The Exchanges

Q with this rising data center construction boom, you know, we hear it there as well, and a lot of those people have the same skill sets that need to be trained, electricians and so on. How much of a constraint do you see the labor pool as? If you did need to go to a 20 gigawatt run rate, like, how hard would it be to recruit enough skilled laborers?

A Well, I, I think you have to think about our business a little bit different than a, you know, building a data center and the electricians and the skill set necessary for a data center. If you think about a solar project, You know, probably 85 to 90% of that is really, you know, labor and mechanical labor, right? You are, we're putting posts in the ground, we're bolting together racking systems, and we're installing modules. And then, you know, 10 to 15% of that is really skilled, skilled electricians that are doing terminations, And splicing and, you know, the, the kind of highly technical skill that you need, um, to do those type of activities. Where in a data center that's happening, you know, every square inch of a project, you're doing, you're, you're doing those kind of terminations and electrical work. So while we have highly skilled resources in our HV, you know, high voltage groups and doing substation work and where the, the, You know, that actual, you know, highly skilled resources needed. A lot of what we're doing is bringing in local resources and training them to do the mechanical install portion. Now, you know, that, that's not to say that we're not looking at optimization. So we're looking at every robotic, um, you know, system that's out there. We're doing, we're, We're doing testing on, you know, every one of our sites has some form of automation or robotics t…

AI assessment note: “85 to 90% of that is really, you know, labor and mechanical labor”

Q it feels like the, the killer app for automation is speed, and I'm curious how you think about that in terms of, um, what is the length of time that it normally takes you with a fully manual labor world to build a 300 megawatt project or whatever size you want, and then how much might you be able to speed that up? As you look at these automation solutions?

A Well, you know, um, not every project is the same, so it's really hard to, you know, come up with a, you know, 300 megawatts takes you 12 months full stop, right? In certain areas you could do it in 12 months, certain areas you're gonna do it in 16 months, right? Because it's harder to build in the northeast than it's hard, than in west Texas. So, you know, we're trying to find out how do we just cut You know, 15% or 10% out of a total build, right? So we're looking at more of how do we build in that type of efficiency? And look, if, you know, I always tell people, if I could, if I could transplant a built site, like, pull it off the shelf and pull and put it on the ground, I'd be sold out, right? So our customers just want to say, how much faster can you build them? And so, that's what we're looking at. I think in, in certain regions, we're going to gain 20% efficiency. In some areas, just because of weather and conditions and the buildable time that you have in, in certain regions, it's just going to take longer to build, right? And so, I think it's for our teams, and we have a, we have a team fully dedicated on how do we build it You know, more lean, more, ah, with more innovation and, and technology within the process, because I think we look at our business much more akin to manufacturing than we look at it as construction, right? You think about, we are, we're trying to d…

AI assessment note: “In certain areas you could do it in 12 months, certain areas... 16 months”

Q curious what you would say the rate limiter on your growth is right now. Like, if I told you you need to, I mean, we talked about getting to 20 gigawatts, but let's just say, you know, as a, as a theoretical exercise, I said Solve needs to be at a 50 gigawatt a year run rate as fast as possible. What would be the hardest thing to scale up?

A I think logistics, right? I think that when you think about these projects and, and the scale of them, it really becomes a Logistics officer type of business, right? When you think about, you know, they always said, you know, logistics officers won wars, right? And because just moving the amount of equipment that we have to move, and the amount of, you know, trucks, so you, when you, when you think about these projects that are, you know, how do you build, and a question get asked of me, how do you build two gigawatts In a year on a single site, when you think about these massive data centers, and I said, tell me how I'm going to move that many trucks, how I'm going to, you know, assuming I can get all the people, right? Because I'll, we'll attract people, we'll attract, we'll get, you know, how am I going to continue to supply that many people putting that amount of work in place, right? The amount of trucks that we have to move becomes the Gating activity, not the amount of people, right? Because, you know, how are you going to park people? How are you going to bust them in? How are you going to, I mean, it's all becomes a logistics game more than, you know, a construction activity. Once I get them to this location, I can put posts in the ground. I can bolt stuff together. It's just a matter of doing all those things at the scale that we're talking about. And And look, the, t…

AI assessment note: “I think logistics, right?”

Q these big, lumpy projects that last, you A certain amount of time, some number of months from the beginning of construction to, to COD. Are you basically in a constant game of trying to, um, put the puzzle pieces together such that you have a flat number of megawatts in construction over time? Like, is it like a Tetris game like that, or does it look something different from that?

A Well, it's actually changes over time. As we're starting to see these projects get larger, we're actually getting operational leverage. Because you think about it, if we were building 20 projects a year, say, and all those 20 projects were 20 megawatt projects, I'd still need a team to manage each one of those projects. Now those projects are, you know, averaging over 300 megawatts and up to a gigawatt in scale. So for a, I don't need, you know, 10 teams to manage a gigawatt project versus a hundred megawatt project, right? So I actually get leverage in the system. And so, you know, a project team and maybe With some additional management resources can do a project, you know, that's three or 400 megawatts versus that same project team that would do something, you know, traditionally a few years ago at a much smaller scale. So the megawatts are growing, but the people that are managing them are not growing. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of leverage in the business as you, Start to look at these projects at scale. So, you know, if we had 20 teams building 20 gigawatts, I mean, 20 gigawatt projects, we could talk about a 20 gigawatt run rate, right? I mean, yes, I would have to, I would have to add more skilled labor resources, more, you know, field labor resources, but those are Largely trainable skills and people that I can recruit. So I, I think that's why we're seeing the…

AI assessment note: “Well, it's actually changes over time. As we're starting to see these projects get larger”