Clean Power Hour LIVE Feb 23, 2024 w/ John Weaver & Tim Montague

Stay up to date with the latest solar, wind, and energy storage news and analysis. Join co-hosts Tim Montague, solar & storage expert, and John Weaver, PV Magazine journalist, as they reflect on the latest tools, technologies, and trends driving the energy transition forward. With a strong commitment to decarbonizing the economy and building a safer, healthier future for humanity, this show is a must-watch for any energy professional looking to stay ahead of the game. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel, rate and review us on Apple or Spotify, and join us live every Thursday at 12 noon EST / 9 AM Pacific

This week John Weaver and I were joined by Sean White and we discussed,
1. Solar energy, permitting process, and sales strategies.
2. Solar panel installation technology and industry trends.
3. Renewable energy sources and their potential to power the grid.
4. Energy transition, solar projections, and carbon removal strategies.
5. Solar roofing technology and racking systems.
6. Solar energy industry trends and events.

Transcript

Tim Montague: 0:40

Welcome to the Clean Power Hour live. I'm Tim Montague, your host check out all of our content at Clean Power hour.com. Please give us a rating and review on Apple and Spotify and subscribe to our YouTube channel. I want to welcome my co host commercial solar guy to the show. Welcome, John. Hey,

John Weaver: 0:57

Tim, how I hope everything's going well. I haven't seen you for a few weeks. I was on vacation. I went to Australia, you were asking about it. I saw solar everywhere. rooftops all over. It was cool. even had my girlfriend telling me Hey, John solar, because I just say the word solar out randomly. When I'm driving in the car. Probably no with my girlfriend, but Soviet. But now in Australia. She's going solar, solar solar, because I was driving. And I was scared to hit cars because I'm on the other side of the road. So I'm like, super zoned in on my driving. And she's pointing out solar left and right. It was pretty cool. Guess?

Tim Montague: 1:32

Yeah, for those of you who don't know, the penetration of solar in Australia is much higher. I don't know what that statistic is. But it's at least 3x what it is in the United States. And there are various reasons for this. And it's funny, John, because I talked to somebody in Australia, gosh, like year and a half ago. And he was like, here's the secret. We build really cheap crappy solar in Australia. So I don't know, you know, the soft costs are half of what they are. In the US in Australia, the soft costs are cheaper. And equipment, you can imagine the equipment's not traveling as far to get to Australia, either, right? It's coming from China or Southeast Asia. And it's a short hop across the, whatever that Strait is called to, to Australia. So there's there's a variety of reasons but and they're also geeks for solar technology, right with New South Wales, isn't it the University of New South Wales that does a lot of r&d,

John Weaver: 2:33

I'm going to put something else as the biggest driver for why their residential solar is so. So well priced. And this was based on, you know, premonitions and held priors that I've learned slowly over time. But I on their last day, we were in Sydney, we were walking on this cool beach. And then south of it is this beautiful set of rocks. And, you know, it's just very picturesque, and it was like, all rainy and stuff and windy. So it was just, everything was cool. And we grow from went into the water and met and electrician just started talking with him as a couple. guy does more Oh, NM, his wife helps with the Office Manager brings in deals does other things. And they don't do solar. But they did. They are this specifically, he'd done solar. They weren't a couple that nobody cares about this on the show. But that's the human touch. We bring it in. And so I asked him, I said, Hey, have you ever done solar? We started chatting about it. And he said, Yes. And he and I asked him to verify I said, hey, when you do a solar project, can you really just show up the next day and install? He goes, Yeah, of course. And you install right away, and you plug into the grid right there, and you turn it on, and then you fall out to fill out the paperwork afterward. And so, Tim, if you could show up to a business tomorrow and start installation, and it would roughly work. And there'd be no issues with it. How much different would your sales process be? How much less paperwork would be necessary? If you were,

Tim Montague: 4:14

I mean, you're talking about shortening this one thing, and that is the basically the permitting. And that would be a good thing, right? We get we get bogged down in interconnection in the commercial solar space, we get bogged down in their connection. Because going into it, you don't know what the upgrades are, or not that the grid operators going to require. And that can be a deal killer. Right? They could say, well, you need to upgrade our wires between here and there. And that's going to cost a million dollars. And you go well, the whole solar project is only a million dollars. Mr. Great operator, what the heck. And so anyway, if you saying that, you can just do this, you could just build a solar facility. And then the interconnection study happens after the fact.

John Weaver: 5:03

When you when you speak about a large commercial project, I am certain that there would be some limitations. I don't explicitly know anything. But I know that in the residential world, you literally install the very next day sure you walk in and if you're really a good Fast Company, and your install team happens to be trailing behind you, and you're the first sale of the day, you might have like yeah, the team is literally trailing me hope when I close the deal, and bam, install team shows up maybe that's not very efficient business

Tim Montague: 5:32

to run there. But no, I mean, I know all

John Weaver: 5:36

the team gets squished everything gets squished. And that's a lot of costs of carrying people for 90 days, and keeping payroll running for 90 days. I'm sure it's cheaper in some way, great. But solar is cheap. Anyway, solar is meant to be replaceable, it's expensive and has to last 30 years when the cost is three times as much. If the cost is a third, maybe slightly less over engineered solar is better.

Tim Montague: 6:04

There's definitely more efficiencies if you can, if you can ease the permitting process, it's going to make the overall installation more efficient. And it will lower the soft costs, there's no doubt, it is interesting that the do E's program to expedite permitting in the United States is struggling. And I don't know the gory details of that. But part of it is, is how we have given local jurisdictions a ton of authority in the United States. We don't have anything close to centralized authority making or decision making when it comes to the grid. We have local authority, and that's a problem because those local authorities are like God. And those are cities and towns and counties. And then and then the grid operator is also like God, John, and I wonder is that different in Australia? Because that is clearly antiquated. Like every solar and storage professional in America understands this, that our grid operators have too much control. It did it was a good thing when we didn't have electricity. Okay, and you needed standards, etc, right? That monopoly, that regulated monopoly model, but that model is completely antiquated. And it's and clearly the grid operator is not willing to change fast enough. That's why we have nem 3.0 In California, and we killed the residential solar market in California. Like go figure like, it's, it's one step forward, two steps back.

John Weaver: 7:38

Well, something about that. It's I don't know, obviously, I'm a I'm a vacation Australia expert. As I was flying from the from Melbourne to Tasmania, somebody on the airplane said, Hey, how are you liking your travel? I said, Well, I'm biased because I've specifically chosen only to go to beautiful places. Thus, my perception of Australia is that all places are beautiful. And a lady in front of us laughed. She goes, thank you so much for saying that about Australia. Like, oh, it's great. So, you know, my bias is obviously showing but um, are my EMI low information, but uh, you know, there's the larger projects, there's a much tighter cost structure. utility scale in Australia is cheaper than us utility scale. And no, Tim, you mentioned it. I didn't see any of the accordion solar installations in Northern Australia, because I technically wasn't in the northern Australia state. I was in Queensland, but which is northern area of Australia.

Tim Montague: 8:38

Well, I'm glad you brought this up. Okay, because there's a couple of things here. You're talking about five B, check out fi b Yes, check out five B they're a factory installed. ground mount racking system, where the panels are installed on the racking in a factory, then they're folded up. It's like an accordion. It's an East West system. And it's very low to ground there's there's virtually no racking, right, the panels are just held together. And they're pre wired in the factory. And then you drag a container out, and then drag this stuff out of the container and it unfolds onto the landscape, you end up with a very high ground covered ratio. Couple of things though. I'm an advisor to luminous robotics, check out luminous robotics. They're targeting module installation for the tracker, currently for trackers, which is 94% of ground mounted solar utility scale ground mounted solar in the United States. And then I'm getting all these data points though. You know, peg is increasingly popular. There's a new peg competitor called planted. I had peg on the show I haven't had planted on the show but plant is is explicitly using robotics for module installation also pegs a very low ground they use rebar as racking. So it's like three feet off the ground. It's an East West system, very high ground cover ratio great in the Caribbean, for example, where you have high wind loads. And, and so but but the data point that I really love about 5g, John is that AES has partnered with them they have formed a joint venture and as is one of the largest or the largest utility globally. They're a very large global utility. They operate in Latin America, in Europe in the United States, I think even maybe in in Asia. But anyway, they were developing their own solar module installation robot that looked like a Zamboni if you know what a Zamboni is. Are you an ice skater

John Weaver: 10:37

Zamboni hockey playwear thing. Yeah, it's

Tim Montague: 10:40

this big square truck that cleans the ice and smooth sea ice. Right? Well, they had they had developed a robot that, you know, it had a big stack of solar modules inside it, which is why it was built that way, I guess. Anyway, luminess is taking kind of the opposite approach. They, they have a small vehicle, it's like a small tank with a robotic arm attached. And they're just building their first prototype. So it's it's still very early days for luminess as well. But they're going to expedite the module deployment onto the racking system, basically, replacing one or two humans may maybe more and getting more racking installed in less time. And then you have Tara base, which is doing this pop up factory. I don't know if you've learned about that. seen that. That where they install the torque to the modules onto the torque tubes in a pot like that

John Weaver: 11:32

idea. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool idea. That's interesting. It is

Tim Montague: 11:36

interesting. And we're waiting for some official feedback from Tara basin and companies involved in that how that's going because they, they've been kind of quiet about it, but they they do have a large scale project underway. So anyway, I like robots. I know that, that you do to John.

John Weaver: 11:57

Yeah, I mean, now you have me thinking about like, I have the coolness of bringing the L factory out into the field. And then doing a key chunk of the assembly with people where the machine is brought to them. And they have their tools and their gear and everything and to to to to do, you still get the fine installation hands of rested person. In a non dusty atmosphere, doing a consistent twist, everything's getting a torque, you can like account for every single bolt having its torque properly done. Because, you know, if you have a little factory setup, and if the torque tightening of your modules and your components and your wires, etc is the number one risk for fire or wind, because that's what it is per my light reading. And you can get a in factory torquing I bet you can get better insurance costs, or at least better production lower OEM costs. Man, it's cool idea. I would love to ride in a factory in the field. installation system man, that would be so sweet.

Tim Montague: 13:11

It's a good experiment. We need to do lots of experiments. That's That's my approach. Do lots of experiments, small scale experiments. And don't assume that you have it figured it out until you get it done in the real world. That's the challenge is the real world. It's easy to do this in a laboratory or in a warehouse. But in the field conditions are very different. And that's where the the the mike tyson quote comes in, right, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. Yeah, that's what field construction is it's getting punched in the face by by mud and rain and terrain and gophers. And who knows what fresh,

John Weaver: 13:51

gophers gophers man, I'm

Tim Montague: 13:54

about to have a just a data point here also on this racking stuff. I'm gonna have another racking company on the show. I'm gonna have several racking companies on the show because I'm a geek for racking called Cambridge energy out of England appropriately. Interestingly, the CEO is Australian. And but they're targeting to compete with five b by doing factory installation of the racking system. It is a portable tracker, designed initially for the mining and remote construction industry. So you set up a while you install the racking just like five being a factory, it gets containerized. And then you ship it to the site, you pop it up. And then you have a tracker that is not permanently anchored with driven piles, but it uses these toggle bolts and cables that are driven. And they're considered temporary because then you just snip the cable, and you can pick it all up and move it somewhere else. So this is interesting that they think that there's a big enough market for this to actually create a technology to disrupt the tracker market. So we'll see.

John Weaver: 15:09

Well, okay, so in Australia, a perfectly great solar power project that was seven years old, which was two years older than its prescribed lifetime was decommissioned at an Australian mind. So it's mine, a mine not a mind. It could have been a mind. There were many minds working there, Tim, but it was an Australian mine in you know in the middle of nowhere and they He commissioned a seven year old plant. And some people were like, Oh, no. But then the others were like, That's awesome. The project met its needs. It was valuable. I'm sure I can even find the article if you tell me. And they it just met the numbers, it got its job done. And that plant uncertain, was decommissioned by people who resold the project and now have a perfectly functioning solar plus storage with diesel generator hookup. Or if they're really smart, Tim, they're doing what this guy is doing. And they're redeploying the power plant somewhere else. And I don't know. So that's pretty interesting. I re re deploying systems and having that value, though, people have been trying to do that with shipping containers for the longest time, you know, deploy city deploy Office, deploy home deploy a solar power plant. You know, it's a it's a model. I see it every once in a while cool drawings for factory deployable solar.

Tim Montague: 16:39

Yep. Yep. Yeah, we need more ways to make solar affordable. That's the bottom dollar here is we're trying to drive towards one cent per kilowatt hour solar energy, which makes theoretically, green hydrogen economical, splitting hydrogen with an electrolyzer, you know, into oxygen and hydrogen. And that's something that companies like Terra bass are very focused on, actually. And that's, and that's a good focus to have for society, if you know cheaper, renewable energy is going to be good for society. So maybe we should get into some concrete stories, though, about this, right? The energy transition. I found a story in PV magazine this morning. Let me see if I can get this on screen. I haven't done this in a while. Grid

John Weaver: 17:33

enhancing technologies, a dream for energy developers like this. I like it.

Tim Montague: 17:40

Yeah, I'm not crazy about that acronym gets. But grid enhancing technologies is story by William Driscoll, NPV magazine, USA here. And it says PJM could add 5.5 gigawatts of renewables with grid enhancing technologies. And the I mean, this isn't complicated. That's one of the things that I like about this, John is it's like, it's kind of staring us in the face and saying, Yeah, we have this grid, it needs to carry a lot more juice. So what could we do to make the grid carry more juice, instead of having to build a whole new grid and add a bunch of wires and poles? Right? And the answer is things like smart conductors, next generation smart conductors, you know, when you're carrying 1000s of volts, apparently, there's different ways of constructing the conductor. And one of them is to make the core of that hollow, for example. But there, you know, conductors have changed over the last 100 years, we don't just use the same exact construction of the copper wire that we used to use, right. And by doing so you can get that conductor to carry a lot more energy. And so re conducting the grid doesn't require building out new infrastructure, right? It's just putting new wires on the existing towers. That seems like a brilliant idea to me.

John Weaver: 19:04

I, you know that the only negative of this is that we can only get 5.5 gigs of capacity. Um, look, that'd be great. And it's only actually it's even better. It's not just 5.5 it's 5.5 and PJM. MPJ. Yeah, so and the cost at that price developers to deploy 7 billion bucks to solar, let's just say that seven gigs of solar. If it were that dollar amount, we know it's not would be point one. So, point 1 billion on seven gigs is that's going to be like what, two cents a watt, a cent a watt. You know, one will go 112 divided by 7123. That's 1.4 cent 1.428 cents a watt, Timothy, not children's money. It's $100 million. But it's on seven gigs of solar. Developers would love the opportunity to have that sort of technology. But there's only going to squeeze it so far. It seems this is 5.5 gigs. We have to terawatts 2000 gigs in the queues ready to go. And that's probably going to go to 10 to 20 terawatts before the game is done. So this is a good band aid. But we need a global HVDC and global could just be super east, west, north south on North America, or the United States. All of those would be great. But these are good band aids. These can get his five gigs for $100 million. Slam it Yeah,

Tim Montague: 20:39

I'm all for this. It's not the sole answer, of course. And it's, but it's it's an important upgrade, so to speak to the approach, and it's gonna save money and time, right for getting clean energy deployed, we need to triple the grid because we're electrifying transportation, transportation, heavy industry and HVAC, those three things basically, right, we're going to triple the amount of electricity we use. And so we need a more robust grid. And part of the answer is grid enhancing technology. So thank you, William Duskull. Good story.

John Weaver: 21:18

That's his thing, will really likes to touch on technologies that enable greater stuff. And if you scroll through wills, Article history, he's written a lot about enabling solar inverters in residential projects to be a big part of the grid. And California has researched this a lot. Sunrun is probably an expert. So Nova is probably an expert in this. And Tesla as well, but I would you know, Sonova has put some smart stuff out there. Sunrun has been doing it for a while. And, and, you know, get yourself a sauna and battery. And I think, I think you can have a pretty cool grid run house with today's gear.

Tim Montague: 22:02

What do you like, sounds amazing.

John Weaver: 22:04

Sounds my favorite home battery technology just because they've been around so long. And they were having batteries as a VPP. Before the word VPP was VPP. How's that?

Tim Montague: 22:19

Yeah, I would agree there that they are forward on the VPP. It's interesting that the brand has kind of fallen, though, in dominance, so to speak in the US. It's in Tesla's local, you know, yeah. You know, Franklin has kind of burst onto the scene. In a big way, I would say, solar edge. I mean, all of the inverter companies now have their own storage products, which I think is, you know, make sense, right. They already make inverters, you need an inverter when you install a battery. But Sonnen

John Weaver: 22:54

is priced stronger than the market was for just a solar plus storage item. It was a premium item from a German manufacturer. And they were big and cool before everything exploded. Maybe they'll always be a niche product, maybe they'll always be European shell bought them and then sold them.

Tim Montague: 23:17

Right? Why on earth would shell sell a battery company.

John Weaver: 23:22

They're trying to figure out about a mineral play a trying to figure out a way to extend their expertise. And they're trying, you know, they want to spend some cash, but their returns on investment of oil are just so high that they keep I think in my light readings of them the return on investment of oil is so high that to buy normal hardware manufacturing products in a world where China is complex in their game, not looking for just return on investment in manufacturers. It's very challenging to be a manufacturer of solar components and be financially viable. it these days, which is in all of our benefits. Nonetheless, it's challenging, so I'm cool with it. People investing in hardware, different conversation.

Tim Montague: 24:15

Alright, let's move on. You've heard a story and Kinnari media written by your favorite author Eric West off the biggest solar plus storage project in the US came online. What's the story?

John Weaver: 24:25

Well, I mean, it's just a big project with multiple pieces put together I believe technically you got this story, Tim. So I did you know the details. Yeah, it is a

Tim Montague: 24:38

good story. Yeah. It's a little it's a little dated now. But this story is this story happened in January and and they installed 2 million solar panels made by first solar in from Ohio, right American solar panels, one of the few true soup to nuts solar panel manufacturers in the United States that is changing q cells will be the next to turn flip that switch I think but and this is in Kern County where a lot of big solar and storage projects are happening. Batteries by LG, chem, Samsung and BYD so, so many batteries that they had to use three different flavors of battery, which well, there's a lot. Well, it's a

John Weaver: 25:23

little more complex. This project is being built in phases, isn't it? Or is it not like? I believe there's multiple phases in this project.

Tim Montague: 25:35

And 875 megawatts of solar and

John Weaver: 25:38

all So the next paragraph, this is this is what interests me most about this company. And I'd like to learn. The project provides power to more than 10 customers or off takers, utility cities, and it's complex. And then there's multiple phases where it's being built. And so I'm wondering if these phases have to do with the battery. Or if it's, you know, this, how this projects come together, if anything, the financial patience that was put out by this group, when they develop this is amazing. And one thing that I think is super interesting about this project is, I think this group started building everything in developing it on their own with their own cash, knowing and believing they had a customer coming for it. Like they put out a pitch that they were going to try to be a merchant solar power plants. And they talked about it. And maybe they got a bunch of PPAs, before they finished, because people started calling on them really hard saying, Hey, I see you got to plan. Let me come by some of your electricity. And they're like, I'll sell to you for premium and the scary market when inflation is high. Something and there. It's cool project. It's death. Thanks, Eric, for writing it. Yeah. Did you see Eric visited? In his Twitter account? He visited the oxen solar panel manufacturing facility in California recently. Yeah, very recently, oh, last month or two could have been a month or two?

Tim Montague: 27:02

Because they've written about that, you know, historically, too, right. But what's the what's the update?

John Weaver: 27:08

Or the update is that there was a, there was a, what do they call when they stack modules on him? A pallet the pallet had moved across the empty, desolate, grass strewn, rat infested back porch. And that absolutely nothing was happening in the oxygen facility, Tennessee Montague? Yeah. And I just wanted to point that out. Because that's very important. So

Tim Montague: 27:35

it's, what's bizarre about that company is they have a partnership with new core, the huge steel company to provide solar panels for new core, what new core calls a solar structure. So let's talk about this story, which is on your hands of stuff. It's on your blog, I guess.

John Weaver: 28:00

Well, this one's on my blog, because I couldn't find the original source image I know who gave who made it blew, my mind

Tim Montague: 28:05

increases. Let's see what the story is that Bloomberg increases solar projections to 575 gigawatts deployed in 2024, a 30%. Jump over 2023. Okay.

John Weaver: 28:19

So that's the image is really all that matters. It's just a big pretty chart with a big pretty number 575. And 575 is a really big, gigawatt number to be deployed, and 2023 or 24. Pardon. And it's based on 444 being deployed and 23. So that means the Wii globally grew from 52 to 44, which is like 70 70% to five to minus 444 equals divided by two, five to 76.1% growth in 24, or 23, versus 22, to 52 to two 444. Massive, and now we just popped another 30. And private conversation, it was suggested to me from Bloomberg, New Energy Finance, Jenny Chase, specifically, that the whale number, they have a range of expectations, their upper bound is like 675 gigs. And 675 is, I don't know, just big number. That's our that's our window. That's what I'm optimistically sales pitching myself into that we're going to be above 600 gigs. I also saw a projection that says if we hit 600, we're following a trajectory. That's really massive. So oh, it's that one. So if you click on that article, right there on the bottom link right there. This is an article I wrote for PV mag. And if you scroll down a bit, you're gonna see a chart that starts at 600 gigs. So that's Bloomberg earlier this year, they went for 13. That's our growth. That's exponential. That's the IEA keep going. That's well here. You know what, scroll up real quick. The IEA says 600. No doubt one image now down three. One more. One more. The IEA says to meet global warming goals. We need 633 gigs a year, we could hypothetically meet the goals that have been set out for solar power, from the IEA perspective, to be useful to humanity in electrifying and cleaning electricity, this year, seven, six years early, solar could be pulling its weight, so to say What

Tim Montague: 30:38

is the blue in this graph? Wind? Okay.

John Weaver: 30:45

So, so there's that. Now go to the next chart. This is this gentleman, you and a part of a very smart group that Dr. dolmar financial risk management and there's a university involved too. They put out a good paper says that if you look at that 2024 number, that's actually 600 New gigawatts being deployed. And if we follow along that path, that leads us toward three terrible almost four terawatts being deployed in the year 2020 30, which is like, you know, this uber growth projected, that's constant exponentially doing 30% 40% a year. And 600 is just cool number, if we hit 600, we got the IEA thing, we got this little projection. These are the things that excite me at night, Tim, I like to think about solar projections. So, you know,

Tim Montague: 31:45

I'm with you, man, right? I mean, the energy transition is a very good thing. It's, it's a feel good. And kudos to all the energy professionals who are, you know, doing this lift on a day to day basis, I, I'm here to be a catalyst and help you guys go further faster, basically, right. And it's very important, we have to keep in mind that completing the energy transition, getting the economy to net zero, okay, we're not adding co2 to the atmosphere today, it's at 420 ppm. In 1970, it was 300. So we have to remember that netzero is important, but it's only 40 gigatons of pollution that we're taking out of the economy. There's another trillion tonnes in the sky. So I want my my visionary energy professional listeners to really focus on that, how do we get that trillion tonnes out of the atmosphere in parallel, as we clean the grid, okay. And Peter for kowski is my shining light so far, he's the dude who's done the analysis and, and written elucid conclusion, which is ocean iron, fertilization, and permaculture of seaweed. You do those two things, basically growing massive amounts of biomass in the ocean, that that you then let sink and it gets stashed there for 1000s or millions of years.

John Weaver: 33:18

I've seen that a few times talked about it in experiments. Yeah.

Tim Montague: 33:23

Yeah, there's some small experiments being done with Li F, ocean iron fertilization. Mount Pinatubo is the great example of a natural experiment that was done in the 90s, Mount Pinatubo exploded, that's a volcano in the Philippines. And co2 levels globally flatlined, because of all the, the iron that Pinatubo pumped into the ocean. So it works.

John Weaver: 33:50

There's also the other experiment that we're doing on ourselves, shipping, we removed sulfur from ships. And now the regions where these where there was heavy shipping, North Atlantic, I believe, is one of the places that are constantly talked about, we're seeing the North Atlantic Anomaly there, which is the temperature of the ocean increase faster, because there's no sulfur in the atmosphere locking. And so the pollution was giving us a temporary respite, sort of kind of hiding its effects of climate warming by saying, You know what? Well, not really, it was just literally blocking light. So I guess the pollution was doing one thing in order to like, hack at you one way and cause climate change. In one way. It also slowed climate change in another way. So it's very interesting, the way the atmosphere work. So it's, uh, yeah, so yeah, pour some iron in the ocean, if that works if we have a cheap way to hack and do some cool solutions.

Tim Montague: 34:55

Well, that's the that's the amazing thing about for kowski analysis is it only takes a billion to $2 billion a year between now and 2040. To remove all of that trillion tons of carbon. Oh, hey, Chris lemon. Good to see you. And Mark James, good to see you. But, but anyway, check out Peter for kowski.com We'll move on you and you should be careful in the dark John about ordering things now. Because we're not going to get to everything which is you know, our common problem. But let's talk about this story by Ryan Kennedy. I mean, this is this is really good news. Solar and battery storage make up 81% of new US electric generating capacity in 2024. That's That's a really impressive statistic. Like, you see this just staring us in the face right, the opportunity has arrived, the energy transition is happening at a pace. But what's the story?

John Weaver: 35:51

It's this is a report from the EIA, and it projects new capacity being deployed in the country in 2024. And there's actually a net negative on fossil fuels, because there's coal and gas that are coming on and off. And I wrote an article separately on that. But this Yeah, oh, this is great. So this is a solar on the AC side. And this is only utility scale. So 36.4 gigawatts, ac 4345 gigawatts, DC, and this is batteries of gigawatts. And probably half of that is for gigawatt hours, maybe three quarters. The other big chunk is going to be Texas, which is one to two hour. So maybe this average is two and a half hours. So you know, 45 ish gigawatts. And already what exists in the US is like 15.5 gigawatts of battery. So the cool, really cool thing, look at December, like when everything's coming online. But um, a really cool thing is that we're almost going to double the already deployed capacity of batteries that are in the United States, we're almost going to double it in one year. So we're gonna take all of existence, and we go, okay, let's double it, the duck. And that's this year. Yep. That's pretty cool. I mean, California is already doing awesome things. But they have a massive trough of cheap daytime electricity. Batteries are about to change what can be thought of as is possible with batteries, California's chi, so power grid is going to pound man, and I'm going to cover it next week, but I'm reading the publication out and we could cover that utility Duff, California just approved the 2030 plan of like 55 gigs of new capacity, and there's going to be so many batteries that are going to hit the grid hardcore, that it's, we're just gonna see the day time thing in California evolve very quickly, very differently. As as, as the battery pundits have been saying, is where I think it's gonna roll out, there's gonna be some nuance, but as the battery pundits have been saying that solar can battery can eat the daytime duck curve. It's, we're gonna now see, we're gonna see the results of the cooking right now the pot is being bubbled, the projects already signed, they're being deployed there in the EIA, high probability of being constructed. This is a high probability. So we're in the midst of the transition happening this year. And the next article, and I put these in order for you to pick them 10. So I was conscious of my article ordering. I care about our show, Tim, we got to take care of our people. We have hundreds of subscribers to the show, I think he said over 500 That's kind of cool. But in the United States, we're going to see over 50 gigs, DC of solar being deployed at least eight, probably 10 gigs of small scale, and 43 to 45 DC of utility scale, as we just saw, that's just straight solar. We're breaking 50 gigs deployed this year, Tim, and that's sort of us floated under the radar, you know, the most the United States has ever deployed ever, is like 60 some gigs of capacity in the early 2000s. We're gonna pass that next year. This year, we might even touch it. You never know. We could get a little squeaky commercial industrial residential bounce. Who knows?

Tim Montague: 39:30

Yeah. I mean, we did 33 gigawatts last year, right.

John Weaver: 39:37

Yeah. 18.6 utility on the AC which is probably like 25 DC and like eight residential commercial. So yeah, yeah. 33, something like that. Yeah.

Tim Montague: 39:48

So this is a healthy clip up this prediction going to 4545 utility.

John Weaver: 39:56

Now, we dealt we doubled the IEA says that we're doubling utility scale capacity this year to next. And that's pretty cool. We're and that's it right there. You can see it. You can see in the 23. You see that light green. And you see in the 24 the light green that's forecast. This is this is the same chart just a couple of weeks earlier than Ryan's I was looking at different the document when it came out, right and saw the EIA press release, but that's utility scale going from like 18 gigs to 36 that's doubling. That's pretty cool. And then at the bottom, you can see the coal and the gas that's retiring. The get the coal is the black that gasps is the brown.

Tim Montague: 40:39

Yep.

John Weaver: 40:42

So 50 Plus gigs, dude, we are in the midst of a growth phase

Tim Montague: 40:53

All right. Well, that's, I hope the IEA is right. I'm, you know, we got to make the transition, all we need to do John is deploy the technology that we have today, we don't need major innovations in solar or wind technology. And we have the technology, we just need to get it in the wild, and we can completely netzero the economy. So we just have to remember that zeroing is not the answer. It's not the Holy Grail. We could have runaway climate change with a netzero economy. Right.

John Weaver: 41:33

Could happen. Yep. We got to take some out.

Tim Montague: 41:39

All right, what's next?

John Weaver: 41:41

Um, you want to see a pretty picture?

Tim Montague: 41:44

You found a project a week mile?

John Weaver: 41:46

It's just pretty. Wow, very pretty. Yeah. See, look at that. I can't even see it. But I just saw your accent everybody. It's a good pretty picture. That's really cool. You gotta like this. Yeah. The half cut modules aren't real. The half cut modules aren't real. They they shaved them up or something. I don't know the exact process. But it was it was shared on Twitter. And

Tim Montague: 42:11

this must be in in Europe. Because it's in German,

John Weaver: 42:14

I believe. Yeah. It might be Switzerland.

Tim Montague: 42:17

not positive. No, it's not Swedish Church.

John Weaver: 42:21

Well, Switzerland isn't Sweden. What?

Tim Montague: 42:23

Oh, sorry, Switzerland. Yeah, life in Switzerland,

John Weaver: 42:27

different Germanic tribe.

Tim Montague: 42:29

What where is this project? Newer.

John Weaver: 42:37

I looked at some of this stuff, I chatted with the person on Twitter. And when I shared their image and they got a you know, if you translate it to English, somewhere, there's gonna button there's gonna be a button for English for us non speakers of the tongue. But it's just pretty look at that. They filled up the whole thing. They, you know, in Europe, I've seen that they have a different roofing construction structure. They, they have this frame that's laid out in wood, you know, your, your roof structure, and their framing, they lay instead of laying wood planks on it, they're allowed to lay the solar panels right on the wood planks. And the solar panels become fully the roofing material. And there's so you don't have to build a piece of wood, and then a layering of various materials to build up to your roof. Yeah, so check that out. That was the before. Yeah. This is a cool structure. I liked the angle, that roof is a little eaten up. All right. Now go to the after. And let our fine folks thing. And of course, they have the bright sunlight. So they pick the best day to show the after. But it's really I mean, the structure looks better with solar. And that's what I said. And when I initially retweeted it, and everybody was like, You know what, it's not even real. That's a computer image. I'm like, Yeah, whatever. And

Tim Montague: 44:03

it is better looking with the solar roof. I have to agree. So you know, they're going from probably clay tile to solar. And yeah, I look forward to this kind of roofing integrated solar solution coming to the United States. It'll, it'll be 10 years, but it'll get there. And it's a good thing. So thank you. Good project of the week. I wish I could tell our listeners where where we found that story, but I could not interpret any of the information on that. So c'est la vie. All right. We got time for a couple more stories. Already plus,

John Weaver: 44:49

sorry, Tim, I didn't see you there. I'll come back from a vacation. I was exhausted and I'm a terrible communicator. All of that.

Tim Montague: 44:56

I went all the way to Boston and I did not get to see John Weaver though. That was the only disappointment from the trip. I had a good trip myself. I didn't actually get to go to the show floor. After it was live. I had to leave the day of the opening to go sailing regatta in Florida but I came in on Sunday on Super Bowl Sunday and was there all day Monday I took a a wonderful workshop with PKD Peter Kelly Detweiler on hydrogen and green hydrogen. So we're gonna be having PKT on the show in the coming weeks, I think in about a month. We're gonna have him on the show to talk about that. And but you went to the show and And you saw some concrete.

John Weaver: 45:40

I saw it was cool, cool ball ballast system. It was concrete. You know, it's I'm actually asked him for a bid for product because we have a couple of roofs that we're looking at. And I just thought the ballast was kind of cool and creative. We get rid of all these metal components. We do have these heavy Yes, heavy, heavy, sorry, heavy bricks. And you have to have the right roof that can deal with it. And maybe they can make some smaller ones that are lighter and more refined in the math. But yeah,

Tim Montague: 46:10

so the story is called on the floor it already plus northeast 2024 concrete racking. No COC needed basketball and more. What's the deal? Tell us what you saw. And what is this racking system?

John Weaver: 46:24

Scroll down one more picket picture. And what I saw was coolness right there. The only metal piece so the clips that hold the modules down. Yeah.

Tim Montague: 46:34

And and why is this advantageous? Well,

John Weaver: 46:39

for a lot of roofs where you don't do a penetration, and you have an available collateral load available. That's a weight pounds per square foot where you can put some stuff on your roof.

Tim Montague: 46:51

You have such an obtuse way of describing this. You're replacing the ballasts blocks with a a block based racking solution. Right. Okay,

John Weaver: 47:02

that's cool. Yeah, a lot of people don't know what ballasts means. So the bricks, the bricks holding down your solar are now also holding out

Tim Montague: 47:09

in your soul. But is the system overall the same weight then? So you, you go from, you know, six pounds per square foot to six pounds per square foot is that the value proposition and you're using less metal, and therefore it's cheaper?

John Weaver: 47:23

All those things combined. Concrete, though, is a expensive product. It is shipping moving it at well. It's not like super cheap, but it is it is cheap. It's relatively cheap. Aluminum is cheap, too. But there are some costs associated with it moving it. It's pretty heavy. It's the same as moving the ballast, I guess. But yeah, I just like it for simplicity, as well. It's fewer components, like massively fewer numbers of components. Yeah, it

Tim Montague: 47:52

says it reduces the use of aluminum by 95%. So that's cool. Well, I

John Weaver: 47:57

wrote that first off, so yeah, but that was your assessment. That was my guestimation. Yes. Okay. Yes. Because there's literally one metal component. And could be more than 95%. Could be like 98. Yeah. So I liked the product. It's cool. It's just It was neat. I just thought it was cool. That was it. So this is a and if you go back up to the top image on the article, scroll all the way up real fast. You'll see the leftovers when solar recycle, rips apart solar panels. And that's what I thought was neat. Silicone, plastic, copper glass. Those are the four main components that's like 98% 99% 96%, something like that. So big numbers, that right there. And so I just thought that was cool. I stacked them all close. I took very artsy pictures. So you read the top. And yeah,

Tim Montague: 48:50

and most of that can be repurposed into new solar modules.

John Weaver: 48:54

Absolutely. Absolutely. I saw your work. So some ballast was neat. That's a racking material or racking attachment. You attach the leg to the roof, you start drilling in the lag bolt, which is what holds the L foot to the roof which holds the panels and instead of you having to squish stuff under there, this puts out some sort of non hardening material some it's probably like, what my editor was saying bituminous you know, just like just like roofing material, just like shingles. And it goos down in semi liquid

Tim Montague: 49:28

sealant. Yes. So it's a way to modify the standard practice for this is for you know, mostly residential right sloped Shingle Roofing

John Weaver: 49:44

shown sloped shingle I did 100 Kw sloped Shingle Roof recently.

Tim Montague: 49:49

Yeah. But what's Well, I don't get it. It's like it just saves

John Weaver: 49:53

caulking, it saves a step. It automates a particular step of the process. And make sure you have good material on every leg going down in there. I bet you this would work really great if you could put it on top of a wood roof like or not have to go through the shingles because then you could really sill seal it perfectly. So, so this is a mid clamp but a mid clamp that sits between rows. So you know you have you have a big long row and between each module, you have a mid clamp and then at the end you have an ED clamp and that's how you put it together. But this is designed to sit between two rows so that the row above only needs one rail to hold it down. So instead Having to Rails to hold down each solar panel wants to sit in between two big chunks of panels and let the top rail, skip a rail. And it products called skip rail. And so it's a it's a mid clamp project that sits between modules and connects two separate rooms together. So you can skip some metal and skip a whole bunch of attachments to the same roof. So you can knock down your tax. Why

Tim Montague: 51:05

didn't someone think of this sooner? Well, wind.

John Weaver: 51:09

That's, that's my logic. And well,

Tim Montague: 51:12

yeah, I mean, this is just I'm a little mind boggling that is this really a thing? Or is this pushing the boundaries too much? Maybe?

John Weaver: 51:23

Maybe? That's a good question to ask you, sir. It's smart.

Tim Montague: 51:29

Yep, yep. Skip a rail. Okay. And then and then we're looking at what here anchor solar.

John Weaver: 51:35

So the main solix So Lux 11. Anchor, the main reason I POTUS this posted this is because anchor is kind of new in big batteries. They're a gadget company that makes awesome connectors,

Tim Montague: 51:50

charging cables. Yes,

John Weaver: 51:52

very good at making things and I read an article on them. And I was very impressed by them by their owner and their logic and how they model their business structure. And I was like, well, all that sounds like a good solid business. And they also do batteries now. And so I was like, oh, anchor, they make big batteries. They used to make little batteries, and I bought their little charging unit. So prior and you know, they always seem to work well. So I was just

Tim Montague: 52:16

just so they're getting in the resi battery space with a lithium phosphate. Is it not lithium iron phosphate?

John Weaver: 52:24

i Well, it's not lithium cobalt nickel, which is what the it's not that. I don't think it's an I guess it's an iron phosphate.

Tim Montague: 52:32

It's B LFP? Because that is the most common form for you know, it's most common chemistry for stationary storage.

John Weaver: 52:42

Probably yeah, I mean, yes, it is. And that's what I seem to. So this is a company that will come out and do some quick scans of your hardware. And their specialty is saying, Hey, we looked at these solar panels and they are good or they are not good. And here's why. And they give you a deliverable that you can use in a discussion with an insurance company. Or if you have a conversation with your module manufacturer, and you get some modules that look a little funky. And you're like, hey, I did a spot checking of models. I found these and his story and I liked it. He said listen, once the module buyer knows that you have a guy like me showing up to go through each module and spec it out, then they guarantee they work really hard to give you good modules. I was like, Oh, that's very interesting.

Tim Montague: 53:31

So he l imaging service? Yes, yes. Yes, he

John Weaver: 53:36

takes pictures. And

Tim Montague: 53:38

E L stands for what?

John Weaver: 53:40

What's your luminance subtly? Yeah.

Tim Montague: 53:43

So it's a standard test that that you want to have done? Usually in the factory, honestly. Right. Probably to pick out modules that are defective. And but so are they using, like machine learning or something? How what is new about their service? Because there's many companies that provide that El scanning service?

John Weaver: 54:06

I don't know, it was new to me that he was doing it and that he existed and that he was already plus on the floor. That's what it was. I just thought it was cool. Yeah, you know, we got 240 ish booths. And I walked by and that was my cool learning conversation. You know, maybe it triggered in me because I bought modules. And I had four or five, six, I had to replace a couple that were manufacture the, you know, a couple that we think were manufacturer issues. And a couple that we know were ours. So it made me think and then what he said is the importance of a clear module acceptance provision clause in your contract, if you're a big buyer, you know, this term, but you you need to have a good of module acceptance provision clause in your contract. So I thought that was interesting terminology to learn. So it was good conference. I liked the conference. And it was small. I was I consumed the whole thing in one day. I was only there for a day.

Tim Montague: 55:09

I heard there were 4000 people. Yep. Which is a good number. You know, these, these regional conferences keep getting bigger and bigger. Yeah, yeah, it's cool like the regionals are. We have three regional events. Let's talk about events, John. We have three regional events in Chicago this year, in May May 20 to 22nd is the Midwest solar Expo. If you'd like to sponsor the expo, reach out to me I am securing sponsors for the Midwest solar Expo. And I also am working with the Illinois Solar Energy Association, on recruiting members to that organization. So if you're interested in working in Illinois, reach out to me. But then in July, we have the solar farm Summit, which is an aggravated takes conference, organized by Mr. Bell. And then we have Ari plus Midwest in November. So three major conferences in Chicago this year, it's, it's, it's a wonderful thing, because they don't have to go very far. What's your next event?

John Weaver: 56:17

We'll probably already plus in Anaheim. Yeah, I'm like, I mean, I might go to that New York, one that the CEA does finance one in March, but I'm still kind of getting life back to normal. And like, next weekend, I'm going to visit a project. And so I gotta, you know, be cool with the amount of time that I give to the world. And so that, but yeah, I mean, work already plus,

Tim Montague: 56:44

or James asked a question, which is a good question for me, probably not a very good question for you. And Mark's question is apart from this channel, are there any other YouTube channels that talk about commercial solar that you could recommend, and Mark, unfortunately, I cannot recommend another channel that talks about commercial solar, there are many channels that talk about residential solar, but commercial is somewhat neglected, I think in the YouTube space. Speaking of YouTube, check out all of our content and clean power hour.com. And we're on audio and video. So give us a rating and review on Apple or Spotify. Those are the two platforms that Garner 90 plus percent of listenership and then check out our YouTube channel, just Google it, but there's a link at clean power hour.com, to the YouTube channel, also, and connect with me on LinkedIn. I love connecting with our listeners. And if you're coming to Illinois, I want to I want to know you I'm I'm an expert on the Illinois market. And if you're an EPC, for example, coming to Illinois, because there is a burst of construction work happening in 2024. So developers are actively looking for construction companies who can build stuff in Illinois. If you're doing that reach out to me, I can help you find resources in Illinois. But how can our listeners find you Mr. John Weaver, commercial

John Weaver: 58:05

solar guy.com. That's our website. We just kind of changed it around a little bit to modernize it and clean it up so we can update pages better. And what's on LinkedIn, John Fitzgerald Weaver. And but most of the news that I have a new technique news term of collecting news, instead of posting it on Twitter, primarily. I'm now posting on my website, all these little snippets that I find good idea, then I'm going to set up my website to send it out to all the places that matter. So I'm going to build a Fetty verse website, which hooks up with Mastodon and, and the bird, the new bird, one blue sky, and then feeds it to Twitter. So it's gonna be my my technique.

Tim Montague: 58:48

And next week on the Clean Power Hour live on the 29th of February. We're gonna have Scott Graybill, who is the CEO and founder of a company called Caillat. Calex, which is developing perovskite solar that will be layered on top of traditional crystal and PV technology. So looking forward to interviewing Scott on our live show, I got to meet him at I can't remember now. It was one of the regionals I was at in the last couple of months, but very interesting. And so perovskites are coming to the solar market, like they have pilots in in the ground. So it's real. And it's just a question of how quickly the greater solar market will adopt this technology. Without I'll say, thanks for being here. And we'll see you next week. Thanks so much, John.