In Search of Solar Energy Freedom. Bill Nussey

Although I did wanna bring you those weekly shorts with recorded sounds of the ocean, bird calls. Ever was out there in the jungle and along the ocean. Well, the background sounds that you hear now are the ocean and Tropic birds and the jungle foul. Our niece, Sarah sang, as she played her hoo Lele in the jungle, as well as alongside the ocean.

It was inspiring and peaceful. Well, now moving forward with today's show, your positive stories are everywhere. People. Positive action. Inspire positive achievements. Your PI could mean the world to you. Get ready for your positive imprint. Well, hello, this is Catherine host of your positive imprint, the variety show featuring people all over the world.

Whose positive actions are inspiring. Positive achievements, exceptional people rise to the challenge music by the talented Chris Noll and as always a huge thank you to Chris for permission to use some of his music on this podcast, including elevated intentions in which he composed for your positive imprint.

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my guest today says that the transition to clean energy is moving far too slowly. And, you know, I absolutely absolutely agree. Bill. Nesti founded the freeing energy project, which is a mobilization plan to move the talents and energies of entrepreneurs worldwide, as well as global policy makers and all communities towards a cleaner, cheaper, and more resilient, local energy future.

But what is awesome about his positive imprint is that his project is power by the people for the people. That means it's up to you and me collectively. And that's key collect. The electricity industry is being reinvented and Africa. Well, I hope he's going to talk about Africa off grid and he has a parable, the monopoly parable, which makes sense.

And of course the parable teaches a lesson. Well, my favorite, he doesn't know this yet, but he does now my favorite absolute favorite line of his from his book is in search of energy, freedom. Well, it is clear from my intro that bill authored a book, but it's not just about clean energy or how to invest in it.

I love this book. I can't wait till he talks about the book because he's going to demystify clean energy. Here is the man himself, as he debunks a century of misinformation regarding renewable energy bill Nesty. Welcome to your positive imprint.

And, and later on, I ended up, my parents got me a microcomputer a Ts 80, which most people don't even remember. And the first time I saw that, Kathryn, I, it, it spoke to me. It made more sense than anything I'd ever met in my life. I fell in love with it, through it, I could do things and, and become somebody that I could never have imagined, never saw.

I was born at the right time. Exactly the right time at the beginning of the computer revolution. Born out of my weaknesses, stumbling into my strengths, I fell in love with technology and, uh, I love it. I love what technology can do to business and to society. I also lament the problems it can create too, I have spent my entire career chasing, and, and occasionally being a small part of these technology revolutions, starting with a personal computer with the internet, with digital marketing.

And, uh, now with, I think what'll be the largest technology revolution in the history of technology is the transition to clean energy. So all that kind of played together is a single theme that, uh, was born out of, um, searching to do something that really I could truly be passionate about. And I feel very lucky that I've been doing that for a couple decades now.

Bill has traveled all over the world and has seen extensive use off grid with solar panels.

And they were too remote for the utilities to pull power lines. So they were using these brand new state-of-the-art, solar home systems, which is a small solar panel and, uh, few lights, sometimes a television. And what's remarkable about these systems is that. 10 years ago. It wasn't affordable for even , for a lot of these folks who live on three, $5 a day and the technology has become so widespread.

So inexpensive, just like that pieces in our cell phones or smartphones, they become so affordable that, enormous markets have built up enormous. Entrepreneurial ventures have been created, across Africa, particularly to provide affordable products, uh, solar powered products to these people that have had no technology in their lives.

And one of the stories I, I really changed me was we were visiting this mud hut home of a man named. Francis. And he was telling us that he had, had children, but, he had not been a good father and husband. And so he had left him, but he pointed to the roof of his place. And there was all these dark, marks up there.

And he said, this was the kerosene, the residue from the kerosene lamps that his children used to study for school. And he said, it just broke his heart to watch them. And, , because they were choking, their eyes were watering. And I had sat in several huts with people and experienced it. And it was far more uncomfortable than I could have imagined and I can describe, , but they lived with it.

And, but now he has a solar home system and solar is powering is, and the room was well lit, even though it was inside and. He said, , I said, where do you think you go from here? And he said that there's this woman who lives, , about a mile away. And she doesn't have one of these. And so she comes to his house every day to get a, to charge her phone.

And he said, he thinks that she might start, she's starting to warm up to him. And sh he might, she might like him. And, , and he hoped that she would come to fancy him cuz he was starting to fancy her. And it was just remarkable how this electric, this electricity system, this, this, transistors and, and circuits and batteries was changing this man's life.

When you were growing up , did you ever think about the rest of the world

And back then, very few people traveled globally and that's something that with my, my children, we've taken them all over the planet. But, uh, no, I didn't have much of a world view. Other than the commercials I saw on television, where Sally's Struthers would tell you, uh, to give $10 and pay for, pay for, uh, food for this child.

You see which I did, but it didn't, it didn't touch me. It wasn't personal. It felt very remote. Just like all the other things I saw on televis.

It wasn't, I was older that it really clicked.

How can we, help people to understand what happens beyond the borders geographically?

You know, and I was, I was a freshman in college, then I had traveled a little bit, but my father was ill and we hadn't done much. , and I just got this Hankin to go, , to outward bound in Maine. And I lived in Raleigh, North Carolina, and my parents had very little money. And the only way I could afford was to take a bus.

So here I was 18 years old, , had never been on a bus before. , didn't even know what it was. And I got on a bus and drove up the east coast and landed in, , near Penobscot bay, outside of Maine and, , met people and did things I never did before. And, and to me, the, the theme there, which I try to recreate throughout my entire life is to seek discomfort.

Don't don't seek to be unsafe, but seek discomfort to do things that , you can't see yourself doing. And that experience the people that I met, , what I learned about myself and outward bound in particular. , but generally being out in the wilderness in a place I'd never been a place unlike anything I'd ever been seen before, it was remarkable.

And it set me on a journey of, , pushing myself to do things that, , that others may not choose to do. But I recommend it just go out there and, , meet people and see things that you can't see yourself doing. But you're kind of intrigued about,

So, you were talking about Africa. , it's so far and expensive to pull to the grid. With solar coming in how will this change Africa now with clean energy, renewable energy, solar energy that they can carry literally, move from place to place,

And it provided the funding and the legal mechanisms to basically provide electricity for rural United States. And many people attribute that to being the, the real rise in the United States is a, is a powerful nation as a wealthy nation. And, and you apply those same lessons to Africa, but we no longer require you to pull those expensive wires.

You can build the small scale systems and, and the people who, the thousands, tens of thousands of people who devote their lives to helping parts of Africa achieve this. And I should be clear to say that many parts of Africa are wealthy and would be familiar to those of us in, urban or suburban United States, but proportionally, they're much

larger numbers of people in Africa and, , smallholder farmers, subsistence farming. And, and so those are the folks, , like rural Americans, , that have very few means and relatively low education. And it's hard to close that gap. And, and so people who focus in this call it climbing the energy ladder, and there's usually several different steps that are well defined and there's papers by government.

And non-government institutions that write about what it means. But the first part is to just be able to, , charge mobile phones, which people aren't aware that almost everyone in the planet earth has a mobile phone and no matter how poor they are, and in places like Africa and India, , especially poor parts, the, all the banking is done on mobile phones and, and banking is one of those.

Big enablers. I can pay you. You can pay me. I can get a loan, a small loan, a micro loan, , and that's essentially what they're doing with these small electricity solar battery systems is you get a micro loan for a $50 or a $250 us system and you pay for it 30, 40 cents a day. And, , it was the entrepreneur and the technologist to me loves what that, what happens is , these systems have a little dial pad, a little keypad, like on a telephone.

, you wire in 40 cents typically, and then it gives you a code on your phone and you go to that type, that code into your solar home system and unlocks the system for 24 hours. And , this actually does so many downstream benefits because it provides credit history. So is this family, or is this person gonna be able to pay back a loan for a stove or for maybe a scooter, , or motorcycle?

And they can look at their credit history on their solar electric Sy solar battery systems. This, the goodness that as you climb, the energy ladder is so profound. , it's exponential in terms of creating downstream benefits, the next level, , and we won't go into all of it, but the next level is really profound as well.

And this is what they call productive use. And this is where the solar battery system actually. Provides the means for somebody to run a business.

it was just simply too dark and kerosene was too expensive and dangerous. And now she keeps her store open and up until dinner or after dinner. And that allows, , people to come and buy the various little things that she sells. And this shop was the size of the closet right in front of my, my office here.

So it was a modest shop, but this allowed her, to, , provide more food and, and school books for her children. , but you can take that up. Another level people open, , barber shops, , the, one of the big uses of productive use, whether you'll love it or hate it is bars. People go after hours, there's lighting there's refrigeration and they use, , these solar battery systems to provide refrigeration, but also healthcare systems.

One of the big things that I was delighted to learn. Was, , how much these solar battery systems provide for women's rights and women's opportunities. What happens very often in these, , rural poor communities is that women are stuck with the most laborious tasks, , often taking the cell phones and walking a mile two, three, four miles, just to get them charged in return home, going and getting water and returning home.

And so they spend a disproportionate percentage of their day, , doing things that are, , to make it difficult for them to become educated and. Produce, , small businesses and to be more interactive with the communities. So, , these productive use systems can go all the way up to a small factory where maybe they're gathering some, , some, , plant some crops and they can, , process them before taking them to market and sell them for a much higher amount of money.

And one of my favorite stories, and I'll wrap up with this one and it's covered heavily in the book is a company called sun culture. And one of my heroes is, , is Samira Abraham and he's started from scratch. What's now the largest solar irrigation, solar powered irrigation company in Africa. And again, who knew I was out there.

I had no idea. We went and visited some of his customers and it turns out that small holder farmers traditionally only have two times a year where it rains. It's very unpredictable. And sometimes it rains a lot. Sometimes it doesn't rain much, and there's a very small number of crops that can survive that difference in water.

So they, and there's a very, the, the least valuable crops. But if you have irrigation. What you can do for about 40, 50 cents a day with these brand new super techy systems, , you can grow high value crops year round. And so this is like winning the, I mean, metaphorically. This is a economic windfall for these families because instead of growing crops twice a year, and living in a very poor way between those times they can grow high value crops like strawberries year round.

And, , we talked to people whose lives, it was, , like an American who's, , working in a blue collar job, all of a sudden getting a fancy six figure white collar job. And it changes their lives entirely. , and this is the energy ladder that people talk about, but it's so real and it matters to people so deeply.

, this was one of the favorite parts of the discovery journey on writing this book.

Electricity made factories cleaner, safer, and more efficient. As a consumer, as a resident in United States, we take it for granted.

We've been using it. Well, my whole life, I am not from a culture where we didn't start out without electricity.

Uh, I didn't get into this because I wanted to make money. I got into this because it needed to be done. And people with solid business backgrounds were shying away from it. And I wanted to create a perspective for policy makers, for individual families, for entrepreneurs, for scientists to say this isn't just about, , saving the environment.

This isn't something we have to sacrifice to make happen. This is something that if we embrace it, Simple economics mean that everybody wins and we actually save money, whether we're in Africa, uh, growing crops who couldn't grow before, or whether we're in a suburban home, on a cul-de-sac, that's actually lowering the electricity bill so they can spend more money on going on a vacation or, or getting a better quality food.

I mean, the opportunities to embrace this next generation is truly global. And one of the reasons I decided to, as I joke, throw away a perfectly good career in software technology and jump into a space where no one knew who I was and no one cared who I was, , to write a book that barely anybody wanted to read.

So, uh, uh, but what a great journey it's been, and I hope that it, , to, to the wonderful theme of your podcast in your audience, I hope it does make, , a positive imprint. , certainly that's been my goal when I, , started off on this.

I do look at what motivates people. And I, and I know a lot about business and what motivates businesses and, uh, and some businesses, many businesses, and many governments are reluctant to change.

Uh, you know, I, I've worked at a large company. Uh, I sold my company to IBM and worked there for years. And, uh, if you show up and do a good job and you achieve your goals, you're gonna get promoted. If you try to do something crazy and different, that might make a big difference. If it works. That's great.

But if it doesn't, you're probably going to get fired or demoted. So the risks are just so much higher. If you try to innovate and there's no industry in the United States, genuinely not a single industry I'm aware of in the United States, it is less likely to innovate than the electric utilities. And people scoff at that.

Bell, that simple thing, come here, Watson, , that you started has turned into this small device. I can dial 10 digits and reach any human being on the planet earth. Within 30 seconds, I can type into it and access the sum. Total knowledge of all humanity over all time instantaneously look what you have created.

And they'd say, well, gosh, you know, they were 25% efficient when we were uh, doing this. And now they're 31% efficient, but gosh, you know, it looks the same. It works the same. It's I guess there's some differences, but this is all you've done. How come the Alexander Graham bell and the Wright brothers, all their stuff just transformed and reinvented and changed society.

And we're exactly the same. What happened to us? And then I bring in another one of their peers, a guy named Sam Insel and say, well, this guy right here, Sam Insel convinced the United States government, um, to make electricity a regulated monopoly. And, uh, so guess what good news is, you know, how many people who listen into your podcast would like this deal, Hey, you can start a business.

It doesn't really matter whether your customer's like you or not. It doesn't really matter whether you do a good job or not. Your profits are absolutely gonna be guaranteed to be some of the highest profits in the country. , if you make a mistake or you need to buy more things, you just raise the rates to your customers and you have a product that they absolutely demand.

And in, in return for that, you have to provide your product to everybody. And if there's people that can't afford it, you kind of have to help 'em. Uh, but generally that's the deal for a century now that the electric monopolies have and good news, it's worked virtually every American and most Europeans have access to affordable, reliable, safe, electricity, and safe being a thing we take for granted.

It's very safe. It wasn't safe back in Edison's day. , but the problem is the industry is atrophied. And really the, the reason that I thought this book needed to be written was to, to people. Innovators who wanna be disruptors, but to tell people who just live in a house every day and turn the lights on and want it to turn on, they like their bills to be lower.

They'd like to think that the power plants are cleaner and this freeing energy was really my journey into discovering. Not only is that possible, uh, but how individuals, families, consumers, moms, and dads, uh, you know, college graduates, how they can play a role in doing this, particularly if they want to be innovators, but just as general, everyday citizens and families, they can actually make a difference, a big difference, much bigger than they think.

And that's why I took a couple years off for my career to write this book and what a joy it was to write it, what a journey, all the people I've visited that inspired me. Uh, but hopefully some people will read the book and, and get excited about the, some, this is something they can do. They can make a difference today, , much more than most people think.

So why do these catastrophes continue to occur when money can be spent to bury the lines or moving more quickly to alternative energy as climate change is happening now.

Electric utilities, uh, have done things that are very unsavory and, and they should be called out and many times they are thank goodness for there's still investigative journalism in the United States.

Uh, even though it's getting scarcer and scarcer with local newspaper shutting down, but by and large, most of the people I've met from utilities are really good folks. They, they want do well. They feel like they have a critical role to help society, their they're their fathers and mothers and their grandfathers and grandmothers, they've been doing the same thing.

Usually multi-generation families in these utilities. Uh, and so they, they kind of struggle to see beyond the blinders. But the thing that people really miss is that utilities are actually in a way government departments. And, and the reason that Sam insole got excited about and convinced everybody to create regulated monopoly utilities was that governments didn't wanna write the big checks to build the big power plants , because you have to tax everybody and nobody wants to pay taxes to build the nuclear power plant, cuz it's so expensive.

So here, this idea, we we'll make the utilities businesses, uh, and then they can access lots of capital through their shareholders. And therefore we'll build out this giant grid because these are businesses, not government entities, but of course everyone was concerned because businesses uh, will just be profit grabbing.

So here's the rub that people miss that what's installed. When you say a regular monopoly over every single electric utility in the United States, there's a regulatory group. And that's a group in like in Georgia where I live, it's an electric group of five people. And those people are the ones that are telling the utilities to build out their, uh, their, to build their lines above ground or below ground, or to build a nuclear power plant or to get rid of the coal plants.

These are the people that actually, uh, drive the utilities and the, and they tell the utilities, expressly legislators and public utility commissioners say utility, Mrs. Utility, Mr. Utility. Here's how you're gonna make your profits. And so when the utilities do things that, uh, increase their profits is not because that's the only option they have.

It's because the regulators are telling them this is your option. And so the regulators in California decided not to push the utilities out there to bury more power lines. And, and, and I'm not, this is not about casting blame. This is actually a good story because like in about 25 states in the United States, including Georgia public utility commissioners are voted for.

I lived here for long time in Georgia, before I had any idea what a public utility commissioner was. Uh, but there's a section of my book called the 201 people 201 people that control nearly all the electricity regulation in the United States, in California, they're appointed by the governor, but still it's political.

You can influence it with your voice as a citizen in a way that nobody understands. These are the people to write letters to. And by the way, they almost all have open hearings. So if you want, if you think that there should be underground, uh, transmission wires, which are sadly very expensive, but if that's something you think that you should have, you can walk into the public utility commission office.

You can hand them a letter. You can sit in in a hearing, uh, and this is where the decisions get made. It's not as much as people think in the ivory tower headquarters of utilities, that that is obviously some decisions are there, but unlike most other businesses. As, as consumers, you can influence the decisions more directly, uh, and more actively than almost any other industry.

So that's crazy cool that people don't know about it. And it's easy. There's lots of places online. You can find who your commissioner is, uh, how to reach your what's. What, you know, what's your email address. And I tell you, when I went to a, a public utility commission meeting in Georgia, I was the only person that didn't work for Georgia power in the room.

If I had stood up, they would've listened to me and they'd been happy to listen to me.

This is one of the coolest things that no one gets. You can make a difference.

And my goals were to have it be an action term and to have it be just two words. I knew I wanted to either energy or power and energy was a better word. Freeing was the real fun one, because what I, what I'm trying to say is that energy is locked into, uh, monopoly and public utility commissioner and legislation.

It's, it's this incredibly innovative. Opportunity. That's just stuck. It's stuck in a system. Uh, that's dominated by incumbents, like the utilities that don't want it to change and the books entirely about how do we free that energy, the business models, the technology, the, the profits, you know, solar is cheaper.

So wouldn't it be great if you and I were getting the profits from solar, rather than your utility, getting the profits by building a giant solar plant, someone's gonna get the profits. Uh, it'd be better if it was you and me and, and, and particularly families that, uh, that are struggling to meet their bills.

Wouldn't it be great if they got the profits from cheaper solar rather than their utility. And so freeing energy touches all that, , by freeing it from a system that's outta date, , overdue for big changes.

The subtitle how innovators are using local scale solar and batteries to disrupt the global energy industry from the outside in.

Learn more about bill and of course his book freeing. Go to freeing energy.com. You can also learn more about bill and his work by searching bill Nesti B I L L N U S S E Y. Again, part two next week. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to download, subscribe or follow this podcast. Your positive imprint.

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