Latest / Clean Power Hour / Clean Power Hour LIVE feat. Chris Lettman | July 20, 2023

Transcript

Clean Power Hour LIVE feat. Chris Lettman | July 20, 2023 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:51
  Tim Montague: Welcome to the Clean Power Hour live. I'm Tim Montague, your host today is July 20 2023. We have a special guests that a Chris leadman of Cl green energy consulting looking forward to having Chris on the show today. He's been on the show a couple other times, so some of our listeners will recognise him. And of course, the commercial solar guy is going to be here. But first, we have a couple of really important and exciting announcements. I want to highlight, first and foremost, some upcoming events that I will be at in person, or virtually.
• 1:27
  Tim Montague: Next week, July 25. At noon central, we are hosting a live webinar with Brian Grenco VDE Matt Murphy of green Bakker and Dan leery of Dino watts. And the title of this event is best practices for improving solar asset management. It's a free event, but you do have to pre register. And we are going to be geeking out on all the ways that you solar asset owners can improve the performance of your assets, you don't want your asset to underperform, or overperform. If your asset is over performing, it means your model was broken, and you're leaving money on the table. So anyway, check that out on July 25. And you can just go to clean power hour.com. Click on the Events tab and register right there. We are in the midst of a listener survey. And I want to encourage all of our regular listeners to do the survey just takes a couple of minutes, go to clean power hour.com click on About us. And you will see a big banner listener survey. And if you take the survey, as our friend Chris Levin did, you can get a free Clean Power Hour hot.
• 2:45
  Tim Montague: So please take our listener survey we do the Clean Power Hour for you energy professionals and aspiring energy professionals and prosumers who are just hardcore geeks for clean energy, that's everything batteries, solar wind, and occasionally supercomputers that are going to eat our world as we know it. As we reported on last week. A couple other announcements, I'm going to aces in Boulder, August 8 to 10. The conference is August 8 to 11. And I will be there hanging out with Shaun White among other friends of the pod and just really enjoying a huge event full of clean energy professionals and a lovely backdrop with the Rocky Mountains right there. So August 8 to 10. If you're going to Asus That's the American Solar Energy Society Conference. Please reach out to me I'd love to grab a coffee or a beer with you. And then on August 16, Aurora M power is a virtual one day conference called sorry. Yes, a virtual one day conference called M power. So Aurora M power if you just Google that Aurora M power August 16. But I'm on a panel with Paul Gramma of Helio scope. He Paul is the founder of Helia scope, who is now part of Aurora. And we are hosting an event at 2pm Central 3pm Eastern on decoding the IRA.
• 4:21
  Tim Montague: And we'll be joined by Benoit angen of the solar Maverick podcast. So looking forward to that. And then the big kahuna.
• 4:28
  Tim Montague: And the gorilla in the room, of course is already plus in Vegas, which is creeping up on us here September 11 to 14th. And John and I will be in Vegas, I believe Chris Leben. Are you going to be in Vegas? Yes, I will. Awesome. Absolutely. Well, we're gonna make a couple other announcements during the show.
• 4:45
  Tim Montague: But I want to get into the news with our friend Chris Luqman and the commercial solar guy, John Weaver, how're you doing John?
• 4:53
  John Weaver: Doing good, busy work and a lot of things going on. So it was a life in business or solid and doing my best to work from my checklist in Zoho my CRM project management checklist. So every project has a task and we give it good loving attention. Because there's projects
• 5:15
  Tim Montague: that sounds that sounds just amazing. How you Dad Chris, welcome to the show again.
• 5:23
  Chris Lettman: Thank you, thank you. Thank you Jim. always appreciated always listening and always enjoy the show. And the content you guys, you know, very relevant topics, articles that you guys curate and bring up and talk about so thank you for having me today. I really appreciate it.
• 5:39
  Tim Montague: Yeah, well, absolutely. You know, you're you're a tried and true Clean Power Hour listener and you were a guest co host when John was on vacation once a kicking it back in South America or someplace like that. And so I appreciate you. You're doing all that you do. So, Chris, you know, I know in the pre show you and I talked about modular supplies, there's, there's a lot of you hear a lot of mixed signals about solar modules in the US. There's a lot of confusion in the market. And so we're here to help set things straight for our listeners and for our installer partners out there in the world, right, who are who are struggling to figure out what's happening with modules, present day and in the future. And of course, the backdrop is that we have tariffs, we have things like the IRA legislation and the IRA of 2022, which is the topic of that one day event that I'm on with a Aurora. But how do you see things right now, Chris, and and what should we drill down on?
• 6:46
  Chris Lettman: Yeah, yeah. So it seems like the the pendulum has swung to the to the other end.
• 6:49
  Chris Lettman: Now. We're reading up on some articles earlier in the week.
• 6:53
  Chris Lettman: And on the global side, there's definitely an oversupply that exists now in the EU. And I found that kind of interesting, but more importantly, obviously closer to home. We're starting to see an oversupply of modules here in the US, specifically in the residential market. But you know, the CNI and utility scale, which, you know, your show tends to look more apt, and I'm sure more of your listeners are probably on that side, starting to see a surplus of modules for those categories or projects as well. So we're seeing that we're seeing module prices coming down. We're seeing it for a couple of reasons. First off, you know, with the raw polysilicon prices dropping a few months ago, and then there's always some lag time between the raw materials catching up on the pricing, as it reflects back to the module price. So that's happened. And at the same time, we're also seeing an overt oversupply of modules taking place now, both at the at the port, as the warehouses where a lot of the southeastern Asian companies are warehousing their modules throughout the United States, I live about probably about 2025 miles west, or east of some of these major majors, three PL facilities, and there are several 100 megawatts of modules sitting there not not assigned to any customer as of yet.
• 8:28
  Tim Montague: So I think it'd be it would be great if we could talk about prices. And in Sure, yeah, what American companies are paying, versus what you might pay for modules in some other market, like Europe or Asia, I heard incidentally, someone from BNF talking about module prices in China. And apparently you can you can acquire modules in China for about 19 cents a watt. Here in the US, the figure I hear is 35 fish. But of course, that depends on where the module is coming from. So set a straight and I'm sure John has no opinions about this whatsoever.
• 9:09
  Chris Lettman: I'm sure I'm sure he does. And he's just chomping at the bit right now. No, you're absolutely right module prices in China are at that price. And what we're seeing here in the US market, anywhere between 34 to 36 cents Ex Works. And what Ex Works means is at the warehouse, so the buyer is responsible to pick up ship and deliver the modules. You can add delivery for that, but obviously the price is going to go up per watt. And so obviously, that's going to affect the price per watt, but definitely seen, you know, lower than what we have the previous quarter. And so definitely a reflection of that.
• 9:52
  Chris Lettman: For the
• 9:53
  Tim Montague: these are modules from overseas, right? And if you were to if you were to buy a q cells module in, you know, made in Georgia, one of these, I think you can get low carbon q cells modules in Georgia, but what would you pay for that? Do you think
• 11:00
  Chris Lettman: that went out?
• 11:00
  Chris Lettman: That's a good question. I'm not I'm not up on on what's going on with the with the local market and local production here in the US at this time. I did read an article and I saw it all over splashed all all over LinkedIn the other day. They have about 1/3 of the market right now. So they're definitely one of the bigger suppliers and bigger well known companies in
• 11:24
  Tim Montague: the US sales has 1/3 of the US market. Yeah, wow.
• 11:28
  John Weaver: Yeah. commercial and residential. Yep. Including
• 11:33
  Chris Lettman: PV that's that's excluding first solar.
• 11:38
  Tim Montague: Well, yeah, and the utility market I would I would venture that first solar has problem like a third of the market or Yeah, or more?
• 11:45
  Chris Lettman: Yeah, when they're in their capacity, you know, it's obviously you know, really high but they're also making some major, you know, Master supply agreements with some of their customers that are going into 27 and 2020 28. So they're they're they're pretty busy too
• 12:04
  Tim Montague: What what are you what are you seeing John and and if you could address the the the topic of of tariffs, and an IRA and these are kind of competing forces, I guess the IRA's is driving prices down for a Made in America modules. But I don't know if that's if it has any impact on foreign made modules.
• 12:30
  John Weaver: So in terms of tariffs, modules can be gotten in Northern Europe and Rotterdam for 15 cents, before import tariffs and about 19 cents, 20 cents after available Ex Works, like Chris said, so 20 cents, Chris can see modules at the 35 ish range, so a full 15 cent per watt difference, which is 75% more in price. So modules in the US are 75% More which you can get a 550 product for like spot market. In Northern Europe, Rotterdam camisole is the product, I keep getting their emails. So I look at that. And the number you mentioned in China as well, Tim is 19 cents for a Topcon highest quality module, you combined 19 cents a watt 20 cents a watt in China.
• 13:21
  John Weaver: So spot market prices without doubt what we're paying more than double for other aspects.
• 13:25
  John Weaver: But for utility scale product that's imported, it's going to be 75%. Higher. I'm seeing like for from a few distributors you can get on was, you know, the 580 modules, the commercial size ones for middle to upper 50 cents and smaller volumes. And I'm sure you can get a better price for bigger volumes. But if you're buying from distribution, they're in the 50 cent range. So triple double what's happening at the ports depending on what your product is. In terms of how the IRA is pushing things, to be honest, the IRA hasn't lowered module prices for anybody except for First Solar because for solar and I guess Q Cell, because those two companies now can use the manufacturing tax credit. That's up to 18 cents a watt DC that was put in for this first portion of the year for solar is getting somebody said at least 18 cents a watt. q cells only gonna get so far until they finish their manufacturing where they make cells and wafers and everything in North America. But their pricing isn't coming down yet because they don't need it. They have no competition for solar.
• 14:40
  John Weaver: In fact, first solar, you know, I kind of elbowed for solar in a tweet saying, Hey, you guys, you know you're increasing prices or doing whatever you want. And, you know, then one of their reps push elbowed me and said, Listen, we haven't increased our prices at all, we've been 31.8 ish, average selling price for whatever, and I haven't verified that. But their price is definitely having gone down, even though they're getting tax credits. And they're using those tax credit tax credits to expand, which fundamentally is what we want. So it's dry, it's definitely driving more capacity announcements, CEA clean energy associates, they just had a talk with Roth capital, where they're talking about 90 gigawatts of manufacturing capacity by 2027.
• 15:27
  John Weaver: Now we're talking almost a half a decade or less. So it's going to come we need to be patient.
• 15:31
  John Weaver: And they're also noting very specifically that wafers and specifically cells are trailing the module manufacturer, domestic content, they 10% error is driven by the cells. So if you want to get that 10% domestic content answer from your modules, you either a you got to be first solar or b You got to have domestically made solar cells because the module goes back one level of all components to account for its domestic
• 16:00
  Tim Montague: Do we have any cell manufacturer in the US right now besides for solar?
• 16:06
  John Weaver: Cell Q Cell is manufacturing facility
• 16:09
  Tim Montague: as well. They're building they're building a cell manufacturing facility right but they don't have a cell they have a they have an assembly plant.
• 16:17
  John Weaver: I don't believe we have any other cell
• 16:23
  Chris Lettman: not active anyways, I think there are a couple more that are planned manufacturing facilities but a lot of them are probably not looking till till 2025 You know, is a good year and a half out.
• 16:34
  John Weaver: Yeah. And they take longer for sales than module factories and then wafer or poly if they As part of somebody's gold, those take longer than cells or modules. But everything, of course, can be done concurrently. QCL does expect like by the end of 24 to have the whole manufacturing supply chain in place. So poly wafers, sells modules, back sheets, because back sheets given incentive as well.
• 17:08
  Tim Montague: Yeah. And we had q cells on the show talking about that expansion, check it out at cleanpowerhour.com. But, so is there. Is there any end in sight for American tariffs on foreign made solar modules?
• 17:24
  John Weaver: Yeah. And in fact, CEA was talking about how the headwinds there because they do the international module analysis, they're expecting headwinds to start picking up in 24. Because come July ish of 24, the temporary tariff suspension on Chinese cell capacity that's flowing through Southeast Asia manufacturers will come to an end. And so that's going to put a little pressure on a few manufacturers jinko. And just a few people that are manufacturing in Malaysia, Vietnam, Southeast Asian countries, and then coming here with Chinese cells. So Nope.
• 18:11
  Tim Montague: Yeah, you know, there's a great podcast that came out recently from Canary media catalyst was Shao Kahn talking about building out a US supply chain. And, you know, one of the points made that they this is an interview with the, I believe he's the head of bmgf.
• 18:27
  Tim Montague: And as Ethan zimbler Is his name, check it out at Canary media.com. But, but one of the points that they made is that, yeah, we've got the inflation Reduction Act, and that is, you know, incentivizing the the deployment of giga factories, both solar battery, Evie, etc.
• 18:51
  Tim Montague: They're $70 billion in in factories, now planned in the US, thanks to the IRA, but they're still going to be very rigorous competition from Southeast Asia, you know, places like Thailand, where they can they can make modules, you know, dirt cheap, because labour is just so much cheaper than in the US. And even if there's tariffs, they're going to be competitive.
• 19:19
  Tim Montague: So it's a both and
• 19:22
  John Weaver: speaking of that number, actually, I'd love to share a number real quick that I was exposed to, in reference to cost structures for modules that I think would maybe interest people. So the other day, and I'll let you know, maybe I, if you want me to, I can just share the document. Sure. Do it. Do a quick present of my, my whole screen. And because there's so no, I'll just do Twitter, then.
• 19:46
  John Weaver: Perfect. All right. So I'm sharing. This came out of a Roth capital email that I get. And this is from the CEA clean energy associates and Joe was presenting from them. I don't know Joe's last name, Sergio.
• 20:03
  John Weaver: But the module processing costs of, of cost in China, Southeast Asia, and the US. And here's the key, the deltas are processed are mainly to capex. So cost of equipment and structure and everything plus labour. So the real difference between China let's say said China had zero, Southeast Asia is three cents more expensive than China, and the United States, eight cents.
• 20:36
  John Weaver: That's what they say the cost differences, and everything else that's different, that 19 to 35 cent difference that you guys pointed out 19 In China, 35 in the US, tariffs, shipping, things like that. So going up 15 cents, half of it is labour, and the cost to make the buildings in place. The other half is tariffs and crap. Whereas for us if we if we want to compare us, you know, so that's, you know, eight cents is not that much of a difference, the difference we have between the Kusile product and something that we can buy is 20 cents, but there's more money being made because products are domestic conference, and I and so I just I think is an interesting number. It's eight cents is not that big of a difference. And you know, a penny of it would get consumed by shipping, because shipping is cheap. Now,
• 21:30
  Tim Montague: I saw that that was an amazingly cheap figure.
• 21:34
  Tim Montague: Penny to ship it across the ocean. That is astounding. I mean, one statistic that sticks in my mind is It's, it's about 12 times cheaper to ship stuff on water than it is by land, meaning road or rail. And this includes rivers and oceans. So water shipping, very cheap. But anything else we should talk about about modules? Or what else is on your mind, Chris?
• 22:11
  Chris Lettman: Let's see, what did we bring up the other day in our archives, I know we talked about the IRA, we talked about module supply, we talked about the CNI market, you know, that was one of the things that I noticed that we're starting to see more, more financing available for CNI projects, which is exciting. It's, it's a great sector of our business.
• 22:32
  Chris Lettman: And there's a lot of projects out there that need financing.
• 22:36
  Chris Lettman: So it's starting to see they're starting to see more of an uptick in financing for that. Of course, there's always that scale, you know, 500, I've always seen 500, kW and higher.
• 22:47
  Chris Lettman: So the market still is underserved. In projects below, like, I'd say, 250 300, kW, DC.
• 22:52
  Chris Lettman: So that remains to be a challenge. So anybody out there that can solve for that, and can have a good business model?
• 23:01
  Chris Lettman: It'll definitely pay off. It's just trying to find trying to find capital for those smaller projects has been difficult, at least what I'm seeing for that lower that lower segment.
• 23:14
  John Weaver: When you say capital, are you talking about third party ownership, financial or
• 23:19
  Chris Lettman: third party, third party financing, you know, companies wanting to come in and, you know, developers developing the project for CNI market, but needing the financing either for the construction, or for a investor to offer that PPA for that particular customer. Below 500 is a challenge. But 500 and above has has been increasing.
• 23:43
  Chris Lettman: It's getting more stable.
• 23:45
  John Weaver: I've. So I work with Sonova, who's been getting into the small commercial space.
• 23:51
  John Weaver: Yes, anybody needs a PPA for a small commercial project call Jim's record. He works at Sonova. And he works in their very small and budding commercial finance units. And first off Sonova is one of my favourite companies for just because they do some cool stuff.
• 24:13
  John Weaver: So nowadays, they become cool again, just as soon as they do one cool project in California.
• 24:16
  John Weaver: I'm like, You're my favourite.
• 24:19
  John Weaver: And they submitted an awesome micro grid idea that I hope they get a chance to do more of but they're they're offering third party ownership and third party loans with ONF, wrapped into it and tie to the standard Sunoco business model because they have you know, millions of well, maybe not millions of rooftops, hundreds of 1000s of rooftops that they own, and manage and pay for an et cetera. But yeah, you're right about that. Christy above, you know, both 250 Kw in markets like Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, which have a consistent tariff and pay well, you can get lots of finance, especially if you get a portfolio of projects, both 500 People will call you every day, both megawatt they'll harass you below 250 gets squishy. And you guys, you know, it's just it's expensive, it's expensive to make less money, and it's costs the same amount of lawyer fees and the same amount of everything and, and those are risky. So I think you're right about that with the finance.
• 25:17
  Tim Montague: There's another company I've been having dialogue with called Clean fi filly, partly he has offices in Colorado and California. But he comes out of the California market and he'll go down to you know, 100 kW, I think for PPA, but he offers all kinds of financing all kinds of projects, not just solar, but any kind of energy retrofit energy efficiency, heat pumps, etc. So clean fi just like it sounds.com All right, well, we've got five more minutes, Chris, what?
• 25:53
  Tim Montague: What's your fancy I'm, we're at your mercy.
• 25:57
  Chris Lettman: Where am I at?
• 25:57
  Chris Lettman: Boy utility scale, definitely the CNI market. And just looking, developing some projects, bringing financing and bringing some equipment in so I don't I don't say no to a lot.
• 26:10
  Chris Lettman: So I'm pretty busy right now.
• 26:15
  Chris Lettman: But anything I can share and help, you know, see a project through and get it to completion. You know, I'm definitely on board for that.
• 26:21
  Chris Lettman: And we'd love to help out in any way I can.
• 26:27
  John Weaver: So Chris, from your, you know, this been a neat thing, Tim, I was thinking about every week announcing a job that gets sent to me or you via LinkedIn, because I get constant developer postings and I share him sometimes on Twitter. But uh, you know, I think it'd be kind of neat if we said, hey, here's a job and recruiter every week. So I don't know, maybe I'll slip that we need to.
• 26:51
  Chris Lettman: I'm here, John, I'm here. I'm here waiting for you.
• 26:54
  John Weaver: Yes, yes. Not for me, not for me. No, but
• 26:58
  Tim Montague: what who is an ideal customer for you? I'm just curious, who are you working with?
• 27:03
  Chris Lettman: For me? Yeah. Um, gosh, you know, right now, I don't have a shortage of investors, what I have is I have a shortage of developers with viable projects. And I need to get more projects in my pipeline so that I can qualify them.
• 27:21
  Chris Lettman: Basically, I have silos that sit on my desk with qualified investors in different categories. So CNI community solar utility scale solar, I need to fill up those pipelines.
• 27:32
  Chris Lettman: And then I qualify those projects, reference them to which investor would best best be suited. And then I get the approval from the developer, move forward with that particular investor, it could be one investor, or it could be three investors simultaneously, and then manage that relationship and get them the best deal, the best offer for their project from the developer, and I'm contracted with the investor. So I'm not taking any fees from any of the developers, so I can do a lot of the marketing work for them a lot of the legwork that they may not have the skills to do or may not have the desire to do. And I'll take that on. I'll take that on and find them an investor.
• 28:15
  Tim Montague: Yeah, you know, there's, there's, it's the Wild West developers, go nuts and get site control, and projects, you know, do some initial design work, apply for InterConnection, and then the friction really starts to kick in interconnection getting an interconnection agreement is a slow and painful process in the US in most markets, perhaps with the exception of ERCOT, as far as I can tell, and that is one of the main pain points that the solar industry is feeling right now. Certainly, for community solar and utility solar. The supply chain problems that we had in 2022 have eased up. And you know, people can get product as we're saying, there's a glut of solar panels globally right now. And you can get panels, and, and certainly inverters, and racking, or you can get American made racking, which is which is awesome. And, but, but you have to really know what you're doing in those specific jurisdictions that you're working. And, and, you know, understand how the utilities are going to respond to your application, which is sometimes unpredictable. And it's easy for them to sandbag and kick the can down the road and say, well, we need to kick that up a level and now we have another 30 days to take that to a level three and then to a level four. And meanwhile, your your operating cash is burning a hole in your pocket.
• 29:51
  Chris Lettman: Yeah, boy, wouldn't it be nice if we could just standardise that across the country and and make it level and just find a simple process for
• 29:57
  Tim Montague: that would be socialism? Chris, we will we will have none of that. We need to have 50 different jurisdictions with 500 different rules.
• 30:08
  Chris Lettman: I lived in New Jersey for 10 years, and there was 256 townships and it was 256 different set of tax rates for your homes attached based on the school district and everything.
• 30:20
  Chris Lettman: And that was just mind boggling to me. It was it was incredible.
• 30:23
  Chris Lettman: Yeah.
• 30:24
  Tim Montague: I guess New Jersey. I
• 30:25
  Chris Lettman: love it. But it just just drove me nuts.
• 30:27
  Tim Montague: I hope somebody in Washington is working on this problem. I know somebody is I just I don't really know how it's gonna play out. But we have to reinvent the interconnection process. Absolutely. And what you know, what I say is we invented this thing called the grid a little over 100 years ago. It was great. It has been very good. We have very reliable power in the United States, which you know, means we have a humming economy. But now, things are different and consumers and business owners want to go solar, they want to be able to buy cheap affordable solar power, but the utilities are creating so much friction in the clean energy transition. And things like taking back net metering right with nem 3.0 in California. And if your state isn't threatening net metering today, tomorrow it will be and you know here in Illinois once we once we reach 5% of grid power from solar, the net metering rules change. We have full retail net metering today for all intents and purposes there are some nuances there.
• 31:37
  Tim Montague: But the value of solar gets tremendously dinged so easily And
• 31:44
  Chris Lettman: where's the state at now, Jim?
• 31:47
  Tim Montague: on a percentage basis? Oh, we're knocking on we're knocking on that door.
• 31:49
  Tim Montague: We're not there officially, but we're knocking on that door.
• 31:55
  Chris Lettman: I better get moving on my projects out there in Illinois then. Yeah, I got I got one. Yeah, we talked that we talked about that earlier, Tim.
• 32:03
  Tim Montague: Yeah, the value of the value of CNI, solar will, will go down. It doesn't mean that the PUC Can't. Can't change that. But But right now, the the rule, the rules are that it's going to be reevaluated, net metering gets reevaluated and Amerind already filed. And then they got a bunch of pushback from the filing. Right. So they were they're just chomping at the bit to say, Oh, we've reached our cap. And so yeah, not surprised
• 32:36
  Chris Lettman: there.
• 32:36
  Tim Montague: It's pretty frustrating. Yeah. Well, unfortunately. Chris, we're gonna let you go and move on with our news roundup, I want to thank you for coming on the show. You're welcome back anytime. And is there a is there a best way for our listeners to to reach out to you?
• 32:52
  Chris Lettman: Yeah, the easiest way is just look, look me up on LinkedIn under my name, CL green energy consulting. And reach out to me if you got anything that you're working on, need some information? If I don't, if I don't have that immediate information, I'm sure I can find someone who does and get you pointed in the right direction.
• 33:08
  Chris Lettman: But most chances I'll be able to work with you directly on your projects.
• 33:14
  Tim Montague: Excellent. Thank you so much. Thanks, guys.
• 33:20
  Tim Montague: Before we go on to the news, John, I want to make a quick announcement that we have something called a media kit and I will put this on screen. But you can you can learn so much about what is going on at the Clean Power Hour. And get a grip on how you could support the show right now this this the show is supported by cin power systems, CIN power systems.com, home of America's number one three phase string inverter, you hear their spots on the show week in and week out and on the entire back catalogue of our shows. And there's John Weaver, our regular co hosts, thank you for being here, John. And then the faces of all the amazing guests that we're bringing to you many times in one on one interviews. Folks like jigger Shaw, who's been on the show three times he has acne. There's the CEO of Landgate, Shaun White. And just so many amazing guests that we have on the show, you can find a link to Jon's PV magazine stories right there.
• 34:32
  Tim Montague: John is a regular journalist for PV magazine, which is why he's such a wonderful co host and a real live in the flesh, solar professional. But and then we're also sponsored by Dino watts, solar Dino Watts is a performance monitoring and analytics platform for utility and community solar, check them out at Dino watts.com dnow@s.com. The show is only possible with your support, though. So we're looking for more corporate sponsors. So check out the media kit at clean power dot group slash media kit. Okay, clean power dot group slash media kit.
• 35:17
  Tim Montague: That's my corporate website, not clean power hour.com. I have a little more control over the HTML experience here, which is why I put the media kit there but and then I also want to remind our listeners that we are doing a listener survey and that is now on screen as well. And that's at Clean Power hour.com/about. Just go to the About page on clean power hour.com and take our survey and get a free Clean Power Hour hat.
• 35:49
  Tim Montague: Now back to the news.
• 35:52
  John Weaver: We like the news.
• 35:56
  Tim Montague: So we can talk more about form energy form energy has been in the news a lot and we've been covering it here on the show. But Canary did a podcast, the carbon copy about their West Virginia plant. You know, I was talking to Paul grani yesterday at Aurora and we were talking about West Virginia and Joe Manchin. And you know, in the run up to the IRA, it was very doubtful that Joe was going to get on board right but lo and behold he did and he is reaping the benefits. The State of West Virginia is now going to be home to a Gigafactory for form energy and form has a 100 hour iron air battery. Which is, you know, it's an incredible statistic and the promise of this technology is that it will provide kWh 1/10 The cost of what lithium costs.
• 37:02
  Tim Montague: And you know, we will have no international supply chain issues because really the main ingredient is air, which is everywhere. And iron, which is also everywhere in the Earth's crust The Earth is made of, I think up to 1/3 of the Earth's crust is iron. So hugely widely available materials. And that's where that $70 billion statistic came from. I'll just put this on screen real briefly, but $70 billion in new factories for electric cars, solar and wind components are planned. And this is the story from Kinnari media, and the carbon copy, podcast. So check that out. What do you think about West Virginia and gigafactories? John?
• 37:53
  John Weaver: cheap electricity, well, less cheap now, because coal is expensive there. But you know, what if that's what's necessary, to put a few factories in key places that might lose jobs from the energy transition from the energy transition, that's what we got to do. Because, you know, we want to, we needed to move forward. And if that's what has to be traded, and occurs, wonderful. So first off, the factory is getting built. That's what I care about. Number two, it's getting built in West Virginia, great. If that's again, if that's the cost, great, love it. I'm a big fan of this technology, I actually covered them, they had a project that was approved to move forward in Minnesota. And so I actually have a link to it after that. But this is going to be a factory building cool. Things that are like, take some hand on technical assembly, there's going to be some Oh nm going on as these units come back for servicing. Because it looks like there's a few if you look at the next article I have on the page, we have two nice pictures in it.
• 38:58
  John Weaver: And you can see how, what they're going to build a shipping container,
• 39:03
  Tim Montague: you're talking about the for the Furbo.
• 39:06
  John Weaver: None of that. So go in the document. Right here.
• 39:10
  John Weaver: There's a PV magazine, article 100, our approval, yes. So that's, that's a form being having something approved. And there's two nice images. And you can see, each one of these things looks like it could probably fit on a pallet. And of course, you can fit like four or five, six pallets in a shipping container. And so there's going to be some smart assembly, some smart own em some smart work that's going to happen as these units get built out. Yeah. So this is when they have these different cells. This is one of the first times I've actually seen the inside of a form energy iron air battery, you know, you have 1-234-567-8910 units there, of these electrolysis style machines. And then you can see how they're all tied together with that one pole, you know, it's an iron air battery, I still don't grasp how it moves, but the charge moves through the air. And I think that has something to do with it being slower battery. So that's, you know, that's cool, that's gonna get built, they're gonna have six of these in a container for these. They're going to be shipping them out that factory can do 500 megawatts of output per year, which is times 100. So that's 50 gigawatt hours of storage capacity. Manufactured per year in that facility. So sweet. Good job, West Virginia.
• 40:28
  John Weaver: Build it, let's do it. We need it. Double that factory, sign some deals.
• 40:32
  Tim Montague: Yeah, one of the things that I that I noticed on the Canary media interview with form was that I think it was the canary media interview. But anyway, you know, the the iron air battery, it charges and discharges more slowly than lithium and some sometimes we'll see an iron air battery paired with other technologies like lithium ion. So the the overall power plant has both fast capabilities and slower capabilities. But it's fascinating technology.
• 41:06
  Tim Montague: Apparently, it's it's nothing.
• 41:06
  Tim Montague: There's nothing new about these metal air batteries. They're over 100 years old in terms of r&d, but it wasn't until recently that we were able to overcome the challenges of getting them to practically recharge and not have problems like hydrogen buildup or there are other various and sundry problems that at these iron air batteries have had over the years. So it's, but it's very exciting to see forms scaling the way they are.
• 41:38
  John Weaver: Yeah, they've now got at least three projects signed that Total 15 No 35 megawatts, 35 gigawatt hours. So they're about up to you know, they're not up to 1/10 of the factory's annual. So they got some work to do. They gotta close some deals we need we need, we need form to get some handshake. And yeah, so this is a new facility of this. This is going to be a 10 megawatt one gigawatt hour facility right there. It's going to take let me see, like 468 acres at most, I think it's closer to six acres.
• 42:11
  John Weaver: And it's right across the street from a coal plant, coal plant that I think has already shut down.
• 42:20
  Tim Montague: Well, yeah, and in that photo, I wonder if that coal plant has been converted to natural gas, because that kind of looks like a natural gas.
• 42:25
  Tim Montague: Stack right there on the bottom of that photo, but hard to know.
• 42:30
  Tim Montague: The other thing, yeah, three may have What the f statistic I heard is three acres per megawatt for form energy. That's about right. Yeah. So it's, it's in the I mean, it's,
• 42:46
  John Weaver: it's, it's per megawatt. But remember, megawatt hour is 100x. Yeah. So with form, you just gotta you gotta go back to that per megawatt thing. Yes, the megawatt per acre is lower. But the megawatt hour is really what's associated with the area.
• 43:03
  Tim Montague: Yeah. And so if you did that analysis on a megawatt hour, is it more? Is it more space efficient than lithium? It's
• 43:12
  John Weaver: terrible, actually.
• 43:12
  John Weaver: And this I heard from Cody, and I can't remember his last name right now. But he works for LS energy. And he was talking about the San Diego battery whose name I can't remember. And they were getting about 250 megawatt hours per acre, or so for a lithium ion. So for this facility, we're talking, you know, 100 megawatt hours per acre or two. So it's really it's close ish. It's nearby. And, you know, so but I do know that lithium ions can be stacked so they can get, you know, maybe more dense. But so far, I've only seemed like two level stacks, so maybe 500 megawatt hours per acre, or two or so. But it's there in the same range.
• 44:02
  Tim Montague: Yeah, it's 30 days in storage. No doubt, no doubt.
• 44:07
  Tim Montague: All right. Well, let's, let's keep moving on. And you want to talk about,
• 44:13
  John Weaver: I think the biggest thing, I think it's Tim Latimer.
• 44:17
  John Weaver: And I think it's Fervo energy. I think we should bring that up. I think it's awesome. And then do let's do also show this picture.
• 44:26
  John Weaver: So let's, we'll see what kind of pictures Canary has. But I want to show everybody this unit. So just this past week, Fervo energy, I believe owned by Tim Latimer. And that's the unit right there. But I got a great up close one, if they don't give us a better one. They have demonstrated 30 minutes straight of electricity generation at 3.5 megawatts. So their goal is to build a fleet of these units
• 44:54
  Tim Montague: for what is what is Fervo energy left, let's break that down.
• 44:58
  John Weaver: Fervo energy is a geothermal energy startup. I guess that's literally the first sentence of the Canary media article, but they are using fracking financed, drilling.
• 45:13
  John Weaver: Electricity Generation via geothermal you
• 45:17
  Tim Montague: cut out there for a second you cut out there. So I know geothermal is you know, you, you put a pipe in the ground, you run some heat transfer fluid through it, and you gather heat or cold from the Earth's crust. But so how are they how are they storing the energy from the from the from the Furbo unit.
• 45:41
  John Weaver: So this isn't a storage thing. This is straight electricity generation. I don't know the exact technique that's going on underneath there. This is electricity generation 3.5 megawatts of output from one unit.
• 45:54
  Tim Montague: So it's a it's it's it's going deep down they're drilling. They're drilling a well deep down to get super hot fluid and then drive a turbine a steam turbine with that.
• 46:07
  John Weaver: I don't I you know what, we got to learn more. You know, maybe we'll get somebody online we'll learn but this is this is not using. I'm sure it's driving steam, but it's definitely is going down about three 4000 feet to I believe Ben Surya who works with them maybe then was different guy but gentleman who works for them. I saw him on Twitter. They're going around two to 4000 feet and using the heat to drive and they're just drilling. They're not using any fluids shooting down to fill up stuff like that.
• 46:39
  John Weaver: OHS fracking process that drives earthquakes there. And they're using the same multi drill techniques that we've learned how to use on our gas rigs. So these guys just came out. I don't know anything yet about the details I'm trying to learn.
• 46:55
  John Weaver: But I think this is pretty cool.
• 46:59
  John Weaver: And it was the neatest news. You know, imagine having a 3.5 megawatt micro grid hooked up to a 24/7, geothermal, one of the things I'm hoping to learn about is how much top side land and it didn't look huge. If you wouldn't mind showing the next picture there, Tim, or it came from Tim on Twitter, the gentleman who's at the facility.
• 47:17
  John Weaver: And he, you know, it doesn't look like a huge footprint for 3.5 megawatts of output, which sounds, which looks cool. It's a pretty big unit. I click on that thing. But it's a healthy sized unit. You know, you can see that the people are pretty tiny.
• 47:36
  Tim Montague: Yeah, that's a big machine. It looks like a drilling rig. It is that probably right. So yeah, so it's it's interesting. I mean, geothermal has been around.
• 47:52
  Tim Montague: It's, it's, you know, it's question of making it cost competitive. That's the bottom line. Money, Money talks in all of these technologies. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter how good we think something is right. It has to be cost competitive. But yeah, excited to learn about Furbo. And yeah, we just need to understand how are they making electricity? It's it's interesting that that story, never said anything about that I kind of surprised.
• 48:30
  John Weaver: That we'll have to learn. It's
• 48:31
  Tim Montague: not easy. It's not easy, just. I mean, if you're Iceland, it's another matter.
• 48:37
  Tim Montague: But that that geologic formation in Iceland is quite unique.
• 48:44
  John Weaver: So they say one of the key things about these guys that others are doing the same thing, but this is a bit more.
• 48:53
  John Weaver: Just more efficient. They're doing better than others. So this is a breakthrough in the technology technologies existed.
• 48:59
  John Weaver: But this is a breakthrough in their technique. So so we'll see as more information comes out, and maybe, maybe we can swing an interview with somebody here.
• 49:06
  John Weaver: I'm sure these folks are busy.
• 49:08
  John Weaver: They're building a 400 megawatt plant for Google Now, to power a data centre. Wow, there could be a geothermal powered data centre, which would be sweet.
• 49:15
  John Weaver: And I just, I love the concept of it. I love the concept of it.
• 49:19
  John Weaver: I think it's a, you know, we need some hot, some clean, firm electricity, and this is a great opportunity. So
• 49:28
  Tim Montague: yeah, that is the cool thing about geothermal.
• 49:29
  Tim Montague: It's there. 24/7 Yeah, so um, no battery needed, right? It's just the Earth is the battery. I guess Earth
• 49:36
  John Weaver: is the battery.
• 49:36
  John Weaver: Yes. All right,
• 49:40
  Tim Montague: let's talk about that bi PV project you found on Twitter. I'm so happy you're back on Twitter. John.
• 49:51
  John Weaver: I, technically, I found this one on LinkedIn. I shared it on Twitter, but I'm still working through how to deal with it. Yeah, I'm gonna figure out how to make use of Twitter hits valuable. I need somewhere to express all these articles that we find.
• 50:05
  Tim Montague: I'm not sure how to I'm not sure how to put this on screen unfortunately.
• 50:10
  Unknown: Oh, it is getting like
• 50:12
  Tim Montague: it is LinkedIn.
• 50:14
  John Weaver: Sir, it is. So it's just a really nice rooftop.
• 50:18
  John Weaver: You're I mean, we share the same engine image every couple of months. Because just because I love the way these fusion rooftop integrated systems work in Europe, with their unique roofing structure. Yeah, check it out. And they just lay that those wood planks above the roofing material.
• 50:34
  Tim Montague: So it's a flat roof.
• 50:38
  John Weaver: He's just one flat or slightly,
• 50:41
  Tim Montague: I mean, maybe angled slightly slow.
• 50:44
  John Weaver: Click that little arrow. There's a couple extra images they'll give us. But I just I just liked the way their product works. The way they tied into the edge. It's just standard panels. They're super tightly wound put into the edge.
• 50:55
  John Weaver: This is an installation in Switzerland. What's the last image that they gave us? It's a nice clean. Yeah, just just I just
• 51:03
  Tim Montague: so that you see a gap, though, between the rows of solar panels, what how are they cap? How are they catching the
• 51:11
  John Weaver: material. They have material that sticks in rubbers pieces. It's a full system. So this is Veridian solar, selling their kits. And so Veridian takes a standard module, they tweak it to fit their structure, maybe take off the frame and customise it. So Veridian solar is really the company and this is one of their installers in Switzerland, and so they have a full kit where they support the outer edges of these modules and have a rubber sealing type of product to protect the house and Viridian. It's cool.
• 51:44
  Tim Montague: Veridian VR I
• 51:46
  John Weaver: think it's VR I ri Yeah. Vi ri dia en.
• 51:51
  Tim Montague: Okay, from the UK.
• 51:54
  John Weaver: Yes, yes. Ruth integrated by Veridian solar, and they call it the clear line fusion. That's the brand name clear line fusion. It's just so pretty. So can we show a really pretty Agra voltaic system that came from Wisconsin? I just want to show the picture, because we don't have to talk about it.
• 52:23
  John Weaver: It's a flower I learned about that's new.
• 52:27
  Tim Montague: Oh, yeah. That is pretty.
• 52:30
  John Weaver: Yeah. See? It's from Wisconsin. So it's nearby you
• 52:39
  Tim Montague: sunflowers
• 52:41
  John Weaver: suit. Black Eyed Susans apparently is what they were.
• 52:45
  Tim Montague: Oh, yeah. Some flowers would be too tall.
• 52:48
  John Weaver: Yeah, so Black Eyed Susan to lower flower. It's bald. The just got things. I mean, one person made a good joke. They said that looks like a SIM card. And I was like, Yeah, you know, you're right, the back of the SIM card with the gold and the black. And so but look how yellow that is.
• 53:04
  John Weaver: Look how much flour that is amongst the solar that's in Wisconsin. But just the overpowering. This gives the contrast of what an agro voltaic system could be, we could truly have a solar project that's just filled up with flowers. And I bet you those yellow flowers offer some reflectivity gain. I have no idea. I'm just throwing that out there.
• 53:28
  Tim Montague: Well, they're making the bees happy. So I'm happy. Absolutely. And is that the extent of it is like this is a pollinator friendly site, or the other ones.
• 53:39
  John Weaver: I just thought it was pretty, you know, I didn't get into too many details. I was just like, wow, look at that.
• 53:45
  John Weaver: It's just gorgeous. That's it. I just want to show everybody something beautiful.
• 53:49
  Tim Montague: Yep. Solar is beautiful. Yeah, I think
• 53:52
  John Weaver: so. So okay, can I show you a project of the week?
• 53:56
  John Weaver: Maybe, yep, that's it right there, we're not actually going to see the project, we're gonna see a one year checkup on a commercial CNI system. And this checkup, this is the electricity generation checkup, we have an electrician going out to do the spot check. And they're also going to do a module washing shoot soon, because it's been real dusty from the smoke up here in the northeast, but I wanted to show you some good and some bad. So first off, this is one year of generation. And what size project 250 Kw DC might be like 240 9.7, something like so just short a 250. column F is actual generation, Column G is what was contracted, so 90% off of what we projected in column H was financial model when it projected. And we can see that we generated 313,000 kWh, versus a contract at 277. The Gulf there is expected to be wide because the contract was only the backup was only to guarantee 90%. But then we can see what the model projected at 304. And so we went beyond what the financial model said, I believe we were a little short and total numbers because there's just lacking rain and no snow. And our models account for a decent amount of snow on this project because it's relatively flat.
• 55:15
  John Weaver: But the key here is that I got to sit down with a customer after 12 months, and go through every month go through their generation go through their numbers, and I got to show them that they're earning a little bit more about 1700 bucks.
• 55:29
  John Weaver: Because each kWh is 20 cents for this project. But they earned about $1,750 greater than was modelled in their first 12 months. And that was just enough to pay for a cleaning, which is great. And so it's just I just really liked the accountability of it. The customer was messaging me early in the summer. Earlier in the year, he's like, Hey, our numbers are down. Because he was looking at January, February, March. And if you look at January, from the utility, it was only 9300. But the projection was like 13. If you look at the February numbers, it was 14 but the projection was 17. Then same for March, march was down, but then we see in April, it starts picking up sure and blown away.
• 56:19
  John Weaver: And so you know, it was a that's why we give an annual number versus monthly because there's variance but I was just happy to go into somebody's office, the on the phone with a project manager and the finance person and then go through the spreadsheet because now they're like alright, we paid a half a million dollars for a thing. Is this really working out? Oh yeah. Let's double check that and so so they're researching making sure the tax dynamics were followed through on the tax credit was gotten the depreciation was used properly.
• 56:48
  John Weaver: And now they're looking at their revenue after a year, and they've gotten $63,000 Plus during the last 12 months for this project, and that's pretty cool. So anyway, I just wanted to break. That was my project of the week conversation.
• 57:04
  Tim Montague: Very cool. We forgot to answer Joe sharps question about bifacial versus mono facial modules. I don't know if you have a
• 57:13
  John Weaver: they're the same same price, same availability.
• 57:16
  Tim Montague: I mean, it's about a 10% Delta, right.
• 57:19
  John Weaver: I don't know I don't buy modules with back sheets these days. And I think it's mainly because modules with back sheets have import tariffs on a lot of them. So they cost more so by facial modules have 15% Less import tariff. So every module I see nowadays is by facial. Yeah. Yeah, I don't even know. I mean, maybe a glass glass will cost more than a glass plastic mono facial or glass glass. bifacial because glass is a little more expensive than the plastic back sheeting.
• 57:48
  John Weaver: But otherwise, they're almost the same. I don't I haven't noticed a difference. I'm very small buyer as of yet though.
• 57:54
  John Weaver: Sure. There you go, Joe.
• 57:57
  Tim Montague: All right. Well, let's wrap up the show. And remind our listeners that they can find the commercial solar guy at commercial solar guy.com
• 58:09
  John Weaver: every day and on Twitter, solar and mass and on LinkedIn, commercial solar guy jumped through a weaver PV magazine also, I'm all around
• 58:26
  Tim Montague: I'm gonna put your website on screen here. There's there's you a few years ago, when you still have some hair. I think you're I think you look better with no hair but and you're developing CNI and utility scale projects. And then you also have whaling city solar, which I don't see why you don't link to the that right here. But
• 58:48
  John Weaver: I'm working on a team. We got some website work on gonna
• 58:51
  Tim Montague: hire me as a webmaster, I guess.
• 58:55
  John Weaver: Working on it, working on it. Well, where can we find you, Tim? What can we do for you?
• 59:03
  Tim Montague: You can find all of our content at clean power hour.com I published a wonderful interview with Jeff Coleman of Eli technologies. This week, Eli is literally creating a digital infrastructure for decarbonizing the built environment. So it is a platform that utilities, H j's and installers can leverage to make it easier for consumers to find all of the incentives in their area. For you know, heat pumps and heat pump water heaters, and solar and EB charging infrastructure and EVs.
• 59:49
  Tim Montague: So, very interesting story with Jeff Coleman. But every week we're bringing you one of these pre recorded interviews and then this live on Thursdays last week, we had Cesar are boasts of new life on the show. He's an expert in both decommissioning and repowering of solar assets.
• 1:00:04
  Tim Montague: John Horton from C power, another great episode talking about how C power is creating a virtual power plant with the built environment, right, you've got refrigeration, you've got HVAC, you've got this mass of warm or cold air in your HVAC, conditioned building, you can leverage that as a VPP. So check that out at Clean Power hour.com. Please check out our media kit. We would love to hear from you about your interest in sponsoring the show. Just go to clean power dot group forward slash media kit and take our listeners survey. And that is on the About Us page of clean power hour.com Right there listener survey, we would love to hear from you. We do this for our listeners who are energy professionals and aspiring energy professionals. And with that, I want to say thank you, John Weaver for being here so often, and so regularly, so thank you, and thank you for all you do in PV magazine and as a developer and installer.
• 1:01:23
  John Weaver: Welcome when he got me fixed our stuttering issue by lowering the quality of my video, Tim, oh, golly, I can take care of you guys better here.
• 1:01:31
  Tim Montague: We want to clone you, John. So if you're if you're a biologist out there thinking about cloning some humans, John Weaver's your guy that'd be weird running into a younger version of yourself.
• 1:01:46
  John Weaver: great person to know I'd hire him immediately put him to work.
• 1:01:51
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I like I like to think about having an army of myself a younger version of myself that would be super productive. Alright, let's grow solar and storage. Take care, John.