Clean Power Hour LIVE - Oct 27, 2022

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All right. Welcome to the Clean Power Hour Live. Today is October 27. I'm Tim Montague, your host check out all of our content at Clean Power hour.com. And please give us a rating and review on Apple and Spotify, especially a review would be useful. It helps others find this content. And I want to welcome my co host John Weaver to the show. Welcome to the show, John.

Hey, everybody. How are you doing? Thanks for the invite. I hear you're in wonderful, Minnesota at a opening of a factory. I'm a little bit envious of you Tim. I just want to let you know. I got you know I got to make you jealous once in a while. John, I the iron range of Minnesota in a small town called Mountain iron. Everything has a mineral attached to it up here. But we're in mining, country iron mining, and now silicon mining. In a way, we are at the Helien solar panel manufacturing factory here. And I'm joined by Dave Rosenberg, who is the vice president of sales and business development. Welcome to the show, Dave.

Tim, thanks for having me. Glad you could make it out.

I'm glad you could join us on such short notice. But yeah, it's totally psyched to be here for the ribbon cutting. What is the occasion? Why? Why are you having so many guests here at the factory?

Sure. Well, we are here to celebrate the opening of our brand new manufacturing facility. So Helien has been producing modules in Mount iron for about four, four and a half years. And this week, we're opening up a new factory adjacent to the existing that's literally connected to the same building that effectively grows our capacity to roughly 600 megawatts of solar module production. And so we've got state of the art machinery able to produce the latest and greatest technologies. And we'll begin producing miles off off the line this month, which we're very excited about.

Awesome. Yeah, really excited to to be this is my first solar panel, factory visit. So super excited to see an actual line. And be careful, though, be careful, Tim, he's a solar developer, he might try and put a panel in his pocket. Don't let him near the commercial line, keep the residential panel in my pocket in the back of my truck anyway. So so what I guess we should we should set the set the table a little bit for our listeners, you know, here we are in 2022, we just got some wonderful legislation known as IRA, the inflation Reduction Act, which is incentivizing manufacturing in the United States, obviously, Kellyanne has been nudging your way into the US market here for the last couple of years. And you have multiple factories now in the US, give us a little bit of the lay of the land. And, and why is, you know, this factory expanding its line?

Yeah, absolutely. And so just to be clear, so we started this construction project over a year ago. So well before, you know, visibility to the inflation Reduction Act. And yes, we saw, you know, hopes and glimmer of incentive to produce in the US the roofers build back better, and then Sema, and then ultimately, it came through IRA. But roughly one year ago, we started construction. So we built the building, you know, three months ago, there was there was no concrete floor in the building. So it's literally gone up over the course of the last 12 months. And today, all the tools and machinery are within the building all turned on in the process of being calibrated to begin producing. And so you know, the company believes in a very localized and domestic supply chain. We've been producing modules in North America since 2018. So we initially started producing in a factory up in Sioux Sainte Marie, Ontario. And that was basically driven by the Ontario Fit program, which was a, an incentive through the government to, to, to put solar projects in the ground. And so the company was born due to that legislation came into the US just due to the demand for domestic supply chains in the US to serve as the US market. And we've continued to not be able to keep up with demand and need to continue expanding our capacities. Inflation reduction fell and fell into place and gave us a bit of a tailwind created a demand of even more demand for our customers, because of the tax benefits through the act. But there's also other motivation and other demand being created, just for other call it legislative and judicial challenges that the US has faced over the last 10 years, as it relates to importing these products into the US. And so we're effectively reducing risk in the supply chain by producing locally and it's really great because customers if they want to get an understanding of where the products coming from, they can get in their car and drive up here and see it you know, firsthand. And so, you know, it's a really timely move for the company. The the the inflation Reduction Act is certainly helped pre sell our 2023 capacities and we're actively going out and ensuring that every last module that comes off this line is pre sold going into the year and in 2024 as well and so There's because of the inflation Reduction Act, we have, you know, essentially new plans for new factories that all that all again begin construction next year as well.

I love that, that you can reduce the risk of the supply chain. You know, we solar developers and installers don't like supply chain risk, it's a major headache when you can't get your products on site in a timely manner. You know, we we take so much risk on the front end of projects that when when they're actually moving to construction, then you're, you're, you've you've jumped through so many hurdles, right, John, and you just don't want to experience more bumps in the road. It's only a tiny fraction of projects in development that actually see the light of day and go to construction. And, and so with by propping up solar panel factories across the United States, we have them now here in Minnesota, you also have a factory in Florida, of course for solar has a major factory in Ohio, who sells has a factory in Georgia. And now there's this drumbeat of solar panel manufacturing and racking, manufacturing and inverter manufacturing, it's all coming and being reassured to the US. What questions do you have for Dave? John? So once a technical one, do you know specifically what size panels will be coming off the line yet?

Yeah, absolutely. So we're effectively building two products off this line. And that's just basically to drive operational efficiency through the production process. And so, you know, the majority of the demand that we're seeing in the market from the inflation Reduction Act is in commercial, industrial, agricultural and utility scale projects. And because of that, the two products that we're producing fit right into those types of projects. So either, you know, flat commercial roofs or single axis tracker or fixed Hill ground mounts. And so kind of the two workhorses that we're producing are a bifacial module. And so, this is 144 half cut cell module in a bifacial format, it utilizes an M 10 cell or 182 millimeter cell, in this product is coming coming out with a nameplate of you know, say 530 to 540 watts. For Inside production, we make a second product that's really more geared for commercial rooftops. And so again, it's utilizing the same M 10 cell, which is kind of the, the new standard, if you will, for for wafer and cell sizing, but it's a slightly smaller module, we were building it in 132, half cut cell format, in a mono facial option. And so for those that have, you know, large commercial roofs, maybe they're you know, brief obstructions and when just want to a smaller kind of building block, if you will, we produced the the 132 to fit into those those types of projects. That said, you know, customers are more than Well, welcome and, and unwilling and a lot of them do build with bifacial is on roof tap, but for the most of our demand that we see, it's all going into, into single axis trackers and ground mounts.

So being the VP of Business Development and sales, and you're sold out for at

least a year, we're never thought yeah, don't put words in my mouth now.

All right, all right.

We have a capacity available, we're actively basically filling that production queue as we speak. Okay, okay. Yeah. From from the rd plus show, you know, got a lot of attention and got got a lot of contracts moving forward. We're doing the same thing this week. And just you know, every every every day we're moving we're moving deals forward to fully consumed that capacity coming off this line.

Oh, so you're seeking to fill up the capacity you haven't done it I've heard hints that there's not a lot of demand of us manufactured solar modules available. So we'll make sure that everybody knows that you guys exist. Because if there's still volume out there that's that's good to hear.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we can help just you know, just come let us know what your project needs are what the timing of your project and you know, we can we can look to see see what's possible, but yeah, we definitely still have capacity left. That's

what would be what would be a minimum order that you would be interested in.

Good question. So we essentially we go to market through two channels, you know, we we, we believe in the distribution model. It's a very important channel for kind of the long tail of the industry. And we move product you know, through distribution for, say, call it anything less than a full truckload You know if you if you, if you do have the ability to buy in full truckload volumes we can we can you know, look at look at imitating a direct relationship and offering those products to you direct

mail truckload is

truckload is so 53 foot track, it depends on the product type and power class, but call it you know, 300 400 kilowatts roughly.

Okay. So you would entertain sub megawatt quarters? Absolutely. Cool. Very cool.

So how long does it take for all the gear to start at the front of the manufacturing line? And then come out the back? Is this like a? Like? Is it hours? Is it days? Like how long does it take for a module to be made? And this doesn't count, put in the gear at the factory? And, and putting it on the thing and move it up to the line? I mean, you know, when somebody pushes a button, I know it's not pushing a button. But, you know, essentially, how long might it take for a module to be, you know, delivered fresh.

Yeah. So I mean, it happens in the matter of hours. And the longest kind of duration of that production period is the lamination. And so, you know, we're effectively kind of vacuum compressing and heating the laminates and the EBA. To fully and capsulize the cell, we've kind of developed and innovative process for that here that allows us a higher throughput. Because traditionally, that is kind of the pinch point in production. This particular factory sitting right behind us will produce at full capacity about one module every 45 seconds, just a sense of its efficiency.

And is the line going to be running 24/7 or two shifts? Tell us a little bit more about the operation?

Yeah. So I think, you know, obviously, ideally, you want this thing running 24/7 to optimize the production capability of the machines that said, you know, there are a few humans involved in the process. And you need to optimize for, you know, workplace environment as well. And so, you know, I believe on the on the existing line, we're doing an in stage shifts, I don't believe we have a final yet on the duration of the shifts on the new lines. But it'll either be three eighths, or two to three shifts of eight or two shifts of 10. The two shifts of 10 is beneficial, because there is some kind of Oh nm, operations, maintenance required cleaning process, restocking of the raw materials going into the lines. And so if we did have a couple hours of downtime within every day, we can accomplish those, those processes.

And can you give us a little sense of where the other materials are the, you know, the materials that go into solar panels, there's class, there's aluminum, there's, of course, the solar cells themselves? Where are all these materials coming from? Before they, you know, to get here to Minnesota? Yeah,

good question. So, effectively, we can procure raw materials for the modules we produce here in Minnesota, from the United States. And so all of our suppliers, that we've lined up for 2023 production, their late 22 and 23 production, our US based suppliers, a lot of this effort is driven by the inflation Reduction Act in qualifying our products for the domestic content provision. The two components within the module that are not available in the US today, hopefully, very soon, are the glass. So there is no solar glass production in the United States today. And the sell there is there is no Monoprix cell production in the United States to so those two components are still being imported. But every other component, that UVA, the laminate the back sheet, the ribbon, the frames can can now be sourced from the US.

And with those components with the labor and other costs. And you know, this is you're not the IRS. So we're not going to put you on a document a legal opinion with this answer. But with all that stuff, do we think it's going to reach the 40 to 55% manufacturing domestic content requirement? I don't, you know, we're still all learning about it, then the IRS Treasury Department's gonna give out an opinion. But are we just are we going to be able to use this as to get as part of our domestic content requirement?

So exact so you make a good point. We don't really know what the what the how it's how it's actually going to play out or CR we're still awaiting guidance from the treasury, which is expected kind of no later than then March timeframe of next year. That said, we've taken a conservative approach as to how we're selling these products and Um, and I do believe that we can qualify the modules produced in this factory for the domestic content ITC bonus within the inflation Reduction Act.

And what is that bonus?

So that the bonus that I'm speaking of is essentially an additional 10 percentage points of investment tax credit.

Got it? Thanks. Interesting. Well, Dave, we, we really appreciate you making time for us this this morning. John, do you have one last parting question for Dave? And then we're gonna move on and do a little bit of a news roundup for our audience as well? Are we going to be allowed to see some of this floor? Can we shut off the cool background and do a quick panning? Or is that not allowed? Because I've stopped secrets?

No, no, we've got a full house here do people come in, we're going to be doing factory tours all day. So anytime you want to come up and check it out what we're doing up here, you're more than welcome to come,

I'll be shooting some B roll today. And we'll get that spliced into the finished product here on the recording. But it's not practical for us to go out there on the floor during the broadcast. from a, from a practice from carrying a laptop and a and a Zoom recorder, etc. So Well, Dave, thank you so much. Good luck and look forward to you know, learning more throughout the afternoon here. Dave Rosenberg with Hallein solar. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me, Tim. All right. All right. Cool. That's great. We're just gonna keep going here. So I'll let you go. So John, it is so good to be in the upper Great Lakes. It's fall, the colors are out. I'm going to get to fly my drone over the factory this afternoon. And also a neighboring wind farm that appears to be powering a US Steel facility, although I have to learn more about that. But it looks like a 20 megawatt wind farm right in the background here. Beautiful country, but clearly mining country. I mean, there's there's mines everywhere you go. You can't go 100 yards without seeing an iron mine. So it's really intense. But what's going on for you? What's what's new in your world? Do you have any, any clean energy news for us today? Well, we got a nice little list if you want to hear that kind of stuff. We did have a fire alarm in my building this morning. And when we were all outside watching, there were a group of about six people wearing dinosaur costumes. So what I've come to learn is that my boss at my company, who was me, doesn't have the appropriate dress schedule set up. And so I don't know, one of these days, you might see me wearing a dinosaur costume now that I know other people in Cambridge, Massachusetts, we're dinosaur costumes to the office. So So that's probably the most significant thing that's happened to me today. How's that for you? Sounds exciting. I hope everything's okay. I believe it was a test. So yeah, so it wasn't real one we were expecting it. The dinosaur costume though. That was the surprise portion of it. I'm guessing. So I like it. Yeah, we can jump straight into the news. I got some good stuff up there. You know, it's I really think it's cool, though, that you're at a manufacturing facility, you're gonna get to see the factories, you're gonna get to see the robots. And I'm interested in the number of people that are actually working on the floor. Because, you know, I bet this is a decently automated facility. And, you know, when you get to this level, there's probably only 3040 50 People who have to support a few 100 megawatts. And I think that's accurate. John, The parking lot is surprisingly small when I was looking at the facility from Google this morning. It I'll put that on in a second here. But let's talk about this story from China. China's solar cell production capacity may reach 600 gigawatts by year. And, you know, we're excited about a 600 megawatt facility here in the US. Of course, we have some larger solar panel factories in the US now gigawatt scale, but 600 gigawatts of capacity coming out of China by year end. And I think I read in this story by Amelia, Amelia, Amelia No. billini Thank you. I mean, PV magazine, that this is almost doubling China's capacity year over year, is that right? Yes. And it's kinda so the if you look further down the story, from like, 2020 to 21, they doubled from 21 to 22. They doubled and now they're doubling again. And then in 24, they'll grow by like, up a little bit. So grow by 60% that paragraph right there. Furthermore, they realize It's the country's policy silicone capacity. Now this is Polly will grow from 530 Mega tons to 1.2. So that's a doubling in 21 to 22. And then going from 22, which will have 1.2. At the end of the year, it's doubling again to two, five by the end of next year, and that's the 600 gigawatts. Now 4,000,024. Now here's the deal, Tim, roughly, three watts per gram, 4 million metric tons, is if you divide that by three watts per gram, gets you 1.3 terawatts of solar cell capacity, maybe a little lower, let's just say it's 1.1 1.2, you know, what's 100 gigs among friends. So in 2020, by the end of 2024. So I mean, starting in 25, there's going to be a terawatt worth of poly silicon. And we know that when the Chinese push their manufacturing into cohesive broad manufacturing, so they're making the poly, that means they're making the cells, that means they're making the module manufacturing. So 2025 Tim, modules are gonna get cheap. Maybe even next year, in fact, I saw a PV info link, which is related to this article. And it may be from this same article, PV info link sees the price of polysilicon chopping in half next year. So going from 36 bucks a kilogram 38 ish down to 18. So, so this is cool. First off the volume, the scale of it is just so immense. I mean, it's faster to this one terawatt number than anything I've ever seen. I've seen no projections of one terawatt by 2025. Like the most, the most recent one I saw was by lon GE. And it was like 2829, this is 2025 that will at least have the capacity of poly silicon. One terawatt of modules. So that's, that's just a lot. I mean, I It's just big. I don't know what to say, is that first mover advantage, the Snowball is rolling down the hill in China. And and they're pulling away. I mean, and this is a national security issue for for the United States. But at least now we have IRA. I was I was, I was joking with myself, I'm going to change my name to Ira Montague. Because the the IRA, the inflation Reduction Act, I've stopped calling it the IRA. It wasn't easy. But I've stopped calling it the IRA because of the conflation with the Irish Republican Army, which we don't want to conflate with. But IRA is really a wonderful piece of legislation. Good industrial policy, is what good government is about. And so real quick, though, I want to, I want to show you a Google Maps photo of where I am. And so here's the factory. And you see this parking lot is is quite small. And, you know, we're talking 40 vehicles, something like that capacity. And then of course, shipping docks and there's docks on on both sides. The facility is actually built out a little more now than then is shown in this photo. But now zooming out, and you can see right in the background, okay, just to the north, massive iron mine. And this facility right here is your United States Steel Corporation. So US Steel, a major steel manufacturer, and a lovely wind farm right here just to the east of that factory 1-234-567-8910 wind turbines, and a sizable substation you and I love these things. This is pumping juice onto the grid, clean electrons from those wind turbines and those wind turbines are up on a ridge. You can't really see it here. But this is a big ridge, which is why those turbines are up there right because when you go higher, you get more wind but this is just very telling of the landscape that I'm in it is big mining country and you cannot shake a stick without seeing a big mine. Which you know, it's a double edge. Okay, yeah, you have to tear up the earth to dig these minerals out of the ground. But when you look at the volume of steel that we humans consume, it is off the charts and it is truly the material that built the modern world. So you got a you got to keep the minds flowing and this is just just our reality as as a species right you can't have a modern society without steel. Well we want to do is create green steel and and That's why we're so fond of some of these technologies. As I, as I like to beat the drum of Rando energy, you know, making steel with clean electrons. And I have another company coming on the show called Boston metal, which I'm also super excited about, check out Boston metal base there in Boston, they're a spin off from MIT. And they're just scaling their technology, but they're making steel with electricity directly. And no fossil fuels needed in the process. And that's what we want to see. So let's go back to the news, John, and move down the roster. It's really hard to move away from 600 gigawatts of capacity at the end of next year, Tim. Just like, you know, you know, it's, it's something significant, that number is just, you know, what it, it lines up with this next story. So this is a tweet. So I'm sorry about that, Tim. But it's the only place where I've seen this image so far. And this comes from the leader of the head of the IEA, the International Energy Agency, and they're not known for predicting solar capacity to be very good. In fact, they're made fun of with their solar numbers, because they make this chart that says, oh, solar is gonna grow like this, like this. And every year, it's like up. And there's this guy named awk. From Europe, I think he's Dutch. And he had, he made a chart showing off how every single year, they're just wrong. And even when they fix their years laters with updated information, they're still wrong. So to see this chart from them on solar panels, is really interesting. And it's no longer surprising. So the headline of the chart is the amount of energy resources from various things that we're going to need in order to be net zero by 2050. And what are we going to have to make? Well, this chart looks at the 2030. And today's manufacturing, so 2021 is the gray, and the blue, that's on the screen here is announced plans by 2030. So the IEA believes that for the announced manufacturing pipeline of solar panels, we are on track to do solar as part of bringing the world to net zero energy. Yeah, which means 50% of the global grid, basically, right? Is gonna be solar powered. And between 40 and 50%, and then another 40% from wind, and then the rest will be hydro, nuclear, that cetera, et cetera. But yeah, so the absence of a green bar in this graph is a good thing. But you'll see that we're hurting in the batteries, electrolyzers, and especially the lithium Marina. Of course, those things are all connected to one another. I'm actually a little surprised that the batteries has such a small green bar, given how big the green bar is on electrolyzers and lithium, I mean, I guess electrolyzers is a separate industry. very new to the electrolyzer industry. So new it's even fresher, but it's growing massively as well. There's no electrolyzers or for making green hydrogen. Yes. Put electricity and water in and get hydrogen and oxygen out. Yeah. All right. So are you are you are you giving this more credibility than then the IEA normally get? Well, that's a good point. Do we trust them today when we didn't trust them last year? Well, what I would say is they're catching up. And if they're conservative on their numbers, if, if it's so happens that they're still being conservative, but they're saying that solar is there, then pretty cool. The one terawatt per year number before 2030 I've read that makes us on site to so long GE has kind of I think given credit to them because they've been real smart at predict projecting things and and after I did the math, you know, Bloomberg Nef, Jenny, Bloomberg and and Jeff gave me a I've had been tracking their history forever of the total amounts of solar they put out and you know, it every three years it's been doubling and more than doubling. And so I you know, Sam, I feel like the solar portion we might get our job done. And it's like, we might be part of the solution, at least on our on our piece of the equation. And that means we gotta help. We might be Yeah, you're gonna it's a tough world we're in man. I don't want to they still don't count your chickens Tim gotta gotta warm those eggs got to work those eggs gotta stay there because those chickens will stress you out Timothy. So yes, we might be we might be what we're working toward it. So it's just it's a cool chart to see from the IEA somebody who's negative on us generally. Well, let's, let's talk about your story and PV magazine on the IRA inside the IRA. What is an energy community? Oh, yes, this is on screen. What's the story, John? So, you know, just like we talked with, was it Dave from Alien days Edinburg aid reason, Berg, he said all east. So if you do his name on a wheel of fortune, you know what to say. But uh, so just like Dave said, you could get 10% added on to your tax credit for domestic content, you can also add 10% to your tax credit, if it's located in what's called an energy community. And right here is roughly this energy community, these three points, a brownfield site, any site or area starting since December 31. That was coal, gas oil, had significant extraction, processing, etc. And then anything that was next to one of those census tracts as well. Additionally, any area that has a certain volume of employment, or gross domestic product that came from fossils, and that's still being worked out, the Treasury Department has to define, as Dave suggested, it could be Q March of next year, so we all got to be patient. But if we scroll down a little further, and we and people have started to put together these maps, and these maps, look at the US. So look at this map, this map shows like the majority of the country looks like it should get an 10% energy error. And, and other maps seem to say 40% is the minimum number. So to but like almost half of the nation is going to get a bonus 10% Because they are in former energy communities. I mean, look at your home state, Tim. The the only chunk that's not is the North. Yeah, it's pink. It's because it's full of coal mines and coal burning power plants that are now mostly shut down or shutting down. And so yeah, Illinois is a major energy community. Look at Texas. Yeah, talk about oil country, right. And that's very much part of the energy transition. Colorado, my goodness, I mean, so many states across the middle part of the country. And then And then even up into the northeast, you know, look at Ohio and Pennsylvania and West Virginia. And gosh, so Well, this is great, though, right? This is incentivizing the energy transition and adjust transition, because these workers are losing their jobs. And so we want to find ways to bring them into the clean energy transition. I've been working with more and more professionals coming from oil and gas. These are oil engineers, basically the equivalent of a solar developer in the oil industry. And they're throwing up their hands and saying I'm out. I don't want to be part of the natural disaster known as climate change. And I want to be part of the clean economy. And so if you are looking for a job in the clean energy transition, reach out to me and John Weaver, we can help you make vital connections to executives, at companies like Hallein, solar, they need workers. And you know, these, these are the new these are the new oil fields of the clean energy transition, the factory that I'm sitting in right now is there's gonna be a lot of jobs. It's gonna be a lot of jobs. Oh, so if we keep going on this. So what I did, I collected multiple maps from multiple groups, because everybody has said, we got to be careful. So if you scroll up just a tiny bit, I'm going to read off the paragraph. Here's my caveat, multiple parties to express that the validity of any specific map is up for argument at this point, we, the employment numbers might be used incorrectly, EPA brownfield areas aren't defined, and coal mine data is incomplete. So, you know, there's our caveat, everybody, so before you spend 10 million bucks on your project, you know, don't blame me blame Tim though. Tim. Tim, let me put it on the screen. So, but uh, if you keep scrolling down, we have six or seven different resources. So you can look at different maps. So I got the one from clean energy. Oh, I forgot their first name V. C. Christopher clack, runs that show. But we got the first map. This one is from s&p Global. It's actually gifts. So it's supposed to be changing. So I wonder why it didn't load like that. But this is just a coal mines, coal plants. If we keep going, we can see the next map that I believe is from resources.org. That's their map. They say that about 40% of the nation is fossil fueled. And this is the employment one so you know, if it's greater than point one 7% of the local region is employed in the fossil industry. Bam 10%. And if it's greater than Point three 5% of total GPA is for GP GP GDP, geez 10, then that qualifies on that same map. So here's an interesting map from BT EU analytics. They did one. It's not freely accessible. But what they did is they looked at the International queues across the nation. And they said, All right, based upon our maps and the queues and where these projects are loaded, located, what percentage of these projects are in energy communities. And you can see out west, there is hundreds of gigawatts of solar in the queues that are Bamp. They just got a gift from the IRA. And look at it grow. You know, miso has over just over 100 SPP, just under 100 ERCOT? Well, I mean, that's almost all of ERCOT solar. So like, pretty much probably the majority of Texas is located in an energy community, no surprise there. But we have hundreds of gigawatts that got a strong financial bump when the IRA was signed. So any of those projects, so, you know, even I have projects we're working on that are definitely within coal communities. So so there's lots of lots of great benefit. And And here's one of the neat ones. This is one of the super dense regions. Look at West Virginia. I mean, the only portion of West Virginia that's not an energy community, is that weird part that's often the often the east as we start getting far northeast part of West Virginia, like the whole state. So So remember who signed this document him? I think, Mr. Joe Manchin. And that's Joe state there. So we know, we know that he was paying attention to this map probably pretty closely when he wrote it up. So good job, Joe. We're taking care of your people. And you have to know though, yeah, this map is a great one. So this is from Jesse Jenkins team. And I don't know, man, looking at this map, it looks like 60% of the nation isn't Energy Community, just checking out these numbers. So it's no, these are all just different maps. These are professional maps done by smart groups, every single one of those smart groups that, hey, you know, we're not legally liable for this just yet. Nothing's out, we got to fine tune stuff. But these these maps are based on government data. They look at labor stats, they look at GDP stats, they look at maps by the EPA, and they and these analysts are doing their best across these different layers and give you this sort of beauty. So if you're a developer, go to where these weird colors are. Because Because you get an extra 10%. I think, I think most Americans are fairly ignorant about just how big energy is what a big part of the economy it is. And what a big piece of the geography it is. But I have a question, John, what are you hearing about Pennsylvania, you notice Pennsylvania is all dark here. And I know that developers like yourself have been securing site control in Pennsylvania anticipating the opening of a community solar market. I also heard rumblings of a CNI market in Pennsylvania, there's a small, you know, residential and CNI market, but are there? Are there new incentives coming in PA for community or DG solar? Now? I mean, the Pennsylvania politicians have decided they don't like community solar. They've had years and the political. The voting term just ended yesterday or the day before before the election, so there won't be anything else. And so no, I had a phone call. One of the reasons I was a little late to get on the video with you, Tim is I had a gentleman who's been we've been playing phone tag and PA, he got a great offer from a developer. He's also got an offer for some neighbors to buy his lands. He's like, John, I need some advice. Sure, the money for the solar is much, much better. And I can give it to my kids, and they can have a long term income for the next, you know, 3035 years. I said, Yo, and he goes, but these neighbors, they want to buy land today. You know, they might not be around in three years. I said, Yeah, that's the way it works. And we talked for 2030 minutes about PA and what the reality is, and so right now, Tim, my company is not putting out more money to sign land in Pennsylvania. Right now we're waiting. Because we've you know, every, every six months, I get a phone call from some big pocketed developer. Hey, sell me your Pennsylvania land. All right. And then they're like, well, let's wait till the deal closes and I chuckle I'm like, Okay, we won't be talking. Because, you know, my confidence level in PA moving forward is pretty low at this stage. Interesting. Well, I'm sorry to hear that. And hang in there. Yep, that's there's a lot of risk on the front end. and solar development. But if you're not an early adopter, then it's it's hard to break into a market. And so you're you're smart to be an early adopter and take that risk. Because that guarantees some reward at some point. It's just a question of when Pennsylvania will pop it just a question of when. So let's move on. There's a story here in electric about Tesla, and a mega factory, you know, I'm not used to saying mega in relation to Tesla, I am used to saying Giga or Terra, but what was the story with the Tesla, Mega? Well, it's the mega factory for the Mega Pack. And it's not a mega factory, Tim, it's a giga factory. Yeah, and I was I was a little concerned. It's a 40 gigawatt hour factory, if I believe like electric links to Musk saying that's the goal. The video in here is pretty sweet. I don't know if the video would stream a video within a video when stream very well. But this was actually a well, I'll check that out. It looks good. So when you get inside, it's not a long video. 2030 seconds, but you can see some cool stuff. And it's just assembling giant batteries out. It's got some lasers, you can see the structure of the shipping containers. I guess this is painting this is painting probably make because you got a machine outside. So it's just made on Earth by humans. Yeah, there you go. So it's just I love that sign made on Earth by humans. So there it is. I mean, it's it's super fast. But I just, I was interested in this and talking about it, because it's a and you can see some units sitting outside in the parking lot, which is awesome. Just casual megapack mega packs hanging around. But I'm interested in this factory. And I thought it was cool, because you know, we're not only guy right there in the lower left, you can see him over there, that red machine with a stack of them just hanging around. It's like Hey, buddy, can I just have a casual megapack I take one home real fast for them my backyard, you know, backup my house for 12 months. But where we've gone past Giga factories, the Gigafactory was supposed to make solar cells, we've gone past a giga factory to make, not solar cells, battery cells, we've gone past Gigafactory for cars, you know, we we have all these factories, now we have a factory of just the mega packs. And that talks of the transition. We're getting to the point now we're building factories just to make large scale battery assemblies. And I liked that, that one, it makes me feel like the price is going to come down. There's a lot of steel in there. But I really liked the concept that we are scaling our big stuff manufacturing, for stationary energy storage. And that was why I was interested in this article just to point that out and be like, Man, check this out. We're building some stuff. And it's cool. Well, this kind of caught me by surprise. This is in Lathrop, California. I assume that's in Southern California. I'm not sure. And but a dedicated Giga Mega Pack factory 40 gigawatt hours. That's about 10 gigawatts, right? of mega packs. Gigawatt is 9000 megawatts, right. So. So 10,000 units is that is that accurate? per year? A gigawatt is a say three ish, three to three and a half megawatt hours. And if this can do 40,040 gigawatt hours, multiply that by 1000. Divide that by 3.5. By 11,400. Timothy. Yeah, so 10,000 Plus mega packs a year coming out of this structure, man. That's so cool. That's how many mega packs per day 10,000 divided by 365 30 Mega packs a day coming out of this structure. Yeah, I mean, that's 100 that's 100 megawatt hours per day rolling out of this building. How sweet is that? So, so that was my building of the week. You know, I don't really have a building of the week. But if we did it, that's what it would be. Yeah, you know, we, we solar developers, we, we think solar development is hard. Sometimes try building a building, try building a factory, try building a battery factory, right, like permitting that thing must be difficult. So you know, real estate development. There's a spectrum solar is real estate development. We have to up our game. I'm planning a webinar series. He's on permitting and constituent relations for solar farms. I've recently had some solar farms that met some challenges on the permitting front here in Illinois. And it's it's a struggle, but so we do need to up our game. But let's move on. I want to talk about this, this Reuters article, and then we'll wrap up the show. Biden's social cost of carbon climate risk measure upheld by us appeals court. That's quite a title. Yes. Is that what makes you laugh that just the title, social cost of carbon? Well, such costs carbon that when I get so 50 cents per tonne, is only a couple of pennies per kilowatt hour. But it adds up. And every little penny adds up. And so really what this is saying is that if the judges around the nation are going to rule, if the federal government is going to make rulings, then this value of $50 per ton of co2 is what the what the number is now that has to be used. And this number has gone up since the Obama era. It crashed during the Trump era, of course, and now it's back up again to this number and, and so the lawsuit was actually a little funny. So the attorney, a group of attorney generals who are was sued, and they simply said, this is a bad number. And then bad things might come from it. And so we want to get rid of it. Because it might be bad. The judge is like, Well, no, you can't just make me do something because you think something bad will come you have to show some harm. And so the judge threw it out and said, Nope, this is good. The social cost of carbon. So what this is, it's just going to give a couple of cents bump, in certain cases, to the cost of electricity and the valuations when people are building things. And if a gas pipelines getting poured, maybe this is going to have an effect on it. And, you know, if we're trying to decide, you know, whether to build solar or build gas, or this or whatever we're building, this social cost of carbon is going to start to calculate counts. And in certain states, it will bite bigger than in other states. And I'm hoping like, say state in New York, upgrades their social cost of carbon from three, three and a half cents to five cents, because that would be good. Yeah. So follow me on the social cost of carbon, I want to highlight that, I published an interview with a gentleman named Dr. Daniel Howard, in Santa Cruz, California, and he has created a platform called I gotta find it quantum EC. Okay. And Dr. Howard is super passionate for sustainability. But he's created a platform to measure the full benefits of your solar wind and battery storage projects beyond the co2 emissions reductions, right, we have to reduce co2 emissions, we have to netzero the economy. But when we do that, we are taking a bite out of all of these Bad's that fossil fuels bring to humanity and the natural world like human health, killing 6 million people a year, six to 9 million people are this, you know, statistics you see out there. Ecosystem services, of course, this is water pollution. This is biodiversity. And, and so now he's got a platform. So you can, you can leverage this platform and do calculations that are going to add another several layers of goods to your solar wind or battery storage project. So check out the podcast at Clean Power hour.com. And there you'll find the audio and the video, we have a great YouTube channel, I just want to highlight that just by clicking on the YouTube icon that takes you to our channel. And you know, of course the Live is here that we do this every Thursday at noon, Eastern 11, Central 10 Mountain nine Pacific, and then we're doing one on one interviews with solar EPCs. Like Eric Peterman there two weeks ago, or just last week, sorry, we brought you a whole series on solar thermal, there's Matt Lensink from cm engineering with his new company called Phoenix solar, doing single axis trackers for solar thermal, making hot water or hot fluids for, for example, food processing, or brewing. You and I are fond of beer, John and you need heat for brewing. And so now you can make your heat from solar and he has imported he's got a sole license for the Swedish technol Energy. And just just love that clean thermal. But so many great interviews, there's Nautilus solar, a well known community solar developer, our friend Matt Campbell, from Terra bass, who's bringing down the cost of solar to a penny kWh. So that green hydrogen is practical. With that, I want to give you a chance to tell our listeners John, how they can find you, Mr. commercial solar guy. Best Ways to visit our website, commercial solar guy.com. And send us a contact or give us a phone call. And we're, we're super busy. But we're working hard and taking care of as many people as we can. We're constructing in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where general contractors and electricians and then lots of other states were consulting in developing. So if you need some questions answered for five minutes, just give us a ring if you want us to build a project, and take a little more than five minutes, but we'll get it done. So commercial solar guy.com, and Twitter, solar and mass as well, LinkedIn, I'm all over the internet bother and people come join us get into the arguments. It's fun. What about you, Timothy? Where can people find you? The best place is clean power hour.com. There's a contact form right there. You can also find me on Twitter, TG Montague, that's also my Gmail handle. So reach out to me, I love talking to our listeners, and other industry professionals or aspiring industry professionals, we need 10s and 10s of 1000s more people to come into the clean energy transition. And John and I can help you get leverage in your process. We can't we know the good players and the bad, it's good, bad and ugly, like any industry. And so reach out to us because we will coach you and help you make vital connections to whatever part of the industry you want. Whether that's manufacturing, development, installation, or other service providers in the industry. There's a huge economy that is now just swelling up like a huge wave, right we are at the bottom of the S curve. And now we're creating this massive economic wave, which is clean jobs and prosperity for capitalists like you and I John Well thank you so much to everyone who's watching the live and please go to clean power hour.com And subscribe to the show give us a rating and a review. Most of all a review on Apple and Spotify. With that I want to say let's grow solar and storage. I'm Tim Montague. Thank you, John.