Solstice is a community solar company trying to make PV accessible to everyone. And that mission is influenced by CEO Steph Speirs’ background.

Steph grew up one of three kids in Hawaii. Her mom had immigrated from Korea. She knows what eviction feels like and what it’s like to skirt homelessness. And she knows how a poor credit score can sink a human being.

She got a scholarship to a private high school, became a National Merit Scholar and earned master’s degrees at Yale, Princeton and MIT.  

In this interview, we’ll hear how her time in the Obama administration led to a summer internship with the nonprofit impact investor Acumen. She worked on solar lanterns in India. Her time in Yemen, India and then Pakistan led to an awakening about clean energy inequities in the United States. 

Solstice has now developed demand for 100 MW of community solar and just closed its biggest funding round so far. 

To learn more about future speakers and attending a live event, go to Powerhouse.fund and click on the events tab. You can listen to all of the episodes of Watt It Takes here.

This podcast is brought to you by KORE Power. Based in the U.S., KORE Power is situated to meet the growing global demand of the energy storage market. KORE Power is building the first large-scale battery cell manufacturing facility in the U.S. owned by an American company. Once it’s operational, the 1-million-square-foot facility will have 12 gigawatt-hours of scalable manufacturing capacity. Learn more. 

This podcast is brought to you by Sungrow, the leading global supplier of inverter solutions for renewables. During these uncertain times, Sungrow is committed to protecting its employees and continuing to reliably serve its customers around the world. Sungrow has also leveraged its extensive network across the United States to distribute face masks to communities in need.