Clean Power Hour LIVE Oct 20, 2022

Tim Montague: 0:41

We are live. Welcome to the Clean Power Hour live. I'm Tim Montague, your co host, Today is October 20 2022. bringing you the latest in solar wind and energy storage news. I'm joined, as always by my co host, John Weaver, the commercial solar guy. Welcome to the show, John.

John Weaver: 0:58

Hey, Tim, I hope the weather is nice where you are, I'm officially starting to cool off a tiny bit and mass. I know that's a lean start. But today on my bike, when I wrote in, I forgot to bring something warm. And so I've been thinking about it all morning, and then start wearing a jacket in the morning. But, you know, more importantly, though, like multiple places on Earth, ran on multiple 100% renewables or 100%. Solar this week, and I know you noticed it in Greece, I just wanted to bring it up. Because I always think it's really cool when a power grid somewhere around the world is running 100% on clean electricity. And it happened in two places in you know, headlining manners. So I just want to bring that out.

Tim Montague: 1:42

Well, one of those places was not Illinois, although I just got off a interview with Anthony star, the former director of the IPA, and we now have 1.5 gigawatts of solar in Illinois. It's only just over a percent or two of our grid, but it's huge progress. So what besides Greece though, is the place that's 100% powered by renewable energy?

John Weaver: 2:07

Well, South Australia was actually 100%, powered by solar, for on Sunday, from 10am until 4pm, and the coolest piece about it. And the article is about the third one down, if you wanted to share an image, there's a great image in that article. But the coolest piece about it is that the solar there was 90 plus percent rooftop solar. And, and so if you look at that chart, it breaks it out into utility scale solar, and rooftop solar. And South Australia, and it's just, there's a nice looking chart. It's like, you know, that's, that's what we want to see. That's where we need the world to be. And just a great chart. So yeah, that's it right there.

Tim Montague: 3:00

Let me see if I can make that bigger. No, it's maxed out. But yeah, they've got a great duck curve going on there looks like. And, yeah, if a if a relatively small place can do it. A big place can do it. Right. Yes. Australia is a small country. What? 20 million people? What is the population of Australia? It's

John Weaver: 3:26

in the 30s. It's low 30s 32 to 35 million, I believe.

Tim Montague: 3:30

Yeah. And they're an early adopter. And kudos to Australia for doing it great solar resources, of course. And but that is a that is a misunderstanding about solar. Solar works. Even in northern places here in the in the Upper Midwest, it works. It works in Germany, which is the same as Canada. It works in Norway, you just have to tilt the panels differently. You got to tip them up. But anyway, yeah, it's common. 100%, solar, wind and batteries is common for a grid near you. And it's good for jobs, it's good for the economy, it's good for the future of humanity. There's really nothing to love. To not like Sorry about solar, wind and storage. Is there anything else about this story in Australia that you want to point out for us?

John Weaver: 4:24

I really actually I wanted to say it after you talked about the Greece story that you found. That's I saw that as well. I didn't really pay attention to the Greece one as much. But I when I saw it on our document stories, I was like, oh, yeah, that's so awesome. multiple countries, multiple places around the world. It's really just a headline number at this point, because there's no hard details on the South Australia, anything special on it? Oh, one interesting thing, actually, they did still have gas running. But electricity was being modeled as it was being sold to a different region. And they kept it running for grid stability purposes. And so that's something interesting to think about. There was a lot of wind, there was a lot of solar. And, and the gas though, the hardware, the spinning mass was kept running for grid services purposes. So that's something that might occur. Or we might have what are called synthetic units that are literally just big pieces of metal that spin just like they were being spun by a term in a turbine from burning coal or fossils, except these are spun via electricity. And so you know, they're we're evolving and And it's cool to watch in Australia as they do it because they touch 100% regularly. There's a couple different grids Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, and they do interconnect, but they, they run different. And but it's interesting to watch, because different regions in South Australia In Australia do things differently. It's just like the States, the United States, we have our regions that are unique ish. They have a similar thing going on there. And you know, 100% school. So

Tim Montague: 6:08

yeah, I think the spring and the fall are really the the Windows world will see this phenomenon happening. Right, here's the story on screen from NPR. Greece has its entire electrical grid ran on 100% renewables for the first time. That story was from October 13. And it was reporting from an October event a few days earlier. But so Greece has been weaning itself off of fossil fuels. And, of course, all of your wishes, it was doing this post haste because of the energy crisis that is going on energy prices are spiking 10x in Europe, because of the war and other is a combination, the war and COVID and supply chain issues. And so you know, the sun does shine every day, and the wind does blow most days. And so if you can put your grid on wind and solar and batteries, you need energy storage. And there's many ways to store that energy. You and I talk mostly about batteries, but there's all kinds of energy storage. And check out our episode on Rondo energy, a heat battery, for industrial heat, I'm very fond of this product and solution, because industrial heat is a huge carbon footprint, just ginormous upwards of 40%. And, and it's not an easy one to solve. But build a big wind farm, build a big solar farm and store that energy in a heat battery. And you can make steel and you can make food processing and chemicals and anything you need industrial heat for. So it's coming. And it's it's very good.

John Weaver: 7:53

So you mentioned the different types of batteries. I got an email this morning from the Department of Energy and Resources of Massachusetts. We were lower however you want to call it the OER. And, and the email said, we are seeking comments seeking meetings on long duration energy storage in the state of Massachusetts and trying to do some research on it if it's a tool that they're going to need. And so I have an interview soon to write about with ESS that I had at the solar conference. And that was pretty cool. And you know, long duration energy storage might come something at a minimum. There's some states asking for it. And I don't know if you saw Well, I mean, there's a headline show, but there was a 60 megawatt hour long duration energy storage project that got funding in California this past week. So it's a you know, there's there's it's evolving. The energy storage game is evolving right now. So it's interesting to watch.

Tim Montague: 8:56

Is that the Yeah, what story is that? Is that on the docket that 60 megawatt hour one? No, but I'll go

John Weaver: 9:04

find it. I saw it on the dock. I can put it on the dock.

Tim Montague: 9:09

Sure. You know, Bloomberg, Nef had a story which I'm going to put on screen here. New Bloomberg Nef analysis projects rapid growth in global battery storage capacity through 2030. Now, this is not shocking news to you and I, John, but this is very good news for the energy storage market in general. Let me get this on screen. And, you know, Michael Lee brick created Bloomberg Nef, he's featured in Tom Eric's new book, we took the risk which I'll be covering here on the show with Tom Weyrich of edpr. But Reese, recent policy developments in the US and European Union represent a considerable uplift to the prospects of global energy storage deployment. And they go on to say that, by the end of 2030 cumulative installations worldwide will reach 411 gigawatts or 11 194 gigawatt hours. So a three hour on average battery. That's considerably higher than Bloomberg predicted in November of last year when it for when its forecast stood at 358 gigawatts or 1000 gigawatt hours. So that number has gone up by gosh. A healthy chunk 60 gigawatts. And it just so you know, I think it's very logical, right? And I think you're, you're in this camp John, when you have lots of renewables, you need lots of storage, the storage is a sponge. It can absorb extra energy, when there's extra energy coming off the wind farm or the solar farm. And then it can inject solar and inject energy into the grid, on demand instantaneously, there's no ramp up with a battery, right. That's why it's such a lovely solution. And we have the technology, we just had to build more Giga factories to make these batteries. I mean, that is a limiting factor. And the race is on the global lithium mining, et cetera. And it's, it's not just lithium, but a lot of it is going to be lithium for the foreseeable future.

John Weaver: 11:38

If you look at the next story you had on the document, which you had up here after Bloomberg, the climate law, Ira spurs, big jumps in US battery investments. So we are pushing it, we are pushing it now. There's huge volumes that I've seen, there's a document from the Fed that came out a few weeks ago, and we may have covered it last week, but a couple of weeks ago work or not, but came from the Fed and said there's a battery belt forming in the south, that lines up with all the car manufacturing facilities. And really, if you look in, you know, in Illinois, and Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, there's, there's like 10, I think the Fed documents said there were 15, battery facilities under development. And they were representing like $40 billion in investments for those structures, and putting all that in there. So that's, you know, what's happening, the battery manufacturing is coming. When I was speaking with ESS, they were speaking saying that they're manufacturing is somewhere like 25 megawatts a year of capacity. And they need to get it up to 200. Meg's real fast, so we can start to get ESS. That's the iron, iron flow battery. Oh, ESS ESS? Yes. Got it. And so they were talking about scaling their manufacturing facilities. So I wouldn't be surprised if we heard an announcement from them. In my article, I get to talk about some of their growth plans. But those are probably already public type of growth plans, but we may hear something big about some fat factories coming. And, you know,

Tim Montague: 13:21

the inflation Reduction Act, the IRA, or the IRA, as some people call it, is providing a incentive for it well, a $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicles, but they can only but consumers can only receive the full amount if the car's battery components are manufactured in North America. So that is a huge challenge, but obviously a huge opportunity. Right? And today, we don't have a lot of battery manufacturing in the US. I would venture I don't I don't know exactly what that number is. But I would venture that 80% of it is in Asia. But these factories are our jobs and economic growth and why not onshore this manufacturing, right? It's a both and we want batteries, we want EVs we want solar panel manufacturers, I'm hopefully gonna go to Minnesota next week to visit the Hallein solar factory that they've been building and homemade solar panels are such a sweet thing. We want as much onshoring as possible.

John Weaver: 14:44

I'm so when I wonder if a battery cell is recycled? Does that count as domestic? So if you if you get the battery the car blows up, you know, let's just say it was a fully made in Germany car. So not Ira eligible. You know, it's a Mercedes one electric Mercedes. But then the battery you know, the car gets an accident, they recycle the battery fully. And then the battery comes from a recycling facility in Alabama. And then it goes into the battery manufacturing plant somewhere, you know, in the south.

Tim Montague: 15:18

Is that hot? Right? As long as it's a new product, what goes into it, whether that's wrong lithium or a recycled product. In fact, we should give an extra incentive for them to repurpose the lithium, the broken battery right or the used battery because we We don't want that stuff to get landfill. Not that it is easily landfilled. Certainly in most jurisdictions, but recycling is extremely important and a sensitive topic and one that consumers are concerned about, right. That is one of the main concerns. When I'm talking about electrification of transportation. People say Tim will, we're gonna fill up our landfills with batteries, this is going to be an environmental disaster. And I'm going well, the 800 gigatons of carbon in the atmosphere is an environmental disaster and a human health disaster, and a future of humanity disaster. So we have to walk that back. And yes, lithium is one of the answers. And we have to, we have to laud JB Straubel for creating redwoods, Redwood energy, or redwood systems, whatever his company is called. He's obviously a very smart dude, hanging out with Elon making Tesla successful company, and now getting into battery recycling. I mean, it must have been hard to leave Tesla here that that could have, although it probably did make him a very, very wealthy man. But he's obviously got a bigger vision for humanity, right, because we are going to be recycling a large quantity of these materials.

John Weaver: 16:59

Speaking of recycling your very eyes, the very next article below you is one that I found the new recycling facility opening in Alabama, one of the ones we're looking at. And, and, and it's in the, in the battery bill, this company now with this facility, I think, has enough battery recycling to do about 50,000 cars a year or 10,000 pounds, I can't remember. But uh, so it's there are people chasing the battery recycling world right now aggressively. And it's not a it's not a limited thing, either. I can't remember who I saw it from. But it was a battery recycling analyst. And he said, Okay, here's a list of all the companies and all the capacity, the people that want to recycle batteries, and here's their factories, and here's their business plans. And here's their launch. And, you know, some of them are public and you know, all kinds of stuff in the reason money and doing business. And then when you look at it, you can see the capacities and you're like, millions of tons of battery recycling capacity per year. And they just had this cool chart, and it showed like, and then it broke it down to the different companies and all their warehouses. And you know, you got this, this bar chart going out and numbers like way over here, and it fills up the page. And then they do another chart, and they lay it over. And the other chart is amount of projected batteries available to recycle. And so you have your battery back recycling chart, like filling up the whole screen. But the projected availability starts off at like zero, because you know, last year there was none. And even after like 10 years, it's one quarter, one half 1/5 of the projected total battery volume that might be available. So the reality is Tim, no, we're not going to have batteries and landfills. In fact, there's going to be so much demand for veterans that we're going to over supply, battery recycling. And we're actually going to have battery recycling companies go out of business, because there's so much demand that multiple people are clamoring in and trying to get in there. And they're going to over oversize, the battery recycling. In fact, it's going to be an interesting industry to watch, I think because there's a lot of people who were hoping for cheap battery recycling. There's other people who were hoping for end of life battery, so that they could reuse it. So a second life second purpose batteries. And now I'm interested to watch. Like at one point, Musk said that it would be better to get rid of old cars and old technology and recycle their batteries to put them into newer, more modern batteries that are more efficient. That get better mileage. And so I've heard you know, I've heard that end of life batteries won't be worth it. Because the new tech that comes out when in 10 years and 15 years and 20 years, just gonna blow them out. So I don't know what to expect of what's going to come from the battery world but I do or from the leftover battery world. But what I do know is that right now there are far more people lining up to recycle batteries than there are projected batteries to be recycled. A

Tim Montague: 20:40

shout out to Peter Johnson, the author of this story and electric if you're not familiar with electric electric with a que at the end.com Great r.co Sorry, great website for electrification of transportation. And the stat here that grabs my attention is at 50% of new car sales are going to be pure Evie by 2030. And so while today, we just in 2022, we passed the 5% mark. And we've got another story about Evie, the Evie market in the US because Tesla just released their q3 results, and it is mind boggling how dominant Tesla is in the US market, but great future for electrification of transportation. And yeah, only 5% of new car sales today are evey. But that's just gonna start ticking to 10 to 20 to 30, and then 250 by 2030. And I would not be surprised if it if it hits 50% sooner than 2030. The ice engine is gonna go by by there's more moving parts in an ice engine car. And so it is going to be non economical. That is why consumers are going to make the shift to EVs. Because they're going to be more economical. And many of these EVs are going to be million mile cars. And so we're going to be able to repurpose the vehicle they're going to have a much longer life, which is great, right? Because that's a lot of material, a lot of steel and aluminum and glass and batteries. And so we'll need fewer cars, and that's not even counting the whole Robo taxi trend that is going to happen then as well. Now will that happen in two years or 10 years? Nobody knows. Elon is sticking to his guns that it's gonna happen next year but he's been saying that for five years, but I do want to I do want to put this story about about Tesla

John Weaver: 22:40

my story on the document

Tim Montague: 22:42

if I can find it Yeah, I use it. Evie sales here's how US electric vehicle sales at by maker and Evie model through q3 2022. Compare, right? Yes,

John Weaver: 23:00

sure. That graph shows that graph and showed me that graph and so big.

Tim Montague: 23:04

Yeah, it's it's crazy. So here's the graph. First of all, the model Y is now the number one selling pure Evie in the United States 190,000 cars they've sold model wise, in 2022. It eclipsed the model three, which is right there. It's at 140,000, I think. And then those two cars alone are greater volume than all the other EVs combined. And there is another Tesla that have the Model X is there any s so Tesla is just a hand over fist kicking butt. The next closest is the Ford maki at a measly I want to say 20,000 whereas the Ford Maki 28,000. They've sold 20,000 monkeys, that's the next most popular vehicle that's 14% of the model Y sales. And I mean kudos to the makers for getting in the game here. This is a nice list on die. Ford. Mercedes monsters even in the game now they sold eight cars. No, no sorry. 324 cars. Oh my goodness. My friends at Toyota. There on the chart at 232 vehicles. Thank you Toyota for finally making an Eevee the Bz 4x. I've never seen one in the wild I don't think but. And even the ID four right major competitor of the model Y only sold 11,000 vehicles in the US, John.

John Weaver: 24:50

Tell you what, though, it's cool to look at. You know, first off, there's a lot of people on the chart. A few of these people weren't on the chart the prior portion of the year but what's really neat is that almost everybody is showing a lot of growth like you know Audi e Tron from 2700. Oh, that's quarterly versus year to date. Oh, nevermind. I was over a

Tim Montague: 25:13

year or two under an 8% increase. Yeah. So that's that's nice. They'll continue to be a niche. The Chevy Bolt up 226% Ironically, a Hyundai is down year over year. I don't know why that is. Interesting. Maybe transitioning.

John Weaver: 25:35

That's a good one though.

Tim Montague: 25:36

I don't know Mini Cooper there's a pure Evie Mini Cooper has Earning 25% year over year, Pollstar to earn 43%. Year over year, Tesla Model S 150%. Year over year. Model 360 7% model why only 20%? Interesting? So, yeah. My Tesla, people are complaining about the stock market because the stock market has tanked. It's taken a major hit, I think Tesla's down 40% This year, but it's just a buying opportunity, right? As I see it, so I'm putting my money where my mouth is.

John Weaver: 26:22

Hey, so can we do two more quick battery things since we were talking about them? And, you know, we could knock out all the batteries and then get on to something else? Yeah, let's, let's do it. So I found that so next article, right below the model Y went out and found that Federal Reserve article I was talking about, yeah, no, let's check it out real fast. And so first of all, yes, yeah, yeah. They were doing a National Review of battery manufacturing. And so when you get a chance, scroll down to the map. But at the highest level, what this is the Federal Reserve likes to analyze the US economy, they do reports, so they can, you know, predict to predict stuff, weather and understand the industries more. And within this report, they chose to focus on battery manufacturing in the US because there's a whole bunch of upcoming. And they said, there's a battery belt that's developing. And this battery belt is composed of giga factories. And if you scroll down, that big map, you can see the east coast or the the Middle Eastern region, you know, west of the Appalachian lots of battery facilities.

Tim Montague: 27:27

There's another map or I mean, I have the map on screen now. Operational facilities are marked in red, and the blue are announcements. So you see Tesla in Texas, and then a whole belt just cruising up through the Midwest, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, none in Illinois. I'm sad to say I don't see anything in Illinois. But

John Weaver: 27:58

you do not rivian though, we do we do.

Tim Montague: 28:04

I forgot to see what the rivian stats were.

John Weaver: 28:07

I saw them there. And they're doubling and they're doubling and tripling. That was one of the companies I saw their numbers going up

Tim Montague: 28:13

11,600 vehicles for the year. From right, yeah.

John Weaver: 28:19

But that's, you know, they had zero last year, you know, the, they barely got one off the runway in September of last year. So they're growing. It's, it's good to see. And I'm very surprised to see all the Ford Transit vans too. So it's so it's just neat to see the batteries. And if you scroll up, there's a nice chart, this chart is a good one, it compares China the rest of the world, you know the US is growing. So you can see a big bump in 2021 for evey sales. But you can see that China's dominating Evie sales, however, the rest of the world's growing to EVs are grown. And I mean, we know this now, we're on the sixth or seventh, sixth or seventh doubling. Now, this document is actually benchmark. And it's, and literally I have the exact same document as the next article. But it's bigger in terms of numbers, which is funny. Because my version is just a little bit newer. And I will

Tim Montague: 29:18

say this is this is really nice. They give you the chart data also, and make the chart downloadable. So Dallas fed.org. And we'll put the link in the show notes. Of course, check out all of our content at Clean Power hour.com. We, we post all our audio and video at that website, clean power hour.com Give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify. And please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That way more people can find the content and help us grow the clean energy transition. We're speeding the energy transition here at Clean Power Hour. Anything else about this story you want to touch on John?

John Weaver: 29:55

We know we know about the volume. I wanted to show off that map so that everybody can see where these batteries works. I think that's a that's a big thing. So you showed that big swath and there's a lot of car manufacturing, there's not a cheap electricity, a little bit less regulation. There's no unions, that's just where the car places went. They left the north and they went south. But uh, but now there's batteries there. And, and you know, the next story is really just a tweet from Simon Morse of battery intelligence. And I wanted to show off his updated 2031 and 2026 capacities, which are really close to the numbers that you just saw, but they're just, you know, a touch larger. 5% bigger. And I'm a big fan of this chart because it gives me a lot of hope. Say gigawatt hours, seven terawatt hours of manufacturing capacity. It's a two, you know, if you look below each one of those charts, you know, we got 1.6 1.0 terawatt hours for last year, five years forward, though, we're gonna be up 500%. So 4.7. And then five years after that already announced, is 7.2. And that's pretty neat. Because 7.2 is a lot of volume. At some point, I done the math that if all of that volume went toward the Earth, it would be like enough to backup all the energy for a day or something like that. And so, we, we are going to have the volume of battery manufacturing necessary to make it so that wind and solar could dominate the energy, our energy needs. Now, right now, though, the thing is, most of these batteries are gonna go into cars. So it's gonna, we're gonna have an evolution, and we're gonna see how it grows going forward. But at a minimum, without a doubt, very soon, we're going to start seeing a global battery industry, that's just gonna I mean, if you look at that bottom chart, it's just about to expand in just huge volumes, growing 100% 1,000% 10,000% from wherever it was. And it's, it's, it's going just like we saw on solar panels, just like we saw on when all of this growth, where it's right now, right happening now.

Tim Montague: 32:15

Yeah, we're between one and two gigawatt hours globally now, right, and we're gonna go to, sorry, 1000 gigawatt hours, we're gonna go to 7.2 1000 by 2030. I look at this, and I and I, I see red, China is still going to be dominating at 67% of cell manufacturing capacity in 2031. And we're going to be at 12.6% or 13%. So I think this is a national security issue, I hope the US is really paying attention to the powers that be because the person who has the most batteries wins. It that is a that is a scenario where we need a lot of batteries. And you can't electrify your infrastructure without a lot and a lot of batteries. So not to mention step back from climate change, right? That's the ultimate goal. And and then and then if you're Elon go to Mars, but first, he has to buy Twitter.

Unknown: 33:34

Monitors,

Tim Montague: 33:35

what did I hear I heard a reporter on CNET refer to the cybertruck as Twitter on wheels. Elon did did say something about cybertruck in in the q3. financial results, he says it's coming in 2023. So hopefully, hopefully, Ford, my Ford lightning would get there first, I'd rather have a Ford lightning with its off the shelf vehicle to grid capacity, but our capabilities. But wouldn't be bad to drive a cyber truck either. Hey, I want to I want to, I want a big logo, a big clean power our logo on my cyber truck.

John Weaver: 34:22

They seem large, I believe I read at some point they were large, and the parking larger cars and a tiny city challenging. But, uh, I would like to have, you know, we have the opportunity to buy an electric van for our installation crew, for our truck for site visits and general work we do, just because I mean, I do have an electric car for my site visit so we're, you know, a quarter of the way there. But it'd be better to start, you know, being a solar company driving an electric van is kind of eaten, walking the walk, doing it properly. So, so I'm paying attention to it. I haven't really delve into the details. I I assume they're not available. But looking at that chart, I saw a whole bunch of available E Transit trucks. So maybe, maybe there will be one that's available pretty soon as we start looking. And then so that's, you know, that's lithium ion batteries. You know, lots of stuff coming. The next article is actually about a an approval for 60 megawatt hour long duration battery.

Tim Montague: 35:28

Yeah, I don't think I'm going to put this on screen and but give us the soundbite. What is it? What is this project?

John Weaver: 35:35

So it's vanadium flow battery, zinc hybrid. It kind of $31 million grant it's been coupled with a behind the meter solar carport on native land in California. The biggest piece of it, though it's at its a 60 megawatt hour battery, which I think is the largest flow battery in the United States. And I've only heard of one other larger battery for flows. And that is in China. And that one's been coming online for like six years. So it's like that one's like a 200. Or like an 800 megawatt hour battery, but it's not a single install it spread around the city. So a 60 megawatt hour vanadium flow batteries coming to California believe it's EOS systems, Eos, it's their battery, which you may have interviewed EOS at some point, Tim.

Tim Montague: 36:26

Yes, I'm running to EOS. They have a Chicago office, their headquarters is in I want to say New Jersey. That was Pennsylvania. Okay.

John Weaver: 36:37

I'll put there somewhere around there. You might be right with jersey.

Tim Montague: 36:40

But so this is this is looking like a real project, though.

John Weaver: 36:48

Yeah, that's it. I mean, it's not an IRP, you know, because there have been a few ERPs in California for long duration storage that were won by lithium ion. Because, you know, technically, if you think about it lithium ion, and it's only duration relative to what you choose it to be. And if you have an inverter, you can make your 100 megawatt hour battery run for 10 hours, or 100 hours, you just have to pick your output rate. So lithium ion batteries, they just said Alright, well, now we're a 10 hour battery, we just adjusted our inverter settings, and bam, and so lithium ion one, but this is a real project that's coming. And looks like it's got the money. It looks like it's got the site, and it's a big flow battery. So I'm interested in it. There's lots of things I'm wrong about and like hydrogen and flow batteries. They're competing in a similar space with lithium ion. And those are two items right now that I have big questions on, I want to be involved in both, just because they're cool. And I think they have potential. And yeah, watching them.

Tim Montague: 37:52

Cool. Well, you got a story for us. In PV magazine. Could we see us or electricity for $0 per kWh?

John Weaver: 38:02

You gotta share a specific graph that's on that page.

Tim Montague: 38:06

Really? The answer is yes.

John Weaver: 38:09

Well, some guy named John thinks that Credit Suisse thinks there's a real solid chance we hit point four cents per kilowatt hour. I went a little further. That's the chart, we should look at that. That bottoming out and 2029 but four cents. seven cents. Yes. Yeah, yes, sir. per megawatt. 10 megawatt hours is one cent per kilowatt hour. So single digit is a sense of a sense. Yeah. So what this chart,

Tim Montague: 38:43

the gray versus the blue on this chart, just explain that to me real quick. All right,

John Weaver: 38:48

so the gray is solar I O. So the gray is when the blue is solar. Gotcha. And what this chart is really saying, though, is that when we combine the fact that manufacturers and you can scroll down and see the next chart, when you combine the fact that solar panel manufacturers are going to see that solid blue line going forward. Because they get tax credits from the IRA, these people are going to be selling panels for debt under 10 cents a watt, or at least their cost is going to be under 10 cents a watt. First Solar, and this is where I come from the zero cent per kilowatt hour, First Solar a couple of years ago on Bloomberg, and I linked to it in this article said that solar panels for them cost about 20 cents a watt, they're gonna get an 18 cent per watt incentive. You're laughing so that means you know what I'm saying yes to instantaneously. Oh, holy, how's that gonna work out? Is I mean, first of all, is not going to sell them for two cents, because they don't have to, they're sold out. All they have to do is beat this chart. So maybe the cheapest we'll see for solar panels is six cents, or until they're sold out eight cents, nine cents, whatever. But this chart plus the IRA tax credits, is what this and that analysts from s&p makes them think we might see point four cents per kilowatt hour. And what I said, is that well, on that's their chart is average, it's more of an average abroad number. So I said, Wow, let's be a little more extreme. Let's pretend it's a first solar project. And then let's pretend it's got the domestic content 10% attr, and the energy community added. So now we're talking a 50% tax credit, a standard depreciation which adds another 10% The first year. And then I don't know five cent per watt solar panels. And you start looking at what the PTC is, okay, if you scroll down a tiny bit more, we have the Lazarus chart. And so I grabbed this one too. And they said in the paragraph, the top paragraph that's on the screen, the unsubsidized LCD of large solar, four standard models is three to 4.2 cents. And for First Solar, it's 2.837. So we look at the PTC, so the large scale solar projects are going to take the production tax credit, they won't take the 30% reduction tax credit makes better financial sense. But the PTC starts at 2.6 cents. And if you add to 10% errors, to over four cents, if the LC OE of a solar project is 2.8 to four cents as of right now, then that means you're going to have a effectively a price under zero, or hypothetically, I mean, we're there we're close to it, if you have to really compete, you're going to be able to sign a contract and say it's zero cents per kilowatt hour. And that's just me. And so that's what I think that's why I wrote that story. I said, you know, we look at all these prices, we look at the models, and then we look at some extreme cases. And that's really what it is. In some extreme cases, the cost of the electricity, effectively could be at zero in the PPA, and the owners could still make respectable returns on investment. So that's why I brought that big ol headline when we see some free solar. Let's, let's see, let's see what happens.

Tim Montague: 42:38

Yeah, it's really cool to see the impact of the IRA here, you know, today, as this chore chart points out from Credit Suisse, American Solar panels are averaging around 35 cents, a watt and, and Chinese panels are 25 cents. But the US is going to dip below the Chinese price, the Chinese price is dipping is going down to 15 cents, but we're gonna go sub 15 to maybe sub 10 by 2028 2029. And so this really matters. Because if you're a developer, you know the cost of equipment and really matters. The solar panels are maybe 40% of you know, the equipment costs and some cheaper is better.

John Weaver: 43:35

On there, he does get some decent prices. You will see some pictures of solar systems that survived hurricanes.

Tim Montague: 43:45

Yeah, let's skip the Canadian solar story and go to Florida. Florida has been in the news because of hurricane in which devastated the west coast of Florida around Fort Myers two weeks ago, and in late September I'll put this on screen. And Babcock ranch has been in the news I don't know is this is this about Babcock or something else.

John Weaver: 44:16

These are commercial rooftops installed by large contractor and they had some good pictures advanced green technologies. I've known that company for another name for a while and if you scroll down a bit, they have two or three sites and they have a gallery of images of some damage that the projects took. And they had a good quality racking so if you click there's a little arrow on the right hand side so you can get some zoomed in images and so this is one of their projects have a definitely click on the arrow there so we can see the actual now you can start to see

Tim Montague: 44:52

it that four panels did get torn off on this rooftop array.

John Weaver: 44:56

Yep, yep. And so this is South This is Florida building code. So the wind codes are like 155 Plus keep going next image

Tim Montague: 45:06

so this is a story in solar power world by Kelly pickerel Shut up. She also has a podcast contractors corner so check that out wow nice straight down um yeah, I'm curious who makes the the best flat roof racking system for high wind is this panel cloud dominate this market to?

John Weaver: 45:31

I mean, probably probably. You know, you know, rack has some good systems as well. If you're specifically talking high wind, you know me as a South Florida and from 10 years ago, we weren't doing ballasted systems, we didn't have a tiny

Tim Montague: 45:49

row space, the row space is very, very small, and must be mostly difficult to build this. I get I got a lot of grief from from our field crews when I did five degree tilt systems I've done to five degree tilt systems, you know, the less tilt the last row space, and this looks like just like six inches if that.

John Weaver: 46:16

And that's what it is. It's it's actually six to eight inches, four, five degree we regularly do five degree systems up north. Yeah, and they're tight. So it's neat to see you probably had like one module fail. And then because it led to a larger collapse on that top one. Is this one leading edge of the building. I mean, this is your standard damage. It's the leading corner of the building, and the leading edge of the modules. And that's it. So that's, you know, the stuff I bet and I guarantee the wind was coming from that direction as well, because that's just how it works. And this is Fort Myers, Fort Myers is where the storm hit. Okay, though, I mean, like, I technically, I guess the storm hit a little further north, but there was a Fort Myers Beach was in the news. It's just being wrecked. And like I was in Fort Myers a year or two go on vacation. And the street that we were cruising up and down on our bikes and enjoying ourselves on was just totally, totally smashed. So, and this these projects, if you scroll all the way down, they mentioned I believe in the last paragraph, is it a PV are still a tiny bit. They talk about the racking, one paragraph up panel clock. So yeah, panel claw, you know, and you know, speaking that Babcock facility, I did a little math after I read about it. They have a 10 megawatt 40 megawatt hour battery, I think two of them, coupled with 274 megawatt AC solar plants right there. And both of those plants and the city of Babcock were designed to deal with hurricanes and the whole city state up and when I looked at the battery size, and I figured they had they said they have about 2000 houses. So if you think 2000 houses at two kW, that's four 4000 It's 4000 Or two, four megawatts. Geez. So the batteries that were there who had handle 4010 hours times two, so 20 hours of downtime, but they had 74 megawatts of solar. So 74 Meg's of solar will fill up a 40 megawatt hour battery from 11am to 11:30am. And then bam, they're good for another 20 hours. So they got plenty of solar there and big batteries. I read that the city was designed to flood the streets specifically, the houses are raised up higher than the local roads than the houses and everything is designed to just flush water into the Everglades because they know where they're at. They realize they're on South Florida and hurricane lane. Oh, interesting. Batteries, man batteries are going to be everywhere.

Tim Montague: 49:06

Yeah, I'm looking forward to visiting Babcock ranch I'm gonna go to Florida sometime this winter and looking forward to visiting that town it's a plan community right I mean, it was

John Weaver: 49:19

built the whole thing to be

Tim Montague: 49:22

to be a solar solar community

John Weaver: 49:28

in the Everglades didn't really nice area, well isolated area, but it's in southwest Florida. And it's really it was built out in the middle of the Everglades. Whoever came up with that idea or power tool.

Tim Montague: 49:42

So where's the Tybee Island Marine Science Center we're gonna put this on screen here but you found a cool

John Weaver: 49:51

cool projects of the week man. Solar Tybee Island. I think South Carolina is where it said but let me double check. This is in Georgia. Pardon me. I've actually I think I've actually may have been here before in the area because I've gone camping on the water down there. But it's a but it's a cool purpose. It's actually solar plus solar thermal. And the purpose of the plant is to power the building behind it I guess which is or a part of the building and keep a turtle happy and the last pictures of said Turtle but it's certainly in solar thermal. Yeah, yeah, it's for a turtle turtle facility. And it looks like the pergola is all solar PV bifacial PV And so the solar thermal is somewhere else. Or maybe it's on top of the roof but they said that was just keep the water warm or the turtle. And just and I liked the pergola the big thick wood and everything it looks nice like I keep believing that people want to install these in their backyards. I'm going to get my brother to build one because I just think it's such a gorgeous, gorgeous structure.

Tim Montague: 51:00

Yeah, my local brewery has a solar pergola and it's it's super attractive, and most people don't even notice it. I noticed that because I'm a solar professional. I know it's all look alike, but it's just a shade structure. And in the middle of a summer, it's great to have some shade with your beer.

John Weaver: 51:21

I am going to send that so a pergola link to my brother so that he puts it in his backyard. Because because he needs it. He he's got to have some, he's got to get some solar, he's got to get he's got some big yard space. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna slowly nudge him to build it because he's the type that can build it on his own. Then there's another one right below it. There's another link just below the pergola real quick. This one's from Texas. It's a residential one. And I like that project because it's weird. I guess that's a thatch roof or something. And green roof. Yeah. Yeah. And so I just thought that was cool. Neat, neat roof.

Tim Montague: 52:06

You see these roofs in Norway? A few in Wisconsin. But indoor County, Wisconsin, there's a roof like this that has goats grazing on. But now they solarized their green roof. That's very sweet.

John Weaver: 52:25

Yep. I've heard about somebody recently you as straw for their roof. And it's like, oh, man, it's so cool. And this is in Texas. You said Texas? Yes, sir. Oh. So green roof in Texas,

Tim Montague: 52:38

Texas is going green. I saw a story that Texas saved $7 billion dollars with renewable energy this year. That's a whole lot, man. You could do a lot with $7 billion.

John Weaver: 52:52

Right? I mean, I could. I could personally,

Tim Montague: 52:55

you can't quite go to Mars. But there's a lot of things you could do here on earth.

John Weaver: 53:01

You hang out with somebody who goes who's gonna go who's got a decent chance of going to Mars. I mean, maybe that's the last image maybe that's our last I think

Tim Montague: 53:10

we'll wrap up with the photo of starship on the

John Weaver: 53:19

this one was from this morning. So this was the last thing I put on the document because as if this when I saw it sitting there maybe it wasn't from this morning, but it was the last one I saw when I

Tim Montague: 53:28

looked around. fully stacked starship on the pad at Boca Chica.

John Weaver: 53:41

We do that thing is a giant and what are their 32 rockets in the bottom layer in the bottom? 132 or 33 rocket hits?

Tim Montague: 53:51

Yeah, something like that. Raptors sound at the engine rafters

John Weaver: 53:58

I think they're called rafters. Yes sir. It's neat. This ship is going to land on that circle thing right there. Right the ship sorry, the bottom half is going to do because it is going to land

Tim Montague: 54:12

boosters gonna take off and then re land and get caught by the grid fins with the chopsticks. Yeah. Looking forward to he said they're they're aiming for a launch in 2023 or two. We will see him

John Weaver: 54:36

all right, Tim. Last solar as all batteries today, we talked about a lot of batteries. There was a lot

Tim Montague: 54:42

of batteries in EVs. But that's great, because that is a big part of the energy transition. And it's both in we need renewable energy and we need energy storage and electrification of transportation. Transportation is about 40% of our emissions. So it's a big it's a big deal.

John Weaver: 55:04

We're at any article any articles today on solar panel technology. Not I will make

Tim Montague: 55:10

up for that next week when when I when I broadcast live from how he ends factory in Minnesota hopefully, like if I can arrange to do that, but

John Weaver: 55:22

if they let you take they probably won't let you take any cool pictures because you know, deep research science technology but but neat. So tell us how tell us about it.

Tim Montague: 55:32

Well, we'll see they they're gonna have a bunch of journalists there so well, I'm How can our listeners find you, Mr. John Weaver?

John Weaver: 55:43

Well, if you want to have a beer downtown and Cambridge, you can always come to one Broadway, a CIC. co working space. That's where I'm based most days now. Or you can come to our website, commercial solar guy.com. We're gonna do some updating, get some, get some extra pages on there, talk about our services, and then Twitter, solar and mass, and LinkedIn, John Fitzgerald, Weaver, all those different places you can find this poking around, how big

Tim Montague: 56:12

is the CIC? What is what does that facility look like?

John Weaver: 56:16

Oh, it's just a standard building. I'm in it right now. It's a, it's at least 17 floors. And it's a street corner. And it's got some nice building. It's connected to another building over here, which I don't know anything about. It's got a little supermarket downstairs where I can get hot food. So it's in relatively healthy. So it's just a nice big structure. And the CIC is one point it was associated with MIT to help MIT students launch businesses. And so they have this co working place that's associated with them so that lots of small business people can work there. And it's good for me because we have the main office down in New Bedford. And but this lets me get out of my apartment, and just get into place and feel more professional during the daytime.

Tim Montague: 57:03

Absolutely. Where you can check out all of our content at clean power hour.com That's where you can reach me, Tim Montague. And please give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify and subscribe to our YouTube channel. All of that helps others find the show and find this content. We are speeding the energy transition, one solar project and one podcast at a time. I want to thank John Weaver for being here week in week out every Thursday. noon Eastern 11 Central 10 Mountain nine Pacific so check it out. And with that, let's go solar storage on Tim Montague. Take care John.