Solar Streetlights Are Resilience Infrastructure, Not Just Cheap Power

Streetlights sound boring. Until the grid fails and they’re the only lights left on.

In this episode of Climate Confident, I’m joined by Liam Ryan, CEO of Streetleaf, a climate tech company rethinking one of the most overlooked pieces of public infrastructure: the streetlight. And yes, I know. Streetlights. Hardly the sexiest corner of the energy transition. But this conversation quickly becomes about something much bigger: resilience, decarbonisation, public safety, emissions reduction, and how we build communities that keep functioning as extreme weather puts more pressure on the grid.

You’ll hear why the real cost of streetlighting often isn’t the electricity at all. It’s trenching, wiring, maintenance, utility control, copper theft, repair delays, and infrastructure that can take far too long to fix. Liam explains how solar-plus-battery streetlights can avoid much of that mess while helping cities, developers, and communities move closer to net zero.

We dig into how Streetleaf’s lights performed during hurricanes, why three to five days of battery backup matters, how monitoring changes maintenance, and why policy can help but won’t replace cost and performance. You might be shocked to learn that in some cases, utilities can delay streetlight repairs for months while the customer keeps paying. Delightful system design, if your goal is public frustration.

This is a practical episode about climate tech that works in the real world: faster installs, fewer wires, lower emissions, better uptime, and infrastructure that earns its keep when conditions get ugly.

🎙️ Listen now to hear how Liam Ryan and Streetleaf are helping turn streetlights into part of the climate resilience toolkit.

Sign up to Climate Confident+ for deep dive analysis of the major climate and energy stories of the day.

Transcript

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Liam Ryan: 0:00

If the grid is out, everybody's home is out as well. And while my team is driving around looking at the streetlights, people are literally outside like having a picnic, eating dinner under our streetlights because it's the only source of light in the community.

Tom Raftery: 0:15

And that is when a streetlight stops being something that nobody thinks about and becomes a thing a community depends on. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is Climate Confident Stories and Strategies that cut Emissions Episode 275, and I'm your host, Tom Raftery. My guest today is Liam Ryan, CEO of Street Leaf, a company rethinking one of the least glamorous but surprisingly important pieces of public infrastructure. The streetlight. We talk about why the real cost of streetlights is often the trenching, wiring, maintenance, and slow repair, not the electricity itself, and how solar plus battery lighting can cut emissions while making communities more resilient, especially as extreme weather puts more pressure on grids. So I started by asking Liam how he ended up working on solar streetlights. Liam, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Liam Ryan: 1:24

Awesome, Tom. Appreciate you having me. Yeah. My name is Liam Ryan. I'm the CEO of Streetleaf. We're a solar street lighting company based in Tampa, Florida.

Tom Raftery: 1:33

And Liam. How did you get into solar street lighting?

Liam Ryan: 1:39

So just like everybody, I grew up wanting to think about streetlights every day. So living my dream here in Florida no actually, so it's kind of a story of like luck and also just like being the right place in the right time, which I guess is the same thing as luck, but I was working for a conservation company during COVID and that all ended with the Global Pandemic. The company I was working for was tied to ecotourism, so I moved back home to Tampa where I'm from and my family actually has a real estate development company and they were working on a big project even during the pandemic. And the local utility had an issue with streetlights in their project. So they had to come up with some solutions, had had some consultants help them find what ended up being like some initial solar street lighting. I came in, I was sleeping on their couch. They're like, Hey, we think there might be an option here. We're just using it for one project. See if anybody else needs streetlights the way we did. I'm zooming through a lot of the, the initial drama, but the gist is I went from living in the woods in Southern Africa for a conservation company to talking to HOAs in Florida about solar street lighting in a matter of like 30 days. And it wasn't because I knew what I was talking about. It was just because the people here needed something better for streetlights and then that's multiplied throughout the state of Florida, but now in, in the 10 other states that we're delivering products as Streetleaf.

Tom Raftery: 3:11

And why solar streetlights?

Liam Ryan: 3:13

Streetlights are one of those weird things that one, nobody ever thinks about, which means technology hasn't really changed there for 50 plus years. But two, the cost of the streetlight is not actually the power to power like the light bulb. It's actually the infrastructure to get the streetlight in place. So, that's where a solar and battery powered streetlight makes a lot of sense. So traditional streetlight, you either are doing overhead wires or a lot of them these days, you're digging a trench in the earth, running wire, running conduit, and tying it back into the grid, which has a lot of costs, but also takes a lot of time. Whereas a solar and battery powered streetlight, you don't need any of that. You just have a solar panel battery, some modern technology included, and you just plop the streetlight right there that day.

Tom Raftery: 4:03

And what's the attraction and to whom? I mean, who are you selling solar streetlights to and what's the big attraction for them to go for solar streetlights versus traditional streetlights, which as you mentioned, need to have trenches dug and cables laid and stuff?

Liam Ryan: 4:27

So same comment about nobody thinks about streetlights. My follow up comment or question is really nobody knows who pays for streetlights either. Kinda assume it's the local municipality or I don't know, maybe my HOA, I don't really know who pays. And it's actually who is ever responsible for controlling that road. A lot of our customers are in new construction and developments. So think like big home building companies, big land development companies that are putting in all this road, all these sewers, all this infrastructure in new communities, they're also putting in the streetlights. that's who we're going to, and it's not only, hey, it's a renewable energy product, but it also is saving them time and money as well.

Tom Raftery: 5:14

Okay, so explain the product itself, because you mentioned solar, you mentioned battery, you mentioned street light, but tie it together for me. What is it that these lights deliver? what's the product look like and what is it?

Liam Ryan: 5:27

Yeah, so the kind of quick origin story I was buzzing through didn't highlight really the key differentiator of Streetleaf. When I moved back to Tampa, this was happening as far as like the solar light, not the solar lighting, the street lighting drama with the local utility, and kinda like my family's development. What we didn't highlight is we spoke to a lot of other Solar street lighting companies. And they had installed 10 in a park over here, 12 in a parking lot over there. But none of them had an out of the box easy solution. It was just like a big headache working with them. And two, it was like, Hey, that's great, but I'm gonna need a thousand streetlights when there's 2-3000 homeowners living here and 10 years from now, if there's any issues, I don't want the HOA manager calling me and saying Hey, come fix my streetlights. I need somebody who's gonna be responsible for them if I'm gonna move away from the local utility. And nobody could really answer those questions sufficiently. That told us we have to do it ourselves. But two, go back to your question of what Streetleaf is. It's a product, but it's also like an installation and like maintenance service. So we're delivering our products. We're installing them for you, and then we're responsible for the long-term maintenance to keep the lights on. So it's turnkey all in one, like easy button, all of those buzzwords, but it's really just making street lighting as easy as possible, so the customer only has to think about it for one second, hear our story, see our product, and then not worry about anything else.

Tom Raftery: 7:07

And just to clarify, the lights themselves, they are traditional poles with a light, solar panel and built in battery.

Liam Ryan: 7:18

Oh yeah, no, fair, fair enough. I did, I didn't actually describe the product at all. I was just going, going through the whole, whole spiel. So, yeah. It, it is so it's, a PV on top of a, aluminium pole. We're in the Northern hemisphere, so always facing exactly 180 degrees south. We're using a lithium iron phosphate battery that's integrated into the, PV frame currently, and then a separate like aluminium pole arm with an LED light. So the panel's always oriented south. The arm is always oriented exactly over the roadway where it needs to be. And then I know we're talking a little bit more on like the solar and battery aspect of the products, but all of our lights are also what's called dark sky certified, which means they minimise light pollution. All of the light is going down, not up and causing further light pollution in our skies.

Tom Raftery: 8:05

I saw that in your website. Yeah. The light coming off them, how much light do they give out? If it's a cloudy day how long does the battery last? Those kind of things. Tell me all about that as well.

Liam Ryan: 8:15

Yeah. So we can talk lumens and foot candles if you really want to dive into that on this podcast. But the, the way I simplify it at a high level is our customers are in the US so I'll speak to like the, the way the US lighting and roadway system is set up. There's basically four types of roadways when you're designing them, which means there's four types of street lights and the power needed to deliver lights safely on them.

There's technical names for 'em: 8:40

local, collector, arterial, major. I tell my team small, medium, large, extra large. Currently our products are cost effective and meet all kind of safety requirements on the small and medium applications, which is like 5,500 lumens for a small roadway, a local roadway, 7,500 lumens for a collector road, which is kinda like that medium application, think like a two lane road through your neighbourhood.

Tom Raftery: 9:09

And battery life. As I say, a couple of cloudy days come by.

Liam Ryan: 9:13

All of our systems are designed depending on the product to have three to five days of full battery backup. What that means is, hey, if that panel was not taking in any more insolation, any more sunshine for three days, that light would still stay on and stay on throughout the night for three to five days in a row. And we're able to edit our lighting profiles if we need to extend that lifecycle, which we do sometimes here in Florida with hurricanes, but that's the settings out the box.

Tom Raftery: 9:41

And seeing, as you mentioned hurricanes, how well do they withstand being battered by hurricane winds, and rain?

Liam Ryan: 9:49

Yeah. So when we first installed our first products over six years ago, we got them signed and sealed by a local professional engineer here in Florida. They meet 160 mile per hour wind code, they're compliant. They're gonna be stable and just not move, even if there's a big category five storm coming through. Four years ago, we experienced our first one in Hurricane Ian here in Florida. Obviously on paper it, it works great. but we're obviously very nervous about what it looked like in reality. And I can tell you of the lights that we had impacted by Ian. We actually had a 5% like failure rate. We had an adjustable knuckle bracket on the panel that made installation easier, but actually like that was the source of the main failure. We went back and changed the product design a little bit. Then in subsequent hurricanes, or sorry, Irma. Irma was the first hurricane four years ago. Then we had Ian three years ago on in Florida as well. Even bigger storm. Our issue rate dropped to 1.5% of the lights affected during the storm. Then last year we had two hurricanes back to back Helene and Milton, our failure rate was below 1%. So short answer is on paper we're a hundred percent compliant with anywhere between 160 to 180 miles per hour. Over the years now, that we've been battered by a couple storms, we've learned a lot and designed our products to be more and more resilient as we go through these storms.

Tom Raftery: 11:23

And if there's an electrical outage as a result of a storm, normal streetlights are gonna have an issue, but yours should stay on, right?

Liam Ryan: 11:33

So that was something that we had always talked about when we were starting. But it's really during these extreme weather events where we see it come to fruition. So it was actually during the first hurricane, hurricane Irma, where our lights actually had the highest failure rate, like I just mentioned 5%. But, we had people on our team go out locally, drive through communities, see if there's any like damage that we're not reporting on our end.'cause we're actually tracking all the lights performance remotely in our office in Tampa. And what we saw was actually pretty amazing. Because not only traditional streetlights are out, but if the grid is out, everybody's home is out as well. And while we're, my team is driving around looking at the streetlights, people are literally outside like having a picnic, eating dinner under our streetlights because it's the only source of light in the community. So it was actually like just such a great validation for what we're doing.

Tom Raftery: 12:30

And obviously then you have other issues for traditional streetlights, things like copper theft. I see it here in Seville because there's a car charger about, 500 metres from where I'm sitting right now. And the two cables for DC fast charging have been snipped off it. Is that an issue in the US for I, we're not talking car chargers, now we're talking streetlights, but obviously streetlights have copper cables going to them as well.

Liam Ryan: 13:02

It is. So municipalities have, one one of their biggest line items in general is maintaining or paying for streetlights. And two, a growing number of municipalities are having serious issues with, copper theft. And it's literally sounds like doing the same thing where you are on the DC fence chargers, people go in literally pull up a pickup truck, seems crazy to me, but literally like just snip, tie the wires off and just pull all of the wires out and just drive away. And so it is becoming a bigger and bigger issue. And you're right, our lights don't have that.'cause they have no wires. They're not connected to the grid. They're also, I mean, maybe not makes the best sense in this context, but they're also all low voltage DC So not for thieves, but for people who are, who are working on the lights you can't electrocute yourself either working on them, but they're 30 feet in the air, not at ground level where people are stealing anything.

Tom Raftery: 13:57

And let, let's talk about some of the costs that municipalities have to deal with, theft and repairs is obviously one. Are there other significant costs? Energy would be another one, obviously, which again, with yours isn't an issue, but what are other costs that municipalities might have to deal with that they wouldn't had they used Streetleaf?

Liam Ryan: 14:20

Yeah, so it's two items. So one you touched on is maintenance. So there's two scenarios the way most municipalities handle street lighting. The first one is the city owns all their own streetlights, they're maintaining them, they're paying for the power and they're dealing with like vendors, suppliers, handling like a whole fleet of 20, 30, 50,000, a hundred thousand streetlights. So the cost of them is literally just honestly maintaining something and having the crews and the overhead and handling that. The other scenario is, and I'm sorry I'm, I know I'm jumping around, but that's where copper theft becomes a big issue. The second scenario is a local utility company will actually lease street lighting to a municipality. So we're seeing that more and more in the US where it's actually a utility who owns the and streetlights, is charging the municipality not only for electricity. That's actually a really small percentage of the monthly bill. It's more of amortising the cost of the streetlights over a long period. And the utility is the one who controls them. So it's just a big bill for the city and they don't have any control. So like the two scenarios are they either have all the control and it's really costly. They outsource that control. But I'm sure other guests have talked about this as well. It's throughout the world, not just the United States, but utility rates are skyrocketing across the board for a variety of reasons. So utility rates are growing much higher than inflation. So cities can control streetlights and just be a burden. They can give it, outsource it to a utility, but costs are going up crazy with them, or now the third option would be do Streetleaf and we would come in. There wouldn't be that energy cost. We could just sell you lights straight up. or if you want us to do all the maintenance and something that you would be be paying a utility, we could do that too. But we're not burdened by all of the other factors that are driving utility rates higher.

Tom Raftery: 16:22

And I know that most traditional streetlights are not smart. They're not connected. They're connected to the electricity grid, but they're not talking back to base as it were. Some of the more modern ones typically are now, but that's pretty new. And I would say, I don't know what the install base of those would be versus traditional, but for municipalities who don't have, or who only have some smart streetlights, they probably have someone hired to go out in a truck. And see which lights are working and which ones are not, and make a note of the ones which aren't, and then do a truck roll the following day to do a repair or some kind of process like that. Or maybe they have a QR code on the, the, the street lights. So if it goes out, people can, you know, take a picture of it or whatever and report it back. Yours, I'm guessing, because you've said you're monitoring them, you know when a streetlight fails or is about to fail so you're not burdened or your customers are not burdened with that cost. Is that fair?

Liam Ryan: 17:30

It, it is fair. And to add some more context to what you're describing. So I'll speak specifically for Florida, but I've seen similar laws in other states in the US is the utility companies in the state of Florida. There's a couple other like deadlines they have in this just Florida legislation that allows them to push off, repairing a streetlight for up to a year without cancelling, yeah, without having any effect to their contracts or their payment terms for that city or that HOA to pay for streetlight. So that's crazy.

Tom Raftery: 18:08

Hmm.

Liam Ryan: 18:09

So we actually started monitoring our streetlights for all the reasons you described about proactive maintenance, having just like our smart control aspect to it. I mentioned during hurricanes that, hey, if we think a hurricane or two last year where there's two back to back, we need to extend the battery life beyond five days, we could live make a dimming profile of the streetlights.

So from midnight to 4: 18:33

00 AM when the roads are less used, that light can dim, extend the battery life. But hey, if somebody's out pulling outta the driveway, walking their dog, there's a motion sensor that flicks that light back onto a hundred percent if needed. And that can actually trigger the rest of the lights on the street too. Before we even got into all that, the reason we started monitoring the lights goes back to the, the origin story. So that first, like local utility that was causing us issues in the original development project, when we first put out our first prototype, they sent two guys out in a lawn chair to look at the light. And they were hoping that there was issues, it didn't work. So they could throw mud against the wall or cause a big fuss that we were getting into their business. Light stayed on the entire night. I'm sure those two guys went home like tired and cranky. what that told us was we need to have the data to back up what we're doing. So as we get bigger, as we install these, as we say, Hey, the utility takes a year. We take eight days. In emergency, we can turn it around in one day or less. It's okay, we need to have the data to back up what we're doing, showing our response time, showing the performance during storms. So that's also why we're monitoring it, just to have the performance data to validate what we're doing.

Tom Raftery: 19:56

And what does that monitoring of the streetlights is there any surprising information you get from it or does it change anything operationally? You know what have you learned from it, if anything?

Liam Ryan: 20:09

It does a little bit. We're just looking for like performance relative to the other streetlights in the area. So, hey, like why if there's a hundred in this community, why is this one panel absorbing less sunlight than the others? Like, we have minimum thresholds on like flags for maintenance, but it's also relative indicators for the other lights in the area. We've had a couple, we're like, Hey, why is this one acting so strangely? Let's roll a truck. Sure enough, somebody planted a tree right next to the solar panel that wasn't in the original landscaping plan. Like little details like that that we, catch onto quickly. So we kind of know, hey, we've seen enough spontaneous trees appear that we can guess when something like that's going on. Another thing is you mentioned QR codes, so like even dumb streetlights that are not connected, don't have any kind of reporting data. They typically don't even have an identifier on the pole that allows somebody to even report what's going on. So, we have all of our lights connected. We do also have a QR code with a unique identifier on every single poll that we put in the field so people can get directly in touch with our team. I will say that leads to some hilarious anecdotes as well. I don't know, like people will scan a QR code and complain about their neighbor's fence encroaching, or somebody else violating HOA rules. And it's this isn't the community forum, this is just to see if there's a streetlight issue. But tho those messages are pretty funny too.

Tom Raftery: 21:38

Is there anywhere where solar street lighting doesn't make sense yet? Maybe shading conditions, streets, densities, or other, issues that, you know, I, I haven't thought about there?

Liam Ryan: 21:50

Yeah, so the real thing of when it doesn't make sense, and the way we look at it, at Streetleaf is around cost. So you can make it work. It's, just how much are you willing to pay for it, like anything? So we say like, Hey, our, lights work from Miami to Minnesota. But to light that same local small roadway in Miami versus Minnesota, you just need a larger panel and a larger battery to guarantee that three to five day battery backup. And that kind of erodes our value prop with our customers. Earlier I was describing, hey, all the hardware we're putting on top of our aluminium pole with a light bulb on it, our solar panel, our battery, our smart control technology, that needs to be more cost effective than digging a hole in the earth, running wire and conduit and tying into the grid. When you go into more kind of northern latitude climates, more extreme winter events, or even more dense urban areas where there's a lot of shading with tall buildings, you need a bigger panel a bigger battery to have that reliability, which erodes the cost equation a little bit.

Tom Raftery: 22:59

And what kind of project then is easiest to first fit for street life? Would it be new developments, municipalities, disaster prone areas, theft prone areas? All of the above. None of the above.

Liam Ryan: 23:14

So, so all of the above. Literally there's streetlights now, now, hopefully you'll, Tom, you'll, be thinking about street lighting and you'll realise like driving through where you live. Hey, who pays for these? Why is this one not match that one. This one's been out for 45 days what the heck? But there's literally so many applications. We're still a growing company, so we try not to boil the ocean. So, we're laser focused on new construction. That's where you find the biggest wins. And we're having some conversations about like retrofits going into old areas, doing things like that. That's the next iteration of Streetleaf and what we're thinking. But right now we're just trying to get as many solar streetlights out there as possible, which is primarily in new construction,

Tom Raftery: 23:59

And what would you say tends to surprise customers most after an installation?

Liam Ryan: 24:05

How easy it is as far as the installation. We talk about on our website, it takes 15 minutes. We have a little sped up video showing an install crew installing it in 15 minutes. But everybody rolls their eyes and it's okay, yeah, sure. But but then we actually do it that quickly and we're in and out of a job site like in a blink of an eye. So actually how easy it is is usually a surprise, but the ease usually comes in after the fact. In a lot of these construction projects, people probably don't always admit it, but like plans change halfway through. In a residential setting, maybe. Hey, I thought all the driveways were gonna be on this side of the street, but they're now on that side of the street. And with a normal street light, it's a huge effort you have to disconnect that light or the entire street from the grid. Go re-dig, bore under a roadway, put in a new street light. It's like a couple months project. Really costly versus our stuff. 15 minutes out the ground, 15 minutes across the street, you're done. So that's really like where a lot of our customers see the ease, not only at the beginning but throughout the project.

Tom Raftery: 25:15

I mean, 15 minutes Sounds incredible. You must have diggers ready to go to dig the hole concrete, ready to pour for the foundation. Walk me through what, what's involved in an actual installation that you can get it done that fast?

Liam Ryan: 25:28

Yeah, so we actually primarily hand dig the majority of our holes too. So that is included in the 15 minute countdown. So we'll hand dig, or if we have like soft enough soils, we will use like, it's called like a hydrovac. You literally are digging a hole with a water kind of jet pump. The reason we do that is so we don't damage any underground. We're just the streetlight guys. We don't need to take out a, main water line or something like that. And then instead of concrete, we like to use what's called like a quick setting foam. So that's like really the, the secret sauce in 15 minutes is this foam will set within that period versus concrete takes 24 hours plus to fully set. That's kind of a secret sauce that we use to make sure we're, moving that quickly.

Tom Raftery: 26:17

And what was harder than expected in making streetlights commercially reliable?

Liam Ryan: 26:53

Harder than expected, and I think we're getting a little over that hump at first is one, getting people to think about streetlights at all. Fact, I'm on your podcast shows that we're succeeding at that a little bit. But that was a huge lift the first couple years we're doing this is just getting people to take a second and actually think about it. As far as the actual like implementation side, it's as we've gone from a smaller company to actually throwing in hundreds of streetlights a week, it's just making sure our supply chain is really consistent. We have our logistics, like really just a fine tuned machine even with all this supply chain and tariff uncertainty that's been happening over the couple years. I actually view everything that's been happening as I don't know. It's, it's really helped us mature as a company quickly. Like we've had to make really hard decisions early in our tenure. And so it's made us become a lot more logistically precise and clean and well oiled machine a lot faster than we probably would've because we just had to.

Tom Raftery: 27:54

And you mentioned that they are dark sky certified, the lights and, and turtle safe. Do your customers care? Is that something that people ask for? Why did you do that?

Liam Ryan: 28:07

Yeah. So, two things. So dark sky and turtle safe not to be the lighting nerd are technically two different things. But we, we do have both options. So all of our lights out of the box are dark sky. There's a couple different key things you need to meet. But the two main ones are, it's called full cutoff, which means all the light goes down. It's not going above the fixture in any way. And then it's also around colour temperature. So, thethe way you measure colour temperature and lighting is on like a, Kelvin scale. 5,000 is really white light 3000, which you need to be below 3000 Kelvin to be dark sky certified is a little bit more of an orangey, yellowish hue. That's just better not only for light pollution, but for just human beings living in artificial light environments in general. So that's outta the box, what we have. Turtle light is an even lower, kind of a little bit more complicated setting, but basically is just minimising the, like light wavelengths. So breeding sea turtles don't get impacted and walk towards the light versus walking back towards the moon or, or the sun in the morning to, to make it back to the sea.

Tom Raftery: 29:19

Right, do people care? Is this something that they ask for?

Liam Ryan: 29:23

That's a great question.'cause clearly I went on a ramble and I was the only one who cared. But so short answer, people normally don't care unless they become like lighting nerds like I am. But municipalities care. So we saw the writing on the wall a couple years ago that everybody's gonna start going towards dark sky compliant. So, we're like, Hey, we'll just get ahead of it and make all of our lights, out of the box, more dark sky compliant, which makes meeting local lighting requirements and spacing the street lights a little bit more difficult at first. So it also made us get fine tuned, make sure we're being as efficient as possible when we committed early to going dark sky.

Tom Raftery: 30:06

Okay, and what would need to change then for off grid solar street lighting to become the norm rather than more novel as it is today?

Liam Ryan: 30:17

So, one just street leave becoming more and more prevalent throughout not only new development, but key cities in the United States. So we really view like Streetleaf as gonna become like the standard, in not only solar street lighting, but street lighting in general. As far as a norm, I heard a term that somebody used and I, and I use it all the time myself now, like urban clutter. There's like signs and stop signs and not only streetlights, but stoplights and kinda everything else that it fades in the background. Right now, a solar panel on top of a streetlight is like captivating, which we enjoy. We want people to be thinking about our product, but as it becomes more and more prevalent, it'll just be part of everyday life. So it literally is just volume and getting our name out there and getting the products in the ground. And I am confident that not even slowly, quickly, solar streetlight will become like just the standard streetlight that people assume they're gonna get.

Tom Raftery: 31:16

And how much of that, how much of a role should policy play in making it the norm?

Liam Ryan: 31:22

at the end of the day, just view the market for street lighting whatever is is gonna dictate it. Policy will help a little bit, but I mean, we've made it work for our customers based on cost and performance. At the end of the day the superior product's gonna win whether with policy help or not. So that's the way we view life, is we need to have not only the best solar streetlight, but the best streetlight on the market and the rest will sort itself out.

Tom Raftery: 31:47

I wanna do a quick lightning round of questions now if you're up for it.

Liam Ryan: 31:51

Yeah, absolutely.

Tom Raftery: 31:52

One sentence answers. So, cheaper power or more reliable power?

Liam Ryan: 31:59

Reliable.

Tom Raftery: 32:01

All right.

Liam Ryan: 32:02

Oh, one, one sentence, not one, one word.

Tom Raftery: 32:05

That's okay. That's okay. What should cities stop doing tomorrow?

Liam Ryan: 32:11

Overspending on infrastructure.

Tom Raftery: 32:14

What problem gets ignored most often?

Liam Ryan: 32:17

The complaint from the end user, which in this case is the individual homeowner or the resident in a community

Tom Raftery: 32:23

What matters more cost or uptime?

Liam Ryan: 32:28

uptime.

Tom Raftery: 32:30

Where does solar lighting still struggle?

Liam Ryan: 32:34

Struggles on cost. So, so you said one sentence, but in some parts of the United States, the cost is great and others it's not so great. So cost is the key driver

Tom Raftery: 32:46

All right. And what belief about streetlights is just wrong?

Liam Ryan: 32:53

That they need to take a year to fix.

Tom Raftery: 32:58

Okay, great. Now a left field question for you, and you can take more than one sentence on this one. If you could have any person or character, alive or dead real or fictional as a champion far solar street lights, who would it be and why?

Liam Ryan: 33:17

Ooh. That's a, that's a great question. I'm a big fan of Tony Fadell? I always say his last name wrong. I've, I've never met him.

Tom Raftery: 33:28

Tony Fadell, yeah.

Liam Ryan: 33:29

Yeah, he is such a champion of the product first mentality. Obviously like was key in delivering the first iPhone. They did the Nest thermostat. Nest is something I really relate with at what we're doing at Streetleaf is it's taking something mundane nobody's ever thought about, that the incumbents have gotten fat and happy with and haven't updated. And just brought it to modern day and made it better. So I think somebody like that would be a great champion for Streetleaf.

Tom Raftery: 34:01

Brilliant answer. I love it. Okay, we're coming towards the end of the podcast now, Liam, is there any question that I didn't ask that you wish I did, or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to think about?

Liam Ryan: 34:14

I mean, we covered the whole basis, like at the end of the day, it's fairly simple product. We try to keep it very straightforward. So I think overall, you covered all the bases.

Tom Raftery: 34:22

And if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed on the podcast today, Liam, where would you have me direct them?

Liam Ryan: 34:29

So they should just go check out streetleaf.com that has our latest products, has everybody on the team info, and if you want to reach out to me, they can find me on LinkedIn as well.

Tom Raftery: 34:41

Alright, Liam, that's been fascinating. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Liam Ryan: 34:45

Awesome. Thanks Tom.