know that the Clean Power Hour has launched a listener survey. And it would mean so much to me. If you would go to clean power hour.com. Click on the About Us link right there on the main navigation that takes you to the about page and you'll see a big graphic listener survey, just click on that graphic and it takes just a couple of minutes. If you fill out the survey, I will send you a lovely baseball cap with our logo on it. The other thing I want our listeners to know is that this podcast is made possible by corporate sponsors. We have Chint Power Systems, the leading three phase string inverter manufacturer in North America. So check out CPS America. But we are very actively looking for additional support to make this show work. And you see here our media kit with all the sponsor benefits and statistics about the show. You know we're dropping two episodes a week. We have now over 320,000 downloads on YouTube. And we're getting about 45,000 downloads per month. So this is a great way to bring your brand to our listeners and our listeners our decision makers in clean energy. This includes projects executives, engineers, finance, project management, and many other professionals who are making decisions about and developing, designing, installing and making possible clean energy projects. So check out cleanpowerhour.com both our listener survey on the about us and our media kit and become a sponsor today. Thank you so much. Let's go solar and storage