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America Crushes 40GW Storage Goal Set in 2017: Supply Can't Keep Up · Clean Power Hour

• 0:54
  Tim Montague: Welcome to the Clean Power Hour Live. It is Friday, December 5. I'm Tim Montague. Check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and a review.
• 1:03
  Tim Montague: Tell a friend about the show.
• 1:03
  Tim Montague: Tell Santa Claus about the show.
• 1:06
  Tim Montague: For sure, I like getting Christmas presents, and I want to welcome John Weaver, commercial solar guy, welcome.
• 1:13
  John Weaver: Hey, Timothy. How are you Nice seeing you last week or no, no. Two days ago, I saw
• 1:17
  Tim Montague: you this week twice in one week. My head is spinning. John, you were in Illinois, and you're coming to Illinois. I want to start you're moving to Illinois, but you're not moving to Illinois, but you're coming to Illinois. I might
• 1:29
  John Weaver: visit a little more too, but yes, we're sort of coming. We're trying to come.
• 1:31
  John Weaver: We're kind of join you and work with you, and work with our law firm, and we want to build some projects out there, a couple.
• 1:37
  John Weaver: And so we're kind of, we're just looking to chase a few projects that a few developers need deployed, three to five megawatt ground mounts, whatever you're looking we have good teams. We have really great detail oriented project managers, Tim Tim Montague here, he's going to be our on in state project manager. Help us vet.
• 2:00
  Tim Montague: If you ever get a project to manage, I will manage it. Yes, yeah. And so live on Facebook. I don't know why.
• 2:08
  John Weaver: Who cares about Facebook anyway?
• 2:10
  Tim Montague: It's true.
• 2:14
  Unknown: Oh, my goodness. Oh, so, yeah. So we are, we are.
• 2:17
  Tim Montague: Explain this.
• 2:17
  Tim Montague: Let's explain this. Okay, why is the commercial solar guy coming to Illinois?
• 2:24
  John Weaver: Well, I guess primarily, number one, it's a good market. It's, it's one of the biggest states in the union, and they're pushing and we talked about it, 123, weeks ago, a few weeks, few shows ago, maybe last show about the new legislation that's coming out for the state. We could share that article if you want.
• 2:40
  John Weaver: Illinois responds to obba with 873 megawatts more of solar, three gigawatts of energy storage, VPPs and more. And so it's related to that. So that's the
• 2:54
  Tim Montague: prime. Where's that story?
• 2:56
  John Weaver: Oh, this is we covered it here. I'll throw it into the I'll share it into the room real quick. Actually, how's that? It's not on the document.
• 3:00
  John Weaver: It's an old, old story. But, oh yeah.
• 3:06
  Tim Montague: And Dave Roberts covered the story this week, about the about surge, as we call it the clean, reliable grid Act, as we call the omnibus bill that was passed recently in Illinois. Yep, so Sergio, that does kind of roll off your tongue. It's not as cool as sija, but it's, it's, it's, at least it's easy to say.
• 3:29
  John Weaver: And so this article right here is, is what I wrote on it. So this was November 4, and so that's the high level.
• 3:38
  John Weaver: The high level is one. There's good programs there, so that, but more importantly, we know some folks there, and we get inbound business from there. Our lawyer, Maria Breece, from Fox Seibel, I think is the firm she's out there. So I feel that we can be trusted and we can have good support.
• 3:57
  Tim Montague: And I'm here, John, come on,
• 4:00
  John Weaver: that's where I was going next. Yes, yes, yeah. So where we do have our licensing out there, we are an EEC, and what does that mean again?
• 4:09
  Tim Montague: Tim, EEC tech eligible contractor,
• 4:12
  John Weaver: yeah, so as a general contractor, we have a little couple bells and whistles attached to us.
• 4:17
  Tim Montague: You get sweeter.
• 4:17
  Tim Montague: You get sweeter incentives if you can build projects using EC labor and contractors, and that's why it's a thing, and the state is trying to spread the wealth, so to speak, and raise up disadvantaged people. It's a little, it's a little unusual that a well off white guy like yourself would be considered EEC, but there's a story there.
• 4:49
  John Weaver: Yeah, it was sort of kind of an orphan. You know, I was a ward of the state, so that's really the variable for me, because I didn't really have parents, and so I was, I lived in the state of Florida in group homes until I went to college, and that's one of their variables. That's one of the considerations of an EEC is, indeed, you know, did you get certain privileges. And the logic is, I did not though I'm really handsome and tall and good looking. So, you know, balances out in life well.
• 5:19
  Tim Montague: And this brings up for me, before we get into the regular news, this phenomenon of a self made man. There is a myth in America that you can be a self made man, and I do not believe in said myth. While we do have a lot of choice and freedom, and if you work hard and have ambition, you can go places, we also have to recognize that we stand on shoulders. We stand on infrastructure. Roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, teachers, universities and parents. And so it is a disadvantage when you don't have parents you know that gave birth to you and that kind of thing, they want you to survive more than most other people, I guess. But anyway, I'm a fan of acknowledging that we stand on people's shoulders.
• 6:14
  John Weaver: And I say that too.
• 6:14
  John Weaver: You know, I was given the we, you know, we grew up on government cheese. That means we literally ate government.
• 6:19
  John Weaver: Government gave us money to eat.
• 6:23
  John Weaver: Gave us money for rent section eight, and then I lived in a group home that was funded by private people with donations.
• 6:30
  John Weaver: So it's, yeah. I mean, I didn't have certain privileges, but I had others. You know for sure, I lived in the stable, most stable political climate on Earth, maybe the United States, in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s so, you know, maybe not today, but that's a different discussion.
• 6:47
  John Weaver: Yeah, it's a different discussion. Today. We got solar incentives and political
• 6:52
  Tim Montague: instability, and you were in Illinois for re plus Midwest, yes, in the Chicago suburbs. Great event. It's nice to see the event growing back in the day. When I got into solar in 2017 it was probably 300 people, and now it's more like 1300 people. So it is growing.
• 7:11
  Tim Montague: We have good new incentives.
• 7:17
  Tim Montague: We're doubling the Illinois program, basically, for all intents and purposes, you could just think, you know, a gigawatt a year of solar, and now three gigawatts of batteries in the next I don't know what five years.
• 7:32
  John Weaver: Yeah, I don't know the exact time frame, but yeah, it's not too long. It's reasonable,
• 7:37
  Tim Montague: and it's unlocking. The new legislation is unlocking VPP. You know, VPP legislation only exists in a few spotty places. Unfortunately, it's not widely available yet. I do think we need to just top down, kind of rewrite how we approach energy and storage, because there's a lot of monkey business with utilities pushing back on various things about the clean energy transition, and it's not good for anybody. It's not good for the grid, it's not good for grid, it's not good for consumers or business owners now we have this spike in demand from data centers and AI and it's all my fault because I'm an AI consultant, and we need to build a lot of solar and storage, and so we do need good state levers. So thank you to the State of Illinois for all those industry groups and professionals and attorneys and lobbyists and state legislators who made it happen because we need state leavers.
• 8:41
  John Weaver: And you know, it's interesting, as all this stuff was happening with the politics and the IRA was moving forward.
• 8:49
  John Weaver: Back in 2122 I was super excited about federal so many people did explicitly remind us all, saying, hey, you know, don't get too stuck up on these feds.
• 8:58
  John Weaver: They're going to do a great job, but eventually they're going to move hard the other direction, so you got to be careful. And, and I remember being like, I go away. Everything's awesome. And, but they, some of those people were right, and for the for the decades that, you know, federal has done its piece and state has done its piece, and so, yeah, it's, it's true. It's now seeing it clearly. It really is true that we, we got to keep our, you know, we got to keep our politics moving on all of the levels, all of the levels and and that. So it's it matters. So let's
• 9:38
  Tim Montague: talk about this story in Canary media from Julian Spector, I missed Julian at already midwest. I don't know if you were there, Julian, normally you are there. But anyway, the grid storage industry set a wild goal for 2025 and then it crushed it.
• 9:50
  Tim Montague: According to Julian in Canary media, we'll put a link in the show notes, as always in 2017 the ESA the energy storage Association, which is now ACP, American clean power. I love ACP, that brand, even though storage isn't in the name, it's cool. They they merged with wind, wind on the wires, or one of the wind trade issue trade associations. And now we have a really robust three big shows in America, right? We have ACP, we have inner solar, and we have re plus. And now ACP is doing regional events as well. You can't keep up with all these events. But anyway, they wanted 35 gigawatts, or they predicted that we would get 35 gigawatts of storage by 2025 and lo and behold, we now have 40 gigawatts of storage. It's not, I wouldn't say we've crushed it, but we beat the goal. So that's good.
• 10:44
  Tim Montague: And you were commenting, though, John, that you were like, well.
• 10:48
  Tim Montague: Duh. I've been predicting this all along. You got to get the S curve. So what do you mean by that?
• 10:57
  John Weaver: So we've been I mean energy storage. The biggest surprise, I would say, with the energy storage surprise has been the cost acceleration in the last couple of years. But many people have been saying that this is going to happen, that this S curve of storage is just going to be something different.
• 11:16
  John Weaver: And in the last couple of years, we've been seeing it, and we've been seeing it aggressively in the last 12 months, 18 months, but now it's kind of cool, because this, you know, yes, well done. But at the other side, this is a 2017 prediction.
• 11:32
  John Weaver: So not bad guys, not bad.
• 11:35
  Tim Montague: Yeah, that's a long time ago. Yeah. That was that,
• 11:38
  John Weaver: was it, yeah, or almost a decade, yeah. So, I mean, that's, that's not bad, and they're, if they're that close. But, you know, there, we shared a story a couple weeks ago about Australia, and this is what I'm really interested with, the energy storage thing because we're going to share a tweet where I'm going to call out something about or maybe we've already done it, but recently, because of China slowing down a bit, Jenny Chase and the team over at bn EF have slowed down their progression of growth of solar. So we may have had like, you know, eight, 900 gigawatts to be installed by 2030 but now that's been pushed back to 2035 because China came out with their new five year plan or so.
• 12:22
  John Weaver: And instead of being like 300 gigawatts a year and growing, they pulled it back to like 200 gigawatts a year. And so it's like, oh, man, with my terawatt.
• 12:33
  John Weaver: Because you know me, I'm the terawatt family, but um, so Jenny, chasing team pulled back after doing some research and saying, Hey, this is China. This is a new political push. But now I'm wondering, based upon what we have seen in Australia, we are seeing that batteries are being incentivized really strongly, and it's leading to more solar growth, and it's happening on the small scale right now, and it's leading to more solar growth because one people are putting in the battery systems, and then they're adding like a mini solar project, like three kW, because it just jives. And then people are supplementing their existing solar system with a battery, and now they can add a little more solar. So we've seen the small side of the solar growth like double and a whole new class of solar projects come to be a battery led solar project, so just enough solar to make the battery meet its biggest goals.
• 13:30
  John Weaver: And I never really thought about that before, but that's kind of like an off grid system of sorts. I guess it's at least the mentality of structuring the hardware together. So I'm just so now I'm wondering, so we got this slow curve because of China, but I'm hoping the curve gets bent upward because of batteries. And that's my most interesting thought that I want to learn about over the next year or two and watch,
• 13:51
  Tim Montague: yeah, I've taken note of a couple of trends in conversations with EPCs in various places. I was at Tennessee recently, in Tennessee, where there's a very robust residential and light commercial installer that called light wave, that is attaching 100% of batteries to their solar projects in Tennessee. And now it's a certain demographic. It's a wealthier demographic, their customers, but the peace of mind that you get by having solar plus storage is very significant. The grid is not going to necessarily get more robust in this period that we're in, because it's getting stressed as fast as we can renew it and build it out. It's also getting stressed by growth, load growth. But anyway, I think there is a flywheel. That's kind of what I heard you say, there's a flywheel, right? You get solar, you get storage, you get storage, you get solar they they work well together. I call it the peanut butter and jelly effect. And who doesn't love peanut butter and jelly?
• 14:58
  John Weaver: Europeans, apparently they don't know about that's true. I've learned you don't have
• 15:02
  Tim Montague: PB and J in Europe. Forget about it. Can't have that. I just like, we don't like Vegemite.
• 15:10
  John Weaver: Yeah, that stuff tasted weird. Man. I even went there and had some, and even some Australians are like, Ah, I'm dead your money. So it was interesting. So, yeah,
• 15:21
  Tim Montague: anyway, taste that is. It's a byproduct of of breweries. I think it's, it's made from yeast, right? And so if you have beer, if you have beer making, you have this stuff that's a byproduct that you need to do something with. And they made Vegemite. I don't know what we do with it here. We probably ship it to Australia,
• 15:44
  John Weaver: maybe, maybe. But you know what? I never knew that, and that's totally the most fitting thing I've ever heard in my life. Australians making. Good food out of beer.
• 15:52
  John Weaver: That's like it just for some reason, right?
• 15:55
  Tim Montague: It's a good thing, all right. So, so, yeah, so batteries
• 15:58
  John Weaver: are coming, and this next story sort of kind of aligns with that. That's why I moved it up the table, just to, kind of,
• 16:04
  Tim Montague: I'm just and just one to put a pin in it on the on Sergio. One of the cool things about Sergio in Illinois, is we're getting front of the meter storage affiliated with things like community solar. Right in Illinois we have a five megawatt AC community solar market, which is seven, sometimes eight megawatts DC. Okay, so these are 40 acre solar farms, give or take, and now you can put a five megawatt battery on that baby, and that's some real juice, and it's just a good thing. It's good for the grid, it's good for the installers. It's good for the IPPS, this is economic growth, but it's growth for the greater good. John, that's an expression that every solar professional needs to have in their wallet. Growth for the greater good.
• 16:53
  John Weaver: I think her name was Kate. Let me go back to my Illinois story. But I Are you talking about the Yeah, her name is Katie. There we go. Katie, Katie McFadden. She's a consultant. McFadden strategies is our firm, and she was talking to me about how they were thinking about the battery sizing, and how excited they were about how it will add and this is flywheel, Tim, how it will add capacity, DC capacity, which is essentially more electricity from K to from solar kWh. That's fundamentally it, but she was excited about the DC capacity additions that would arise because of the new legislation. And I would too.
• 17:35
  John Weaver: Was speaking with somebody at at re plus, I can't remember who, but just, you know, walk in the hallways doing a thing, and got into that conversation, and they were excited. They're like, Yes, this is how we're looking at it.
• 17:49
  John Weaver: This is what the incentive is.
• 17:49
  John Weaver: There's a kWh, here's how the numbers. And I was like, Man, that sounds solid. He goes, because we're, we're pushing it.
• 17:55
  John Weaver: He goes, we're gonna get a few.
• 17:57
  John Weaver: And I was just like, it just, it was nice to hear. So the battery flywheel in Illinois, it's gonna spin a little, yeah, and I'm looking forward to it.
• 18:06
  Tim Montague: So you want to talk about battery shortages, yes.
• 18:10
  John Weaver: A little nuance of battery shortages, yes, so it's cool. It's very interesting. Is it good news? Is it good?
• 18:16
  John Weaver: Absolutely, good news, yeah, it's good news. I like the furrowed brow there. Tim, you're like, Oh man,
• 18:24
  Tim Montague: yes, right. I got it on screen. Now, battery shortage intensifies as 100 amp hour cells sell out into 2026 story by Vincent Shaw in PV magazine. What's the story?
• 18:36
  John Weaver: Yeah, so Vincent's awesome. I love him. He is. He's based, I believe, in Hong Kong, maybe in China. But the main story here is that you know how you kept hearing during the last couple years, even from me, these battery cells, they're getting bigger. They're turning into like 1000 or click on the ESS newly link, because they have much better information there. But the battery cells are growing in size. They were like 100 Amp Hours, like the headline says at the top of this. But now you can get battery cells up to like two, 3000 amp hours. And these big cells are just fundamentally different. These are grid scale battery cells, maybe for cars.
• 19:13
  Tim Montague: I'm not sure they're three times the size.
• 19:15
  Tim Montague: Yeah, yeah. So that's a small one, 314,
• 19:18
  John Weaver: I mean, the the industry standards at five and six now. But what this is, these are grid side cells. So the big battery companies have shifted from making smaller hundreds walk amp hour cells to these bigger ones, and what's what's happening afterwards is that the demand of growth in residential and smaller commercial projects is so great that all of those people that left those factories with small cells now we need to build some new factories, because we're seeing demand growth across the spectrum of battery and cell size, and maybe these small batteries for homeowners will evolve toward bigger cells. I am not smart enough on the electrical engineering side, but it's just showing that the growth across the spectrum of battery products, it's it's causing, and so everybody's moving quickly to get into these big, big cells and new tech, but there's still demand for the small ones. And so this is just really, it complements what we're seeing in terms of the battery growth.
• 20:19
  John Weaver: This is a little nuance of saying, wow, why am I having an issue getting these batteries?
• 20:25
  John Weaver: Oh, that's because they're sold out. Because utility scale is just hungry, hungry for capacity across the world, and that's kind of cool and exciting, and so that's why I thought to bring that up as a little nuance.
• 20:37
  Tim Montague: Yeah, you know, it also makes me wonder who makes the machine that builds the battery cells? And I'm guessing it's China,
• 20:48
  John Weaver: right now, it is absolutely, absolutely, um.
• 20:50
  Tim Montague: I had James Showalter on the show at that drop. That hasn't dropped yet, but James is the CEO of, eg for a residential storage company down in Texas, and he's been buying cells from China, but is now, now has a contract with LG, I believe who is building a factory in the US, he is going to do assembly with American made cells and American containers in Texas to combat the Fiat rules, right that are coming. Everyone is interested in Fiat and tariffs it and ITC, and that's those three things kind of go together. It's, it's, it's, it's not a very good tasting soup, apparently, but it is a soup that we're drinking because there's, there's lots of, there's lots of uncertainty still, right? We just don't know exactly how this plays out. Many people want to buy FIAC free but, but I just say, look, it's great to have that ambition, but it also has to pencil, and you have to be able to get the stuff. It's, it's, it's totally about money at the end of the day, money and availability.
• 22:09
  Tim Montague: Like we want to get things done faster and cheaper, and apparently the federal government is very concerned about getting more data centers online, right? Because they had, they launched this big new process program. Is it Genesis, something like that, which is like a moon shot right to incentivize American AI industry. Well, the limiting factor is data centers compute, and the limiting factor for that is interconnection to the grid and electricity to feed the factory. It's, it's a gnarly circumstance that we're in, John, when you're killing wind farms and solar farms with the pen and simultaneously saying, oh, yeah, let's make it easier to interconnect and let's make it easier to get your environmental permits for these big projects. Well, but how are you going to power the grid?
• 24:02
  John Weaver: John, yep, without that, yeah, you know, I kind of with this AI stuff. I mean, I know they're building a bunch, and I hear the gas and I hear the solar, but I also hear efficiency gains coming in AI.
• 24:16
  John Weaver: And I also hear these progressions of maybe starting off with a smaller off grid system, and then slowly building into connected to the grid as we build out the sites. And then there's this one site out in Cal in Texas, I've read about where they're, you know, doing like, 10 or 20 gigawatts, and it's a standalone campus. Yes, I think, I think the former Energy Secretary Perry is associated with them, and so I'm just, it's really hard, it's really interesting to think and contemplate what's going on with all that kind of stuff. Because it's, it's just things going on, and it's really, it's, it's something to watch,
• 24:56
  Tim Montague: and it's a both.
• 24:56
  Tim Montague: And it's like some of these facilities are getting solar and wind and battery farms affiliated with them, and then natural gas turbines. It's a both end, right? And some of them are being developed as off grid facilities, initially, because the interconnection queue is so long, and hopefully we can shorten the interconnection queue for both the data centers and the renewable energy facilities, like there's two terawatts of solar and wind in the queues around the US, right? So we have to, we need, we need reform at the federal level. I'm a big fan of that will, will the Trump administration do the right kind of reforms that will favor us? I don't know that's TBD. But so you want to talk about tariffs?
• 25:50
  John Weaver: Oh, yeah, exclusions, yes, higher,
• 25:55
  Tim Montague: Yeah, us extend solar manufacturing tariff exclusions by John Fitzgerald Weaver, December, 1 recent story, yeah, you're prolific.
• 26:04
  John Weaver: I've actually been not writing as much the last couple of weeks. I've been on a little vacation. I got sick Thanksgiving. I need to write a little more. But yeah, this popped out the other day an extension of exclusions, and if you scroll down, there's a list of them. And this, I moved this article up because you were just talking about the gentleman in Texas manufacturing battery cells. DG, four, yes, sir. So we have the ability to import Chinese hardware to manufacture solar cells. And there's a bullet list, silicon growth furnaces, band saws, diamond wire saws and gear. There's a whole much. Longer list, but interestingly, Mr. Biden excluded. These are pieces of hardware, and interestingly, the Trump admin just said they're extending it due to positive interactions with China. And so just an interesting little thing that was allowed to be excluded and gives, you know, tiny bit of hope of all right, we're, we're doing more. I mean, I'm buying some modules I just submitted, you know, Helene. We like Helene on the show. Yes, we do. And Helene, I just made two purchase orders with Helene for modules that are being assembled in Minnesota. And I'm not certain where the cells are coming from, but they're us cells. I'm sure the wafers are international, so the poly is international, but the cells and the modules and so, you know, they're being they're buying some of these machines, maybe, maybe not silicon growth, for silicon growth, or a band saw, or that type of stuff. But you know, they're buying some and I think, I just thought it was interesting that these particular pieces of hardware were able to move through and so, so, yeah, it's just,
• 27:55
  Tim Montague: but it's basically, it's basically the Feds recognizing that there's a whole lot of different parts and pieces to these electronics, right? And if you're stacking tariff upon tariff upon tariff, it's going to make things completely unaffordable for everyone involved, and that's going to hurt the economy, right? It's the economy. Stupid.
• 28:16
  Tim Montague: Who said that?
• 28:18
  John Weaver: Jim Carver. Jim Carver, okay, something rebel.
• 28:23
  John Weaver: Whatever his name is. He's from down, from down south.
• 28:26
  Tim Montague: Yeah, he's your father from another mother, like you're a younger version of James.
• 28:32
  John Weaver: James, yeah, yeah, he's, he's from way back, but, but yes, it's the Feds recognizing it. And if you go to the USTR, the trade board, they have a, there's a document in here I link to, and they break it down, and they say, you know, we specifically can't build these. They're not available globally. Jim Carver, the raging Cajun. Thank you, Chris ledman, for reminding us that's his name, the raging Cajun, great name. But they specify in this document that they reached out and they got quotes or comments, hundreds of comments, saying, listen, these need to be excluded from the tariff. So if you want us to build a solar industry solar module, this, this, this, you got to give us a little time. And so it was just extended so that, you know, it gives me a little hope somewhere that we're going to keep building and and not expand and expand and. And it also lines up with, you know, the next thing I wanted to push with, and it's how India is turning into, you know, the place to be. And let me add that right here. But India is doing two things which really interests me in the module world. And they're also setting record pricing for battery bids recently. So first India, similar to China's top runner program, I think that was a name from a few years ago where the purpose of the program was to push higher efficiency modules by setting the incentive requirements. I think that's how they did. It said, if you want to get the state program, you need to have higher efficiency modules. That pushes the manufacturers India is now doing the same thing, and India is going to have hundreds of gigawatts of manufacturing capacity, like right now for some components, they're just getting onto the ball with ingots and wafers. They're only at, like, 10 to 12, well, two gigawatts an ounce, but growing.
• 30:20
  Tim Montague: Yeah. Can you share the story? Because it's behind a post
• 30:23
  John Weaver: Bloomberg, yes, yes, because I pay for Bloomberg, because they're awesome. I love the news that I get from Bloomberg.
• 30:32
  Tim Montague: I almost clicked on their ad. They have a special running for $1.99 a month, but it's only for one month, and then it went, goes up to like,$38 a month. And I was like, Oh no, no snap. I want to talk about India, though. Okay, I commented I was on a call with an Indian robotics company just before this, and I commented to the gentleman, a very well spoken engineer from southern India who is designing O and M robots, for utility solar. And I said to him, dude, it is amazing how many calls I have with Indians compared to a year ago, like they're coming to North America. It's this is the AI revolution software, but also hardware and solar, and they're going to eclipse, according to this gentleman, and I haven't you're a good fact check on this. On an annual basis, India is going to be installing more solar than we are in the US, I think, or maybe it's the install base is going to surpass us in about four or five years right now, the US.
• 31:40
  John Weaver: How about both? How about both? Right? Now we're second in capacity and deployment volume. And the next story is going to say India is about to deploy 40 gigawatts, 41 gigawatts next year, or this year, we're at 5060, yeah, India is growing. We're going to be a little wobbly for the next couple of years. We'll see. We might still grow. We might break 60, we might touch 70. We'll see. But yes, India is going to catch us on both sides, because they're going to keep growing, and their growth rates are higher than ours right now. So yes, I do believe that's about to occur. And I think they care more about cheap energy. They don't have gas. They have expensive coal, while they
• 32:17
  Tim Montague: have Yeah, they have coal. They have lots of native coal, yeah, and they are building coal plants still, but they're also building lots of solar.
• 32:26
  John Weaver: Well, I think there's also a headline recently that said their coal growth may have slowed a bit or even stopped this year, something good happened with renewables relative to coal. So it was, you know, they're still going to build it, though they're giant country with low per capita usage, like,
• 32:43
  Tim Montague: yeah, a 10th of the US. But so this initiative to raise the efficiency requirement for solar modules.
• 32:49
  Tim Montague: What is that about?
• 32:51
  John Weaver: It's about higher tech and lower LCOE. Every 1% efficiency increase drops the cost of electricity 5% from 20 so if you go from 20 to 21 it drops 5% 21 to 22 it's 22 it drops like 4.9 so every percent.
• 33:06
  John Weaver: So if you can jack your average up to 25 that's going to be like a 15% price drop, 20% price drop, not maybe it's going to approach 25% of L COE drop. So they're trying to push up the and it also drops the price in a module.
• 33:22
  Tim Montague: But favor. How does this somehow favor Indian module makers? Does it?
• 33:30
  John Weaver: Well, it's going to force them to spend a little extra money, but it's going to make them more competitive globally, and it's going to make their project cheaper. So they're being pulled by the nose saying, Listen, buddy, you want some incentives from the state?
• 33:40
  John Weaver: Great, Listen, Mr. Billionaire Adani, you want some incentives.
• 33:43
  John Weaver: We're going to give them to you, but you need to give us something, not just panels, but good panels, not cheap garbage, good panels. And so that's what it is you're being forced by the money to upgrade your game. And that's, that's what's happening here. And and that's awesome.
• 33:59
  John Weaver: They're following China's lead, or, you know, just making a good, logical choice. I'm so watching India do it. And then the very next story, same thing.
• 34:07
  Tim Montague: Yeah. Do we need to drill further down on that?
• 34:11
  John Weaver: Nah, nah. That's fine. Yeah, yeah. We already kind of talked about it.
• 34:14
  Tim Montague: I mean, the story just throwing for people, there's a story from end of November by uma Gupta in PV magazine, India forecast to add 41.5 gigawatts of new solar in fiscal 2026 so that number 41 gigawatt, that threshold, is a big deal. We're past that. We're into the 60s, but they're coming and
• 34:33
  John Weaver: we're approaching 60s. We're in the 50s. Still. We haven't broached 60.
• 34:37
  Tim Montague: I thought we're gonna hit 60 this year. I
• 34:39
  John Weaver: think we'll see at the end of the year, we'll see.
• 34:42
  John Weaver: I haven't been as in the numbers this year as much, but yes, we might, we might, so we'll see.
• 34:48
  Tim Montague: So there's a boom going on, people, right? The industry is booming because of the rollback of the ITC. Just let's remember that there's a boom, and it's going to boom for a while, at least 18 more months, and then there's going to be a tapering off, and how much of a tapering off? We don't know. There are different prognostications about that.
• 35:09
  Tim Montague: Strap in solar coaster riders just ride on you just know that there's a good growth trajectory for the next 20 years for good companies, and the bad ones will go away.
• 35:22
  John Weaver: Hopefully.
• 35:22
  John Weaver: Hopefully. The next one's a kind of a funny project of the week.
• 35:27
  John Weaver: Tim, it's more of me having to fix something and learning about it.
• 35:32
  Tim Montague: This project, the blue sky story, yes, sir, yes, sir. The 12 volt battery in my EV where, by working on it with the with the heat on in the regular mode versus utility mode?
• 35:44
  John Weaver: Yes, you got to share it so I can show people what's going
• 35:47
  Tim Montague: on with my little carious.
• 35:50
  John Weaver: I mean, it's been fixed. It's been fixed. Yes, yes, you
• 35:53
  Tim Montague: bricked the battery, though,
• 35:55
  John Weaver: not the main battery, the 12 volt battery.
• 35:59
  Tim Montague: Oh, this is just like running the appliances and such. Why does a Why does an EV have a 12 volt battery?
• 36:06
  John Weaver: John, I have learned this. So when I posted this, actually, if you scroll down, there's somebody who made a really smart comment. I was like, Holy crap. I didn't know that. So the battery, and it might be under the John, smiley, smiley comment, but um, oh, you can't like it. Click on it.
• 36:22
  John Weaver: Click on the comment, maybe it'll let you see within it, there you go. Funny piece of EV history, right there. It's right there. So Jameson, so the 12 volt battery is mainly used for closing the contactor that enables the big battery. They used to have one. And you go a little further down, oh, it's at the bottom. So they used to have them, but they were being replaced, and the cost of them was very high. And so because of the replacement costs, yeah, click on that comment, you'll see what they say. So they used to have this other piece of hardware that was used, and they did, Hyundai had it with the knife, Ionic, the replacement unit to do that was too expensive, so they just use a standard 12 volt battery to engage the big battery. But I ran my car wrong. You have utility mode, and I sit in my car and I go to sites, and you know, it's cold up here right now, so I turn on the heat, I park in the sun, and I try to work from a laptop. But I ran the car in non without the big battery engaged. And so I managed to, two or three times, run the 12 volt battery down.
• 37:26
  John Weaver: And when the 12 volt battery dies, you can't access anything.
• 37:30
  John Weaver: The car doesn't turn on. It's like you have a you have a 10,000 pound, no, 3000 pound battery that's not usable. And so I learned that, and I didn't realize it's just a plain old battery you like when I replace it was a AAA, dude. I'm like, Hey, do you have this? He goes, Yeah, that's standard switch out three minutes. He goes, Oh yeah, that was the easiest switch out.
• 37:51
  John Weaver: So, so what's going on in this image is that in order to make my car work, I have that little jump battery for my friend, Michael, yeah, and that jump battery I have to charge in the car while it's driving, because I crashed it a few times. So the joke is, I use my big battery while the car is driving to charge my small battery, and then when I park, I have to get out and then jump my medium sized battery, which allows my big battery to work, but then at the same time, I charge my phone. So, you know, I got my micro battery, so I have four battery sizes in this car, and it's really annoying, but it's fixed now.
• 38:26
  Tim Montague: But rolling battery farm. John, yes, yes.
• 38:30
  John Weaver: So I'm not allowed on an airplane in the storage section because they just don't allow that anymore.
• 38:36
  Tim Montague: It's true. It's true. Well, they say they don't allow it, but I wonder how many batteries are getting into the belly of the airplane anyway, but there aren't a lot of scary thermal runaway stories on airplanes of late. So I don't, I don't, I'm not afraid of batteries.
• 38:58
  John Weaver: Who's afraid of the big, bad battery? All right?
• 39:00
  Tim Montague: One or two more.
• 39:00
  Tim Montague: Sure,
• 39:03
  John Weaver: carefully asking me that question. Tim
• 39:06
  Tim Montague: EV, trucks are taking off in China. Massively, key, massively. I love that word, massively, all right, skyrocketing, skyrocketing. EV sales of not just autos, but also trucks. So they actually like pickups in China.
• 39:21
  John Weaver: Well, this is really about delivery trucks, big trucks, and that's why I decided to share it. It links to a big report that goes in the depth but this particular, but the particular image that's shared on Blue Sky by by John, John hanger. He great person to follow, by the way. Okay, so if you look at these freight vehicles, the growth of them. I mean, you can see all vehicles.
• 39:44
  John Weaver: You can see car, passenger cars, the top right image. But if you look at the bus, the trailers, look at the semis taken off, look at the trucks. Look at the freight vehicles. Those are the ones that I keep reading. They burn like if we can change a small percentage of those, we adjust an outsized volume of oil consumption, and so to see it taking off like this in China, and it's going to come elsewhere, but you know, China's leading the electric vehicle revolution, pulling the world.
• 40:18
  Tim Montague: This graph is just China. Yes, this is just EV, which is effectively the future, right? China is at the fore of EV adoption together with Northern Europe. I don't, I don't know what percentage of new I mean, you see the all vehicle chart there, 50% they're approaching 50% of all vehicles, all
• 40:38
  John Weaver: vehicles, not just passenger, all vehicles, passengers, well beyond 50. Now.
• 40:40
  John Weaver: It's like it's gaining on 60.
• 40:43
  John Weaver: It's like it's moving.
• 40:45
  Tim Montague: I mean, we're at 5% John, 1010,
• 40:48
  John Weaver: 10% is what I saw overall. We are 10, but we've kind of flat lined. There's actually another thing floating around. In the last few days I've seen that we're gaining on 10, but yeah, so it's just the EVS moving into the big trucks with these giant batteries. This is, you know, this China doing a couple things. Number one, nation state considerations, they have to import this oil. So if they can, ISO, they can get rid of this risk of the United States putting a bunch of aircraft carriers in, stopping oil coming in. That's going to help them. And just, you know, it's cheaper. EVs are cheaper.
• 41:22
  John Weaver: And they make these in house.
• 41:22
  John Weaver: They make these trucks. So instead of exporting billions and trillions of dollars to people that have oil, they're sending it into the nation battery farms, lithium farms and growing is
• 41:34
  Tim Montague: there a standard lifetime? I mean, we say what lifetime ownership? The cost of lifetime ownership is there? Is there? Is there a graph about EVs versus ice engine cars?
• 41:45
  Tim Montague: About that? I want to see that graph. It's out there, because the EV will go a million miles versus an ice engine. That'll go two or 300,000 right? So you can triple the life of the vehicle because there's so many fewer parts, right? It's way, way fewer part moving parts, which means the machine just lasts longer.
• 42:06
  Unknown: Yep, absolutely. Don't have pistons.
• 42:10
  Tim Montague: All right, let's do one more. All right, then I'm desperately going to go eat lunch.
• 42:17
  John Weaver: Hope it's good lunch. This one's sort of like electric, electric.
• 42:24
  Tim Montague: That's good one.
• 42:24
  Tim Montague: Trump wants a stake in Nevada's upcoming lithium mine. I bet he does. I want to say I want a stake in that lithium mine too.
• 42:35
  John Weaver: Well, I'm really interested less than that Trump one, but the one right above it, this Trump one is interesting.
• 42:41
  John Weaver: We can do both. They'll be fast.
• 42:41
  John Weaver: So this is just what this does for me, seeing these combo stories about lithium in the US is one is that we have a lot of lithium opportunity in the US.
• 42:52
  John Weaver: Yes, we do, and that if we have the opportunity in this country to make money from it, it has a chance of becoming more politically palatable, especially since these folks sounds like Tim wants a steak for lunch. Brian said Tim's hungry. But if we have people in Texas, in the south making money off lithium Nevada, the other stories about a big old facility in Texas and Arkansas that the oil majors are interested in, and then if we have the ability to extract lithium from brine.
• 43:27
  John Weaver: And so now we see that there's brine from all the junk that we're pushing down from the fracking water. There's enough, there's there's value in that.
• 43:33
  John Weaver: Now they're seeing there's lithium brine in some of that water. And so the combo of, you know, Trump wanted to use, whatever the heck we're doing with this federal thing where we take 10% it's weird, but just the fact that it's happening gives me a little hope of saying, all right, we might turn the corner and stop being you know, it's funny the end of that sentence, though, right there, that last sentence, the US is in the era of Griffith, of Grifters. But, you know, yes, but if somebody wants to grift off something, and it's lithium that's in our favor, you know, that means it exists. That means it's coming forward and so, so that it just gave me a, you know, within the crap, there's a little silver lining. It's like, All right, we are now big enough that professional Grifters want to get on our train. They want to ride our coattails. That means there's enough money for them to steal, and they're seeing the big game coming. And so great. You know what? I'll take what we got. Let's ride our weird roller coaster. And, you know, hop on and so, so that think
• 44:38
  Tim Montague: it's pretty interesting. Yep, there's, there's no doubt. The future is batteries, and for now, they're lithium batteries. Eventually there'll be something else.
• 44:47
  Tim Montague: Sodium is coming, of course, but Well, let's cover that last story you mentioned. It is a Bloomberg story. Gas price through the roof. So you have to share that one. Now.
• 44:57
  John Weaver: You should get this one free. This is standard. This is a, I'm guessing this is a free site, but I'll click it anyway, price gas is up. It's over five bucks. Oh, man, it's awesome. I didn't know how much awesome information I was getting with my little subscription. Just Bloomberg should know that the reason I pay for this is Jenny Chase at BNEF.
• 45:17
  Tim Montague: Okay, so genuine.
• 45:17
  Tim Montague: Sometime,
• 45:20
  John Weaver: Jenny's awesome.
• 45:20
  John Weaver: Jenny's
• 45:22
  Tim Montague: make that happen.
• 45:22
  Tim Montague: I
• 45:24
  John Weaver: could, well, maybe, well. So we got to talk about something interesting, though, not that we don't talk normally.
• 45:31
  John Weaver: Yeah, all right, so check this beautiful chart out. I feel so bad saying it, but I don't care.
• 45:36
  John Weaver: Man, price of gas, price of natural gas, is up massively.
• 45:40
  John Weaver: It's up to the point, I mean, it's still down. No, this is us.
• 45:44
  John Weaver: Okay, globally, it's like 10 plus, because globally it's liquefied natural gas. Is the market. That's what Europe pays for their gas from us, $10 plus and but what's happening here is one, it's getting colder in the season, so every winter it gets higher, but it's higher this winter than it has been since this little thing that happened in Europe, when this one guy blew up this other country. And, you know, all kinds of things started happening. So now we're starting to see something happen again, starting to see the price of gas come up. There's a few reasons for this. One of them is that we're now exporting bigger and bigger amounts of natural gas. There's some charts out there flowing that show this, and then seasonal stuff, but also the price of oil is a little funny. And when the price of oil goes funny, natural gas as a byproduct goes funny. And so I don't know enough about what's really going on, but I just know the price is going up, and I know that's going to push the price of electricity up next. Year, because the way the recapture rate works, and this is what you should start talking to people about. Tim say, next year, your price is going to go up, because this year the utilities have to buy some expensive gas for that 40% of our electricity, and the more exposure they have to gas, the higher price they're going to pay. Yeah, and that's going to mean next year, when they look backwards, they're gonna say, we have to recapture these costs.
• 47:04
  John Weaver: And those costs, they get to add profits on and and there's dynamics around it about this stuff, and so expect a bump in electricity pricing next year as a result of this stuff, just like you can see this year. You know, some places have actually seen the price of electricity fall a tiny bit in the Northeast. That's because they're recapturing prices from 24 right now. So soon we're going to see him capturing the 25 prices, which have been reasonable,
• 47:34
  Tim Montague: but with this expression recapture.
• 47:38
  John Weaver: Oh, recapture. So when utilities make costs in the past, they then report those costs to the public utility commissions, and they said, Hey, we spent $100 million on new power lines, so we need you to allow us to get the cost back by increasing the price of electricity, and then we need a nice 10% return on profit, because that's our that's our rules. That's the monopoly Cost Plus model. Yep, cost plus, yeah. So they get to say, we built all this stuff. Now we need to recapture the cost and add our profit. So right now the utilities have to pay for the gas. They're going to have to recapture this price because they they can only they do their best to hedge and buy contracts for contracts, but gas is cheap the last couple of years. So therefore contracts might be at, you know, three, four or five bucks, three, three bucks, two bucks. But there's,
• 48:30
  Tim Montague: I'm just curious, if I'm a Nipsco, which is a big gas utility in Indiana and a bunch of other states, if I'm Nipsco and I have a big fleet of gas power plants. Don't you think that I'm also a gas utility, or is that not the case? Meaning I own assets in that industry, right? I am pumping natural gas around. I'm selling natural gas, so I'm benefiting when the gas price goes up, even though I'm burning a lot of gas also, which cost me more on the generation side, maybe I'm making more money because of the price of gas.
• 49:13
  John Weaver: So I mean, they're not pumping gas from under the ground, though,
• 49:18
  Tim Montague: that's they're not mining the gas, correct?
• 49:21
  John Weaver: They're not extracting it. So that means if they're buying the gas at the higher price, they are going to resell it at the higher price.
• 49:27
  John Weaver: And that's where it comes to us.
• 49:31
  Tim Montague: I think Billy Bob Thornton is mining the gas.
• 49:35
  Tim Montague: Apparently, that's what I saw on TV.
• 49:37
  John Weaver: Really Billy Bob, he's got a big gas field.
• 49:40
  Tim Montague: Well, he's a land man in the in the show land.
• 49:43
  Tim Montague: Man,
• 49:43
  John Weaver: oh, okay, you haven't seen that show yet. I don't own a television.
• 49:47
  Tim Montague: Tim, well, they hate you have it. You have a TV.
• 49:49
  Tim Montague: You have a computer screen, though, you can watch it on on Netflix. I think it's on Netflix, I'm not sure, but anyway, I'll have a Netflix.
• 49:54
  Tim Montague: It's, it's, uh, it's quite, it's quite abuse. It's quite entertaining, okay? And he and he and he's quite, he's quite with the times. He's criticizing the wind industry on the show anyway, all right. Well, that was a good that was a good show.
• 50:13
  Tim Montague: I want to thank you for bringing us so many interesting stories.
• 50:16
  Tim Montague: And before we go, we need to get our schedule straight, because I don't know if we're going to do any more shows this this year, not next week. Oh, maybe the week after. Yes, around the week of the 19th. I think I might be in Rockford that day again. So that is always an adventure. But yeah, we'll do a show on the 19th, and then we'll be dark for Christmas, and then it's 2026 Yeah, man, all right. Well, check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com, reach out to me on LinkedIn. That's the best thing you can do. Just reach out to me. I love connecting with people and tell a friend about the show. And where can our listeners find you, Mr.
• 51:04
  Tim Montague: Commercial solar guy,
• 51:06
  John Weaver: they can find me in Illinois. That's true.
• 51:11
  John Weaver: Commercial solar guy, calm.
• 51:11
  John Weaver: We're kind of fine tuning our website a little bit, trying to make it a little faster cleaner.
• 51:17
  John Weaver: I'm also on LinkedIn, blue sky.
• 51:17
  John Weaver: I like blue sky. Commercial solar guy, on blue sky. So those are the those are the easiest places. And you can find me here every two weeks with Mr. Timothy Montague on the Clean
• 51:28
  Tim Montague: Power Hour here in Illinois, which is also the third coast so,
• 51:34
  John Weaver: oh, I never knew that phrase. That's a good phrase.
• 51:38
  Tim Montague: All right. Thanks for being here, everybody, and we'll see you in two weeks.
• 51:50
  Tim Montague: All right, goody Duke.