Ardes Johnson, CEO of NeoVolta – Interview Series

Ardes Johnson, CEO of NeoVolta, is an experienced energy and clean technology executive with a background spanning solar, battery storage, power infrastructure, and strategic sales leadership. He was appointed CEO of NeoVolta in April 2024 after serving as President of Meyer Burger, and previously held senior roles at JLM Energy, Tesla Motors, SolarWorld, GE Energy, and BAE Systems. Earlier in his career, Johnson served as a Nuclear Officer aboard the USS Harry S Truman, giving him a strong foundation in mission-critical energy systems and operational discipline.

NeoVolta is a U.S.-based energy technology company focused on advanced battery energy storage systems for residential, commercial, industrial, and utility applications. Founded in Poway, California in 2018, the company designs energy storage platforms built to help customers improve energy resilience, reduce utility costs, and maintain backup power during outages. Its product lineup includes systems such as the NV14, an all-in-one hybrid inverter and lithium iron phosphate battery backup system, with expansion options through the NV24 platform. NeoVolta trades on Nasdaq under the ticker NEOV.

You have led energy businesses at Tesla, Meyer Burger, SolarWorld, GE Energy, and now NeoVolta. Having experienced multiple technology cycles across solar, storage, and grid infrastructure, what convinced you that NeoVolta is positioned to capitalize on this next phase of U.S. energy storage, and how has your previous experience shaped your strategy as CEO?

Having navigated multiple industries, I’ve learned that success in energy hardware depends entirely on solving for manufacturing reality rather than just technology promise. At GE and SolarWorld, I saw the challenges of domestic scaling; at Tesla, I saw how rapidly demand explodes when policy and manufacturing align; and at Meyer Burger, I witnessed how unpredictable international markets can be.

These experiences shaped my strategy for NeoVolta. We aren’t trying to out-manufacture China. Instead, we’ve built a lean, incredibly nimble U.S.-based platform that is fully FEOC-compliant. As compliance becomes the strict price of admission for major American contracts, our agility allows us to pivot faster than the competition and deliver the exact regulatory advantages utilities and developers need. That is the bet I’ve built my career around, and why I am leading NeoVolta today.

Two independent firms, Needham and Lake Street, initiated Buy coverage within days of each other. From your perspective, what operational milestones changed the investment narrative enough to attract institutional analyst attention, and what do you think many investors still misunderstand about NeoVolta?

NeoVolta stopped being a story about potential and became a story about execution. The company started in 2018 focused mainly on the Southern California residential market. When I joined in 2024, my priority was jump-starting national expansion and launching the joint venture that opened our doors into the commercial and industrial space.

That shift shows up in the numbers. We increased our stake in the Pendergrass joint venture to 80%, secured a formal FEOC compliance opinion on the Georgia facility, and signed our first commercial LOI, roughly $200 million with Infinite Grid Capital, all within a few months.

What I think investors still misunderstand is that NeoVolta today is a fundamentally different company than the residential battery vendor we started as. The Georgia facility alone, at full 8 GWh capacity, represents well over millions of dollars of annual revenue potential. A lot of the market is still pricing us on our residential history rather than the industrial-scale platform we’re actually building.

Much of your recent progress centers around domestic manufacturing in Georgia. Beyond the obvious political and tariff considerations, what long-term competitive advantages does a U.S.-based battery manufacturing footprint provide that investors may underestimate?

The tariff and incentive story gets the headlines, but the deeper advantage is trust and speed. Utility and data-center customers are signing multi-year, capital-intensive contracts, and they need certainty that their supplier won’t get caught in a customs dispute or a shipping bottleneck. Manufacturing in Pendergrass means we control our own lead times, our own quality process, and our own compliance posture.

There’s also a talent and iteration advantage that’s easy to overlook. Having engineering, quality, and production under one roof means we can shorten the feedback loop between what customers need in the field and what we build next. With our vertical integration, that compounds into a real cost and reliability edge, not just a policy-driven one.

NeoVolta recently announced FEOC compliance for its Georgia facility. For investors who are unfamiliar with the evolving regulatory landscape, how significant is FEOC compliance in determining who ultimately wins large utility-scale battery contracts over the coming years?

It’s becoming close to a gating factor. Under current rules, a project can lose its investment tax credit eligibility if it’s tied to a company with majority Chinese ownership, or if too much of the project’s cost comes from a Chinese-controlled technology provider, and that cost threshold gets stricter every year through 2030. It’s currently set at 55%, rising to 75% by 2030. For a utility underwriting a decade-long project, that’s the difference between a bankable deal and one that simply doesn’t pencil out.

That’s exactly why we structured our Georgia joint venture the way we did: an 80/20 ownership split with our partner PotisEdge, with LONGi holding a small, non-controlling stake in NeoVolta directly. It lets us bring in real battery management expertise while staying clearly compliant. I expect FEOC status to increasingly separate who wins the largest utility contracts from who gets shut out.

One of the more interesting developments is the 1.1 GWh supply framework supporting AI infrastructure projects. AI data centers are quickly becoming one of the fastest-growing sources of electricity demand. How do you see battery energy storage evolving from simply providing backup power to becoming a critical component of AI infrastructure itself?

Storage is moving from insurance to infrastructure. Historically, batteries at a data center were there for the bad day, an outage or a brief disruption. AI workloads are so power-hungry, and interconnection queues so long, that storage is now part of how you get a data center energized at all. It lets developers manage load volatility and, in some cases, bring a facility online years before new transmission or generation capacity would otherwise allow.

Our LOI with Infinite Grid Capital reflects that shift: roughly 1.1 GWh across projects in West Texas, Puerto Rico, and PJM territory, tied directly to AI-driven power demand. With our Georgia facility on track for ramp-up in the third quarter, that gives us direct line-of-sight between our manufacturing output and a named pipeline of AI infrastructure projects. As the technology continues to improve, NeoVolta intends to be a central part of supporting that growth.

The announced approximately $200 million Letter of Intent provides investors with greater visibility into your commercial pipeline. How should investors think about converting large framework agreements into recurring revenue while managing manufacturing scale-up and execution risk?

I’d point investors to three things, in sequence. First, conversion of the LOI into definitive, binding agreements, since that’s the step that turns a framework into contracted revenue. Second, our own production ramp at Pendergrass, since an LOI is only as good as our ability to deliver product on schedule. Third, order cadence, whether that first relationship expands into follow-on volume and whether other customers sign similar agreements.

To be direct: the IGC LOI is non-binding on volume and purchase obligations today. That’s normal at this stage of a manufacturing ramp, but it means the real test of execution is converting identified project pipeline into firm purchase orders as we prove out quality and throughput at the plant.

NeoVolta has expanded beyond residential storage into commercial, industrial, and utility-scale markets. What operational changes were required to make that transition successfully, and which of those markets do you believe will ultimately become the company’s largest growth driver?

Moving beyond residential required real changes across the business: different manufacturing scale and quality systems, different sales cycles, and a different kind of team. Bringing in a battery management and systems-integration partner like PotisEdge was central to that shift, since utility-scale BESS demands a level of lifecycle and safety engineering that residential product simply doesn’t require in the same way. Underneath that operational shift, we’ve also been investing in the digital intelligence that makes it possible. We’ve been securing and developing our own Battery Management Systems, Energy Management Systems, Power Conversion Systems, and expanding that proprietary technology through internal engineering and manufacturing innovation rather than relying on off-the-shelf components. That’s what lets us build differentiated solutions instead of competing purely on hardware.

Of the markets we’re in, I believe utility-scale will be our largest long-term growth driver. That’s where electricity demand growth is most acute, where deal sizes are largest, and where our FEOC-compliant domestic manufacturing gives us the clearest edge. That said, residential will always be a priority for us. It’s where NeoVolta started, and we remain a company that respects our roots.

As battery demand accelerates globally, supply chain resilience has become just as important as technology innovation. How are you balancing domestic manufacturing ambitions with the realities of sourcing critical battery components in an increasingly fragmented global market?

This is a phased transition, not an overnight switch. Today we’re still able to use cells from Chinese suppliers within the Safe Harbor thresholds current rules allow. But we’re actively planning the shift, first toward Southeast Asian cell sources, and over time toward U.S.-made cells as domestic capacity comes online. There isn’t yet enough American cell manufacturing capacity for the whole industry, so we see the meaningful transition to U.S. cells as more of a 2028-and-beyond strategy.

In the meantime, the rules allow us to blend FEOC and non-FEOC content to hit compliance thresholds, which lets us stay competitive on cost while de-risking our supply chain over time.

Investors often focus on manufacturing capacity measured in gigawatt-hours, but scale alone does not guarantee profitability. What operational metrics should long-term shareholders monitor over the next 12 to 24 months to determine whether NeoVolta is executing successfully beyond simple revenue growth?

I’d point investors to a handful of metrics beyond top-line GWh capacity: our production ramp cadence at Pendergrass against the timeline we’ve laid out, the conversion rate of our LOI and framework pipeline into definitive, binding supply agreements, unit economics at the plant level as we scale toward full capacity, and our path to positive adjusted EBITDA.

Ultimately, the milestone that matters most is proof that we can manufacture at a quality and cost that make our FEOC-compliant, domestic product genuinely competitive, not just eligible for incentives, but a smart commercial choice on its own merits.

Looking ahead three to five years, the intersection of AI infrastructure, grid modernization, electrification, and domestic manufacturing appears to be creating a once-in-a-generation investment opportunity. Where do you see NeoVolta fitting into that broader energy transformation, and what milestones would define success for the company by the end of the decade?

NeoVolta sits right at the intersection of those four forces. AI infrastructure needs power now, faster than new generation or transmission can typically be built. Grid modernization and electrification need flexible, dispatchable storage at scale. And U.S. industrial and energy policy increasingly rewards, and in many cases requires, domestic, FEOC-compliant supply chains to capture that opportunity.

By the end of the decade, success looks like Pendergrass running at or near its full 8 GWh capacity, a diversified customer base across utility-scale, data-center, and grid-modernization projects, a battery supply chain that has meaningfully shifted toward domestic cell sourcing, and a company that has translated that manufacturing scale into sustained profitability.

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit NeoVolta.