15: The Evolution of Residential Solar w/ Mike Kirby, President of Lumina Solar
You've Been Warmed
English - February 10, 2020 13:47 - 54 minutes - 46.6 MB - ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsEarth Sciences Science Technology clean energy carbon nuclear carbon offsets carbon removal green energy climate change greenhouse gases co2 emissions renewables Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
This episode features Mike Kirby - President & Co-Founder of Lumina Solar - a solar energy provider based in Baltimore, Maryland. Lumina Solar facilitates the installment of solar panels for residential buildings and have been in operation for nearly 2 years.
With a long career in the solar industry spanning 11 years, Mike was the perfect guest to get into the nitty gritty details of installing solar panels in homes. I was super curious and had a ton of questions such as - how easy is it to install these solutions? How much do they cost? What kind of financing options are there? What cost efficiencies and savings do customers get when going solar?
I asked all of these and more. Throughout the episode, Mike had some great insights as to what policies which started in California specifically jumpstarted the adoption of residential solar, how the industry has matured and evolved over the past 11-12 years, how batteries come into play and where they are on the adoption curve.
All in all it's a fascinating conversation, one that is more micro in structure than what I've accustomed you with so far. However, if you ever wanted to know how solar panels for homes operate and what it takes for you to get them (especially in the US), then this is going to be an interesting one!
MIKE KIRBY & LUMINA SOLAR RELEVANT LINKS
Lumina Solar Website - https://www.luminasolar.com/
Mike's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-kirby-546ab225/
TIMECODES
2:54- his background and how he got into solar
11:09 - how the solar market has shifted in the past 10 years
15:14 - Policies that were implemented around Solar
18:48 - How they communicate differently depending on political views / customer interests
23:48 - How the process of installing solar works
31:14 - What happens if you overproduce electricity
35:15 - The role that batteries play
40:18 - Solar energy systems increasing the costs of homes
44:25 - Science vs Business vs Politics vs Society