<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=429271514207517&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">

Discover how TIME’s Top Greentech Companies are seen (or missed) by AI-driven platforms including ChatGPT. View the report ➡️

Skip to content

Scaling Clean Podcast

Episode 49: Alon Mashkovich, CEO of enSights

October 23, 2025

 

Scaling Clean: Alon Mashkovich on Tackling Solar Underperformance with Data-Driven Insight

How enSights is using AI and data integration to boost solar asset performance, and a business model that wins investor confidence.

Alon Mashkovich is the CEO of enSights, an AI-powered profitability software platform that optimizes energy assets and operations. With over 15 years of experience in energy consulting and renewables, Alon has built a company that helps manage more than 10,000 clean energy assets across the globe.

Alon joined me live on the Power Up Stage at RE+ Las Vegas to discuss what it takes to scale a clean energy software company, navigate international expansion, and tackle one of the solar industry’s chronic issues: underperformance. What stood out most was his approach to fundraising, market adaptation, and building technology that cuts through noise to deliver real operational value.

🔹 Local insight drives global growth: 

When expanding globally, success depends on more than just offering a good product—it requires deep market understanding and strategic entry. Each country has unique needs, regulations, and cultural dynamics, so take the time to identify local pain points and tailor your approach accordingly. Establishing a physical presence on the ground is essential. Immersing yourself in the local culture, engaging directly with customers, and truly listening to their challenges will help build trust and shape solutions that resonate.

🔹 Build investor trust through revenue: Tie your business values directly to revenue. Even a modest value proposition gains strength once you start selling—real sales prove impact and inspire investor confidence. Revenue turns ideas into credible businesses that can scale and improve. Every market has pain points, and with a strong team and culture, solving them becomes easier. It’s challenging, but when efforts are linked to tangible business impact, everything shifts.

🔹 Build trust for tough conversations: Uncomfortable conversations become much easier when built on a foundation of trust. When both sides feel safe and respected, honesty flows more naturally. Approach these discussions by listening actively, asking thoughtful questions, and seeking to understand the root cause. Take time to reflect, then engage in a constructive, two-way dialogue that leads to real progress.

Why This Conversation Matters

For me, this episode reveals three key insights:

  • Underperformance is a solvable problem. enSights’ analysis of 10,000 assets reveals massive unrealized value in existing solar fleets, and offers a practical path to recover it.
  • Global expansion starts with humility. Alon’s approach shows that listening, adapting, and embedding locally are essential for clean energy companies going abroad.
  • Data integration is the new differentiator. In an industry awash in fragmented data, success comes from turning noise into actionable insights that drive real revenue gains.

Listen to the full conversation on Apple, Spotify, Radio Public, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

Overview

Introduction

Melissa Baldwin:

This is Scaling Clean, the podcast for clean economy CEOs, investors, and the people who advise them. I’m your host, Melissa Baldwin. Each show, we bring you usable insights from tested leaders that you can apply to the business of running your business. Welcome to the Scaling Clean podcast. This episode was recorded live on the PowerUp stage at RE+ in Las Vegas.

Our episode is brought to you by the Power of Live sponsor, Wärtsilä. My guest today is Alon Mashkovich. He’s the CEO of enSights, an AI-based profitability software built to optimize energy assets and operations. Alon has spent over 15 years in energy consulting and renewables, and his software helps optimize over 10,000 clean energy assets across the globe. Alon, welcome to the show.

Alon Mashkovich:

Happy to be here. Thank you.

Melissa Baldwin:

Glad to have you. We always like to start our show by hearing from our guests, who are usually CEOs like yourself, about the journey that led you to where you are today. So how did you become a CEO? Have you always had an interest in starting businesses? What led you to being here in the seat today? 

Alon Mashkovich’s Journey Behind Building enSights

Alon Mashkovich:

Good question. Actually, yesterday I talked with my co-founders, and I said I didn’t imagine my life like this. But yes, from the beginning, I knew that I wanted to work in business. I have my first degree in law, a second degree, an MBA, majoring in finance, and I started in business consultancy, strategic business consultancy, where I developed the department and focused on renewables and energy efficiency, leading commercial and industrial facilities in their journey through digitalization and adopting new technologies.

Eventually, we worked with so many types of assets and so many types of data coming from different assets, and we discovered the shocking fact that you have so much data, and data is the new oil. Eventually, no one uses it. Even if you do, very few really get insights from it. After understanding and working in the space and identifying so many insights, we decided to do it in our own way in order to make things simple.

They taught me, as a business consultant, that everything you do, you should be very cautious. Keep it stupid simple. Just keep it simple. This is exactly what we’re trying to do, to make the lives of our partners easier through our platform. This is how we got to it.

Advice for U.S. Companies Expanding Globally

Melissa Baldwin:

I heard you mention C&I there. I know that’s a big part of your portfolio and the work that you’ve done. I want to talk to you about that as well. There’s a big, growing C&I business. It was mentioned last night at the dinner I was at with Nico.

One of the things I’ve noticed with some of my customers in the United States is that, because of the tightening policy environment, they’re looking to expand globally and expand abroad. That’s something you’ve been very successful in. You’ve done business across Europe and Latin America.

If you could give advice to businesses in the United States that want to expand globally, what advice would you have for them? For example, if they want to do business in Europe or MENA, what would you suggest?

Alon Mashkovich:

First of all, I think the market here is huge and still needs help, especially C&I, but also the risk side of things, which is struggling, and the utility space, which must have more advanced solutions. But when it comes to global expansion, I think the most important thing is to listen to the market, what it has to say, and enter very strategically after understanding whether the product is ready for that transition, because every country has its own specific needs.

In renewables, everyone talks kilowatts and sun, but it’s more advanced than that. It involves financial models, different ways of working, and different workflows. So, really invest in understanding how the market feels and what the pain points are. Then adapt, and start with a local presence. I think it’s very, very important to have your boots on the ground. There are different languages you need to speak, and culture matters. Listen to customers and understand their pain points.

Fundraising Lessons from a $10 Million Series A

Melissa Baldwin:

Good. I want to ask you another question about something you’ve done successfully, and that I see a lot of our customers and clients pursuing, and that is fundraising. Your company completed a $10 million Series A round in December 2024 to support your expansion here into the United States. What advice would you give to other companies that are going through fundraising rounds, or seeking Series A or Series B? Any advice you’d give them?

Alon Mashkovich:

I think the most important thing is to bring business value and tie it to real revenue. When you build your business from the ground up by generating revenue, even if you have a small value proposition, but it brings value, you start to sell. When you start selling, you have more revenue, and then you bring much more confidence to any investor that comes in.

It’s not a startup that just has an idea and a presentation. It’s real business value that you can build, scale, and improve. The pain point exists. When you tie everything to business impact, it’s a different game. Of course, the team and the people behind it are important too. A very good team and a good culture make everything come easier. It’s still quite difficult, but when you’re tied to business impact, it’s a different playing field.

Why Investors Valued Execution and Measurable Results

Melissa Baldwin:

I’m going to ask a follow-up there. When you were working with your investor, what do you think gave them that moment, or got them really excited about what your business does?

Alon Mashkovich:

It’s a lot of considerations. But the bottom line, I think, is execution. You really need to provide real value and a real product. If you make claims, like we try to do, you need to showcase to your customers, clients, and partners that you’re bringing them value, boosting their energy metrics and numbers, not only in percentages but also in quantified numbers. That’s very important.

When they hear that, they understand it’s a real business. I think that’s the most important thing, that you really impact revenue. Then it’s a real business that you can scale and grow.

Shocking Insights from Analyzing 10,000+ Clean Energy Assets

Melissa Baldwin:

So recently, I understand that your team has analyzed over 10,000 C&I solar assets.

This is across the United States, the Middle East, and Europe, to look at how these systems are performing. We know there’s a chronic issue with underperformance. Can you tell me what you learned from that analysis you did recently?

Alon Mashkovich:

Every time you look at this data, it’s shocking. When we first started the business, we did a small research project across several thousand assets, and we discovered that over 70% of the systems were not meeting their planned outputs.

It is insane. Seventy percent not meeting outputs is a very high number. Each time, we try to convince ourselves that the problem is not so big, or that maybe we can do better things. Then we get shocked again every time. Even across the 10,000 U.S. sites we analyzed recently, we see that over two-thirds of them are not hitting their targets.

So the numbers are still high. It’s not because you don’t have data. It’s what you do with it and how you use it to identify issues. Today, I think the administration and what’s happening is finally making asset owners pay attention that performance is not there. There is what we call revenue leak. By looking at the numbers, we try to really improve it because it’s there. The sun is there. The equipment is there. Just take action. So the numbers are pretty shocking.

The Real Causes Behind Asset Underperformance

Melissa Baldwin:

I agree with you. I think right now our industry is under a microscope, right? We have more criticism from the current administration. Now is the time that the assets we have on the ground have to be performing as expected. That’s important to solar’s reputation generally.

But what I understand from your look at this is that it’s not always human error. It’s almost like an overload of notifications. Is that right? Could you talk about that?

Alon Mashkovich:

I think there are three reasons for that. First, data quality, and how you manage all this data. You have so many data sources coming from on-site hardware. But you also have additional systems on the software side, like ticketing systems and billing systems. By gathering everything in one place, you can really analyze it and start providing value.

So yes, there are many reasons before we even get to the human side. There’s the data acquisition piece, handling the underperformance data, and quick action. Quick action is critical. We’ve noticed that many times we onboard assets in a very easy, plug-and-play way. Just last week, we onboarded thousands of assets on the East Coast, and we noticed that many systems were underperforming, and no one had known for months. Sometimes we even saw disconnected streams and disconnected inverters for over six months.

The Lessons and Inspirations Guiding Alon Mashkovich Today

Melissa Baldwin:

So I want to move on to a different section here. This is something we ask all of our guests on Scaling Clean. The purpose of Scaling Clean is really to share wisdom from seasoned CEOs with the rest of the industry so that we can all do better in the business of running our business.

One of the things we like to find out is not just how you got where you are, but where you learn from and where you draw inspiration from. Do you follow any podcasts? Is there a great book you can point to that has contributed to your success? What has inspired you professionally, either now or in the past?

Alon Mashkovich:

I often look to my father and grandfather, at what they’ve done, and how they raised me. In this modern world, I read less, but I listen to audiobooks while driving and running. I think the most important thing is to listen and communicate.

Eventually, it’s all about humans, even if it’s hardware, because it’s operated by humans. So listen to the customers, listen to everyone. I think this is the most important thing. Every time I have a conversation with someone, I try to take away as many lessons as I can.

Books, wow. Recent books. I could open my Audible and share, but I also listen to a lot of research from Gartner and different podcasts, like SunCast. Shout out to Nico, definitely. I try to gather as much information as I can because I believe knowledge is power. It affects everything we do. There’s one great book I remember. I think it’s called… I’ll check it.

Melissa Baldwin:

Okay. It’s funny that you mentioned that your parents were an influence. I can’t tell you how many CEO guests I’ve interviewed who cite their parents as having a major influence on them, whether it’s in business or not.

Leadership Lessons on Communication and Trust

Alon Mashkovich:

So the book is, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

Melissa Baldwin:

What’s it about?

Alon Mashkovich:

It tells the story of an external CEO that enters. The board brought her in to restructure the company and help make it a success. She comes in and starts to rebuild the team. Eventually, it’s all about communication. It’s all about building trust. When you have a leadership team, you must have very strong communication and be open with the team.

For a startup, or any business, it’s like the solar coaster. You have ups and downs, and it can happen a few times a day, a few times a week, every month. So you really need to be strong with your team members, with your leadership team, in order to have the power to go through it, whether you’re down or up, all together.

Eventually, this breeds success, because when you’re like a fist, one fist, you can really win the game.

Handling Tough Conversations and Building Trust

Melissa Baldwin:

That makes me think of another question we like to ask our guests. A lot of times, as a CEO or business leader, you have to have a tough conversation. You have to fire somebody. You have to own up to a mistake, or address an unhappy client. What is your approach to that? How do you handle those tough, uncomfortable conversations?

Alon Mashkovich:

I think it takes me back to this book, even with employees in hard situations. When you build a trusting relationship, even hard conversations are easier to handle because you’re open. That openness brings a lot of success in every communication you have with any person. I usually start with questions, really listen, understand the cost, reflect, and then conduct a really good discussion.

Melissa Baldwin:

At Tigercomm, we call it keeping the floor clean.

So there will be a time when maybe I’m uncomfortable, I’m unhappy about something somebody said. Instead of stewing on it, it’s really just, you’ve got to say, hey, I noticed you did this, and it made me think that, and have that conversation. It can be uncomfortable, but ultimately it’s better, as you said, to have that discussion openly so that you’re not a dysfunctional team.

Advice to His Younger Self and Finding Work-Life Balance

Melissa Baldwin:

I want to ask you, how old were you when you started your first business?

Alon Mashkovich:

I think 25.

Melissa Baldwin:

So right now, today, imagine you’re in a time machine. You go back and you see your 25-year-old self. What do you say? What advice do you give to your 25-year-old self, just about to start a business?

Alon Mashkovich:

I think what I said about listening, you need to build it. It’s really like a muscle that you need to train. So be much more open and focus more, listen more. Maybe more work-life balance.

Melissa Baldwin:

Okay. Well, that’s another question we like to ask. We ask this question to all of our CEOs. It’s interesting to hear the different things that folks do to get that work-life balance. There are some people who wake up really early in the morning. There’s one woman who swims in Monterey Bay. So what do you do? What is your rest, your joy, your way to recharge your battery?

Alon Mashkovich:

Kids. Kids are everything. Yeah. Running. Yeah, definitely. I wake up early in the morning to get more sport in. I think it’s important. It helps you feel better and think better. So being with the family, and combining that with running at least three times a week.

Melissa Baldwin:

Yeah. Did I hear that you were in the marathon this morning? It was a 5K.

Alon Mashkovich:

There’s a 5K this morning.

Melissa Baldwin:

Thank you, SEIA, for sponsoring that.

Alon Mashkovich:

Definitely go there. I think every conference they have now, I’ve participated. Really, it’s great to start the morning going for a run with a whole bunch of people around you.

Melissa Baldwin:

How big was the group out there this morning?

Alon Mashkovich:

Wow. It was pretty big. Two buses.

Audience Questions on Scaling Data Acquisition Across Assets

Melissa Baldwin:

Are there any questions from the audience?

Manjunath (Audience):

My name is Manjunath. I’m from the Florida Solar Energy Center. Thanks for the inspiring talk and the way you did it. Thank you. Excellent. My question is on the technical side. Because you said you’re looking at, like, 10,000 assets right now. How do you acquire the data?

I mean, because we also look at data. Each site is unique. The challenges are unique, I agree. So it may be just one person doing it. When you look at 10,000 assets, how do you do it? Data is just data - what you really want are insights.

Alon Mashkovich:

So we are a software company, and this is our core business, the data acquisition piece. We invested heavily in order to be able to communicate with any provider that is out there.

With that, it doesn’t matter if it is an inverter type XYZ, or you have a revenue-grade meter, or you have a SCADA system via API, Modbus, DC, provide PMT. You have so many protocols. So we’ve really invested in all these data acquisition connectors, as we call them, in order to make it easier and standardize.

We have a lot of processes around the data in order to qualify it and make sure that everything is the highest quality that we can. Then when all the data is managed and in one place, with the right metrics, everything is possible. Then you can run different applications. If you have BI tools, you can use our analytics, or you can run additional agentic applications. So once you structure the data after bringing it in, everything else is easier.

Manjunath (Audience):

One more question. Do you compute like crazy parameters for each site? Like all the ratios, correct everything?

Alon Mashkovich:

All the KPIs that you can imagine, there are so many. It depends geographically. Here you’re looking at something, in Europe you’re looking at something else, so definitely.

Manjunath (Audience):

So how are your assets distributed? Is it residential, commercial, and utility-scale?

Alon Mashkovich:

Most of our assets are C&I, up to small utility-scale. Over the last year, we’ve been onboarding medium utility-scale assets.

Storage is growing more and more. We have a small portion of residential mix, but the main focus is DG, distributed generation. Thank you.

Transforming Alert Chaos into Clear Revenue Priorities

Melissa Baldwin:

That was the Florida Solar Energy Center, right? Great organization. I’m also from Florida, from Tampa, Florida, so great work that you’re doing. Wonderful.

I want to add a few questions on top of what he just pointed out. Because from what I understand, correct me if I’m wrong, it sounds like a lot of these companies don’t necessarily have this data in one place. It’s siloed. What is it like when you first approach a company to work with them? What does it look like before? What is their data story before, and what is their data story after?

Alon Mashkovich:

Very different. It depends. There are big players that have invested heavily in different legacy solutions, in which they’ve built their historians and data warehouses. Again, it’s difficult. You need to have your own team. It’s kind of a build versus buy decision, especially for small and medium-sized companies.

I think, on average, most of them have at least three to five different data acquisition systems, and most of them don’t have one place where they gather all the data. When we come in, we acquire all the data, including historical data. Then when they want to use it, they have everything structured in one place. They can consume APIs wherever they want in order to do whatever they need. So it’s definitely a dramatic change from how they operated before.

Melissa Baldwin:

You mentioned they usually have three to five data sets. What are those three to five data sets?

Alon Mashkovich:

Hardware providers and monitoring data sets. For example, in vertical layers, they have inverter data, the data coming from the inverters, and the data coming from revenue-grade meters. They have data coming from their CMS, if they’re using it. It’s different data.

But again, it affects different AI agents that you want to build on top. Because if you have an issue and you’ve identified it, and I believe you’re familiar with that, you need to know how to solve it. There are different technician levels. So you need to ingest not only the electrical data, but also the data coming from technicians on site, with different tools, in order to really understand it.

But that’s not enough. You also need the financials, the people, the P&L, and other data to build a full picture that can serve not only the operations team, but also the C-suite, the stakeholders, and everyone around the table. I hope that answers your question.

Melissa Baldwin:

No, and that is helpful. What I also heard was that essentially, the person who’s at the screen managing all of this data, in the “before” situation, may have dozens of alerts coming in. This isn’t working. This isn’t working.

Alon Mashkovich:

Alert fatigue. We call it alert fatigue.

Melissa Baldwin:

What is that? What’s alert fatigue?

Alon Mashkovich:

You have so many alarms, you lose trust. You can’t trust all these alarms you’re getting from all these different service providers and different holders. You need to verify that this alert is really true. So we’ve invested heavily in a prioritization engine in order to gather all the electrical data and compare it to different metrics, and then provide much more accurate insights.

We call it actionable insights because it reduces the noise. Then you can really focus on what’s most important. We also have prioritization depending on the customer, depending on the use case. If it is an IPP, they have specific metrics. If it’s an O&M, they have their own, and then it’s tied to their obligations, contractual availability, and other requirements in order to really prioritize and focus on them.

Melissa Baldwin:

To find the money.

Alon Mashkovich:

Definitely. Stop the bleeding. You have so much revenue that you can gain from your existing assets, and there is no sense in keeping on losing it. So definitely.

Melissa Baldwin:

Do you think some of these folks are even aware that they’re losing that?

Alon Mashkovich:

I think today we’re hearing more and more talk that performance is finally getting attention. Until a few months ago, we needed to convince people to look at their performance because they were losing. Now we’re hearing more and more that it’s finally happening.

We are a step before the storage boom. So what will happen in storage? Storage is much, much, much more complicated than solar assets. Hopefully, the lessons from solar performance issues will be implemented in storage to maximize revenues. Storage is key to the industry today.

Melissa Baldwin:

Abby brought it up in her welcoming speech as one of the four things she wants to see us focus on moving forward: solar plus storage, always. It’s much more complicated, right? The time of day matters, the rates are different, and the size of the system matters.

Why Success Depends on Choosing What Not to Do

Melissa Baldwin:

I have two more questions, if I can get them in. One is: do you think success is dependent on what a company chooses to do, or chooses not to do?

Alon Mashkovich:

I think it’s about choosing what not to do. There are so many distractions, and so many things you want to do as an entrepreneur. Focus is very important to understanding where your key strengths are and concentrating on them.

Everything else can be built and structured with an open system. So if there are customers that want to use other solutions, no problem. We can integrate. Our mission is to help our partners do their job better, in an easier way. So if it can be done by our solution, great. But if you want to bring in another partner, perfect. We can tie in via back-to-back APIs, and that’s it. Then it helps everyone improve their business flows.

Why Alon Mashkovich Remains Optimistic About Climate

Melissa Baldwin:

One more question. Do you consider yourself a climate optimist or a climate pessimist? I know it’s tough these days.

Alon Mashkovich:

Yeah. That’s the reason I entered this business in clean energy, because there are so many opportunities. We want to leave a better place for our kids. So I want to be optimistic about the future. I think most people care about it, and we see more and more people caring. So let’s stay optimistic.

Melissa Baldwin:

Great. Is there anything else you want to say for our listeners? Any boost you have?

Alon Mashkovich:

Yeah. Well, welcome to visit our booth. Definitely. I think, focus, listen, and keep on going.

Melissa Baldwin:

Very good. Well, thank you so much, Alon, for joining me. Thank you for joining us here at the PowerUp Live stage. It’s been great. This stage is presented by Wärtsilä and produced by SunCast Media. Thank you all very much. Have a great rest of the show, and we appreciate you joining us.

Alon Mashkovich:

Thank you very much.