Don't Sell me Haircare after my Buzzcut

This is our last throwback to The Growth Compass, the show I hosted before The Grove. Season two starts next week!!

Scott Wharton runs Tandem PV, which stacks a new material called perovskite on a standard silicon cell. When we talked a year ago, it was four weeks from its new factory.

Since then it opened a 65,000 square foot factory in Fremont, won about $7.7M from ARPA-E to scale US manufacturing, and added former Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to its board. Huge congrats, Scott!

Let's dive in.

In this week's issue

• Pick one customer
• Virginia's 21 GW solar shopping list
• Six funders taking applications

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FOUNDER LESSON OF THE WEEK

Pick one customer

Even if your tech is applicable 'everywhere', you need to pick one customer to get your feed under you.

When Scott joined Tandem PV, the plan was home rooftops. The thinking, inside the company and across the industry, was that homeowners have less roof to work with and pay more.

Both were true. It still didn't hold up. By Scott's count, more than 80% of the US market goes to utility scale and less than 10% goes to homes.

The sale is complex, too. A rooftop runs through the installer, the sales engineer, the homeowner, and maybe someone else in the house who thinks it's ugly.

“[Utilities] buy in huge quantities, they're very sophisticated buyers and once you sell to them, you're done. They deploy it.”
Scott Wharton, Tandem PV

They didn't plan their way there. Feedback came in from both sides, and they made a call. “The only way you're going to find out if you're wrong is to kind of make a bet.”

Tandem also had a clear and simple operating principle all employees shared. Ask anyone there and they'll tell you: two-layer panels, sold to the companies that build solar farms. So Scott doesn't have to check their work.

“Anybody” is not a customer.

The Growth Compass Podcast - Scott Wharton, CEO @ Tandem PV

Scott Wharton on moving Tandem PV from rooftops to utility scale.

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The Grove: Climate Tech, Explained by the People Building It

The Grove is Earth Onward's climate-tech interview podcast. Host Blake Newcomer talks with the founders, investors, and scientists building the energy transition, turning candid conversations into playbooks you can apply, from fundraising to regulation.

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BUYER SPOTLIGHT

Virginia's 21 GW solar shopping list

Dominion Energy Virginia filed its new 20-year plan on October 15. Its preferred path builds 21,229 MW of new solar, more than state law requires.

1. A clock.

Virginia's Clean Economy Act requires Dominion to seek approval for 16,100 MW of solar or onshore wind by December 31, 2035. Since the law passed in 2020, it has petitioned for nearly 5,000 MW of solar.

2. Money on the table.

Dominion takes proposals to buy Virginia solar projects from developers year-round, priced per watt.

3. What they said they can't touch.

Unproven equipment. The solicitation says every proposal “must utilize existing, proven technologies with demonstrated reliable generation performance.” And land: “cumulative local restrictions can narrow the universe of viable project sites.”

More power per acre helps when sites are scarce. A track record gets it in the door.

Sources: Dominion Energy 2026 IRP Update, Oct. 15, 2026; Dominion 2026 RFP for Renewable and Energy Storage Development Projects, rev. July 2026.

FUNDING OPPORTUNITY

Six funders taking applications

Three close in November, one takes pitches anytime, and two funds raised new money this month.

• Wilkes Climate Innovation Prize ($250K grand prize, non-dilutive) is open to companies at any stage, anywhere, working on climate mitigation and resilience; applications close November 20.
• California Energy Commission ($5.6M total) funds open climate data and modeling for a wildfire-resilient grid, open to public and private entities; applications close November 20.
• ARPA-E UNLOCK SBIR/STTR ($323K to $4.6M) funds small businesses working to raise output and capacity from key subsurface resources; applications close November 20.
• NSF America's Seed Fund (up to $2M) backs US small businesses across nearly all technology areas, energy among them, and takes project pitches anytime.
• Union Square Ventures ($900M in new funds) folded its energy thesis into its core fund and will back capital-intensive robotics, manufacturing and energy companies.
• Bison Ventures ($160M fund) backs pre-seed to Series B companies in physical AI, energy and human health; founders reach it at inquiries@bison.vc.

BRANCHES

• First GridAdvance Summit Explores Applying AI to the RTO (2 min)
• Solar PPA prices jump 5% in Q3, mainly on new trade tariffs: LevelTen (2 min)
• Google supersizes PJM virtual power plant to more than 1 GW (3 min)
• As US grid batteries surge, risk of fires plummets (3 min)
• PJM, FERC Focus on Large Load Challenges at Tech Conference (3 min)
• In Cumberland, questions swirl over water sources for newly-approved Dominion gas plant (4 min)
• What to know about the nation’s first grid utilization metrics (6 min)
• Dominion-NextEra merger hits turbulence, faces opposition from Va. leaders, SCC staff (6 min)

CLOSER

Solar is this week's shopping list. Storage is December's, and Virginia's law asks for 16,000 MW of that by 2045.

Dec 8 ~ the Utility Innovation Summit: Battery Storage.

Know a founder whose answer to “who buys this?” is “anybody”? Forward this to them.

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With love, Blake

See you next week!