15 Years in EPC: Andreas Bach on Solar Construction Mistakes, MC4 & Grid Bottlenecks...

On this episode of the Soliverse Podcast, Peter sits down with Andreas Bach, a senior EPC executive and advisor with 15+ years of solar and storage experience, working across Europe, the Middle East, India, and Africa.

From burned MC4 plugs and untrained labor to winter construction delays and 300,000 tons of PV waste on the horizon—Andreas shares hard-earned lessons on what goes wrong when projects are rushed, and how to build solar like you’ll actually own it.

They discuss:
🔌 Why cheap MC4 connectors quietly kill performance (and insurance won’t cover it)
📉 1.7 TW of clean energy stuck in grid queue limbo
🛠️ 15 classic EPC mistakes—and how to fix them before they bankrupt your project
🧱 Why concrete foundations are the silent killers of solar ROI
♻️ What nobody’s budgeting for: the €2.7/panel recycling time bomb
📊 Why owner’s engineers and quality sign-offs are mission-critical
🇪🇺 How Europe can lead by example—if it learns from its early scars

Connect with Andreas Bach:
🌐 Website: https://a-bach.com
🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreas-bach-solar

Connect with Soliverse:
🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6C2HVmlEcsFXJqzxlfT9uA
📨 Email: peter@soliverse.energy
🔗 LinkedIn – Peter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterpongraczsaas/
🔗 LinkedIn – Soliverse: https://www.linkedin.com/company/106534214/
🌐 Website: https://soliverse.energy

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Transcript

Andreas Bach (00:00)
imagine you choose something what is today cheap. You have your carplex under control. But what people sometimes don't see is the TCO, total cost of ownership for 25 years. So what can be cheap today, can have extra OPEX for the next 25 years.

Many investors, many EPCs I've seen, they're under huge price pressure that they care today for the lowest price and they shift the problem of this extra cost of tomorrow to tomorrow.

Peter Pongracz (00:43)
Andreas, good morning, welcome to the show.

Andreas Bach (00:45)
Good morning Peter, good to be here.

Peter Pongracz (00:47)
Nice to have you here. Andreas, I have an interesting question for you based on your activity on LinkedIn You had a post which was titled 15 years, 15 don'ts, that actually gained a lot of traction Why do you think that it hit such a nerve in the solar world?

Andreas Bach (01:03)
I think everyone who was on site have seen at least one of the points and you see the points over and over again and I think people couldn't stop themselves just to share their story what they have seen on site. Yeah, I was actually surprised about the feedback I've received and I received also from people like their top 15 or even top 100 points.

Peter Pongracz (01:27)
Wow, that's a long list of things that can go wrong. Obviously, coming back to your experience, you've spent 15 years in EPC and you've seen all of these mistakes and all of these pitfalls in the book. What's the first project that really taught you the right way of doing things and how things can go wrong?

Andreas Bach (01:45)
It wasn't my project, but once I was called to project to India, and it was back in 2011, could have been anywhere in the world, but that one was in India. It was planned, it was designed, they went to the site and then they heard, then they learned the hard lesson because they didn't do a ram and pull-out test. So they had no idea about the soil and the soil was hard like granite. So there was no piling possible. There was even no cable trenches possible.

So they had to redesign the whole plant. We had to pre-drill, put concrete, put a pile, and all the cables that went above the ground with cable channels. But there was still one crossing to do because it was two sites they had to cross. And then we had a special machine on a truck with a jackhammer, but a huge one. The thing was busy for one week just to make a five-meter trench.

You plan something nicely, and then the real world hits you.

Peter Pongracz (02:45)
it sounds like you actually had to put a rooftop project on a ground mount soil, right?

Andreas Bach (02:52)
Yeah, you could say so. And you know, that was challenging because this project was in a nowhere and now we needed, I don't know, 500 cubic meter of concrete. That was the mission to get.

Peter Pongracz (03:03)
that's crazy. I think that's always nice to be able to adapt to the situation that you're dealt, right? Because sometimes you're planning everything is nicely laid out, but it doesn't always correspond to the real world conditions of the project.

Andreas Bach (03:18)
Exactly.

Peter Pongracz (03:19)
And when it comes to these kind of issues, what would you say is the best way of avoiding having these type of situations?

Andreas Bach (03:26)
Well, proper planning. You have really to go out to the plant, to the site, check the site, speak to the people on site, do all your testing. Many companies just try to shortcut and say, OK, we have done it 100 times, so it will go well. But you need really to go and do the RAM and pullout test. You need to go and do some soil excavation just to see all the layers.

and don't hit any surprise. mean, there was another plant in Germany, in Bavaria, actually. They said it's fine. We go 160, ramming death. We started the first pile. It didn't go in. Second pile, till number 10. We only had 10, like, bended piles. And what we found out then, there were, like, rocks everywhere, 80 centimeters below. It was a six-week delay and a lot of cost.

Peter Pongracz (04:14)
you count those losses, right? The people standing, the machine standing, and then you have to redo the whole project, that's an insane amount of money and finances lost.

Andreas Bach (04:25)
Absolutely, and you're out of control. When you plan it, and we know that plan and reality is always like a story, but if you plan it properly, you somehow are in control. But if you just take chances, you lose the control over the project, you lose the control over your cash flow, et cetera.

Peter Pongracz (04:41)
Yeah, of course. I mean, those margins are being squeezed today more and more. So it's quite crucial for you to plan well to maintain your margins as well. And, don't hit huge capex milestones before they need to be hit, right?

Andreas Bach (04:54)
Absolutely. I mean, we see it actually race to the bottom. We see the prices are dropping everywhere. IPPs are under pressure. PPA prices are dropping. So everyone is actually turning on the price screw. And margins now are razor thin. So you have to make sure that you actually, as I said earlier, in control.

Peter Pongracz (05:14)
And you mentioned IPPs and PPAs. When it comes to these type of arrangements, how do you see the landscape changing in terms of flexibility and when you actually need to produce during the day?

Andreas Bach (05:26)
Well, what we see is now like supply and demand. The supply is bigger, especially during midday. Some countries we see negative pricing. In some countries we see a curtailment And that hits the investor actually when the performance should be as it best midday. So I think we cannot just install PV south faced.

We need to look at other solutions. West-East could be the first one, but I think in the long term, it only works hybrid with BESS.

Peter Pongracz (06:00)
And when it comes to east-west and south-facing projects, especially on large ground months, I've seen the tendency this year that we are installing more more trackers, even in Germany. What do you think about that? Is that the solution or we should just be doing better planning and better yield analysis ahead of time?

Andreas Bach (06:16)
That's a great question. Maybe a bit of both. Whatever you plan today, even if you have a plant which is the BESS in five or 10 years, it's a completely different business case. What you do today is like the peak shaving. You just push to the afternoon. And in the afternoon, you make maybe some money. But in five or 10 years, it could be just a standard practice. With a track car.

Even in Germany, yeah, you have the full cycle of the sun the whole day. And if you put BESS also on top, then you're really in full control, let's say 24-7. And that might be actually the future, which we maybe see in five to 10 years, a tracker and the BESS. Maybe even with wind together and some other solutions like clipping, for example. Many people, they go for the maximum grid connection.

What is the need? Let's say they have a 50 megawatt plant, they go for 50 megawatt grid connection size. But what about going with 40 or 30 and just sacrifice the other? That could happen that you actually get a grid connection instead of not having a grid connection.

Peter Pongracz (07:23)
And what is your take on the hybridization of projects? So is this the right way that we should stack wind, solar and the batteries together or whatever it's available so we can cover the whole the day cycle, right? So we can also produce at night or maybe we can plan in other ways as well and that's more flexible and more kind of the real answer to a longer term solution?

Andreas Bach (07:44)
I think what we see often is like there's a wind project or there's a PV project when we look at the existing infrastructure.

But solar, everyone knows there's no energy flowing in the night or with wind. There is not much wind during the day. It's more during the night. So if we share more often, go for the cable pooling, I think we can actually overcome the bottleneck, which we see today with the grid. Today, we have 1,700 gigawatts of renewable energy.

waiting to be connected to the grid in the European Union. And we need to find a better, smarter solution just to combine everything.

Peter Pongracz (08:30)
And again, that's 1.7 Terawatts. So that's a ridiculous amount of renewables waiting in the pipeline. We have the planning for it, but we don't know how to execute on those well,

Andreas Bach (08:42)
Well, we know, but there is a good upgrade we need to wait for. And then we have the application, which is pending. And then you have like every DSO or TSO have its own way to run the application. Some are quite modern. They run with IT. Some are still on paper, where you just print out your application and send by post today in 2025.

Peter Pongracz (09:07)
And what do you think would be the right solution or the right formulation for this?

Andreas Bach (09:11)
I think communication, need to harmonize it. DSO, TSO, they need to talk to each other. We need perhaps a database in Europe, not only in Germany, even Germany don't have, but even in Europe that we really see what is going on with the different DSOs. Just in Germany, we have almost 900 DSOs and DSO A and DSO Z, they don't know what they're doing. They're not talking to each other. They'rent even not talking to the TSO.

So that is also separate. And I think we have to find solutions from the IT side and also from the communication side that we generalize actually the application and the planning ahead.

Peter Pongracz (09:51)
But I guess, all of those guys have slightly different motivations and slightly different incentives. So what would be the right answer? How do you align these people to, you know, strive for a common goal?

Andreas Bach (10:02)
That is a good question and if I know, I'll tell you.

Peter Pongracz (10:04)
Okay, that's a good enough answer. Andreas, you've been in the industry for a long, long time and you've seen, you actually wrote about the flip-flops on the site and wrong cabling in the ground. What's your experience with that? Is it lack of training or is it just the pressure of churning out the project really quickly?

Andreas Bach (10:23)
think it's a bit of both. It is always a cost pressure. And with the cost pressure, what you do, you choose the cheapest supplier, the cheapest subcontractor. And the cheapest subcontractor don't have the budget to train its people. Or the cheapest subcontractor just take the workforce, which is available today, but they're untrained. They're maybe first time on a solar plant.

you are just stuck with all the issues also in the long term because whatever you do wrong in execution, you live with that for the next 25 years.

Peter Pongracz (10:53)
25 years is a long, long time. you actually mentioned somewhere along the lines how expensive the cheap solution can get, right? Can we expand on that?

Andreas Bach (11:02)
Well, just imagine you choose something what is today cheap. You have your carplex under control. But what people sometimes don't see is the TCO, total cost of ownership for 25 years. So what can be cheap today, can have extra OPEX for the next 25 years.

Many investors, many EPCs I've seen, they're under huge price pressure that they care today for the lowest price and they shift the problem of this extra cost of tomorrow to tomorrow.

Peter Pongracz (11:42)
And I guess, it's kind of a two-part scale. On the one hand, you as the EPC want to win the project, so you need to present a reasonably priced offer. On the other hand, you you're not really incentivized to to what's going to happen in 10-15 years down the line, right?

Andreas Bach (12:00)
Exactly. And in financial models, in an XLS where you plan your costs, to explain the quality, the minimum quality, it is hard to put it in numbers. There's just always a pressure from the revenue side to hit a higher margin. But especially on that side, there is just a pressure for price reduction. But there is no

thinking about the quality and perhaps the issues in a couple of years. If you choose the wrong or cheap component whatsoever and you know it breaks in five or 10 years, technical engineer knows this, but not the finance guys maybe. And if it's replaced in five or 10 years, the finance guy actually, they wouldn't know it.

Peter Pongracz (12:43)
Wow. And how is that minimum quality typically defined on a project? What are the kind of KPIs or what is the structure of defining these type of metrics?

Andreas Bach (12:54)
Well, normally a or a serious EPC have a list of suppliers which are qualified and they going through the list. But there might be some other EPC that just go purely for the price. Because sometimes if I go for a tender and I get different prices, there's like huge price differences. And I wonder like why. And when I deep dive into it, then I can see

because they choose maybe a cable from any country in the world without certification. And the other one is like taking maybe in Germany produced cable. It is hard to compare then because you're not comparing apples to apples when you have such a widespread of the quality understanding. And that is hard to explain then actually to the finance guys why you want to go for the

more expensive solution.

Peter Pongracz (13:47)
Before the show we were talking about the MC4 connectors. You mentioned that this is a classic example. You can pick one with no pattern, slightly higher resistance, or you see losing the real yield. How is that implemented when it comes to larger plants?

Andreas Bach (14:03)
I think that one is so underrated, this issue, because it's such a small plug. And you just crimp the cable, connect it, and then you put it together, and then it clicks. But it doesn't mean it's a certified pair. You have like Staubli who invented the MC4 plug, but there is no patent on it. I And then you have a lot of aftermarket solutions.

And if you have like brand A and brand B, maybe one of them is Staubli maybe not, even if they fit. But the geometry, it can be a little different. And then it is not like connecting very well. You have like a higher resistant, and the higher resistance will lead to heat. And heat means loss. So you will have on every string

a yield loss. can be 1%, it be 2%, But if it goes very wrong, can have even a hotspot and a fire on site. And then that is a real bummer because insurance wouldn't pay because the payer wasn't certified.

Peter Pongracz (15:04)
So there are quite a lot of things I want to drill down on here. So first thing, the certification. What are the best practices when it comes to acquiring the right certified parts and why is that worth it on the long run?

Andreas Bach (15:17)
So what you need to do when you buy PV panels, you need to talk to the supplier which plug they are using. You need to get the data sheet if it was a Staubli plug, which mouse go for, or if not. And if it wasn't a Staubli plug, you have to find this company and buy as a counterpart. Some PV panel suppliers also send you the right plugs with the panels, but not everyone is doing it.

So you just have to make sure from beginning that your plug which you purchase and connect to the PV panel is exactly the same brand.

Peter Pongracz (15:54)
Do you think investors and engineers truly understand how a few connectors or cables can cost them hundreds of thousands of euros every year?

Andreas Bach (16:03)
I think it depends. If you're talking to someone who has long time in the industry, know it. But the industry is becoming bigger. There are more more people coming in and I meet more and more people which just have like a few years experience. And maybe they have not came across this issue. But everyone knows that the MC4 plug on left hand and the other MC4 plug from different brands on the right hand is maybe not...

certified pair. So that comes with experience, I would say.

Peter Pongracz (16:33)
And do you also feel that sometimes the engineers and the financiers have a really different view and they really are fight between each other of like how the project should be done?

Andreas Bach (16:45)
Yes, mean, on the finance side, they don't go into this detail like an MC4 plug, but the engineer does, and maybe the procurement does. But as said, it is hard to explain why you need higher capex, how you explain them. You need to go for this quality for long term. The pressure on the investment side is like,

We go as cheap as possible with tier one, but there is anyway quality differences.

Peter Pongracz (17:15)
Yeah, and sometimes tier one is just a stamp, right? So it doesn't really reflect on the actual quality. You can get tier two and maybe it's slightly better quality than tier one has been,

Andreas Bach (17:27)
Exactly.

Just because they're not in a Bloomberg list, maybe they don't have the turnover, but they might have the quality. And maybe there's a quality and a bit more expensive, and this is no one is buying, and this is why they're not in the list. It's a game to find, I think, the middle way between good quality to make the plant last for the 25 years or 30 years and pay not

more is necessary.

Peter Pongracz (17:52)
And coming back to the Bloomberg list, actually spoken to a friend of mine in China and he said, you know, the Bloomberg list is really just a branding exercise. So if you do have good suppliers, you can find them either in China or somewhere else as well. But the Bloomberg list is actually just a pay to play type of model. And if you have the personal relationships of acquiring the hardware, it's actually much better and much more cost efficient for you to do so.

Andreas Bach (18:18)
Absolutely, I'm committed with you. It's maybe the first place to go if you're new in a game and you want to understand which companies are there. But you need to go into the quality check, the audits and certify actually them as a supplier.

Peter Pongracz (18:33)
So and guess then we are back to the money part, right? It will take you a lot of time cost you a lot of labor hours and money to get those certifications done. So it's a tricky decision to make.

Andreas Bach (18:45)
Absolutely. But you know, most companies only calculate the project cost on a project. The overhead costs are not integrated in the project costs. So the overhead cost is paid somewhere else.

Peter Pongracz (18:57)
And do you think there is a solution to this? how would you redesign the EPC building process to kind of shift it towards more of a quality driven process instead of the cost driven one?

Andreas Bach (19:09)
That is a difficult one because it depends on the mindset of the asset owner. Some are just building it up and selling it as soon as under operation and some are building it and keep it to the day until it is getting decommissioned. It's a difficult one.

Peter Pongracz (19:28)
So guess if you're building your own house and you're going to live in it, you pay more attention to it. But if you're just building it to flip it, then you're not going to focus so much on the quality, right?

Andreas Bach (19:37)
I think that is it. because if you construct and connect and the business aim is to sell it to someone, you're very price driven. But if you operated yourself for 25 years, then maybe you're more quality driven, especially when you're longer on the market and you know the pain and the headache if you were cutting corners in the beginning.

Peter Pongracz (20:05)
For sure, as we mentioned before, cutting corners might come back and bite you in the butt later. Do you have any examples in terms... And do you have any examples of maybe countries or developers that are actually getting these things right?

Andreas Bach (20:10)
Plus

I think if you look at industrial nations or if you look at the Nordics, for example, I think they're very quality driven. Their mind is very quality. Some other, especially countries where they're new in the market, where they have like local EPCs, they're not there yet with experience. I think especially markets which are long in the game, they understood now how important

important it is to look at the quality. Because we see a lot of plants 10, 15 years old, where they already consider repowering because it's not performing anymore because of so many issues they have with the quality.

Peter Pongracz (20:57)
so I guess the short answer is the further you are on the learning curve, the better decisions you make, right? Which is obvious. So is there any way to fast track these for those countries or geographies that are new to the business?

Andreas Bach (21:10)
I would say to buy in with an outsource or insource from experienced companies, experienced consultants, experienced countries, just to listen to them and getting like to consult you what to do and what not to do.

Peter Pongracz (21:26)
sure for sure and you actually mentioned that some of those panels are already coming back right after 15-20 years of life cycle so if we look at the project from the end point so once the the panel is done and it's a it has lived this life cycle

What's the take on recycling? You mentioned the other day that we are somewhere along the region of 70 to 90,000 tons of panels that should be coming down soon. Are we prepared for that in Europe? Or what is the right approach to address this?

Andreas Bach (21:56)
Well, maybe let's clarify. First of all, you have to recycle. You cannot just landfill it or export it. You can only export it, let's say, for a second life. If you have a certification, the panel is tested and good to use, then you are allowed to export it. Otherwise, you are forced, actually, inside the European Union to recycle it.

amount which we have today, we have the facilities inside the European Union. But this is scaling up fast. you say today we have 70 to 90,000 tons, but just in five years time in 2030, we're going to have 300,000 tons. And further the line is going quickly up. So I think it's like a chicken egg.

The industry is there, there are who players preparing, but the capacity is not there yet because there is not that demand yet. But I think that the demand will rise also the capacity will rise

Peter Pongracz (22:52)
it's already mandatory, right? let's talk about the cost side of these things. So it costs about 2.7 euros per panel to recycle in Europe, right? And sometimes it can be 10 to even $20 somewhere else. Is anybody budgeting for that at the design stage or what's the approach?

Andreas Bach (23:11)
No, I'm afraid no one is budgeting for it. Every financial model, every Carpe Xpeng I've seen, the decommissioning was not part of it. And I think that is a dangerous game. You mentioned already the price of the PV panel. Yes, 2.7 euro. is somewhere there. I've seen prices in the US where they cost up to 18 dollars per panel.

And this is why maybe we see so much landfills in the USA, which will not happen in Europe. And also what many people believe that if the decommissioned plant, the material cell after recycling will cover the cost. But that is not true. If you only look at the PV panels, have like the cost per ton is 50 euro plus minus. But the income.

is 110 euro with today's market of glass, aluminum, silver, et cetera. So there is a gap. And you as an asset owner, when you have to decommission the plant, you need to pay the gate fees. And the gate fees need to be, money for it.

Peter Pongracz (24:13)
It always comes back to money, And what happens if people ignore this? Who will pay the bill at the end of the life cycle?

Andreas Bach (24:15)
Yes.

I think he knows the card game Black Peter. Whoever holds the last card, so the last asset owner. Of course, the last asset owner can go back to the supplier because the supplier is actually obliged to take care of recycling by European law. But in 25 years, who knows if the supplier still exists and the supplier is mostly not inside the European Union. So it's really hard.

to go for it. So you need to do it. But in case there is no last owner, even if it's a foreign owner of the PV plant, I'm very concerned it will go down to the DSO or to the land owner or maybe in the end to the taxpayer. Otherwise, maybe we have a lot of stranded assets in the European Union.

Peter Pongracz (25:08)
So we don't want to end up in the same situation where we ended up with the coal power plants and maybe the nuclear ones as well that the cost is bore by the public.

Andreas Bach (25:17)
it should be asked already by the lenders and it should be maybe also part of law that the decommissioning is already planned with a building permit, for example, that when you present your calculation how much a kilowatt hour costs, the LCOE,

that everyone asking is the decommissioning really part of this calculation and it's mostly not.

Peter Pongracz (25:41)
we should focus on front loading these type of requirements and then everything should in principle solve itself,

Andreas Bach (25:47)
Yes, why we only look at the start of the project, not the end of the project. I mean, it is a project because if you start and end, and the end is just blurred away.

Peter Pongracz (25:57)
That's very true. And where do you see the biggest errors or blind spots in today's thinking when it comes to the modules construction and maybe how we measure the success of the project?

both in terms of recycling and generally What are the kind of typical measurements that we look at?

Andreas Bach (26:14)
I think the proper design, the proper execution, and already that the plant is also designed for the decommissioning. You can already plan it during the design phase for the last day. For example, if the foundation is a bit tricky, everyone is running to the solution of using concrete. But this concrete, it will be so

difficult to take out when you decommission the plant. I've seen where we went for a second or third ramming pullout test for further static calculation to find a solution where we just can go for ramming instead of using concrete. I think concrete is a real killer on the project, especially when you consider decommissioning. For example, also transformer station

Many people go for it already, but a containerized solution where you can, it, just go there and hook it up with a crane instead a concrete station which built into it. It is so hard to decommission.

Peter Pongracz (27:12)
So should we avoid concrete as much as possible in most cases or what is the right rule of thumb?

Andreas Bach (27:18)
We should stay away from concrete as much as possible when we build PV.

Peter Pongracz (27:23)
makes sense. And what do you think are the kind of signals that the industry should pay more attention to before it's too late when it comes to the construction?

Andreas Bach (27:32)
Yeah, the proper execution, the quality in execution and have a minimum training level for all the labors. For example, if I would be the investor, the asset owner, I would, for example, have an owner's engineer on site. Many people just leave it to the construction company or to the EPC company and their EPC company are in charge of their own quality. It doesn't make sense. And some people say,

We have a lender's technical advisor on site. The lender's technical advisor doesn't take any decisions. He just reports what was done in a good way or in a bad way. The owner's engineer in the beginning will take care of your interests to have the proper execution on site and can also decide on site which way to go.

Peter Pongracz (28:18)
Yeah, it's difficult to make decisions on the spot,

Andreas Bach (28:22)
Well, if you don't have the owner's engineer and you get your monthly report, you just see what has been done. But with owner's engineer on site, you can see it already from beginning in which direction it goes. So you have the control over the execution. Because once something is wrongly installed, whether you pay a lot of money and time to correct it or you live with this fault for the next 25 years.

Peter Pongracz (28:45)
That's a big issue. you actually mentioned a labor here a couple of times. Today in Europe, think the latest number was from solar power around 800, 850,000 people working solar. But the number is going to increase exponentially in the next couple of years. What do you think is the right way of training these people and who should train them?

Andreas Bach (29:07)
for example, I went to South Africa, it was for them a complete new market. But there were some solar schools actually, where people could be educated. That was for execution, it was design works. I think we should also look at the same in Europe. Many people starting in the industry, yes, they went for their studies in their field.

electrical engineering or But not many have really been trained specifically on the solar side. I know some EPC, bigger EPCs doing it, but I'm also afraid that we have a lot of smaller companies and they do not have the capacity to train the people. So they'll be trained on the fly with all the errors they do while learning.

Peter Pongracz (29:53)
Exactly, and I mean it's a big difference to learn something in school there is another thing to actually do it right so to learn by doing that's the typically the most efficient way but of course it might cost you a little bit of money in terms of mistakes and other costs but that's probably the fastest way to get there.

Andreas Bach (30:12)
Yes, I completely agree with you.

Peter Pongracz (30:14)
And we actually spoke about how the construction actually goes. So we were chatting about, it makes no difference to build a one megawatt or a 50 megawatt plant. What is the kind of methodology or what are the changing parameters behind that?

Andreas Bach (30:28)
in the end, it's the same headache. You have the mobilization. You have to bring the ramming machine. If you do it for one megawatt plant or a 50 megawatt plant, it is the same headache. I would say a small plant or big plant, have different challenges. If something goes wrong on a small plant, you don't have much time to correct it because you start, finish a one megawatt plant so quickly.

on a 50 megawatt plant, I think there's a great danger if you have a fault repeated. And then, for example, if you skip your golden table or mock-up table sign-off, you might have an issue which you have repeated 100 times.

Peter Pongracz (31:09)
Is there a fix to repeating those mistakes? How can we spot them on the fly when we are actually in the process of building?

Andreas Bach (31:17)
We come back to the owner's engineer from the asset owner perspective. And if you look at the EPC perspective, to really go for each work you start to have a sign off. So if you start piling, you do the first 10 piles and you check everything and sign off. Yes, this is the quality we need or we need to correct it.

Same goes then later for the whole substructure with panels, et cetera, with the DC cabling to build this whole mock-up table and have every stakeholder actually come to this table and sign it off. Some people complain, yeah, it will take time. It will slow us down. But that is a preparation to make it right from the beginning. If you skip this and you're going the fast,

way and build it anyway and you have a fault. That is a time problem when you have to correct it 100 times.

Peter Pongracz (32:12)
We spoke about the timelines in real life. This is very important. The timeline plan versus the timeline in progress and in the process of construction. How do the aspects such as weather, logistics and grid affect those timelines once you're actually on the site?

Andreas Bach (32:28)
I have seen it so often, for example, that we are planning to start a construction in April because we were told we get a notice to proceed in March because in February there is a financial clause. And then suddenly the financial clause is postponed for whatever reason. TDD wasn't signed off by the lenders. And now you get the financial clause in October. And suddenly your whole project shifted from the summer to a winter construction site in Europe.

It depends where you are. You have six months of rain and fully moist soil where you hardly can open a trench or you have like a frozen ground where you cannot open it because it's so frozen and you hardly can lay any cables. And I think especially from the finance side, they don't know these challenges actually to construct PV during the winter time.

use so much more power to weather, the rain, to the frost and whatsoever. For example, you cannot just lay a cable, bend a cable when there's zero degrees because the cable could break.

Peter Pongracz (33:33)
Yeah, and those are the real life lessons that you cannot learn in school, right? You need to think about that once you actually have a couple of projects on their belt.

Andreas Bach (33:41)
Yeah, once you went on a winter site, then you know the pain.

Peter Pongracz (33:45)
And if you had to pick one of the most important lessons or most important things that every developer should do before they break ground, what would it be?

Andreas Bach (33:53)
to really go to the site before, to speak to all stakeholders, to check the condition of the land, go to the mayor, check the grid connection, to do proper preparation. I've seen where people or companies are just building 100 plants a year, then they start to skip these things because it's just repetitive.

then you have a plant which just have a bad surprise for you, but you don't know because you didn't go to the site. I was once involved in a project where the neighbor, it was on a farm site, the neighbor hated this project. He didn't want that project and he was doing everything possible to stop us to go to this plant. There were sometimes roadblocks, know, and we didn't know that before.

Not everyone is happy actually for PV.

Peter Pongracz (34:39)
how overall...

I haven't heard too many examples like this in Europe, but in the US, you know, it's quite important for you to get the local counties buy-in and the local neighborhoods buy-in as well to your project, but it really depends on which neighborhood you are in, I guess.

Andreas Bach (34:56)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in Germany or Europe is maybe not so complicated like in South Africa. I went also many years to South Africa. They have to talk to all stakeholders, including the cultural head of the local African tribe. It's not their land, but they've been first there and they can make your life difficult or easy.

Peter Pongracz (35:17)
That's quite a wild story and is there any way to make the grid connection a little bit smoother or is it still the wild wild west?

Andreas Bach (35:25)
Now, I don't think it's a wide, rest, but I think it's like a bottleneck. Many companies I see, they do the mistake. They just treat the one grid connection from DSO A as a grid connection from DSO B in a different location. But that might be a complete different application. It might be a complete different milestones or deadlines you have to hit. So you have to make sure you redefine print and actually obey all the rules.

to follow their application. I've seen delays in years because someone was missing a deadline to submit a document. And also, it's not only follow blindly the process, but also go into the communication with the DSO. Not only meet when something went wrong, no meet already before, actually to plan with them how to proceed.

Peter Pongracz (36:00)
Yeah.

Andreas Bach (36:15)
And also during those meetings, you learn a lot what is maybe not written, but there may be some unwritten rules which I expect from you.

Peter Pongracz (36:23)
So the unwritten nuances of knowing your customer and doing your homework are of key importance.

Andreas Bach (36:30)
Absolutely, and I think it is everywhere, not only DSO, but especially important with the DSO because if you don't have the good connection, the rest doesn't matter because your plant will be just a stranded asset.

Peter Pongracz (36:41)
And if we flip the coin from the technical to more of the human and the leadership side of things, what do do when everything goes wrong on site? How do you keep the team calm and still focused on the task?

Andreas Bach (36:52)
I think when things go wrong on site, you have to show up, you have to stay calm and do not finger point who was doing what wrong. I think the focus should be on finding a solution for the problem. Whose fault it was that can be checked another day. But first is about protecting the project, protecting the company and not finding whose fault

to stay calm and just lead actually the solution finding and then execute a solution. If you go there in panic mode, the whole team will be in panic mode and that wont helps the project.

Peter Pongracz (37:25)
And we've been talking about the management side of things and how to build a team which nurtures the culture of responsibility and where people are actually fixing the problems instead of hiding them. So that's also a tricky management decision, right? How do you approach that?

Andreas Bach (37:41)
Well, what I always tell people, even if you see a small problem, report the problem. And then we look at the problem. Because if you hide the small problem today, it can be a big problem tomorrow. And you better take today and treat it as a small problem, as a small solution. But I've also seen that people are sometimes have a fear or scared to report a problem because the feedback earlier was...

that is not on none of your business or something. So I always try to have this open communication and ask everyone, does it matter what you see? Does it matter what you hear? Communicate this and then we can treat it and see if that is a problem and if you need a solution for it. And rather today than tomorrow.

Peter Pongracz (38:24)
What advice would you give to new engineers, young engineers who are just about to onboard their first project when it comes to the EPC job?

Andreas Bach (38:32)
I would say, climb out of your comfort zone, of your comfort box. If you're an engineer, for example, also go to the site. Speak to the construction manager. Speak to the laborers when you can. And just see what design means on the screen, or what it means in execution actually on a real site.

opposite the same. If you go into execution, example, in your own site, also go to the engineering site and look at this. Also go to the procurement side and check why they order this product and not the other product, which you believe is maybe better. So what I'm saying you should learn to see the full picture and not only blindly your own trade. This will just end up in silo thinking.

Peter Pongracz (39:17)
if you're looking at the future of the business, the future of EPC or future of building solar plants do you think technology such as AI, drones and digital things can solve these construction problems most of the time or will it still be mostly human driven business?

Andreas Bach (39:33)
I think I will stay human-driven business for a very long time. I know that AI is there. I know AI drones. But AI is not the whole solution. It is just one tool in your whole toolbox. If you have a PV plant and you're constructing it, and let's say the contractor is bending the cables from the panel too tight, the bending radius is too tight, the drone won't pick it up.

but the owner's engineer on site will pick it up.

Peter Pongracz (40:01)
So expertise and experience are the solution?

Andreas Bach (40:04)
Yes, AI, it's really good for seeing all information, bringing all information together and seeing the database about it and giving you some hints which you maybe wouldn't have seen it just because of the pure amount of information. But especially when it comes to execution on site, there is no AI really there which can

take the job of the human. I know there are some automated systems for installing PV panels or whatsoever, but every site is different. It's not a factory where you have this same work, same situation every day. Every project is different.

Peter Pongracz (40:39)
Is there any innovation that you think it could help to prevent these mistakes that we mentioned in the 15 don'ts from your article?

Andreas Bach (40:47)
Not from the AI side. That is like lesson learned. Many people skip the lesson learned. I think we can only learn from the previous mistakes and don't repeat the mistakes in the future. And as I said earlier, AI is one tool of many. But AI won't prevent you from doing the mistake in the next project again, which you have done in the last project and no one told you.

Peter Pongracz (41:12)
That's true, that's And on a personal note, after decades in solar, what keeps you still motivated to stay in the business and to keep pushing forward?

Andreas Bach (41:21)
Well, I want to see Europe actually becoming CO2 neutral. I think we have burned enough fuel. We burn our whole planet. So my aim, my mission is to reduce all this burning. And we are even not halfway yet. So not only Germany, whole Europe needs install PV, need install wind, need install best, et cetera.

This is actually what motivates me to bring this whole industry, this whole idea forward.

Peter Pongracz (41:51)
And is there a particular lesson that the industry has taught you both on a personal and professional level?

Andreas Bach (41:57)
Yes, nothing is how it seems to be. So as I said earlier, you plan something, but then every word is different. That was a lesson. You believe something is going in that way, but it's taking a complete different turn.

Peter Pongracz (42:13)
Indeed indeed and if you if you could give one commandment to all EPC's to follow what would it be?

Andreas Bach (42:20)
Yeah, look at the full picture. Don't go for was the cheapest subcontractor for the cheapest supplier. In the long term, it's not helping your reputation. Maybe you win the tender today because you got the cheapest price, but a few years later, if other potential clients look at their track record, they will see that you went always the cheapest way.

Peter Pongracz (42:43)
we are actually nearing the end of our time. What type of people should get in touch with you? Who would you like to speak to in the industry? ⁓

Andreas Bach (42:50)
welcome to speak to everyone from the execution side, design, procurement, from the investor side. mean, in the last 15 years, I was on each side. I was on a construction side. I was in an IPP side, EPC side. So I have seen the whole picture. The reality.

on the ground and also the reality in office. So I'm open to speak to everyone.

Peter Pongracz (43:14)
What would be the right way to get in touch with you?

Andreas Bach (43:16)
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreas-bach-solar on my Website: https://a-bach.com

Peter Pongracz (43:19)
Okay, so we'll make sure to link to both of those in the show notes below and Andreas, any finishing thoughts?

Andreas Bach (43:24)
Yeah, I want to just say one more thing. Many people lean back when they have reached the PR, which they have planned. And I don't understand why, because the power ratio you aimed.

is what the lenders want to see, what the asset owner want to see, et cetera. But that is just a minimum. It's not a maximum possible. So what I don't understand is that they're not looking into how I can optimize my PV plant and increase the yield and increase my income. This I see everywhere. There's always a debate between we hit the PR or not. But that is not the question.

OK, we add the minimum PR. How we get to the theoretical maximum PR? And there are some great solutions out there where you can just identify some silent yield killers to optimize your PV plant as at best.

Peter Pongracz (44:17)
Yeah, that's quite critical. So Andreas, on that note, thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate your efforts and sharing your knowledge. And let's do this again soon.

Andreas Bach (44:28)
Thank you, Peter. was great to be here.