I sat down with Jim Sardonia, who just won the first PowerVets Veterans Leadership Award from ACP, a program they run with us. When I asked him about it he barely talked about himself. He called it a team award and started telling me about his guys in the field, the ones out at two and three in the morning restarting turbines in feet of snow and twenty below.
Jim spent seven years in the Air Force as a launch weather officer at Cape Canaveral. Now he’s VP of technical support at Exus Renewables North America, where his team decides whether a piece of land can hold a project at all. That means telling a bank what twenty years of weather will produce when you’ve only got two or three years of data from the site. The bank stress tests your number against the worst year it can imagine. Jim remembers 2015, when the drought out west put California wind farms at 65 percent of their long-term average. Get that math wrong and people don’t make payroll.
This is what I mean when I say you can’t get by on vibes in this industry. The project produces or it doesn’t. That’s why veterans fit here, and Jim’s been hiring and mentoring them for years.
He says there are more projects right now than there are people and money to build them.
Timestamps
00:06 - Cold open and welcome
01:25 - The PowerVets award and the guys in the field
03:06 - Turbine height, wind shear, and site suitability
05:18 - What Exus does, and how a polygon becomes buildable land
07:46 - Solar land use, agrivoltaics, and revenue per acre
11:26 - Who owns these assets: Everpower, pension funds, and hurdle rates
16:45 - Pricing the weather: met towers, P50/P90/P99, and bank stress tests
22:46 - A military family and the SR-71 crew chief
26:01 - Launch weather officer: 137 launches and shuttle ferry flights
28:21 - Data center demand and the interconnection bottleneck
30:53 - Why veterans fit: ownership, safety, and no getting by on vibes
33:33 - Turning Point USA and student-led organizations
37:15 - Advocacy without the trigger words
42:23 - Advice for veterans considering the industry
Resources
People & Organizations
Kevin Doffing (LinkedIn)
Project Vanguard (Website - Podcast - Apple Podcasts - Spotify)
Jim Sardonia (LinkedIn)
American Clean Power Association (Website)
Center for Energy Workforce Development (Website)
Student Veterans of America (Website)
Pattern Energy (Website)
Company & Industry News
Exus Renewables North America Closes $400 Million Facility to Meet Surging Power Demand
Energy Industry Needs More Veterans as Demand for Skilled Workers Grows
Related Project Vanguard Episodes
Transcript
Kevin Doffing: Welcome to Project Vanguard Podcast, home of the community of Veterans in Energy, where we explore the journeys of veterans leading in energy. We’re building American energy dominance through an all-the-above approach where energy security is national security. And our mission is to double the number of veterans working in the energy industry. I’m your host, Kevin Doffing. Today I’m talking with Jim Sardonia. Jim’s an Air Force veteran and meteorologist who spent years as a launch Weather Officer at Cape Canaveral, supporting space shuttle launches for NASA. Now, he’s the VP of Technical Support at Exus Renewables North America. And drumroll, he just won the first ever Power Vet Leadership Award from the American Clean Power Association. I don’t know how it took winning this award for Jim and I to finally connect, but I’m really glad we did. We talk about what it takes to make a project pencil, how banks stress test the weather itself. And why demand is outrunning everyone’s forecasts. Who actually owns these assets and how to turn wind data into a number a bank will lend against? If you’re a veteran wondering whether there’s room for you in this industry, Jim’s answer is this whole episode. Let’s get into it. Jim, thank you so much for joining us today.
Jim Sardonia: Absolutely. I appreciate the invitation and it’s great to speak with you.
Kevin Doffing: Yeah. You know, the first time we spoke, I was actually in Iowa as we were kicking off that chapter last month or so. And I was real excited to talk to you because you recently won an award through the American Clean Power Association. Can you talk a little bit about what that was? What did you do with the big cash prize?
Jim Sardonia: Yeah, I’m still waiting for that, but no. The award is the first inaugural ACP, it’s American Clean Power Association’s Power Vet Leadership Award. And based on the write up, they wanted to identify and recognize veterans and their contributions to the renewable energy industry. I was nominated by my company, Exus Renewables North America, which was a huge honor. We have you know, almost a dozen veterans in our company.
Kevin Doffing: Yeah.
Jim Sardonia: Itself and just be nominated by my company was a huge honor. And then we got notification it was a top five finalist at Clean Power in Houston was in the s crowd there when they announced and very honored and privileged to be standing and sitting next to my fellow veterans and accepted on everybody’s behalf. To me I like I told my folks here, this is a team award from my perspective for all the veterans here. We have veterans in the field operating our sites. They’re out there two in the three in the morning. Getting these turbines restarted in the middle of the winter with feet of snow on the ground and twenty below. So they’re the ones that motivate me, you know, to work harder in the back office here and make their job easier and better and work the best I can for Exus here.
Kevin Doffing: Yeah. And I’ve been out to the Exus offices. I love how there’s that ground mount wind turbine that’s in there. Yeah, the vertical. Yeah. I’ve had some friends that have talked to me about that, but it’s you gotta get a lot more height on top of buildings or whatever. G get out of the friction at the base.
Jim Sardonia: Yeah. And out of the shadow of the big building.
Kevin Doffing: And you’ve designed a lot of projects. So you know exactly probably the numbers behind the increase in efficiency as you get higher. Yeah. Well.
Jim Sardonia: Absolutely. That’s a huge part of our core business. And being on the technical side, we look at those conditions, the climatic conditions at each site, at each wind farm. You know, these turbines are getting massive. They’re going up to a hundred and twenty-five meter hub heights, you know, three to four hundred, three hundred and fifty to four hundred feet just at the hub height. That’s at the nacelle level. And then the blades are another eighty meters above that. So we’re really stretching into the lower levels of the atmosphere. We’re really extending high. Into that and wind shear is a big part of that element where you as you you go higher winds you typically increase in some cases they actually decrease and at unique like mountain passes in California or out west you get some very unique wind flow dynamics which we have to study that’s our job on the technical side is to study all these sites, make sure the conditions are suitable for good production, but also not to beat up these turbines. They’re designed to last 20 years, but if you have conditions that are really rough, turbulent high wind shear, they could beat these turbines to death in two or three years. So we’re looking at a balance between good production, positive revenue, projects that make money and produce well and can last for a lifetime. That’s what the
Kevin Doffing: That’s what I always liked when I talk to companies, you know, asset management companies like Exus is it’s not a hearts and minds things. It’s a dollars and cents. Right. People will be like, hey, you you say all the above. What about a coal plant? I’m like, do it. If it pencils, like do it. But good luck without some massive subsidies to make it pencil. And that has nothing to do with greenwashing or whatever. That’s just market economics, commodity pricing, just the market, yeah, like free markets. So take a step back.
Jim Sardonia: Yes. Yes.
Kevin Doffing: What would you say you do at Exus and tell everybody about Exus as a company? As y’all are hiring more vets and things like that. I love what y’all do.
Jim Sardonia: Yeah, absolutely. Exus Renewables North America is a owner, operator, developer, and builder of utility scale renewables, wind, solar, and battery storage. We’re basically A to Z. We Greenfield Prospect, we’re prospecting actively right now for new projects across the country. We’re looking at potential acquisitions of projects maybe further along in development or even operating assets. So we look at everything that is, you know, could bring value to the company to increase our pipeline, our portfolio. As I mentioned, we, you know, we’re a developer and a builder too. We have an EPC group and that’s the group I’m assigned to. I’m the VP of technical support in our EPC group. And EPC stands for engineering, procurement, and construction. My role is more in the E and the P part of that, the engineering and procurement. And then we have our another silo with an another vice president who’s head of construction. Once the project is developed and designed, and we have signed contracts to procure wind turbines or solar modules, then it shifts over to our active construction group. We have very experienced folks in our construction team that have built gigawatts, multiple gigawatts of projects throughout the country and even in other countries, Canada, North America. And my role on the technical side. So when we’re looking at a project, we need to evaluate that project. It usually starts out with just a polygon on a map. And from our development team, we’ll say, hey, what can we do with this land? We have to look at it from a geospatial perspective. We have a GIS team, GIS personnel on my team. We’re going to look at it as far as wetlands, railroad track transmission lines, roads, houses. Once you get a polygon of an area. It turns into what’s called a buildable area, which is a much reduced amount of area inside that original polygon. And it looks like Swiss cheese, but really with a lot of holes in it, I tell you. So where there’s a lot of constraints to build, especially wind, ‘cause they’re big devices and you know, you need to you can’t put wind turbines right next to each other because of wake effects and you don’t want too close to structures people are living. They do produce Exactly, shadow flicker noise.
Kevin Doffing: Shadow flicker.
Jim Sardonia: Solar’s a little different animal, but it’s very similar. Instead of, you know, little isolated wind turbines, you have just a flat area. The constraints may be a little different. It’s a very different process of construction. That land basically underneath it, if you know, there may be some great flat prime farmland, but that may not be a great piece of land for solar because you’re taking away the ability to do all that good farming for twenty years.
Kevin Doffing: Yeah. But also at the same time, especially as you’re keeping it in your family, you’ve now rested the land. Yeah. You’re gonna see some of the most productive land when that comes back into production. Or, you know, you do multiple things and you start grazing underneath. Exactly. I love Silicon Valley or Silicon Ranch. You know, they’re now figuring out with IoT devices how to run cattle underneath. I mean, sheep you can do in certain places, but there’s certain places sheep just aren’t as versatile everywhere. And with every kind of grass. I mean, I’ve had people explain it to me. I’m not a sheep guy, but I’m pro sheep. But, you know, I’m from Texas. So like big cattle country. And I mean, now that they’re starting to figure that out, you don’t have to have it way above the cow. You know, you just have to be able to flip it up and flip it flat. And now the cows have somewhere shady to go. There’s just a lot of like knock on benefits.
Jim Sardonia: Yeah, absolutely. There’s a whole branch called agrivoltaics, you know, which is deals with that. What can you do? How can we take advantage of what we have underneath these underneath these tracking tables and modules? So it’s an emerging branch in photo in PV and solar, but it’s I think quickly gaining ground. So we’ll see that.
Kevin Doffing: Well, I mean, you know, just from a landowner perspective, like how can I get, you know, more value and revenue out of the same commodity and parcel, right? Like, what is my what is my what are my what is my revenue per acre? Right? Whether that’s, you know, because the industry did this, right? Like you’ve been in long enough. So you’ve seen probably where the contracts with landowners went from, hey, we’ll pay you based on how many towers are there. But then as the towers got bigger and there were fewer. It’s shifted over to well, how much power are you producing? And I want to cut the revenue. Yeah. Not just a square footage lease.
Jim Sardonia: Absolutely. Right. Yeah, absolutely. And it it’s, you know, shifting, like you said, as these turbines get larger in the generator size, a megawatt size and the rotor diameter of the blades, like you said, there’s much fewer turbines that may produce the same amount in a given area. Here in Pennsylvania, obviously, you know, we look at old abandoned strip mines. It’s a lot of land where you can’t really do anything on it. If you’re driven out on some of the hilltops and plateaus out here, once they go through and strip that out, there’s not a lot of growth potential and we’re looking at that actively. There’s still good portions of land that can be utilized for solar wind where there’s wind and battery storage especially. That’s another area we’re looking at. We’re looking at data centers at Exus as well. As long as you have transmission, maybe some w water sources in the area, it’s a
Kevin Doffing: Yeah, power, water, land. Like that’s all you need. But the power and the water the are the hard parts.
Jim Sardonia: Exactly. Yes, exactly. Especially, you know, transmission, making sure these data centers have huge loads, demanding huge amounts and just bringing the power in to run these is a challenge in itself. Water, like you said, for cooling. You know, there’s new technology coming that doesn’t necessarily use as much water, but you know, that’s years down the line. But we’re seeing, you know, utility scale batteries really picking up in capability as you know, in the last few years and then we expect it to continue next. Short term, five, ten years or so.
Kevin Doffing: So, you know, a long time ago when I was working with y’all, one of the things I found really interesting, because I just think that like the profitability of the projects is really the accelerant on the industry. If you’re not making money, then like it was a nice try. Right. But where they do make money, go make more money. And that’s the fastest way to scale anything, right? Yeah. The whole EV subsidy tax credit thing, okay. But as soon as gas prices spike. Sales spike, right? Because it’s an economic driver and that’s what people are going to make their decisions off of. And I love how y’all are thinking about as an asset manager, hey, how do we like run this efficiently? Where does preventive maintenance versus reactive maintenance make sense in the long-term value creation of this asset? But can you talk a little bit about like who are your clients? Like who actually owns the asset that you’re managing? Cause I always thought that was interesting because you’d hear about these blue chip companies. But I never thought about there are companies like DESRI, D.E. Shaw Renewables, that have gotten into actually owning and operating. But I think they’re the only financier that does that. Can you talk a little bit about like a BlackRock and the John Hancock’s
Jim Sardonia: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I forgot to mention that’s really how Exus formed about eight years ago. There was a legacy company called Everpower Wind Holdings, which is pretty close to a lot of us. A lot of us worked at Everpower. Our CEO at Everpower is now our is our CEO here at Exus, Jim Spencer. A lot of folks I work with day to day were former Everpower workers, but Everpower was sold off like a many renewable companies, IPPs, you know, they’re held in maybe closed-end funds that have a lifetime and they mature. And then, you know, the holder of that closed end fund, they’re required to sell that company off. And back in eight 2017, 18, Everpower was sold. Jim Spencer and Deval Beludia formed Exus Renewables North America and it was started out as a third party asset manager. And that activity that is really how Exus has operated ever since from the beginning till for about six years until a couple of years ago. But they were so successful in growing that client base. Some of the clients began asking, Hey, do you have experience in building a wind farm for us or repowering a wind farm for us or doing the maintenance? And they knew we had the technical
Kevin Doffing: Great when customers are like, can you do more scope?
Jim Sardonia: Exactly. Exactly. It’s like your dream client, of course. You know, there were the technical we had the technical experience and expertise that more people were brought into Exus. I was given a call a few years ago and I said, you know, when do you want me to start? Type of thing. It was really, you know, just an honor to come back. When you can come back to a company where you worked with great people, their focus is moving things forward, building projects, expanding the company, get hiring good people. That’s the type of company you want to be in. But we have big clients. I’ll say I can s kinda say what industries are they’re in. There’s a lot of companies that own renewable assets, but they don’t have the technical expertise to operate it and maintain it. And that’s where we come in. There’s infrastructure funds, pension funds, there’s, you know
Kevin Doffing: For de-risked long-term revenue generating assets, which that’s what I’ve always struggled in Houston when people are like, well, this doesn’t look as good as an offshore well return. I’m like, well, yeah, but what’s the downside on an offshore well return? And they’re like, zero. I’m like, well, you don’t have that with you. This is a utility capital play, not a oil and gas play. Like they’re different capital and risk appetites.
Jim Sardonia: Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. And like you said earlier, we’re not a nonprofit charity. Renewable companies are not nonprofits. They have to make revenue to survive. That’s just the bottom line. And dependent on your investor, dependent on your client, they have very high hurdle rates for returns. They have very high requirements for returns to even approve of investing money for these projects. These projects are
Kevin Doffing: Absolutely.
Jim Sardonia: Hundreds of millions of dollars requires hundreds of millions of dollars in investment and they want returns. It’s their money. Yep. They expect solid, almost guaranteed returns. You can’t guarantee the wind or the sun, but you can find the projects. We’ve been able to find the projects and find the right combination of components, EPC contractors, builders to make the projects pencil. The rates are only getting higher, the investors, the banks are only want higher returns and the money that they are let borrowing or investing. And, you know, there’s a lot of companies out there, like I said, in the last five years, you know this, there’s been a lot of cash out there in the last five, six years. Yeah. You know, they’re looking for areas to deploy that cash. You know, cash doesn’t make that a lot, even for these super huge investors, but they want to find good investments. Some of them want a percentage of renewable projects in their portfolio to diversify. But we’re working with clients that look that invest in all kinds of things. You know, hotels, other solar, small scale solar like rooftop and CNI commercial and industrial. Yep. And all various sources. I’d say it’s always good to diversify your investments and that’s what these big companies and investors are doing with renewable.
Kevin Doffing: Well, and that’s one the things I always talk to people is, you know, the entire like portfolio approach to our energy base so that we’re not overly exposed to a single commodity in case there’s something that pops off in the Middle East. Yeah. Which depending on what day you’re listening to this, we may or may not be at war ceasefire or throwing bombs at Iran or somewhere else, right? I was in Iraq. Yeah. But I mean, there’s intermittency and different project operating risk with everything, right? There’s the commodity risk of a global commodity. Yeah. But there’s also weather variability and intermittency. And you have a meteorological background. Can you talk a little bit about like how has the industry dealt with that, approached that, and how has that risk degraded or just improved over time?
Jim Sardonia: Well, that’s a great question. And it’s a really a big part of our process in determining, you know, basically when we get a piece of land, we have a financial modeling team. They want to know how much is it going produce? How big can it be? How many megawatts can we deploy here? Assuming all the constraints and everything else. And what the variability is going to be. What is the uncertainty? Uncertainty is a key part of the energy yield assessment evaluation. There’s uncertainty from for when, for example, you may
Kevin Doffing: Mm-hmm.
Jim Sardonia: Have deployed Met Towers. You have to deploy some kind of measuring device to see what the winds are on site. Meteorological tower. Meteorological tower with yeah. Anemometers, wind vanes, temperature sensors. You’re characterizing the site with data on site because there may be a airport, you know, 20 miles away, but that has weather data from two meters, three meters off the ground, but 25 miles away, got not going to be at all
Kevin Doffing: Met Tower being meteorolog mm. I’ll get there eventually.
Jim Sardonia: Representative of a site on the ridgeline in Pennsylvania thirty miles to its east or something like that. So we need data on wind, especially it’s much more variable with wind. If you have to have data collection at the site. However, there’s uncertainty, the quality of the sensors you have, the height of the sensors, you know, these turbines, like I mentioned before, we’re getting up to a hundred and twenty five meter hub heights, the center of the rotor, but the blades extend even further. You really don’t have met towers that tall. They’re you know, 60 to 100 meter range just to get the bottom part of the rotor. And then we have to use calculations to extrapolate what we think the wind profile is. But the wind data itself, you know, the sensors are not perfect. There’s uncertainty there. You’re only measuring a snapshot of time. These wind farms are going to be out for 20, 30 years. We’re measuring a two, three year snapshot and we’re projecting that forward based on what we do is there’s global weather models out there that actually can predict. They’re called gridded global models. Any point on the earth, you can go back 30, 40 years and you can get a time series of what that model predicted for conditions at say 100 meters. We use the data and we overlap our on-site data with the long-term previous data set from these models and we try to project backwards about twenty, thirty years, what the overall average would have been. You know, now year to year it’s gonna vary quite a bit and it can vary more at some sites versus others. In the eastern, like in Pennsylvania, it doesn’t vary as much year to year, maybe five to seven percent year to year. But you have a long term average. They call that the P fifty. That’s your fifty percent probability. Right. California out west in some of the mountainous regions, they can vary fifteen, twenty percent year to year. So you have to capture that variability. And you capture that in what’s called, we calculate not just the P50, the 50% chance, the average. We calculate things called a P90, P99. And the P99 is you have a 99% chance of exceeding a certain value. So it’s a value. Let’s say your production, you expect it to be 200 gigawatt hours per year. Yeah. Your 99% tile, your P99 is gonna be the value where ninety nine percent of the years you’re gonna exceed that, but that’s probably about eighty percent of the P fifty. So that’s, you know, what is that? A hundred and sixty megawatt hours per year.
Kevin Doffing: This is just so you can over prom underpromise and over deliver with the investors, like, hey, like we know we can hit this number.
Jim Sardonia: Exactly. And they want to stress test. The banks will stress test against the low number. They wanna know if I have one year out of twenty that it’s P ninety nine level, we’re gonna be okay or in some cases they’re not okay. We can’t even meet our debt coverage. You know, that we borrow money. No.
Kevin Doffing: No, as a business owner, like am I gonna make payroll? Like that’s what’s always in the back of my h head whenever I’ve, you know, had payroll is like it all things considered, I wanna make sure I’m taking care of my employees because it’s hard to run a business when you don’t pay your employees. Good luck.
Jim Sardonia: Yeah, exactly. And there’s some years. Right. Exactly. There were some years too where two thousand fifteen time frame out and out west there was a huge drought and it’s extended over several years. There was a big El Nino, big drought, big high pressure dome over the west coast, and the winds were almost nothing in in the big areas like Tehachapi, which is the famous wind farm region in California, Altamont Pass in Northern California.
Kevin Doffing: Service your debt.
Jim Sardonia: These wind farms out there, they were sixty, sixty-five percent of what they should have been. They were sixty to sixty-five percent of their average P fifty. It was devastating some of the, you know, financially for some of those wind farms. If you get two or three years strung in a row like that, it could cause some, you know, major headaches or, you know, it could cause some companies to go out of business, honestly. They came back, which is that’s the nature of averages. You’re gonna come back. Yeah. There’s gonna be some years that are Well above average, but you string a few bad years together and that’s what the banks are testing. They want to know what that variability is. What’s that range?
Kevin Doffing: It’s like being a farmer. You’re gonna have some bumper crop years, but I mean, yep, to your point, there will be some droughts and what are you gonna do?
Jim Sardonia: Yep, exactly. And they have to be prepared for that. Obviously they prefer a low uncertainty where your P ninety nines and P nineties are very close to the P fifty, so but everybody That’s right.
Kevin Doffing: Guarantee. Well, Jim, so take us back. How did you originally get into the military? What was your driving? Did you see a t shirt, you had your dad did it, like what was that motivation for you?
Jim Sardonia: Well, Sardonia family, there’s a lot of history in the military. Mm-hmm. I had two great uncles in World War Two, one of them the Pacific Theater, one in Europe. My great uncle in the Pacific Theater drove Higgins boats, that’s the thirty-five foot landing craft on a couple islands. My great uncle was on day two at on Normandy and he was there for one day. He took a bullet and that was it. He was one of those that was a quick in Europe for a very short time. I’d hear stories. My dad was in the Air Force for over 20 years. And you know, I was thinking about this actually. I and I thought you would ask it. And the first memories that I ever had as a human, I was three to four years old. I remember my dad coming back from Vietnam. And sorry.
Kevin Doffing: No, you’re fine.
Jim Sardonia: But, you know, when that’s the first memory you have of your this cool guy in uniform coming through the door, you know, I was like, wow, that made a huge impression. And this was in how old were you? I was like three to four. It was 1970 to 1972. And he was, you know, in Vietnam. He was in the Air Force, but he was a crew chief for the SR-71 Blackbird, the reconnaissance. Big you greatest plane ever designed, still way ahead of its time, in my opinion. But he’d get deployed they the Air Force back then in especially in those units, they’d have ninety day deployments, a hundred and twenty-day deployments. He’d go to Laos, Thailand, and Guam. The thing I remember was he’d come back, he’d bring us gifts. I still have gifts from like Japan, you know, little things. It was just cool. So the first memory I have really, I was fifth child of num of six, you know, was him coming through the door. It was great. You can imagine, you know, your dad coming back and everybody’s we’re a family of eight at that time. So it was a big event. And then, you know, this was during the Apollo era too. So I actually remember the last two moon missions, watching that on TV in nineteen seventy-two. So those two, I’d say those two things had the biggest impact on me as far as from then on, I was like, I’m gonna join the military. You know, I really wanted to be in the air force, but I was open to really anything, to be honest with you. And I interviewed with the Navy. At one point, they wanted me to be in a nuclear submarine, but I was like, nah, let me talk to the Air Force and see what they had. You know, went to school. I went to a small school originally, Valdosta State College, and joined the ROTC program there. And then got my commission four years later when I graduated and, you know, went from there. And they gave me two choices in assignments. First one was a missile launch officer in South Dakota or go back to school and go to Florida State for my meteorology degree. And I chose the meteorology degree. So it wasn’t a hard choice for me.
Kevin Doffing: Nice. I love that. But then you weren’t done doing some of that. So when you got out, what were you doing? I feel like there was a three letter acronym that you followed up with.
Jim Sardonia: Well, when I got out I was on active duty Yeah. I was on active duty for seven years and my last assignment was at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. And the Air Force provides all the meteorological support, all the weather support for the launches for NASA at Kennedy Space Center, which is just north of Cape Canaveral, and the Air Force for all the unmanned launches that the Air Force does out there.
Kevin Doffing: Fourth.
Jim Sardonia: I was a launch weather officer. We supported as a active duty Air Force launch weather officer, we were primarily supporting the Navy ballistic missile launches off the test launches off the East Coast. Mm-hmm. There was a weather team that supported every launch. We supported every shuttle launch, Titan at the time, Delta at Atlas at those vehicles too. We supported those as deputy launch weather officers, whether we’re man in the radar, that we had a weather reconnaissance aircraft that would fly through the clouds and very specific criteria to launch a rocket. There. And I would did that for a couple of years. And then I had the opportunity. They they wanted to expand the role. They had three civilian launch weather officers there. And they needed a fourth one. And just timing was key. And, you know, I was working hard there and timing. So that it’s two things that I tell everybody. Timing is always key to what you do or how opportunities may come your way. And if you work hard, That just aligns. If the timing aligns and you worked hard, those opportunities may pop up for you. So they offered me to work as a civilian. So I separated and worked for both the Air Force and NASA and supported, went on for six another six years supporting over 137 launches, 22 space shuttle launches. I was a meteorologist for the ferry flights when the space shuttle was on top of the 747 and flew across the country. That that was a very weather-sensitive flight. They could only fly Up to about twelve thousand feet. It was depressurized. The space shuttle is very it could fly into space and through a launch process, but it was very sensitive once it everything was turned off and once it was on the ground. And if you flew across the country, you could not fly through a cloud. It would actually pit the tiles and cause damage. So we had to fly keyhole our way through clouds and storms through the across the country. They had refueling stop halfway through. So very weather sensitive operation there. Wow. It was a fun ones to be a part of.
Kevin Doffing: So you’ve been doing this for a while. You know, I’m interested. What do you see that other people are not paying attention to, especially as you’ve seen like cycles where like nobody was paying attention to solar, wind was coming up? You know, then battery one megawatt was considered grid scale. And now, you know, we have gigawatt. I’m really interested in new financial vehicles that actually are made for, you know, monetizing battery storage, because battery storage is a Swiss Army knife and it kind of fills in on things. But I don’t feel like there’s a full turnkey monetization, you know, financial vehicle that’s bespoke for energy storage yet. What are you looking at that you don’t feel like people are paying attention to enough yet?
Jim Sardonia: Well, and I’d say the last three to four years, the thing that nobody was really anticipating or looking at was this massive demand growth in data centers. That I was in been in renewables eighteen years. Nobody was predicting what we’re seeing right now as far as the expansion of data centers, the massive growth in these. They’re popping up everywhere. I was in New Mexico a month ago. They’re building data centers like in parts of the desert where nothing should be, you know, it’s there’s barely any pl Yeah, exactly. There’s barely any plant life in these places. But it’s good land, it easy land and they’re building them there. The load growth or the growth of in Virginia and and even Pennsylvania now, nobody anticipated or looked was forecasting this kind of demand for power. We’re seeing it, I think we’re straining, we’re putting a strain on the system right now. We’re seeing localized
Kevin Doffing: Easy permitting.
Jim Sardonia: Pricing that’s being filtered down to homeowners and businesses. And you know, you’re seeing rates, you know, going through the roof in some areas. I think we’re playing catch up. We may be playing a lot of catch up to try to counter that. Mm-hmm. You know, one big project in New Mexico, the SunZia project, which I know a lot of folks at Pattern Energy, that is a massive undertaking, but that’s the kind of things we need to address. If we’re gonna continue to build these massive data centers with this incredible amount of load. And demand and we need to big big infrastructure projects like that. We need big grid, you know, grid interconnection challenges have always been the biggest challenge. Even, you know, since I started fifteen to eighteen years ago, it’s always been interconnection. And it that’s a long time of that being the same problem. But we’re continuously playing catch up, it feels like to me, with the growth that we’re seeing across the state the country.
Kevin Doffing: Yeah. And I mean, you know, going back to what you said earlier, you know, why are veterans at Exus? And I think it applies everywhere else. Like there’s such a need because this is not something where you can get by on vibes. Right. Like your project is successful or not. Like there’s no arguing, did it produce power? Did you make money? It’s brass tacks, right? And I think that it fits well with the military culture of operational excellence, risk mitigation, not risk aversion, and you know, just getting things done.
Jim Sardonia: Right.
Kevin Doffing: Where have you seen Exus, where have you all been able to bring that in so that you are attracting like the best of the best in the veteran community to come in to that? It applies across the industry, but how is your company trying to set itself apart on that?
Jim Sardonia: Think we have a good balance between very experienced and highly skilled, proven leaders in the industry into our fold here. And then using everybody to mentor new people, we have an active mentoring program. We have a great intern program every year. We’ve hired interns from every year class that we’ve had. We try to build the younger crew that we have, but Just the fact that I think we’re very focused and targeted on who we hire that have a lot of experience. And it on the operational side, that’s where veterans fit great. On the safety side, as you know, it everything in the military is built on safety and protecting our source our resources and our troops. And there’s great fits in certain areas. I’d say maintenance, operations, safety. So it’s a combination of that. We have our sites itself. Most of our site managers are veterans. They bring that focus, they bring that discipline, that work ethic, leadership, they’re ready to tackle and they own it. You know, they own those projects. That’s the great thing. It’s not just a job to them. They own these projects and, you know, it they take it personal when, you know, if these projects aren’t operating as they should, or, you know, even if they’re operating great, they want it to operate better to move things on. So I think that’s our strategy, you know, overall. We have great resources here locally in Pittsburgh. There’s a couple several great universities, Pitt, CMU, Carnegie Mellon, there’s Duquesne University. So there’s a great local source of technology and young talent. And also we collaborate with CMU, Pitt, other organizations throughout the industry to, you know, further the science. That’s one thing. Further take the science further, make build these projects. Let’s, you know, move things forward and build these projects that that work great.
Kevin Doffing: Yeah. No, I think, you know, as we bring in more folks from the military, what we end up finding, at least in my experience, maybe this more based on who I am, you know, there’s a little bit more of a libertarian streak of pragmatism versus, you know, a political alignment, really, but just getting things done. But I love to see diversity of thought inside the industry. Yeah. One of the things I was impressed with is that you’re involved with. Turning Point USA. Can you talk a little bit about how you got involved with the organization? What does that look like for you? And just talk a little bit about that.
Jim Sardonia: Yeah, absolutely. And I’ve been involved with them for a little while now. I would say it’s my personal values, how I align my personal values with that organization. I enjoy mentoring. I have three teenagers as we discuss, you know, getting ready for college, the values and just kind of general ideals of what the country was founded on, less government. That’s one of the core values of turning point, or one of the core. Goals of educating our younger population and folks in college. I enjoy the aspect of talking to our younger generation. Like you said, it’s not political, but it’s just we’re interested in moving things forward in a positive way. You know, when I was in the military, I felt like it was served. I felt like, you know, I was serving my country. I feel like I’m doing the same now in renewable energy. And like you said, energy is security to serve the community as well. There’s a lot of things I enjoy on that. And just trying to get the message across, the values at turning point is trying to pass on. I’m aligned with that. And, you know, with kids going into college, I just want to see, you know, multiple areas of thought, like you said, and it’s not just one sided. There should be the opportunity for other student led organizations. I love that it’s a student led organization. One of the big things, there’s a story right here in Pittsburgh, two miles away from where I’m sitting, a local college. Here in downtown, voted unanimously to not allow a turning point chapter. It’s a student le you know, student government associate you could look it up, but
Kevin Doffing: That’s what Student Veterans of America is. I mean, like it’s a student led organization on campus.
Jim Sardonia: And to me, being voted down unanimously based on ideals, you know, these aren’t ideals of what the country was founded on, less of government involvement, just what the ideas of freedom to me, you know, being in a family with three generations in the military and and, you know, from every war from World War Two to Desert Storm, that’s important to me is to instill a sense of patriotism in my kids and others, you know, if I can. I think that’s important. You shouldn’t hate this country. I love this country. And that’s I’m gonna proudly say that. And I’m not ashamed of it. I’m not ashamed to say I’m a member of Turning Point. Completely proud of that, really. And in the events, obviously in the last year, even reinforced that. Especially in the until recently, you know, there the chapters are being turned down. But I’ll say that was the first step. That’s the first battle, maybe, but the war’s not over. And if you look at Where that’s happened at other colleges across the country, almost everyone eventually became eligible and created a chapter. And I’ll just say to the local university where that happened here, you know, the cavalry is coming and don’t get discouraged to the the students there. There’s people working in the shadows and behind the scenes. And, you know, we’ll do everything we can to help out. You know, it’s it’s just a first step. Disappointment and You know, failure at first sh motivate you more to try to achieve what you’re trying to achieve.
Kevin Doffing: Yeah, I love that. I mean, like, listen, we do a ton of energy advocacy. I’m not getting into a left or right thing. I’m just trying to advocate for vet jobs, all the above, energy security. But I mean, like, I gotta talk to people about how to show up and speak up. And I mean, I’m not telling them don’t do anything. I’m telling them, listen, you just need to connect your military service, whatever your service was, to your industry experience. Right. Like, we’re not the biggest advocacy group because we’re targeting you know, 10% of the energy workforce that have military experience, right? So it’s there are other groups that are bigger than us, but this is the group I belong to and the group I like being with. It’s interesting in how it’s hard to get some people, don’t want to put their head up. You know, I got a buddy who, one of our new chapters, is like, listen, I just don’t want to get mixed up in it. I will do anything to help you get veterans more jobs. I am all in on that aspect. I believe everything we’re talking about. But that’s the only thing I really want to get involved in because I just feel like it’s so hot out there that I don’t want to do it. And I’m like, man, but that’s how we bring the temperature down, is just I keep having to go back and forth with other energy advocates. They’re like, what’s your key talking point? I’m like, being a good dude or gal, like just being somebody and talking to somebody. You know, when we’ve had to defeat like misinformation on solar panels, one of my guys was at an American Legion having a beer, and someone’s like, I hear that, You know, the water runs off it when it rains, it causes cancer. And my guy didn’t launch into like a 12 point thing and pull up a PowerPoint or cite a research paper. He’s like, actually, nah, that’s not true. And that’s all it took because he was just somebody that he was having a beer with that he trusted that knew, worked in the industry, and all the drama was gone. They went back to just having a beer. We just need to talk about what we do for a living. Like I’m literally going to talk to a major wind company. Cause they’re like our veteran employees don’t feel comfortable talking about their jobs with their neighbors. Right. As they’re powering their neighborhood, as they are doing this amazing critical infrastructure, frontline worker, just turning gears. You know, they could be just as easily working on a drilling room floor. Yeah. And they’re not comfortable talking about their job. It’s like the craziest thing to me.
Jim Sardonia: Yeah, I agree. I agree. It’s like I’m proud of what I do. Like you said, it’s not a left or right thing. There’s a lot of viewpoints in the renewable industry from what I’ve seen and the people I’ve talked to and, you know, work with throughout the years. You know, you do get stereotyped if you say, I work in wind power renewables. It’s like, you well, you kill bats or birds or whatever. But you know, when you explain, you know, this is how we work with that. And there’s some legitimate concerns for both, you know, wind and solar. Like I wouldn’t want a turbine a hundred two hundred feet away from my house with shadow flicker. Right. Going. If you see videos of that online or what
Kevin Doffing: I don’t want to pump jack my backyard, but I’m fine having it my property. In like everything in moderation.
Jim Sardonia: Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, there’s Right. Exactly. And you mentioned standing up and being proud or just being assertive. You know, that’s one of the things that I’ve seen. You know, I’ve seen some veterans come in and they’re maybe a little better word, shy or afraid of standing up and speaking out or speaking up. And I said, just if you know there’s something where you can make an improvement, it’s the companies I’ve worked with, they are looking to move the company forward. If it’s an idea, if it’s a change in a process that makes things more efficient, brings in more revenue, you know, just gets a project done as you’re going through that development stage. I’ve seen 10 times more projects die in the development stage because they just don’t pencil. But yeah, you know, there’s a few that comes through. And if you can find a way to get those through, be willing to stand up. And that’s the kind of leadership I think a lot of companies are looking for. Just people that will own it, own their process or their function, their job function, their project they’re working on, and just trying to push things forward. You know, to me it’s not a job. We’re trying to make put something in the ground that’s gonna be there for thirty years. You know, my kids will see these layouts and these projects that I’ve worked on. And, you know, that’s something I want for them to see.
Kevin Doffing: Yeah. No marginal fuel cost, energy independence. Like whenever I go in and talk, if I know somebody’s hostile against renewables for whatever reason, I just talk about it without saying the trigger words. I talk about like being on an early stage of a technology curve, cost declines, you know, consumer preferences, capital returns, de risk long term. Yeah, like I can talk about renewables for seven minutes without saying the words. Yeah. And usually by the time we get around to it, they’re like, okay. Well, I d you know, I just haven’t thought about it that way. I’m like, well, then you’ve had some really bad salesmen come in here who are like pitching you the hearts and minds campaign without talking about the dollars and cents. What? Well, Jim, as we wrap up, you’ve been doing this for a while. You’ve been in the industry, you’ve built what, over seven gigawatts of projects. What’s your advice to veterans that are considering this industry? I think that almost a third.
Jim Sardonia: Yeah, exactly.
Kevin Doffing: Of the folks that listen to this, if not more, are active duty service members that are exploring this industry. Either they’re really want to get into it and they’re trying to figure out how, or they’re just kind of dipping their toe and then looking at it. What advice would you have for those that are evaluating this industry to know if it’s right for them?
Jim Sardonia: Well, I mean, the first thing I can say is that I’ve never been busier in my eighteen years in the renewables. And the next few years I think the outlook is outstanding and not just renewable energy, any energy industry. Just the growth, the demand for power is just skyrocketing. So in the next five, you know, six years we have so many projects that we there’s more projects than people and money that we can build. So I don’t see it getting to a point where there’s gonna be a slowdown at all. At all. It’s gonna continue. The thing to me to look for is look for companies that are very diverse. Even if it’s just renewables, look for a company that’s diverse. We’re doing wind power, we’re doing solar, we’re doing battery, we’re repowering sites, repowering wind and maybe even solar. We’re looking at data center power for data centers at certain areas. So if you know I’d be a little less confident if there’s companies just focused on one small area. Yeah. You know, we’ve seen a few companies go out in the last few years, but because of that, they were a little siloed into one area. And, you know, if one tariff hits, then it’s devastating. So there’s a lot of old wind farms out there that need to be repowered, that are being repowered. You know, that’s one great diversified area that we’re working on. So to me, those type of areas are those type of companies that have the diversification. Kind of figure out what you want to do. You want to be in the office, you want to be out in the field. There’s great operations. I see so many positions for operations managers and just people in the field, construction workers. There’s tons of activity, especially on the solar side. Solar requires a lot more people, a lot more numbers and people w during the construction phase. Wind requires fewer people, but more highly skilled, like these crane operators that, you know, only a few dozen can operate those. There’s certain areas in solar. You know, there’s a great I don’t know if I can promote a website, but it’s called get into energy dot jobs. Get into energy dot jobs. If you put your MOS in there, they will link your MOS to jobs that are available out there. So it’s a great that’s great.
Kevin Doffing: We’ve had them on the podcast. So that’s underneath that’s the Troops to Energy Jobs program underneath the Center for Energy Workforce Development. And John does coaching. It’s free coaching for any veteran that wants to get involved. You can go find that episode where we just talk about John and how he’s helping veterans through CEWD and the Troops to Energy Jobs do that. But getintoenergy.org, I think, website is a great. Platform where they have jobs, they have the MOS trainer and everything like that. Yeah. No. I mean, you know, one of the things we often get asked is like, hey, could you do this? Could you be a placement group? Could you be a recruiting? And I’m like, so many people are already doing that. Let’s not do what others are doing. Let’s do what needs to be done. And that’s where we do the community and the advocacy work because that’s the stuff that other people are not doing in our space that I’m excited to do.
Jim Sardonia: And just I I saw one of your other videos interviews before. Get on LinkedIn. There are so many sources. Get a LinkedIn profile if you don’t have one. Get a veteran that has transitioned to review a resume. You know, I’ll be happy to send it to me. You can find me on LinkedIn. I’ll be happy to help review. I’ve reviewed so many resumes from veterans and hopefully some of the things I’ve recommended help. Search out the leaders in renewable energy, which is funny. I typed in veterans. Are leaders in renewable energy that are veterans and your name popped up. You’re the first one that popped up. If you type that in Google, you’ll see your name and things like that. That’s important.
Kevin Doffing: For everybody that finds me. Well, and I mean, you know, that’s the point of why we have that Slack community. So, like if you’re listening to this and you do want to find some people, you can do that. But also, you just go to projectvanguard.org. You can join and you’ll get invited to our Slack community. We have a private Slack community with over 500 veterans that work in this industry. Introduce yourself. I guarantee you, we were just talking about with Andy Davis on a podcast episode that came out last week. Within a week, he had five meetings and three coffees. You know, with veterans in the industry. And it it happened like that. Like it’s a qualification or a vetting process that you’re on this platform. Okay, you’re a good person and you’ve already self-selected. You’re not going waste my time and I’m interested and can help you. So I mean it’s like just expedites on a peer-to-peer, decentralized, expedite way, because I love having these calls. I’m going to get murdered by our staff if I keep taking more calls with vets that want to get in and I talk about the same stuff. But all that to say, Jim, so great to have you on here. The time flies by. That’s always a good sign. Thanks so much for taking the time today with us.
Jim Sardonia: Absolutely. It was a pleasure talking to you and pleasure to be able to contribute.
Kevin Doffing: Awesome Jim. We’ll be in touch soon.
Jim Sardonia: Thank you.
