Shaun Laughlin Shares his Views on the Future of Behind-the-Meter C&I Market

Shaun Laughlin shares his views about the C&I Market at Infocast’s Solar Power Finance & Investment Summit

Interviewer: Hi there, I’m here at the Solar Power Finance Investment summit with Shaun Laughlin. Shaun, thank you so much for joining us.

Shaun: My pleasure.

Interviewer: Great. So I’ve some few questions for you about the Behind the Meter C&I market. So the solar industry has struggled for many years in finding a way to effectively capture the full potential of the CNI market. So is the solar industry going to be able to successfully serve this in this market or will it continue to struggle over some of the challenges that it’s faced in previous years?

Shaun: Well I don’t think there’s any question that we’re going to succeed in capturing it more effectively. But the CNI market itself is so diverse that I mean inherently, you know, you’ve got a lot of hills to climb in there.

So if you look at residential, it’s very consistent, and we can effectively create cookie cutters, same thing really with Utility scale, when you look at Monster Projects, you’ve got a handful of players, you can build them very efficiently and effectively you are following very similar engineering standards and protocols and that type of thing. The CNI market is so diverse, so it’s all over the place. It’s not just Walmart and the famous big box stores that have done so much, it’s also non-profits and it’s munis and it’s even small scale utilities, so it’s an incredibly diverse marketplace that requires more than one solution and probably some smart teaming to conquer it as well. But yeah, I think we’re going to get there and it’s going to be a big market.

Interviewer: So what do you see as the most pressing challenge that needs to be overcome in the CNI market and what are some of the most promising purchase that you’ve seen to do so?

Shaun: Well I think its multifaceted right? So uncertainty is always going to be an issue regardless of the administration, the political, the regulatory environment. I mean it’s always going to be an issue, someone is always going to be looking at the ITC and how appropriate it is, looking at tax reform…