How Top Solar Teams Handle Red Tape | Soliverse Ep. 35

What really slows down utility-scale solar projects, bad engineering, weak execution, or the red tape nobody budgets for early enough? 

In this episode of Soliverse, Peter Pongracz sits down with Phil Horwitch, co-founder of AMH Holdings, to unpack how the best solar teams handle permitting delays, stakeholder friction, QA/QC problems, and the hidden communication gaps that quietly derail projects. With more than a decade in utility-scale and distributed generation, Phil shares a grounded operator’s view on what separates teams that keep projects moving from teams that lose months, money, and momentum.

Phil explains why realistic timelines matter more than optimistic ones, why local relationships can speed up approvals, and why “buildable” engineering always beats “perfect” engineering on paper. They also get into battery storage trends, the growing need for solar education, and the kind of cross-functional thinking young engineers need if they want to build a long career in renewables.

If you work in solar development, EPC, engineering, project delivery, battery storage, or renewable infrastructure, this conversation is packed with practical insight on how successful teams think before the first shovel hits the ground.

Guest & Episode Links
Phil Horwitch, Co-Founder, AMH Holdings
LinkedIn
AMH Holdings LinkedIn

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Transcript

Phil Horwitch 0:00

The big issue is gonna be the permitting aspect. Just pretty much getting the start to be able to get the boots on the ground and actually start the actual construction aspect. And then the other one has to do with the QA and QC.

Peter Pongracz 0:12

That is Phil Harrich, co-founder of EMH Holdings. Someone who has spent more than a decade helping teams deliver solar projects. He believes the biggest project killers are very really about tech. They are the slow grind of permitting and the small QA and QC misses that quietly turn into expensive delays.

Phil Horwitch 0:33

If you do your homework right at the beginning and then you just kind of be honest with yourself and whoever you're using, you kind of just need to build a realistic timeline and schedule and you do your due diligence and you actually research it.

Peter Pongracz 0:46

They feel based on how the best solar teams manage local stakeholders, reduce permitting friction, and keep projects moving when approval cycles stretch far longer than planned. By the end of this conversation, we will learn how winning developers execute under pressure, navigate permitting delays without killing momentum, and protect projects through years-long approval timelines. I'm Peter Pongra. This is Soliverse, the future of solar. You've seen projects from every single angle, right? So what is the thing that kills utility scale solar projects most often today?

Phil Horwitch 1:23

So I got two things that come up when I think a project doesn't actually like go to the end of fruition on the projects. First one is the big issue is going to be the permitting aspect. So just pretty much getting the start to be able to get the boots on the ground and actually start the actual construction aspect. And then the other one that I'm seeing a lot just has to do with the QA and QC. It kind of goes hand in hand with the permitting. But then you also have the QA, QC on the construction side too. That just makes it a little bit harder to actually get the project all the way ended and signed off and just finally working on site on that side. So those are kind of the two big issues on our side that we're seeing that kills these projects right now.

Peter Pongracz 2:10

When a project typically stalls, who do they typically blame? Do they blame the process, the people, everybody else?

Phil Horwitch 2:16

Oh, it's always going to be the process. It's going to be that the utility or the jurisdiction or something like that just doesn't want to actually like have solar and they're just taking a lot longer on that side. Or truthfully, unfortunately, comes down to they're going to blame it on if they signed up in EPC just because it's a little bit easier to blame it on somebody else and just kind of sitting back and looking at it and being like, there's nothing we can truly do in regards to like permitting. The utility in the jurisdiction is going to do what they want to do no matter what. They're the overall boss, but they just don't get prepared up front to actually like get a standard of, hey, this is how long it's going to take, and present that to their stakeholders to actually understand it from the overall beginning on that side.

Peter Pongracz 3:09

So what you're saying is if you do your homework right, you should avoid most of the problems, right?

Phil Horwitch 3:15

Yeah. If you do your homework right at the beginning, you talk to the jurisdictions, and then you just kind of be honest with yourself and whoever you're using, whether it's a subcontract or your internal team, you kind of just need to build a realistic timeline and schedule. And if you do your due diligence and you actually research in it, you're gonna know what you're kind of signing up for, whether that's a six-week permit process or I mean, where I'm on right now, that's is a six-year permit process. And that I've been on some long projects for the permits in some of the states that we've worked on. But if they're just realistic on it, it everybody works out a little bit better on that side.

Peter Pongracz 3:57

What's your personal list? What's the longest time to get uh all the paperwork done?

Phil Horwitch 4:01

Oh, at the very beginning of my career, we had one that had 27 revisions to going through a permit. It was in Virginia, so it was uh it was probably five and a half years that we worked on getting that permit. And then it was probably another two to three years to actually get it done on that side. I didn't get to actually finish. I had already left the company that I was working on it for, but yeah, it was like an eight and a half year project, I think.

Peter Pongracz 4:35

Wow. So that's uh that's one for the record. So and when do you see these type of projects fail the most often when it comes to the the real life implementation of uh of things?

Phil Horwitch 4:46

Like I was saying earlier, it just comes down to if you do your research up front, so mainly up front, whether you're the developer or the owner, if you're doing your research at the very beginning and kind of just getting to know the jurisdiction, getting to know the state and all the stakeholders in that area, you're at least gonna be able to put a realistic timeline on it. So then you can kind of plan out for okay, is this project even viable money-wise, or is this gonna be too long because the revision cycle is four to five typical revisions to actually get the actual permit on that side, or hey, this is an easy state, let's go ahead and do more in this state because we actually get to get it done on time and on price on that side.

Peter Pongracz 5:34

So basically, you need to need to wear your battle scars and and and learn from them, and based on those, you will be able to have a good estimation of how long it's going to take and based on the state as well, right?

Phil Horwitch 5:46

Yeah, I mean, pretty much. You there's states still to this day are kind of like the wild, wild west. And we see a lot of developers right now that are going to hit those states because some other states they say they want to be solar, but they mainly just want to have solar in their queue, where other states they just have a lot of land and they actually want solar to actually be built in the actual state instead of just having all this paperwork in place of hey, we have solar, but it's not really installed yet.

Peter Pongracz 6:19

That's interesting. And can we double-click on what what the two definitions actually mean? So having the solar in the queue and actually having them implemented. So what are the kind of two motivating factors on both sides?

Phil Horwitch 6:31

Yeah, so what I mean by putting in the queue is like you have probably a 10 to 30 percent engineering done. You submitted like your interconnection package, and then you've actually submitted your first permit to be under review. That kind of starts the process, and that's where, depending on where you're at, that's where some states and jurisdictions can actually count that number where hey, we have X amount of megawatts or projects of solar that are in. When in retrospect, it's we do have those projects that are active, but they're not actually built, they're just kind of being reviewed at this time. Where on the other hand, you have it where they're actually built. You can go to this address, unfortunately, usually in the middle of nowhere, because some of these projects are pretty big, and you get to go see the solar field, you get to go see it working, and it's actually pumping energy back into the grid, or nowadays storing on the battery storage that we've been seeing a lot too lately. So those are kind of the two differences that I at least see on our side.

Peter Pongracz 7:36

How much of this is uh actually technical questions, and how much of this is political or social?

Phil Horwitch 7:42

Um, probably 50-50. I mean, some of the most obnoxious questions are gonna be like the social aspect, like going to the town hall meetings and hearing that, hey, the solar is it gonna cause me to grow a third arm out of my head on that side. We've heard it all, unfortunately, on some of these town halls where people just don't have the education of what solar is. It's still this like voodoo thing that you heard five or ten years ago. So that's like the social portion. And then the political portion is it's mainly just so they can say that they have solar. We see some things, but the way that we get around it is we just provide them with our interpretation of how we did it, and then they don't have to interpret it. We get to basically show them here's how we did it, here is the change you requested. It was changed by X, Y, and Z. And then there's not an additional interpretation on top of that. So it can get approved very quickly.

Peter Pongracz 8:44

So you have uh different stakeholders, different angles, and different motivations. So, what's the best way of convincing somebody that that's against solar, against renewables, that this is actually the right solution?

Phil Horwitch 8:55

I mean, the way that we do it is we like to start very early on in the process. I mean, we're working on projects right now that won't actually be built or permitted until 2028 or 2029. So our process is we'll kind of fake call into the county utility or the state and not say who we're with and just kind of say that we're an engineering company, we're just building a database of all the different counties and states throughout the United States, just putting together if they have solar requirements or if they don't have solar requirements, and just building a massive database of all the counties in the United States. So when we do get approached for some of those, we've already done the research, we've built the relationship already because they know who we are on that side. Usually just comes down to relationship, being a human, not coming to them and kind of trying to argue with them, like, hey, this is why we need solar, here's what's wrong. You're just taking forever. It's kind of just being a nice human being and realizing that they're just doing their job. It's not like they came up with the regulations and codes, they're just there to enforce them. So we try to make it easier to be a human being towards them and just overall nice.

Peter Pongracz 10:14

That's very important to be human. You know, some people really forget that in the industry. We are all human and we need to talk to each other like humans with a little bit of respect, a little bit of kindness, and that goes a long way. Exactly.

Phil Horwitch 10:27

The nicer you are, the easier we've seen some permits happen. Like I said, they're not creating these rules and codes, they're just the ones that are sitting in front of a piece of paper having to look at these plan sets and say, I just don't see this, where they're looking at a 25 to 30 different engineering companies, and all the companies are going to have a different plan set. That's why we just like to point out where exactly it is on ours, be a little bit nice to them, not always talk to them about the project, talk to them about, hey, what did y'all do this past weekend? Or what do you actually do fun in that county when we come actually and start building this project and doing some inspections? What can we actually do for fun and just kind of make them realize that hey, they're trying to get their job done, but they actually do care about the city and county that they're actually building this project in as well.

Peter Pongracz 11:21

When it comes to these types of discussions, do you have a concrete strategy of like, okay, this year I'm gonna focus on these eight states or five states, or how do we actually build the pipeline? What are the kind of assessment criteria to do these meetings and to go to site?

Phil Horwitch 11:37

It's usually kind of just where our projects are all located at. We'll get a project in, for instance, like a county in Texas. We do a lot of work in Texas, and then from that county, we'll pretty much do a buffer of all the counties that kind of surround that area and just do our research on all of those. Because it's pretty much bad to say, once you have one project, all of them start being developed right around that original project. So we just like to be prepared. So it's pretty much just taking it and expanding it so we can just understand what's coming. And while our guys are there doing either turning in plan sets, we'll go visit some of these and just kind of put a face to a name and just start the conversations and say we don't actually we're not working on a project, we're just kind of see what you have in regards to solar. Do you have a project that's built already, or do you even have solar regulations in this county at that time?

Peter Pongracz 12:35

What would you say are the the most common mistakes that turn a neutral stakeholder into a combative one or somebody who doesn't actually like solar?

Phil Horwitch 12:44

Oh, it's truthfully not being we get caught for this all the time, and we try to be as brutally honest when we're talking to developers, and sometimes it does backfire because we tell them not exactly because nothing's in exact science with this, but we try to be honest and been like, hey, this is a bad county, a bad state, and you're gonna have three to five different revisions just because that's who the county is, and then they'll go ahead and put a schedule together with one, and then we'll see that afterwards, and it usually comes to where we're not always necessarily 100% spot on, but we're within the realm of what the approval was on that side. So I always like to say is some developers don't actually like like our team at the very beginning because we might say the project is going to happen a year later, but at the very end of the project, when they realize that we were somewhat correct or correct on it, we're usually good friends by the end of it because we're just trying to cover them from the beginning and be as realistic, even if it is the harsh truth.

Peter Pongracz 13:53

It's sometimes better to hear the the negative news up front, right, than once once you're in the middle of the process.

Phil Horwitch 13:59

Yeah, especially with these projects. I mean, these are multi-million dollar projects. So a couple days on a big project like that can cost a developer either a lot of money, or it's bad to say it can cost people their position at some company if they didn't do that correctly. So we just try to be as brutally honest with them, and then it's truly up to them if they're gonna take what we say and move forward with it. But we can only do our job and provide them with the knowledge that we know, and they like it, they like it, they don't, they don't. But we at least know on our side we provided them with the right information for it, which makes us all move forward better.

Peter Pongracz 14:38

Indeed. If you look back to 2025, what are the some of the bigger lessons that you learned in that year? It's been quite turbulent in the world of solar, in the world of renewables, right? Globally. So, what would be the the the craziest things or or something that you actually learned that you're going to put forward this year?

Phil Horwitch 14:56

In 2025, we saw a lot about where it's truly bad to say I was repeating myself to a lot of developers and a lot of owners, and it's happened throughout the years, but we're kind of telling them the exact same thing over and over and over again. So me and our team came up with, and that's kind of our whole mission of 2026, is we're gonna try to use our online presence to help simplify everything for everybody. Take all of these three-letter acronyms that the solar industry loves to have, and just kind of let it be known what it actually means, and have it to where the common person can hear those terms at the dinner table if they're talking with it, and actually be intelligent about it and just kind of know what the solar industry is and kind of defunct this craziness of the big words and acronyms that we like to use.

Peter Pongracz 15:52

That's interesting. So that touches on one of my favorite topics, education. So we we've been talking about this before the recording as well. So, what role do you think education plays in this whole game?

Phil Horwitch 16:04

Oh, it's a massive one. One of the biggest things that we've seen throughout the years is solar's finally becoming that industry that's not going anywhere. That's what I learned from RE Plus this last year. Is we're finally becoming a resilient industry. But the one thing with becoming a resilient industry is you're having either the construction guys, the engineers, all of them from other industries like oil and gas coming in, and they don't necessarily know anything about solar. They just think they can come run it and, for instance, construction, put a pile in the ground. Anyone can put a pile in the ground. But they're not setting them up for success by educating them about the different terms that we use, how the actual process works in the field or in the permitting process on that side. So that's why we just decided to not take it upon ourselves for the industry, but kind of our team's just having a little bit of fun with it because we get to get back to the basics and start explaining and teaching everybody what they kind of learned at the beginning of their career since we're all pretty deep into it now. You just kind of forget about the basics. So that's what we're gonna kind of do and just simplify it for everybody.

Peter Pongracz 17:18

Makes sense. And I think you know, repetition is is also key to to success. But what we also need to understand is that the more new people are entering solar, you know, the bigger the workforce will be, the more education there there will need to be done. And that's that's one of the big jobs for for every single company, right? I I have a great friend, Andrew, who's who's been working in solar for 25 years, you know, and we have all this technology, for example, drones, right? So you look at why my my project is not producing, the drone flies over, everything is fine. But this is when experience comes in, and when the owner's engineer goes to site and you see that the cable is actually bent above the bending radius and it's slightly cracked. This is where we are losing a lot of production.

Phil Horwitch 18:03

Exactly. It's always the small things that you just kind of forget about when you're in the weeds of everything. Those are the easiest things to go. Like on the engineering side, it's bad to say that's like the title block for us is just making sure that you have the right date or the right initials of who checked it. So it's always going to be the small details that are the first thing that are going to be forgotten on that. But that's where the basic like solar 101 and 102 and everything like that, it comes in to actually just get people up to speed.

Peter Pongracz 18:34

When it comes to these types of issues, what would you say is the craziest thing was that you've seen on a project done badly or done the right way?

Phil Horwitch 18:43

Oh, probably the worst thing that we had was it was when I was I started in the construction on utility scale. And we were in the snow trying to install piles in like two and a half feet of snow, and we couldn't even see the ground, we couldn't see where even the pile was going inside the ground, but there was a specific date that we had to be done by, so we just had to keep rushing through and get as many piles as we could in at that time. And it's bad to say when the snow melted, none of the piles looked good, it looked extremely bad on that side, and it caused a bunch of rework where if we would have just stopped for a little bit, truthfully let the snow melt and get to actual good working conditions and not have to rush, it would have been installed perfect the first time.

Peter Pongracz 19:32

Again, coming back to experience, right?

Phil Horwitch 19:34

Exactly. This was this was probably eight or so years ago, and so it's at the very beginning of at least my career, only a couple years in on that side. So you kind of learn, but it also comes down to if the developer's under a rush because they're trying to finish on that certain time frame because they didn't plan at the very beginning, they don't really care what need to be done, they just need to hit this set date, no matter what, and whether that's a bad install or a bad connection or something like that. So truthfully, all comes back down to doing your due diligence at the very beginning. And that's why we like to get in years ahead of their actually gonna be installed.

Peter Pongracz 21:05

So again, we we are back to due diligence. So on that note, what would you say separates good teams from teams who are doing a bad job?

Phil Horwitch 21:12

Just truthfully coming down to communication and setting realistic expectations. You gotta have the communication. It's like I saying earlier, even when the client doesn't like it. They might want to hear all these sunshines and butterflies, and the project is going perfect throughout the entire thing when in retrospect it could be going okay. And if you're just honest with them, they don't get surprised with this big change order halfway through where hey, why are you running six months behind? Well, we kind of weren't telling you the exact truth at the very beginning, and then everybody's in a pickle trying to recover either cost for one company or schedule for the actual owner developer on that side.

Peter Pongracz 21:57

You mentioned uh engineering and and design. So of course engineers always aim for the perfect design, but when do you need to know that you can give way to the good enough design or the buildable design instead of the perfect one?

Phil Horwitch 22:13

It all has to be buildable. That's one of the main reasons I went into construction before getting fully onto the engineering side, because us as engineers just like to build whatever we can on this screen and computer that we have, and usually that's not going to be something that can actually be built. So we I tried to bridge the gap at the very beginning, and we still do that at our company nowadays. At the very beginning, we'll have some of the construction guys that I've worked with in the past, they'll do a complete review of our plan set, and half the time it comes back. With a very red tint to the overall plans because they've marked it up, like I'll get out. And we take all those and try to do what we can. So when it actually does get to them, they realize we're like, oh, they actually did take our like expertise and put it into the plan set from the very beginning. So it's a lot easier for them. There's some of the smartest guys are the in the field. They're the ones actually doing it. We're just sitting in front of a computer.

Peter Pongracz 23:17

And there are also very few people who do both, and especially doing both well.

Phil Horwitch 23:22

Oh, yeah. I mean, you can be a jack of all trades, but you're gonna truly not be a master of one on that side. So we try to bring in the experts to help us with their specific like expertise, whether it's a construction guys at the very very beginning or the different engineering aspects that we can throughout. So we get the best product out there. So when it actually does get to time to install it, it's going to be installed correctly and as easy as possible.

Peter Pongracz 23:52

When it comes to the two sides of the same coin, so on one hand, we have the engineer who has drawn the project, and then on the other hand, you actually have the people who are building the project physically. What is the best way to communicate between the two of them? Because obviously everybody has their own opinion, everybody has their own experience. How do you mitigate that?

Phil Horwitch 24:12

Yeah, the way that I like to do it, and I've done it in the past, is you truthfully just have to go to site, visit with them, realize that, hey, even though I have all of these licenses, and I'm the one that's actually putting the stamp on the piece of paper, I'm actually going to listen to you. So give me some changes that you see, have a quick page turn with them. And it's kind of like what I was talking about earlier with the jurisdictions, just treat them nice and realize that they're the ones that are actually doing it. Like I said, some of them are way smarter than all of us. And they just chose to be in the field instead of behind a computer, which is even more great because I get to see my family every single day where they might not go see theirs for months at a time. And that's just the path that they chose. But they're some of the smartest guys that I've dealt with, and some of the best and loyal guys that you can deal with. So it's just getting to know them on a personal level and then just getting their help and actually showing them like, hey, you tell me this red line, I'm actually going to do it. I'm not just gonna blow smoke up you and realize that eh, I just didn't listen to you because it's what can't be done.

Peter Pongracz 25:22

So basically, experience running through the the hoops and and basically figuring out how to talk to people. Is that the secret sauce?

Phil Horwitch 25:31

Yeah, experience and then especially with the construction side to making sure that it can be done. That's why we bring them in with every step, especially at the very beginning, because they're gonna know what can be done, not just what can be drawn.

Peter Pongracz 25:46

When we segue into AMH as a company, what do you guys hope to achieve this year? What are the kind of big milestones that you would like to hit?

Phil Horwitch 25:53

This year we're truly just trying to have fun with our online presence. We haven't done any type of marketing over the existence of the entire company. So just trying to have a little bit of fun, go on more podcasts and talk with people like yourself in the industry and kind of just get back to the basics and simplify it a little bit. There's a lot of I look at some of our social media and posts and articles that we're putting together, and it's things that I haven't seen in five, ten years, and I'm like, oh, that's actually really cool. So it's more just realizing that hey, we just need to have a little bit of fun, and while we're doing it, the work will come because people come to you because they see that you actually know something. So we're just gonna try to show people that we're gonna simplify it for you and be able to talk to you like a human being and not over-engineer it in a sense.

Peter Pongracz 26:49

From your perspective, what are some of the major trends that are shaping out in the industry? Because from from my perspective, people keep telling me this is going to be the year of the batteries. Well, of course, you know, that comes with quite a lot of uh hidden surprises, right? Supply chains, where do we get the batteries from? Who is going to going to manufacture them? And ultimately, how are we gonna plan them into those projects? So, what's your take on that?

Phil Horwitch 27:14

We saw a kind of start in 2025 and about like 2023, 2024. Our business was probably like 75 to 80 percent actually like solar arrays in a sense, and just the big fields. But then in 2025, we saw that kind of shift to where 80% of it is just going to standalone battery storage. So that's where we just see it, where you're not having as much land because people aren't wanting to lease out their land for that long. So you're only having to get maybe one landowner that has a smaller amount of land, and you can put your standalone battery storage on that one instead of having to have this hundreds of thousands of acres for this massive solar field. So that's the main thing that we saw over 2025, and then we've already seen it into 2026, and I'm sure it's only gonna move forward on that side. So it will be interesting to see. There's always the new suppliers with new types of technology coming in. So it'll be cool to see how small batteries we can get because we kind of went the opposite way with the panels kept getting larger and larger, and they're still getting larger and larger. But on the battery size, I'm sure it's only going to do the opposite and get smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. So we can start to fit more and more compact into these smaller areas.

Peter Pongracz 28:38

Yeah, I mean, the density is definitely increasing, and also the the cycle numbers as well are going up. So we should have better and better technology. The the only question is how are we going to integrate that to the to the existing grid, right? How are we going to make the whole system play together? Because up until I would say 2024, you know, everybody was talking about the siloed components of the whole system. We were talking about solar, we were talking about BES a little bit, we were talking about wind, we were talking about the grid, but now is the time that we actually need to harmonize the whole thing and we really need to think about the grid as well, right?

Phil Horwitch 29:14

Yeah, there's gonna definitely have to be some most of our projects we're seeing upgrades to the grid. So you're a thousand percent right, is we can put as much battery storage, we can put as much wind, we can put as much solar, but we also have to think about, like you said, the overall grid health of it on the big scheme of things.

Peter Pongracz 29:33

And especially for you guys, you know, the the distances in the US are a little bit larger than here in Europe, so you you need to think a little bit more about the transmission as well, right? So it's not not that simple.

Phil Horwitch 29:45

Yeah, and you we just moved away from Texas and we saw it while we were there. I mean, you'd have these massive freezes that you had never seen in Texas, and they would take out complete turbines. And I remember getting questions about those. Like, why didn't you design them for this temperature? And half the time the question was, we're in the middle of Texas. We didn't think it got that cold, but the climate's even changing to where we're having to design things a little bit beefier to make sure that we can account for the fluke events that are happening that didn't always used to happen.

Peter Pongracz 30:21

Yeah, I mean, the extremes are going to get uh more and more extreme. So we really need to account for that as well. And obviously that's why we are here, that's why we are working in this industry to combat that as well.

Phil Horwitch 30:32

Exactly. That's like I said earlier, I think that's why we're finally becoming you're not gonna get rid of us, is where every three to four years there'd be something that would happen, and you'd try to not in the solar industry, but going to RE plus. I just saw it like everybody was happy to be there, resilient to be there, and nobody was truly that scared like I've seen at some past RE pluses. Everybody was just positive about where the entire industry was going. So it's great to see that we'll be here for a while.

Peter Pongracz 31:05

I guess most people who have gone through the a couple of ups and downs of the solar coaster, they are not really afraid, right? People who are new in the industry and they came in in on a high, those are the ones who tend to get scared. But if you you've been through this, then it's just a natural market cycle, right?

Phil Horwitch 31:21

Oh yeah. I mean, I it's bad to say it's a funny story, is I literally got married in February for a specific reason because that was the downtime of the side of the industry that I was in at that side. So I know I could take an extended period time of off to go get married, planted, and have my honeymoon and all that because it's the solar coaster. We're all kind of used to it, but you just gotta plan around it.

Peter Pongracz 31:48

Yeah, and I mean, you know, you only have one life, so you really need to make make use of your time the best possible and then plan the next career switch for sure.

Phil Horwitch 31:56

Oh, yeah, exactly. So you kind of get used to the solar coaster, you bring in some other aspects like we don't just do only solar at AMH, we have some fun projects that we work on, and it kind of just holds the gaps, or that's where we truly just audit our entire processes. So when we do get extremely busy because the coaster's coming up to ramp full speed, we have everything up to speed to where we can go as fast as we can and still keep the quality that we have.

Peter Pongracz 32:27

What's the most interesting project you ever worked on?

Phil Horwitch 32:30

It's probably one of the biggest projects that we've done. And I always go on like sitewalks aren't usually you don't really get anything on that site just because uh you're looking at a piece of land, and a piece of land is a piece of land. But this site walk, we actually got something, and it was just showing the massive like size of the overall project. I mean, it took us four days to do this entire site walk, and that was eight hours in the truck for four days straight to actually go through the entire site to show the like how big that actually site was where I remember at the very beginning I started in residential and selling a pallet of modules was like the greatest thing that we had seen at that time. Where now we're talking about megawatts and gigawatts of projects. So just kind of the shift of how big everything is finally getting.

Peter Pongracz 33:26

Nice. And uh what would you say is the the belief that this industry changed your mind on?

Phil Horwitch 33:33

It's truthfully that you just have to be nice to people and you can get more work done when you're nice with people. It's being like this at the very beginning, we were kind of like this hippie industry that came through that everybody wanted to say that they were with solar, and that kind of gave everybody a bad taste in their mouth, just because you had to almost like puff your chest out a little bit, be a little bit aggressive because everybody had this hardship with solar, to where it's kind of changed, where we're actually just to say, hey, we do work in solar, people actually understanding what it is in nowadays, they truly want it because they see how actually good it is for either the environment, how many people that it actually takes to build one of these. So it just brings in so much other business, whether it's restaurants, hotels, gas, car rentals to the actually city that you're building that in. And probably the other thing is just like I had to say, the actual friends that you make throughout the years that you can call on for anything, whether it's you just spend so much time with them on these long projects that you just get to know them, you get to know their family, and you just get to kind of see how they grow, they get to see how you grow, and it's kind of just like a brotherhood friendship that we get to have in the solar industry.

Peter Pongracz 34:56

Yeah, again, and it comes back to the the point we started with, right? That we are just human, so we are all human and we need to act like them. And sometimes we we all wear this mask of like a professional persona or personality, but at the end of the day, you know, everybody is the exact same. Everybody just has uh similar objectives, you know, everybody wants to feed their family, do a great job, and ultimately deliver a great project.

Phil Horwitch 35:20

Exactly. Everybody wants a project to be done as fast as you can. It's not like you're working on a project and you're trying to have this delay. We just want the project done so we can move on to the next one. Everybody can be acquaintances, acquaintances, or friends after the fact, and it's the smallest but biggest industry. Because you're gonna always see somebody on a random project that you saw five or ten years ago, you're gonna see them in five or ten years as well. So it's pretty cool.

Peter Pongracz 35:53

The good thing is that people don't often deviate from solar or renewables. So once you're in it, you probably are going to stick in it. You just change companies or maybe change the angle of your work, but uh you will typically stick with it.

Phil Horwitch 36:06

Yeah, it's once you're in, you're kind of in for life on that side. It's a cool industry. I do love it. I picked it over I I've only been in solar my entire career, so it's the industry that I chose from the beginning, and I've seen it grown a lot. And I'm sure in the first 10 plus years it grew a lot, but in the next 10 plus years, I'm sure it's gonna take off even more on that side. It's gonna be crazy.

Peter Pongracz 36:31

Back in those days, it was called alternative energy, right?

Phil Horwitch 36:34

Yeah, you didn't want to say solar in some instances when you were going to some town hall meetings.

Peter Pongracz 36:40

Speaking of that, what is one of the the most annoying buzzwords that you would delete from the industry if you could that you hear quite often?

Phil Horwitch 36:49

I mean, I would truthfully just try to get rid of all these three-letter acronyms. We like to just like have everything down to either a PPA or an EPC or megawatt hour, so NWH. It's kind of just get rid of all these three-letter acronyms so we can just kind of talk on that side and not have to just know what the term is. And it also allows for an individual to come in and not have to know solar like me and you and everybody else that's been in the industry 10 years, they can just come in and actually just talk and actually be intelligent about it.

Peter Pongracz 37:25

It's quite tricky, and you know, even if you have the small local nuances, right? Here in Europe, we would call them mounting systems. In you guys in the US would call them racking systems, right? These are the small things that uh that you really need to pay attention to. And if you're you're not exposed to uh different projects, you're probably not gonna know it.

Phil Horwitch 37:44

Oh, yeah. I mean, or you have people call them tables, or people call them rows, or people call them racks. It truly depends on when they got into the industry and when they were like who they were taught by, whether they started with a racking company or a construction company or an engineering company. So it's pretty funny. You can kind of tell everybody's background from the way they talk. At least in the States. And I'm sure it's the same in Europe where you're at, is like I talk different because I'm from the south and somebody in the north.

Peter Pongracz 38:15

Yeah, for sure. For sure. There are there are those local nuances, and you know, in here in Europe it's even more fragmented, right? Because every country, even between those countries, you have the different uh regions, and everybody kind of looks at things from a slightly different lens. And you know, you have this big, big divide or like big uh trend that the north is inherently more CNI, the south is a little bit more uh utility scale, but now it's kind of mixing and matching, and then you know, you can add the agripv uh cherry on top of the cake, and then uh then everybody's a little bit confused, but we are making some progress.

Phil Horwitch 38:51

You're talking about like the farming solar and all that?

Peter Pongracz 38:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's uh that's huge, huge in the in the farmlands, especially in Italy. You can't really build any any any more utility scale, you can only build agripv, so you need to preserve the land for the agricultural use, but you can you know kind of find this workaround and still put solar in there.

Phil Horwitch 39:12

Gotcha. Yeah, we've seen I've seen like the been talked with people about do they use like the sheep and everything like that on anything.

Peter Pongracz 39:20

Sheep are cool, they're useful.

Phil Horwitch 39:23

They really are. That was one of the coolest exhibits at RE Plus 2. It gave me a hoot every time I walked around there. It was something that I'd never seen before. It's kind of like when goat yoga came into existence.

Peter Pongracz 39:33

Yeah, I mean it's entertaining people, you know, it it catches your attention and it it makes you like look twice. So that's uh a mission accomplished, right?

Phil Horwitch 39:41

Oh, I remember hearing about it a couple years ago, and I was like, I mean, it'll probably happen. And then you actually see it happen on projects, and you see a pressure release of it, and you're like, wow, they actually do put sheep on projects nowadays. That's cool.

Peter Pongracz 39:55

Yeah, it's a it's it's very interesting, but it's a good use case because you you preserve everything, you know, you preserve the the ground, the the soil, the the weeds or whatever needs to grow underneath them. So it's a it's an interesting use case. Um Phil, and and on on that note, who inspires you as a as an entrepreneurial solar? Who who is somebody you look up to?

Phil Horwitch 40:18

Probably the main person is I read his book probably like six or seven years ago, but it was Mark Cuban. And I don't know why it stood out, but I'm not a big meeting person. I feel like most meetings can be done, and he kind of said the exact same thing in it. So, and it's bad to say I truly just have like Shark Tank my entire like until it came out. So seeing him on that, um, the only bad thing about it is that I'm not I'm from Houston, obviously, from looking behind me, so I'm not a Dallas fan. So everybody's gotta have one bad thing about them, but he's probably one of them. But I kind of just try to take in from everybody, but that's the like main business thing that I try to implement is I'm just not a big meeting person. It's every time I go to a meeting, it's bad to say, like, you can calculate how much money each company is losing and losing at that time because you have like 30 people on this one, and it just drives me crazy. I'm like, this is just costing every company so much money, where we could just have some emails and chats go back and forth, and the it would all get completed and save all of our time and energy. Because I know, at least for me, some of these big meetings are just energy suckers.

Peter Pongracz 41:33

It takes a long time and to prepare to to attend, and then also most most people are just hanging out there, like, okay, this is fine, this is fun. But uh yeah, I mean that's uh that's a big productivity killer for sure.

Phil Horwitch 41:44

Especially after the pandemic happened and everybody did all of the Zoom meetings. It's like half the time you'd be on your phone during a Zoom meeting and not paying attention, and everybody uses it as like, oh, sorry, my internet cut out. What can you say that again for me when it's like, hey, you were just sitting behind your computer on your phone doing whatever you wanted to do. So we try to do less meetings, and like I said, it's always stuck with me from when I read his book that he did mention that where it's like, oh, somebody that's extremely successful doesn't actually like them and they have a full reasoning behind it too.

Peter Pongracz 42:19

The key thing here is that you know if you have a good explanation, then it makes sense. If you just say I don't like them, they don't make sense, then then that's you know not not good enough uh reasoning. But I I fully agree with you that if if if there is no nothing nothing to contribute and nothing to take away, then you should not be in the meeting.

Phil Horwitch 42:38

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I was everybody knows him obviously in our industry, but I was reading an article about Elon Musk too, and he was saying if you're not in that meeting, he doesn't seem that it's rude that you literally just drop out of the meeting and walk out of it because everybody everybody's got a lot of work to do. So if you're sitting in a meeting and you realize, oh, I actually don't need to be here, well, just leave and go actually get some work done on that side.

Peter Pongracz 43:01

On that note, we're actually coming to the end of our time. So if you had one piece of advice to either a young engineer about to enter solar, what would it be?

Phil Horwitch 43:11

Oh, advice to somebody coming in is I would just try to learn everything that you could. Don't try to go into one specific field. It's like I said earlier, be a jack of all trades, a master of none, but master everything while you can. So learn how developers work, learn how owners work, learn how construction works, and learn how engineering works. And then you get to kind of see it from all phases, and then you can pick which route you actually want to take and just enjoy it while you're at it. It's a fun thing to learn every single phase because everyone works a little bit different, and you get to take that and actually teach like an engineering company how to work with the developer to how to learn with construction. So just be as well-rounded as you can. And it's also don't piss anybody off in the solar industry because it's so small but so big, you'll either try to hire them in a couple years or uh they'll be hiring you in a couple years too. So you want to keep everybody friends.

Peter Pongracz 44:10

Indeed. I I heard this kid saying in uh in Morocco that you never hurt a camel because they remember, so and they will take revenge.

Phil Horwitch 44:19

That's the craziest thing about the I've either hired or worked for a bunch of people multiple times back and forth throughout the years. So it's I tell that to all of our younger people. It's like try to be as nice as you can. Don't piss anybody off because you might not always work for AMH, you might have to go work for that person. And if you made a bad impression on them, then it's only gonna look bad on you, and you might not get that job that you need in a couple years.

Peter Pongracz 44:47

For sure. That was very stoic. I'm I'm going to. Steal that line for sure. I like that.

Phil Horwitch 44:54

Small but big industry.

Peter Pongracz 44:56

Yeah, indeed, indeed. And last but but not least, so who should reach out to EMH? What kind of people would you like to speak to?

Phil Horwitch 45:04

We work with a lot of developers and EPCs. Our goal is to get in as early as we can because we like to provide you with like the engineering reports, very realistic schedules, and we're going to be as honest with you that we can be once we do our due diligence. So all the early people, developers and EPCs and owners, they can contact us and we'll try to be as honest and upfront. So we don't have to talk to them in three to four years and realize that they still don't have a permit or anything like that.

Peter Pongracz 45:39

That's the right piece of advice. And what would be the best way to reach out to you?

Phil Horwitch 45:44

Yeah, all you got to do is search my name, Phil Horwich, on LinkedIn or just search our company, AMH Holdings. And just specifically for like podcasts, if you just message me the word simplify, we me and my team put together a quick like three to four pager that kind of just shows you what we're trying to do all of 2026 and just simplify solar a little bit. So just message me simplify and we'll get a document over to you to take a look at.

Peter Pongracz 46:11

Awesome. And maybe we'll link to all of those in the show notes below. So on that note, Phil, thank you very much for your time. I really enjoyed this. So let's do this again soon.

Phil Horwitch 46:19

Hey, I'm looking forward to it. I appreciate you taking the time today to talk with me as well. It was a great conversation.