Clean Power Hour LIVE | December 14, 2023 | Speeding the Energy Transition

Tim Montague: 0:40

And we're live. It's December 14. Thumb. Tim Montague, welcome to the Clean Power Hour live. Check out all of our content at clean power hour.com Give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify. That would be the best stocking stuffer, you could give us a rating and review on Apple or Spotify. Or better yet, tell a friend tell Santa about the Clean Power Hour and I want to welcome my co host, John Weaver to the show. Welcome, John.

John Weaver: 1:07

Hey, Tim, it's been a while since senior glad that we're here chatting again. There's, you know, always important news to talk about, especially at the end of the year. And I hope you had a nice year. I hear cient inverters will be with us taking care of the show for another year. So congrats on signing that.

Tim Montague: 1:28

Yeah, we have. We have re upped our contract with chin power systems. Thank you so much to Brian Wagner, the president of cient. We call them CPS America. That's the easiest way to name chip, but they are the number one. And this is official now the Bloomberg. The Bloomberg tier one list was published this week. And cient is number one on that list for tier one inverter. So check out CPS America at cin power systems.com Thank you so much to Brian Wagner, though for their their partnership. And for anyone who's interested in coming on the show, we want to talk to you. So reach out to me and John on LinkedIn, whether you're an OEM, a service provider, a developer or an EPC, we bring all kinds of folks on the show here on the live on Thursdays, and on our pre recorded platform as well. We have a lot of a lot of announcements to get through this morning. But I wanted to also just, you know, let our listeners know that we've been on hiatus the last couple of months. It was a deliberate hiatus. But we're back. And we look forward to this is our Year End Show John, we're not going to see each other next week. And then and then it's 2024, the week after that. So this is our Year End Show. I want to wish all of our listeners a merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, and a Happy New Year.

John Weaver: 2:55

I think for me, I just picked all kinds of articles as I was going back this week looking at like really big, high pie in the sky numbers that were cool. We saw the solar numbers we saw, you know all kinds of different stuff. You know, commercial solar guy had a really good year revenue up over 100%. So, you know, we could talk about review stuff all day long, Tim. But real quick, just because I heard you talking about it. And I wanted to bring it up, you have a webinar thing that people seem to like now that you set up and like a really big, cool racking company that I like, is using it like I haven't heard about that. So that's why I'm bringing it

Tim Montague: 3:41

up. Yeah, I hatched I hatched a package, I call it the webinar package, John. And what I do is I host a webinar on a value added topic. It's not a sales pitch about your product. But it's a webinar, for example, we did one with Tina Watts this summer, on improving solar asset performance. And we had VDE, the independent engineering firm on we had green backer, who's a customer of Dino watts. So I do a webinar on a value added topic for the industry with you. And a third party like a customer of yours, and hopefully a third party engineering firm or someone like that can that can validate your technology or your service. So we do a webinar, then we do an interview with your CEO or founder. And then I will write a story for PV magazine, which gets 5.7 million views per month, which I think the commercial solar guy discovered a little before me which you know, I'm a slow learner, John, so but that that package are now offering a special of $3,450. It's normally a $7,000 package. So I have 50% off right now, if you book this special before the end of the year, so reach out to me reach out to me on LinkedIn or on the clean power our website. And the other announcement, though, that I'm super excited for unless you have any other questions about the webinar package. Maybe Maybe we should have the commercial solar guy on the webinar.

John Weaver: 5:10

We totally should. Absolutely. Maybe I'll do one. I'll take one. What

Tim Montague: 5:16

topic, what topic would you want to do if you did a webinar John?

John Weaver: 5:21

commercial solar rooftop solar behind the behind the meter system analysis process, how we come to the conclusion about what rooftop solar project should be yours and Massachusetts and Rhode Island specifically? Yeah, because that's where we're focused. And those design tech needs can bleed outward from the northeast, of course.

Tim Montague: 5:42

So how you how you design and size a project and how it and how it pencils? And what are the constraints? That kind of thing? Yeah,

John Weaver: 5:51

and how we take into account local incentives, local infrastructure, roof size financial modeling.

Tim Montague: 5:58

Yeah,

John Weaver: 5:58

you know, just what we look at for a project. So maybe we would pick a local roof that we did a project on and say, here's what we consider the mass and then do a different one in New York, or maybe a different one in Pennsylvania. And just kind of show, you know, because we do lots of rooftop and we're going to be focusing on rooftop sales in the south coast, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, we hired a sales guy named Craig, he's going to be doing a reach out specifically for rooftop owners on the south coast of mass and Rhode Island. And if we did a focus show on it, for our company, that'd be a good piece of marketing material for us to also have available for our local businesses, too.

Tim Montague: 6:39

Exactly.

John Weaver: 6:40

So that sounds cool. So if we did one of those with you guys, put that you send me an invoice for deposit on it. And we'll start working on it because we need media for our website. And that's why I come on this podcast because I know that there are plenty of people that watch and listen versus reading. And you know, I right, so I gotta get out there into video medium.

Tim Montague: 7:02

Yeah, that that having your your company and a customer in a conversation is so valuable. Because we're all biased about our own companies, we all think we're the best thing since sliced bread. But when you have a third party who didn't who could have worked with anyone, but chose to work with you, the commercial solar guy on their rooftop solar project, that's that's powerful sauce that others can then absorb, while they're mowing the lawn doing the dishes, because it's in their ears. And they don't have to think they're just listening to this webinar. And it's a good thing, or reviewing it on Zoom or on our YouTube channel, check out our YouTube channel. It's very robust, all of our content goes there, including these lives. So the other announcement I want to make, and I'd love to hear, like some things that are new in your life, John, because it's been a couple of months. But what's new, really fresh for me as I started doing business development for icea, the Illinois solar and energy storage Association, that's our statewide industry organization. I've been involved with icea on and off since 2005. And I see as 40 years old, they were doing you know, they were promoting solar thermal back in the day, before PV really burst onto the scene. And then crushed thermal, just bone crushing with lower cost of energy than you could provide with thermal. So the solar thermal kind of went by by unfortunately, a lot of contractors pivoted into PV though. So anyway, near and dear to my heart organization. And I am recruiting new members and helping members that have forgotten to re up their membership to re up and it's so it's great pleasure to work with all these developers and installers and OEMs and service providers that are working in the Illinois market. Fun fact about Illinois people and John, maybe you know, this we're adding 10 gigawatts of CNI, residential and utility solar in the next seven years, we're ending adding 10 gigawatts between now and 2030. So Illinois is a great Digi market. If you're not involved in Illinois, reach out to me, I can help you get into the Illinois market. That's another thing that I do. But I'd love to talk to you about icea. And the value that they provide, they have a full time lobbyists, for example, that works in Springfield helping us keep the train rolling the seat to train rolling, we have a wonderful RPS. But it's all about getting, you know, continuing to augment that with, you know, charging infrastructure, electrification of transportation, phasing out of gas, there's a lot of things that have to happen here. And we have to hold on to our good net metering rules and, and and fight off the utilities basically. So but that's my other major announcement. I don't want to forget about talking about events, upcoming events. I'm going to go to inner solar, I'm going to ra plus ne I may even go to Ari plus community solar, which is just before InterSolar in San Diego. But InterSolar is in January in San Diego, and then already plus Northeast is in February in Boston, your backyard what what's new with you John?

John Weaver: 10:30

million things projects companies growing, put out an SBA loan request so that we can hire sales teams and I I believe my banker is pushing it forward to the review committee was trying to kind of get a handle and, you know, have some concerted outbound sales efforts higher guy named Craig Sargent, he's going to focus on the south coast, Rhode Island, Massachusetts effort. Good Rhode Island program, there's lots of behind the meter available lots of small rooftops, we can build them. And, you know, we're just trying to kind of get a little more consistency, control of our growth versus the really great stuff we have now. But it's all random and inbound in different ways. So we just we have to manage it. And now we're trying to do it a little smarter. That's, that's the biggest piece I would say for us is just trying to grow and working on that process, we put together a slide deck, and we submitted that slide deck with a package of financials. And the slide deck was specifically for our banker for the SBA loan, but I could rework it, we were also considering taking on a 10% owner if we had a strategic partner. But that would be you know, they have to be really strategic, we prefer to do a bank loan SBA for our next round of growth, just because we don't have to give up anything, and paying back the money. We that's not going to be an issue for us. So it's, we're just seeking some growth and stability. And we signed a few nice projects. I gotta fly out to a site tomorrow morning. It's real big project that

Tim Montague: 12:08

would lie FlightAware.

John Weaver: 12:13

In the great state of Pennsylvania. Oh, cool. Yeah. So it's a short flight. But it just it makes more sense. And going through all the details, what

Tim Montague: 12:23

is going on with the community solar market in Pennsylvania? I mean, I know that you've been developing projects there. But the legislation still hasn't quite popped, if I'm correct, if I recall, correctly,

John Weaver: 12:36

it's always being talked about, but it's never moving forward. Maybe next year, next year is the type of year when it could happen is the way I'm told things that are publicly influential get signed in presidential election years, or before the Lok every two years. So this year, I don't month, nothing occurred this past fall. So and, you know, every once awhile, I see a new headline saying, yay, community solar push legislation. Legislation has been submitted many times. Just not not popping up yet. So you know, continuing on. Yeah, we, we the project we're talking about, here's a big behind the meter. And we're just we're going to talk to this customer and, you know, figure it out. And we're doing some good engineering on this site, so we can get our hourly, big count in. And

Tim Montague: 13:27

so you have a behind the meter project in PA.

John Weaver: 13:29

Yes, yes. Cool. Yeah. And

Tim Montague: 13:33

in the greater scheme of things, how does that? How does that pencil?

John Weaver: 13:39

Technically, I don't know. We were the customer has its very refined customers, sophisticated customer with their own financial resources. And we're bidding only a certain piece of it. We're handling no major procurement, only the most basic aspects of Balance of System so that we can be a little more efficient with its purchase. Engineering balances system, project management, construction management, all the labor. So so deep down, I don't know, that's customer's game, and the customer is really smart with their pricing and how they're doing it. So I bet to their ROI is pretty great. I don't know if their projects great enough to consider a production tax credit, but their pricing is so smart that maybe it would The only negative is that it's going to be a lower angle rooftop project. So system efficiency will be lower in exchange for low system costs due to the ballasts, racking and low angles and everything like that. So it's pretty big sized system. It's five Meg's

Tim Montague: 14:40

Wow. Yeah, that's a very large CNI project. Good luck with that.

John Weaver: 14:47

Thank you very much.

Tim Montague: 14:48

That's, that's exciting. There's just something about big rooftop solar, I just,

John Weaver: 14:53

I just love like big roofs and I cannot lie. Yeah,

Tim Montague: 14:57

I got nothing against smaller projects. But big rooftops are exciting. They're challenging in some regards to every project has its own challenges roof condition is the number one challenge for CNI, solar honestly. And because the roof gets easily 10 years old, it 10 years goes by fast and if your roofs 10 years, say 12 years 15 years old, then it's in questionable condition for solar projects, unfortunately, but still has maybe 20 years of life in it. And so, we you know, the the the workaround there is to combine a roofing augmentation and a solar project or reroofing a solar project into a single catbacks. That's totally doable. And that's the thing. The IRS has signed off on that, of course, you have to get advice from your tax professional. Don't take Tim Montague, his word for that I am not a tax accountant. But it's a thing. So should we should we talk about offshore wind?

John Weaver: 16:03

Like offshore wind?

Tim Montague: 16:05

Didn't you know, they're

John Weaver: 16:06

starting to turn on?

Tim Montague: 16:07

Yeah, they're starting to turn on. That was one of the stories and I don't know if I found that story yet. What is the what is the project that is turning on as we speak?

John Weaver: 16:19

Well, I believe one of the projects off shore of that in New York or Connecticut have turned on the first unit or first couple of units, and they're feeding the grid. And pretty soon, the project that's feeding near, that's coming out of New Bedford, which is vineyard wind is going to turn on. So let's look at an offshore wind feeding grid, and I and so they're just starting though. And the reason they're, you know, they're just starting is simply, you know, you can do one at a time. And so it's south fork, and South forks off Long Islands. And so it's 132 megawatt facility. And it's starting to feed the grid, the next one that will feed the grid is vineyard wind, and that's feeding into Massachusetts. But that won't be they said close to the year and vineyard wind has, without a doubt, obviously, they've already got units up. And they've had hardware going in and out of New Bedford, which is where I'm based today, for months for months now. And I've been visiting and sharing images with everybody and it excites me just seeing this big old gear. And and I have seen you can actually just barely see it from Martha's Vineyard on certain beaches, if you look off into the horizon. And so the first units that were deployed a few months ago, a month ago, those pictures hit the news, and it was pretty cool to see him.

Tim Montague: 17:51

Yeah, we have a story in VOA news here on screen that calls out the South Fork project east of Montauk Point, New York. And they're using 11 megawatt turbines. We also have a story about 1514 to 15 megawatt turbines that Chris nelder did a story on. I'll talk about that in a second here. So offshore wind is happening. And it also is facing some headwinds, as Jeff St. John says in Canary media, I think that was his Jeff. Jeff St. John. Story. Oh, I just found the podcast story that I didn't find the story story. So what are the what are the headwinds in your mind, John, for for offshore wind.

John Weaver: 18:49

It seems as if it's the interest rates being above 789 percent in the market, because offshore wind is big capital upfront. And that's just affecting these PPA bids that were super low. And when you pay for cash today, for a 30 year project, and your interest rates are really high today, then either a you need to update that PPA price up, or you need to. Well, you can't you just you have to update that PPA price or cancel the project. And that's what occurred. A couple of projects off the east coast. They were they were canceled because the local jurisdiction didn't want to renegotiate price. The local apparently some of them paid like massive fees like 10 million $20 million fees, that type of thing for cats backing out of a deal. And then I guess they'll resubmit because they still own the rights. They still got the interconnection. They're the ones that know the site. So I think right now, that's the biggest headwind. A second one, though, is fossil fueled pushback where we have the fake whales argument. And then the constant bs of oh, I can't see, you know, property rights. You know, it's funny that people that scream property rights want to impose their will upon other people's properties. like wait a second.

Tim Montague: 20:22

So ironic that isn't it? Yeah, I

John Weaver: 20:25

think it really just the biggest stress though is the money. It's always the money. The paying for these units. With all the cash in a tighter credit market is a challenge. There's two ways get through it. Number one, well, three ways one, we pay a little more for electricity from these units. Number two, we have a special interest rate that's discounted for clean energy products coming from the federal government, or number 3/3. One is interest rates to come down, which, which is why the stock market was up a whole bunch yesterday. And as I think up again, today, the Fed said that they can foresee lowering rates by next summer. And that shot everybody stocks up. And so that could be another benefit. So but that's gonna take a while to work its way and if they're only going to start lowering them in a year. So projects that are getting bid today, they're going to be on some touchy ground, they're going to be bidding with interest rates, at least in one of the bid numbers. They can say something like, Hey, if the interest rates go down, we'll lower price ever ratchet situation in there. But you know, it's just a lot of cash upfront. The first 30 years of energy, that's your pre paying for cash, or for electricity is what you're doing.

Tim Montague: 21:42

Yeah, so you know, this story we have on screen by Jeff St. John from Canary media points out that the Biden administration set a goal of building 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. And, you know, we're basically starting at zero. I mean, now we have a, maybe, maybe a gig turned on, I don't know, but, you know, we're, we're just, we're just starting. And anyway, we had bad inflation problems this year, that's now getting under control. But we also had supply chain issues. And then there's this monkey business with the developers trying to renegotiate their PPAs and cancel canceling projects outright because they weren't able to. So Orsted cancelled was 2.25 gigawatt ocean wind project. And, you know, that's a bummer. It's, it's, you know, clearly pissed off Governor Phil Murphy in New Jersey. But, excuse me, that's their prerogative, I guess. I mean, the developer has to make money and has to do stuff that's, you know, going to make financial sense for them. So, I see both sides of that, I guess. Right. And, but yeah, it is funny to see the stories about the whales and stuff like that, like, I don't buy that. In fact, I think there's evidence that, you know, when you build these, these, I mean, it's basically an underwater platform of some kind, whether it's, it's a pile that goes in the seabed or a floating you know, for truly offshore, they're using floating platforms, but but, you know, it creates a, it creates an ecosystem right around that, where there's a lot of ocean life, and then that's good for the for the fish. And that can be good for the fisherman. So there is an upside also. But I wanted to, I wanted to show off a little bit of Chris Noters work on this topic, and see if I can get that on screen here. Chris nelder is the host of the energy transition show. It's a great podcast, it is behind a paywall. He makes the first 20 minutes free, but you had to pay I don't know $6 A month or something like that. It's not expensive. But Chris did a trip to the UK and visited some he didn't get to go like out to the construction site in the field, like in the ocean, but he got to visit the staging area where I'm going to get this on screen and show some photos of that where you see this gears just or as the as the bread say the kit is just crazy. Crazy big. And I have too many tabs open. So I don't know if I'm going to find this now.

John Weaver: 24:35

What five systems are we building out here?

Tim Montague: 24:38

Share Here we go. So I mean, these are these are Chris is documenting some 100 100 to 200 megawatt projects this in. So we see photos here of the Moray West staging area called Lindbergh and Invergordon. And these are what's called monopiles. So that is the you know, that's the that's the turbine that's the that's the pile that the turbine sits on. It's 10 meters in diameter. It's a football field long and the swept or the diameter of these turbines that they're installing. I think these are the 1414 megawatt hail I turbans. They are the swept or the diameter is 222 meters. football field two football fields I did the math on the swept area, and it's 10 acres of swept area. So you basically take a two megawatt solar farm and turn it on its axis, turn it vertically, right and stick it up on a pole, several 100 feet in the air, and you get 14 megawatts of power. So that's pretty cool. And if you have good wind, you can see in this photo, the workers here standing by that truck that's holding that. So I mean, these, these piles are just massive. In this case, these piles are just getting pounded just like on a solar field, they're just getting pounded into the ocean bottom, which is also pretty crazy. And then some great shots of this ship that they use to carry the piles and there's one of the piles has already been loaded onto the ship. And this massive arm, I don't know what else to call it, that they use for picking up the pile from shore and then putting it onto the ship. It's it's quite a piece of machinery. So check out the energy transition show. Just a huge fan of Chris Childers work and and he also did a so this last episode is all about offshore wind in the UK. He also did a show on this community called I guess it's an it's an island community in Scotland, where they've been integrating solar and batteries into their micro grid. They had, like very few people had power for many, many years. And then they've just been building diesel, micro grids. And now solar wind and battery micro grid. So that story about I guess also very interesting. So check that out. All right. I'm fighting a cold to like so many people. Yep,

John Weaver: 27:42

yep, me too.

Tim Montague: 27:43

Yep. Tis the season. I'm just glad it's not worse, but I have a little bit of a cough,

John Weaver: 27:52

cold, cold, cold, or been a living creature on earth. So my biggest story kinda is solar growth. And if we got about six, seven links in different ways, that kind of point to it in different things. Now we could also before we talk about solar growth, we could talk about a project of the week. So I'm very happy is done. And we're waiting on the final PTO. Everything's been accepted by the utility. Or we could talk about the power your home system, which is called power house, I believe, from Tesla Tesla power, power house.

Tim Montague: 28:33

Yeah, well, let's

John Weaver: 28:34

get started with their new truck.

Tim Montague: 28:36

Let's talk about your project of the week. I've got that up. I'll get it on screen here in a second. A bunch of

John Weaver: 28:43

images that I posted on Twitter of the site during construction recently

Tim Montague: 28:48

set the table for us what

John Weaver: 28:51

so great. So brewery is a brewer who's located in Rhode Island, Westerly, Rhode Island, they make captain's daughter and a couple of other great beers. Old structure plus a new structure combined into one two roofs a high one a low one, we have rapid shutdown devices and bricks that are holding the system down. And it's about 50 Kw DC, couple of inverters, some KB racking, those are Q sell for 85 Watt models. And it was kind of the the biggest challenge of the system was actually getting through structural because it turns out that the original contractor who built one of the buildings, didn't finalize 50 bolts holding the structures purlins. And those extra purlins gave those bolts gave the purlins additional force that they could hold weight. And so the thought was that the system might be the roof might be stressed just a tiny bit right now, right without the purlins. So you can go to the next image in the tweet series. There's a few images. And so that was the biggest. I would just say go to the next tweet. Just close this one out. Oh,

Tim Montague: 30:13

that's tweet. Yeah. Let's go back to the doc. No,

John Weaver: 30:18

no, you should be able to click right on that tweet and then see 123 behind it, or they're not following tweets. Nothing. After follow. Oh, maybe not.

Tim Montague: 30:27

I don't see anything else there. All right. Well,

John Weaver: 30:30

that's that's my tweet. Well, there's few others that I have on it. It's a good little project. So we got the structural done, we worked through that we got the modules in place, inverter was a little challenging. We needed a small 208 volt inverter, we ended up founding some gear and rapid shutdown. And it's nice one thing we learned after the project, that's a little bit of a challenge that we're working through. But so far, it isn't an actual issue, because it's been raining a lot, is that the smokestack spits out more than just smoke Timothy, it spits out barley. So yeah, some of our modules had barley sprayed all over them. And we're gonna have to learn how those six ish modules certain area are affected.

Tim Montague: 31:24

They might have to go up there and that was it off, right? That Well,

John Weaver: 31:27

it's just so happens there's a door right next to this area. And so a hose could be reached and, and so it might not be an issue. We just want to watch it, see how it evolves, make sure nothing sticks. It's a rainy region. So yeah, terrible. But of course, we don't want barley slowing down our generation numbers. So that's just our system of the week. And one last thing about Grace Hill, their owners are really cool. They actually bought a carbon capture device. And the carbon capture device helps to make their beer bubbly. And so they actually have carbon capture and solar energy at this facility. One could argue solar powered carbon capture, if you wanted to be, you know, cute and annoying. So there you go. So I'm happy with gray sale, Jen, the owners really patient really nice. All documents turned in the utility has accepted it. We're now waiting on PTO and for the switch to be thrown. And we expect it any moment.

Tim Montague: 32:31

Oh, cool. Yep. So construction is complete.

John Weaver: 32:35

Oh, yeah, construction is complete.

Tim Montague: 32:39

With it next time, you gotta find those photos, bro.

John Weaver: 32:42

I have them on fact, I can find them right now. If you want me to share,

Tim Montague: 32:46

we want to see the completed project. stacks of modules. I get excited about that. But I'm a geek.

John Weaver: 32:55

Well, listen, I think people need to see stacks of modules and be damn happy with it. Because that's the meat of a solar power project. And it's good stuff. And I like sharing the stacks of modules as my pictures. Obviously, as you can see, stacks of modules are oftentimes shared.

Tim Montague: 33:16

I'm gonna move the link to the projects of the week, just to the top of the dock here. So they're in order for the show notes. But yeah, find us a link. We're going to talk about cybertruck We're going to talk about growth in the solar industry. Yes, a lot of good news coming out about the solar industry no without its challenges, our friends in residential solar struggling a little bit this year, because of inflation rates. Well, because of inflation, knocking finance. That's that's a wicked spiral, so to speak, or Snowball

John Weaver: 34:01

is a challenge that you want to see some images Tim. I'm gonna share my screen, do it. Sure. entire screen this way you guys can see everything I'm working on. It's always dangerous to do that, isn't it? All right. So here's some modules on the roof on the on the lower level. And that's that machine that's spitting out the oats right there. What's

Tim Montague: 34:31

on screen. Okay,

John Weaver: 34:33

okay, now you can see it. Good. So here's the modules. There's all of our switchgear nice and clean behind the meter system that are three Fronius units coming off the roof, panel, disconnect, or, you know, main panel on site, disconnect all that good stuff. This is the co2 machine shouldn't got a better picture of the co2 guy there. But that's all right. This is the gear coming

Tim Montague: 34:58

off the road. So it's a machine that the co2 machine is doing exactly what

John Weaver: 35:05

I don't know exactly how it works on the inside, but I do know that it's taking bubbly co2 carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and making your beer fizzy with it.

Tim Montague: 35:15

capturing carbon out of the atmosphere directly. Atmosphere capture Yes, that's impressive. I didn't know that. Like I didn't know that they could do that small scale and make it economical.

John Weaver: 35:26

Whose I guarantee you this is not economical in any way shape or form. I guarantee you

Tim Montague: 35:31

there was a subsidy that they that they took advantage of to install the machine. No,

John Weaver: 35:36

I guarantee you they did it because they're good people I like to own it. They I don't, I don't know anything. I don't know what they paid for it. I don't know where they got it. They could have beat up some old lady on the street and took her carbon capture him as

Tim Montague: 35:47

well. Let's get him on the let's get him on the webinar. He's a good. He's a good customer to bring on the webinar, man. All right, maybe we'll do that. That could be our webinar. Interesting. Interesting project. Yeah. Yep. So

John Weaver: 36:00

it's just a small little roof. Oh, this is beer. Yeah. This is their machine on the inside. This is the oats that were on the roof that were getting spit out that we had to deal with. That's one of your beers. This is going off the roof. There's my ionic there's a bunch of transformers that are next door to the site, which was kind of weird. This is inside making the beer. This is panels on the upper roof. Nice clean, there's more of those transformers up close some of the images and more beer and you know oats on the modules. So

Tim Montague: 36:33

some utility has a storage yard next door is that that attach? Yep, yeah, yep,

John Weaver: 36:39

yep. Yep. I'll tell you where the location is Tim, but you got to pay me

Tim Montague: 36:48

the location of the brewery

John Weaver: 36:51

now of the trance Oh wow. Well,

Tim Montague: 36:54

if you know the address of the brewery you know the transport

John Weaver: 37:00

I'm already going I bring you a good deal you go right around so that's the project for the week. That's that's pretty sober. It took us a bit of time we got the customer a great return on investment. Electricity is expensive. And she got a nice state incentive plus federal Of course. So so I'm, I'm happy with grace our jet. They got a great project. Congrats.

Tim Montague: 37:27

Yeah, that's, that's very cool. Thank you for sharing that. Okay, we're gonna go to Tesla cybertruck. And in the news there, they've officially launched deliveries of the cybertruck Right. Elon has been doing a lot of interviews shooting arrows Joe Rogan shot an arrow at one on the show on the Joe Rogan show. Here's a photo. Sorry, shot a gun.

John Weaver: 37:51

Did you see the gun video?

Tim Montague: 37:52

I didn't see the gun video now. Oh, there's

John Weaver: 37:54

a machine gun. They shot a machine gun and it's like an old timey machine.

Tim Montague: 37:59

You know what I thought it was really disappointing at the at the launch event. I only watched part of the launch event. But they threw a baseball at the window. Not a steel ball this time. I'm like, Guys, come on. You don't think we're gonna notice? I'm like Elon dude. Just just dropped the whole throwing a ball thing. Don't Don't throw a baseball though. That doesn't that doesn't have any credibility with me in my book. Yeah. So yeah, Elon is kind of crazy that way. He does stupid stuff. But oh, you wrote a story. I didn't realize that you wrote a story about the cybertruck.

John Weaver: 38:35

I do write stories occasionally. Still. It's good.

Tim Montague: 38:38

It's well, yeah. And why not? You know, I mean, they they didn't get first to market with it with an electric pickup, right? There's already the rivian and the Ford lightning. And maybe I don't know, is there another one? Probably. And those but but you know, Tesla dominates the Eevee market in the US they there? They're over 80% of Evie sales in the United States. Probably yeah. Oh, they are. They are and the model Y like we predicted two years ago is now the number one selling vehicle in the world. It passed the Toyota Corolla on volume. So, you know, Tesla's doing some some good stuff here now is the cybertruck going to be a runaway hit? That's TBD. I have two cybertruck reservations. I'm planning to create a cybertruck business with those two trucks. So stay tuned. I am an early reservation holder on one of them. One was one was made like that first week and then one was made. I don't know when I think maybe a couple months later. So I

John Weaver: 39:44

thought I did mine early on but apparently I'm like number 200,000 in line.

Tim Montague: 39:50

But yeah, I'm not holding my breath. Because they got a lot of orders. But you know, it is cool, right? There's a there's a 50 amp cord coming out of the back of that truck charging a Tesla? Yep.

John Weaver: 40:06

So I can the purpose of this article because you know, I write for PV mag so I don't write about vehicles I don't really the Eevee portion of Tesla's super important but whenever I cover them all I care about is the solar and the storage. But this is a step in a PV magazine direction that matters because this is backup energy from your vehicle. This is potentially part of a virtual power plant without a doubt vehicle to home and vehicle to load so Vita H and Vita L and it offers There's 11 and a half kW of power output direct to a house, which also lines up with powerwall three and the Tesla inverter. So a nice family of products that are going to jive in terms of energy movement. And then it also offers five plugs. Two in the back, maybe one or two in the front are some some mix of a layout of plugs.

Tim Montague: 41:03

But what really matters is the kWh isn't the isn't there, like 130 kWh in that battery?

John Weaver: 41:09

I think I saw something that said 123. And change. Yeah, so

Tim Montague: 41:13

it's like twice the size of a model wise battery. Yes,

John Weaver: 41:17

absolutely. And it's a lot of your house. If your house is 30 kW, which is the average but a very high average. Yeah, that's three days, four days, you know, 120 is four days, never, of course, want it to run off for days, you'd love and you should also have some solar there.

Tim Montague: 41:33

Well, yeah, if you want to charge when the grid is down, right, you gotta gotta have some solar.

John Weaver: 41:39

And at 11.5 charging and 11.5, household inverter and this and that, I bet you can pump a lot of solar into your vehicle in a single day. If you happen to be in a moment when the grid is down, and you're trying to watch her kWh usage, open your windows shut off your AC. So with that, the power the cybertruck is now an off grid power plant. And this is the first Tesla vehicle that offers these features. And it's called the power house. And it'll probably come to other vehicles. But you can really just have this truck hanging out doing nothing and be your house. It's still really funny looking. I would love to buy one for commercial solar die and just cover it with logos because this big giant weird looking

Tim Montague: 42:27

thing. Yeah, it's an attention grabber for sure. Yeah.

John Weaver: 42:30

And it can you can fit a solar module in the bed. And I, you know, I believe I believe the bed is wide enough to lay the panel flat, the tire jams, the tire things. Yeah,

Tim Montague: 42:43

it'll hold the sheet of plywood flat with the tailgate down. Tailgate has to be down. Yes, correct.

John Weaver: 42:50

So we just got to get a wrap around the end for if it's a big module. If it's smaller module six by three, then it'd be really easy to fit in there. So that's what I was looking at it for. And we could put strap a back onto it a rack if we need to put some stuff. And I've seen some videos about not performing like off off the road and doing some crazy stuff and getting stuck in ice. And I'm like, great. I don't plan on driving it that way. I'm going to be at work slash advertising truck. Yeah.

Tim Montague: 43:20

Yeah. It is. The stainless steel eyes. Monroe live has been covering it and doing a tear down Sandy Monroe Check, check out his podcast and YouTube channel. He did a he did an interview with Elon also. And that that stainless steel that the exoskeleton is built off is pretty special steel, it's not run of the mill stainless steel, it's truly very impact resistant. So that's cool. I'm sure that comes at a premium and the price tag is is something that people are complaining about, like I think I think it starts at 90. So, you know, affordability is definitely an issue. But it's it's I think it's I think it's a pretty cool, pretty cool product. I mean, let's face it, Elon has, you know, been pretty, pretty successful with previous vehicles. Now, he doesn't sell a lot of model x's, for example. And this is this might be in that category. We'll see. Right? will will will Ford f150 buyers migrate to Tesla? That's that's a question for f1 50s. The the number one selling truck in America. Yeah, I

John Weaver: 44:38

mean, I think some people will. Some

Tim Montague: 44:41

people will for sure. Just will it will it like really, really go gangbusters. I think that's TBD. But we're

John Weaver: 44:49

gonna find out. Is he going to be able to max out his manufacturing line that he has in place for this machine? And yeah, we'll see.

Tim Montague: 44:57

I gotta hand it to him. I mean, they I saw a video of the cyber truck care, towing a Porsche, and drag racing a Porsche. I think it was a Porsche 911 and it beat the night while towing so that was also pretty impressive. I mean, it's fast. under three seconds zero to 60

John Weaver: 45:20

Yeah, I don't need that version. No, I mean, I need the slow version. Yeah,

Tim Montague: 45:24

I'm happy. I'm happy for you know, a 10 second zero 60 or three I don't know six seconds. Doesn't I don't need the three seconds here to 60 but I guess you know when when the puck Let's pocalypse comes John, that that kind of speed is useful.

John Weaver: 45:43

Of course, so is a car. And that's the purpose of the article that has power with it, and has a micro grid. It's almost following it around, you need a couple extra pieces to make it a real micro grid. But it's powerplant and I thought that was pretty cool. And this might be good for the rest of Tesla. Maybe your old Tesla won't have that opportunity. Maybe it doesn't have the right inverter inside of it. I don't know that answer. But maybe new Tesla's going forward will. So, yeah. I like it, at least for that. And I'm looking forward to seeing the first one that I see because it's gonna be totally weird and gonna be like, Wow, that is a weird car.

Tim Montague: 46:25

Well, you'll see one before I do probably, you know, here in the here in the hinterlands of Central Illinois, I'm not holding my breath to see a cyber truck, but maybe I'll see one in San Diego in January. That's, that's a possibility.

John Weaver: 46:40

So that's a place where you might see it.

Tim Montague: 46:44

So we're gonna have to be selective about what we cover. Shout out to Chris Lachman who joined us here. We miss you, Chris. We should talk about solar growth. Hmm.

John Weaver: 46:56

Yeah. Well, the next five stories are really kind of all together. So you could bunch them on the document. Because I'm going to hit all five of them in a Quicker, quicker thing, because they're all kind of tied together. It's actually six stories. So first off this year, you should share that chart on the screen from Bloomberg. This year, we're expecting 58% growth in capacity to deploy potentially, and we're potentially going to move from 250 ish, 260 ish gigawatts to roughly 410 to 415. And that's from Bloomberg. And that's a huge number. And,

Tim Montague: 47:36

and the number is is impressive in the US too. Right? We're gonna do like 30 gigawatts in the US this year, I think,

John Weaver: 47:43

well, actually, it will. Sweet. I'll show that chart too, if you want, but somebody that EIA and sia are both suggesting 33 gigs. Okay, that's, that's like 50 60% Gross Alpha last year, because last year was like 2022. Yeah. And so 33 is a huge number.

Tim Montague: 47:59

And that is quite a jump, though. Look at this bar graph. Holy cow.

John Weaver: 48:03

Look at that jump. Now, there's a lot of questions about what's going to happen the year after and I actually have one article that suggests 570 to 620 gigs. But you know what that says, We're gonna fly right past one half of one terawatt. Next year is what's being suggested. That's cool. Point five terawatts. You know, when you're rounding error now goes upwards instead of downwards, you've kind of crossed into a new thing. You

Tim Montague: 48:32

know, what I noticed about this bar graph, though, John, is that China is really driving a lot of that growth. Without a doubt. Without a doubt they're doing they're doing more than half of the 400 gigs. I think,

John Weaver: 48:45

like 240. Yeah. Like they're doing. They're doing. Yeah, I mean, the world just passed. Oh, terawatt. China's doing a quarter of a terawatt.

Tim Montague: 48:57

Yeah. So it's, it

John Weaver: 49:00

is significant carat. China is carrying the weight of many people on a solar industry. And that's great. And so what's what that's leading to is the next article, which you should check out. And it's the pricing of solar modules. Okay, right now, are super low. And they're falling, you know, in the spot market. There's pricing, I'm seeing stuff being offered before you pay for import tariffs at 11 cents in, like Northern England, or Northern Europe. And I saw that 1112 cents, euro cents. So we're talking, you know, 1213 cents, and then you import it, it's 1415 cents, 16 cents, maybe. So the price of solar modules have collapsed since last year's August, peak July peak. And now we're seeing the spot market, you know, all under 15 cents, well under 20 cents. People are suggesting we'd see big deals at a dime next year. I think we'll see one or two deals at a dime, but maybe just to move capacity. But what we also might only see are, you know, I saw a big deal at 15 cents like a five gig or five gigawatt deal, 510 15 gigawatt deal for like, the Chinese national power company. So you know, the biggest deal in the world biggest procurement, and it was at 15 cents. So that might be the number where people have to be to be profitable is 15 cents that might be the lowest price where we're at right now, maybe in six months, it'll drop down to 1413. But if you're buying at 15 cents, that means your partner's making money. And in fact, 10 to 15 gigs. That's it, that means 15 cents, is where we're at. And that's cool.

Tim Montague: 50:55

I mean, isn't it a double edge, though, right, like, prices coming down as a good thing that is a huge driver of, we call this the cost adoption curve. As as the world consumes more solar, and builds more solar, the price of the technology is going to come down, that's a good thing. It gets more affordable means more people can afford to do it, more people will do it. And it's a virtuous circle. The downside of this collapse is it can really hurt the companies that are manufacturing the product and cut into their profits and their viability. Right. So there could be blood on the floor here is that one of the predictions, though, that the industry is going to go through a real pain point?

John Weaver: 51:39

Absolutely. Lots of solar Polish silicon manufacturers joined the fight in 20, to 23, even 21, as the price of poly started popping due to COVID. And other things, and a bunch of them are gonna get hacked, is what everybody's saying. And because there's like three times, there's like two terawatts worth of poly silicon announcements, and we don't we're not there yet. We're still at, you know, something much lower. So, so yes, there is some thought that there will be some industry consolidation is the business language that is used. And yeah, and you know, what, it'll have an effect on US companies who are trying to get their stuff going. And even my favorite company, Meyer Berger, who is a premium product manufacturer, and still trying to scale up their business and then, and if pricing pressures hitting them, then it's rough, but maybe, you know, their total revenue is definitely going to be tighter. But the cost of wafers that they had to pay for is now 1/5 of what it was one quarter of what it was. So they're flexible to some degree, because they're not making the poly.

Tim Montague: 52:53

So what is this? What is this story on Reddit TrendForce highlights ongoing global competition in solar PV.

John Weaver: 53:02

So that's next year, that's where I said, I was wondering about what capacity next year I don't know if you can see the image. If they let you. If you scroll down on that article, the hit the read more button. Okay. And that right there, so that next year, is trend for saying okay, 413 gigs this year, were expecting 28% growth, which would actually be a slowdown from the last three years. And we're suggesting 570 620 gigs. That's continuing growth coming, some of its coming from China, some of its coming from the rest of the world, the US is probably going to grow next year Europe's gonna grow next year, your percent three years in a row 40% growth. That's pretty big thing to us might have a big year of growth, too. I'm not certain what 24 numbers are for the US yet haven't seen the predictions. But why is

Tim Montague: 53:54

everything in Chinese here?

John Weaver: 53:58

Because trend forces Chinese. Yep. So just, you know, we have record low pricing, we have module growth, it's the the transition is accelerating a bit for the solar portion of the industry. And, you know, I'd like to share an article soon talking about people guesstimating one terawatt of capacity coming. And that's pretty huge. Now, the next article we had is actually saying that electricity generation in the US, solar, the solar portion of it is only up 16%. There's a cool chart on there on this article that you get, you could share it, it's just good chart shows how much solar is as part of all electricity on a monthly basis. The first chart in the article, it sounds green. Yep. So there it is. So this year, we're gonna grow about 16% of US electricity, it's gonna go from about 4.7 4.8% of all electricity. And it's gonna grow up to about 5.4. So this chart, it's kind of tough to see on the screen, I got to work on the formatting. But what it shows is the amount of electricity that comes from solar on a monthly basis, and we can see it's growing greatly going back to 2015. In May, we have our record for the month at 7.3 of all electricity of this past year. You can see that peak, and every year goes up a little bit, man. So next year, maybe we'll we'll probably break 8% Maybe we'll get to 9%. But then definitely in 2025, we'll have our first month, April or May, that's gonna break 10% of all electricity coming from solar PV. And it's just kind of neat to see that growth chart. This year 16% growth is actually really low Tim, it's low, because it's low, because last year, we didn't have that much solar get installed, we only had 2022 gigs, 16% capacity growth. This year, we're gonna have 23% capacity growth. And that might mean, we have our first year that solar takes over greater than 1% of electricity needs. That's what that paragraph is saying right there, we might go from 5.4 to like, 6.8, next year, yeah, that would be a big jump. And so we got growth going on, which is kind of cool. And I just, I see a lot of good solar capacity being installed in our company, and our future, my company, too, of course, but in our future, and this is California's large scale versus small scale and multi generation curves, it's a nice number there, California gets, you know, like 1520 plus percent of its electricity from solar. And in certain months, it's over 40, or it's over 35%, electricity from solar, which is kind of neat. So, you know, there's just a lot going on with solar. That's, that's what this series of articles did. And if we, the last two are good and complimentary, and of your articles, one of them is that wind and solar will pass coal, next year, coal is crashing along with wind and solar going up. And then they'll show a neat little chart there real fast for everybody, from Bloomberg. And then the last one is gonna be simply that we have a lot of battery storage coming in, we've seen that image before, of all the battery storage coming. But, you know, I just, it's a big transition that we've been pushing. And, and things are occurring. And so here's coal, here's solar, plus wind, and solar and wind have a nice, firm, clean upward trend. And we see what's happening with coal. So they're going to cross then, you know, make a whole bunch, a whole bunch of electricity and, and this number between wind and coal. By the end of next year, it's going to be over 20% of all electricity. And maize or maybe right at 20%. Yep. Somewhere around there. 1718 to 20%. Yep. So it's, you know, we got a lot going on, and that's my India review.

Tim Montague: 58:36

That's good stuff. I love this graph here showing the growth of wind and solar and the decline of decline of coal. You know, I mean, simultaneously there's there has been a growth in natural gas. We're not we're not getting off of fossil fuels just yet. Really, right. And, and global. Let's, let's remind ourselves listeners PPM s, okay, global ppm of co2 is still going up at about a percent a year. We're at 420. This year, we need to get back to 300. Okay, now that trillion tons of co2 Pollution is extractable via natural means with some augmentation with things like iron ocean fertilization, check out my interview with Peter for kowski. Peter for kowski.com is his website. We can do it, but we have to invest in those emerging technologies. And unfortunately, the answer is not direct air capture. It's seaweed and diatoms in the ocean. That's my answer. So that Merry Christmas. The climate crisis is totally solvable. And what's amazing what you know about Peters work is that he, he concludes the price tag on that is only a billion to $2 billion a year for 30 years. And that's That's chump change in the global you know, economy. So while we've done it again, it's great to have you back John on the live we do this every Thursday at noon, Eastern 11, Central 10 Mountain and nine Pacific. Check out all of our content at clean power hour.com Give us a rating and a review. Please reach out to me and John on LinkedIn. How can our listeners find you John?

John Weaver: 1:00:24

commercial solar guy.com It's our best place we're updating our website right now. It's it's slowly getting cleaned up. general contracting services solar consulting and development as well, I'm on Twitter, solar and mass. And I'm also on LinkedIn. So if you just type in commercial solar guy into Google, you'll find a whole bunch of ways to find us, whichever whichever path you like this, I think

Tim Montague: 1:00:51

we should just keep calling it Twitter just to put a stick in Elon Zai. Oh,

John Weaver: 1:00:55

yeah, I'm calling it Twitter. I don't know what the crap, whatever.

Tim Montague: 1:01:00

Alright, well, I look forward to seeing you in the new year. Happy holidays, everybody. Happy New Year. And we'll see you the first week of January, I think. And then hope to see you in San Diego for a second week of January. And the show will be dark that week because we are at InterSolar. But cool, but good to go to my old stomping ground. I lived in San Diego for 10 years. Love San Diego. Nice trip. All right. Thanks, John. Take care. Hey, listeners. This is Tim, I want to give a shout out to all of you. I do this for you twice a week. Thank you for being here. Thank you for giving us your time. I really appreciate you and what you're all about. You are part and parcel of the energy transition, whether you're an energy professional today, or an aspiring energy professional. So thank you, I want to let you know that the Clean Power Hour has launched a listener survey. And it would mean so much to me. If you would go to clean power hour.com. Click on the About Us link right there on the main navigation that takes you to the about page. And you'll see a big graphic listener survey, just click on that graphic, and it takes just a couple of minutes. If you fill out the survey, I will send you a lovely baseball cap with our logo on it. The other thing I want our listeners to know is that this podcast is made possible by corporate sponsors. We have chin power systems, the leading three phase string inverter manufacturer in North America. So check out CPS America. But we are very actively looking for additional support to make this show work. And you see here our media kit. With all the sponsor benefits and statistics about the show. You know we're dropping two episodes a week. We have now over 320,000 downloads on YouTube. And we're getting about 45,000 downloads per month. So this is a great way to bring your brand to our listeners and our listeners our decision makers in clean energy. This includes projects executives, engineers, finance, project management, and many other professionals who are making decisions about and developing, designing, installing and making possible clean energy projects. So check out clean power hour.com both our listener survey on the about us and our media kit and become a sponsor today. Thank you so much. Let's go solar and storage