PES met with Daniel Flanigan, Chief Marketing & Product Officer at Erthos, to find out more about the simplicity, performance, and economics of earth-mounted solar, and why their technology is poised to upend the utility-scale market.
PES: Hi Daniel, thanks for taking the time to chat with us today. Perhaps we should start with some basic information about Erthos. Why was it founded and what does it do?
Daniel Flanigan: Erthos was founded by Jim Tyler in 2019. Jim came from DEPCOM Power, which he co-founded in 2013, and prior to that he was a VP at First Solar. He has worked in utility-scale solar for nearly 20 years now, which is a long time in our young industry. He had been carrying this idea with him for some time that once module prices decreased below a certain threshold, roughly 40 cents per watt, depending on numerous factors, it would become more cost-effective to eliminate racking and tracking, and all the material and labor costs that come with it, and instead just put the modules flat on the ground. In 2019, he realised that we had largely crossed this threshold, and so Erthos was born.
