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US Solar Has a Quality Problem: What Buyers Need to Know · Clean Power Hour

• 0:51
  Tim Montague: Welcome to the Clean Power Hour Live. I'm Tim Montague, your host. Check out all of our content at Clean Power hour.com Tell a friend about the show, bringing you the latest and greatest wind, solar, and battery news every other week with none other than the commercial solar guy, John Weaver. Welcome.
• 1:07
  John Weaver: Hey, Tim. Hey, Tim,
• 1:09
  Tim Montague: always good to see you.
• 1:11
  John Weaver: Very busy solar day. Had some good conversations this morning with bankers and lawyers and developers and all kinds of people. So, I hope you're busy as well, too.
• 1:21
  Tim Montague: Well, I noticed our conversation on LinkedIn about fioc and attorneys, and that is one of my take homes from Fioc, is it is just fueling the lifeblood of attorneys and accountants, and
• 1:41
  John Weaver: just
• 1:41
  Tim Montague: a headache for solar installers and developers who just want to get stuff built. We just want to clean the grid. It's not a big deal, really. It's funny that it's become a big deal. Um, but we're gonna regret that it is a big deal. I think
• 1:56
  John Weaver: funny, my so I was on a phone call this morning with four attorneys and two bankers, and then myself and the my attorney, who's one of one of three of the four, were my attorneys, and my attorney said, John, that was.. I can't remember exactly. He goes, but that was a path of agreeableness. So, the conversations between the attorneys were just very nice, and it was very great. I was very grateful of everybody wanting to work together. So, normally, when you're hanging out with four attorneys, nobody likes each other, but you know this was worked out nicely. So I'm hoping to see the next round of documents go through shortly, and then you'll, you guys are going to hear about the project and what's going on here very shortly. Now, I'll talk about what the agreement was, actually, if you want, Tim, if you're interested. So, the way that way it worked is my company, CSG Developers, Commercial Solar Guy. We're looking to build and own our first project, about 1.8 megawatts rooftop. We have a construction loan and a perm loan lined up with Locus Impact Investing. They're a Virginia-based specialty finance bank, focused. They do a lot of stuff, but they do a lot of renewables, a lot of green, and I'm working with Beth. They're very helpful. However, concurrently we have a line of credit with our bank, Eastern Bank, and that helps us with construction. It's very helpful.
• 3:23
  John Weaver: We've been able to take on more jobs concurrently because it's much easier to manage cash flow when you have half a million bucks of extra money that can be used, but those two are competing things, because the bank locus, they need to control the project, and they look at me as a guarantor, and my bank needs to control their 500 grand in any assets we create, so they protect their money, and they look at me as a guarantor, so they had to work it out, so in essence, the bank, my bank, said they will move to subordinate underneath the new project. So technically it's still Locus Impacts project, but then Locus Impact will move to subordinate for paying off our line of credit if something goes sideways. So they both took a position subordinate to the other in different things, so now everybody owns me. I don't own anybody, but I'm gonna get a be able to build projects, and you know, buy you some beers, Tim. So that's that was my morning. It was stressful starting off, but around 950 my heart fluttered. So those are nice.
• 4:31
  Tim Montague: So you're going to be the long-term asset owner, and you're giving the off-taker a PPA.
• 4:38
  John Weaver: Well, the off-taker in the state of Massachusetts is called Alternative On Bill Credit, and that means we're going to be selling 100% of the electricity to the utility, and so the power company Eversource, in combination with the state, will be the off-taker for a fixed 20 year contract, so sort of a PPA, technically, I guess it's a PPA, but maybe, maybe it's called a feed-in tariff, if we wanted to be more solar specific, but yes, yes, a 20 year agreement with the utility.
• 5:09
  Tim Montague: Cool. Well, welcome to the world of asset ownership. It is interesting how EPCs go on that journey. I know several here in Illinois that are doing that, and it's a way to benefit from the work you do, right? If you're a construction company, there's no reason why you can't also become an asset owner, Borrego, is a good example of a company that went on that journey. Standard Solar is a good example of a company that went on that journey. Now they're a big Ipp. Many people still just know them as an EPC, but they're an Ipp, full blown.
• 5:49
  Tim Montague: So,
• 5:49
  John Weaver: yep.
• 5:50
  Tim Montague: Well. I look forward to seeing how that goes for you. Thank you. Let's get into, let's get into the news.
• 5:56
  Tim Montague: You found a story about the ISS, the International Space Station
• 6:01
  John Weaver: Project of the Week.
• 6:03
  Tim Montague: One of my favorite things, you know, I love the space station. It's, it saddens me that we're not going harder after the next generation of space station, it is going to get decommissioned, I think, sometime in the next like five years,
• 6:22
  John Weaver: I think, like 2030 2031 ish, maybe 2032 is the spin down. The Chinese are working on a space station, of course.
• 6:32
  Tim Montague: Oh, they have a space station.
• 6:34
  John Weaver: Yeah, so check this out. So, this is them working on the space station recently. So, you can see the, you can see them going into the dark. You can see the trackers on the space station tracking the sun as it spins around. That, of course, is the unit they're working on, so that one's not moving. You can see the two little people just kind of moving really fast. Of course, it's on a speed up, but every time it goes dark, that represents 45 minutes, because that's how long it takes a space station, I think, to do a rotation around the earth.
• 7:11
  Tim Montague: I've never seen a video showing the motion of the trackers.
• 7:14
  John Weaver: Yeah, yeah, that was the neatest part. I thought, I mean, these are like.. I think these are Boeing Spectra Lab solar cells, triple junction..
• 7:22
  John Weaver: so was it Galame. it's Iridium, Cesium Gallanium. I can't remember the three things that are in it, but and then they have efficiencies that are over 30% efficiency, could be upper 20s, but they're going to be like triple junction layered stuff, so those are like the coolest solar cells. Well, I was about to say coolest solar cells on earth, but technically they're not on earth,
• 7:51
  Tim Montague: and they're also super expensive,
• 7:53
  John Weaver: yes, yes, they're like 100 bucks a watt, something 50 bucks a watt, something goofy,
• 7:58
  Tim Montague: but very cool,
• 7:59
  John Weaver: yes, yes, that is, that's the space project of the week, so it's not really news, but just pretty awesome,
• 8:07
  Tim Montague: good stuff, good stuff,
• 8:08
  John Weaver: yes,
• 8:10
  Tim Montague: all right, one of the report's central points is that most issues arise during factory ramp up.
• 8:17
  John Weaver: Yes.
• 8:19
  Tim Montague: Ah,
• 8:19
  John Weaver: so this is
• 8:20
  Tim Montague: okay. So the story is PB Magazine, US solar panel manufacturers need to learn to solder.
• 8:27
  John Weaver: You like my time,
• 8:27
  Tim Montague: John Weaver. Okay, that's my story. I like it.
• 8:31
  Tim Montague: Well, you would think if you were a solar panel manufacturer, you would have robots that know how to solder very well.
• 8:40
  John Weaver: They do, but it takes a little time, and if you look at the first image, you can sort of see it. It takes a little time for the machines to be tightened, for the for the processing line to be tightened for the lasers to be tuned in, because apparently year one, year two, you could have up to down to a 30% yield rate, which meaning that 70% of your modules need to be fixed. That was an extreme one, that was a massive outlier, but it seems within year two, year three, factories tighten themselves up, but it's particularly applicable to us, even me, like literally me.
• 9:18
  John Weaver: We're buying modules from Canadian Solar, and they have a new factory, and so it's like, ah, what's going to happen?
• 9:24
  John Weaver: Well, what's the quality of this module? What kind of issues might we have with breakage? But there's also very interesting that electro luminance has the ability to find these breakages, and so even though the yield rate off the manufacturing line is highly variable within the whole factory, once they fix things, it seems, if I'm interpreting this report correctly, it seems as if the fixed rate tightens up these issues, and so, so you're still going to have some challenges with modules from newer factories, so pay attention to it. So,
• 10:03
  Tim Montague: you think that's the what we're looking at here is just that these, these are newer factories, or without a doubt, variation in the US versus India and China,
• 10:13
  John Weaver: so it's without a doubt that they're newer factories. In fact, I looked at the chart and the India one was spread out further in prior years because India is scaling up and China's just scaled. I mean, China's been building them for a decade already, so they have the machines, they have the technicians, so the US, the majority of our factories are newer. I guarantee you, I don't know this, so I can't guarantee it, but if you scroll up, there is a big chunk that's up there at the 100% and First Solar, they are very experienced at making solar panels, so my gut feeling is that First Solar is occupying that high-quality yield. Rate, I don't know anything about making their type of modules, though it's a different thing. It's vapor deposition versus all the standard stuff that normal solar panels do, but I guarantee you they're up there because you know they're awesome. They have like five-ish factories, I don't know how many factories that have, but it's new, and and the report talks about that, they say it's highly associated with rollouts of new factories, and they pointed to other countries where new stuff is hitting, so like Indonesia's, Vietnam's other regions, they're a little sketchy in the first year or two as they get rolling,
• 11:27
  Tim Montague: but so if you're buying made in America solar panels, you have to be cautious about the quality of the product.
• 11:35
  John Weaver: Yes, sir.
• 11:35
  John Weaver: Absolutely, especially if these lines are brand new, which a whole bunch of them are. So, just pay attention to your quality, look at your modules, do a thermal scan, you know, just pay attention a little bit more to your early manufacturing line modules, I've heard this with batteries too. Big smart battery companies specifically say developers pick the manufacturing line they buy off of in the factory, they like they know the quality of each individual manufacturing line. I once had a guy who buys from Sun Wota, they're one of the massive Chinese groups, and he said, Yeah, we know the factory we buy from, we know the lines, we don't want to buy the new stuff because we like the old line, the old line is mature, that knows how to spin up cells. I was like, wow, had no idea they had such nuance and such insight into factories, man. And by the way, this is from CEA Clean Energy Associates, so this is what they do. They are factory inspectors, I mean, that's what they do. They travel around the world. If you want to find some module companies to learn from, this is this is the place.
• 12:45
  Tim Montague: Yeah,
• 12:46
  John Weaver: and this is a cool chart. It shows all the different ways we can mess up a module. There's a lot of ways to mess up making a solar panel, and here's a list of them, and it's just kind of neat.
• 12:59
  Tim Montague: So, it's not as simple as you think.
• 13:01
  John Weaver: Nothing is simple, dude. I have learned this. I've learned that I know nothing. I know a lot less than I knew yesterday, and tomorrow I'm probably gonna know less than today. That's minus that is life.
• 13:14
  Tim Montague: Wow,
• 13:16
  John Weaver: so, so soldering, man. Got to do some better soldering, but, but there's hope. There's hope that it's coming, and that's that's what matters. So, it's, it's gonna work,
• 13:28
  Tim Montague: I guess. It's good for CEA.
• 13:31
  John Weaver: Yeah, yeah, I think we need them. The world needs them,
• 13:37
  Tim Montague: all right. An island going solar energy load of approximately 40 gig watt hours per year, with a standing load of around two megawatts, and peak demand reaching 4.5 megawatts. What's the story?
• 13:47
  Tim Montague: I'll put this on screen. Oh, it's in PB Magazine, also.
• 13:51
  Tim Montague: Right,
• 13:53
  John Weaver: yeah, yeah, not my story, someone else's. This is, you know, the next story that I actually have on the line on the document aligns with this one, and it talks about the technical aptitude of batteries and what these batteries can do, and Nauru is actually a culturally famous island, sadly, because its leaders have been very open and talkative around the world about climate change, because if you look at that picture, it's a really tiny little island, and right there is the ocean, dude, and they're in the South Pacific. It's terrifying. The seas are right there. They are conscious of climate change, and they're getting rid of their diesel generators, and it's just the ability to take care of human beings with batteries and solar is here, without a doubt.
• 14:47
  John Weaver: We have the skills, we have the tools, and this is just a good, I don't know, it's just a feel-good story, and I hope it works, and they're gonna have those diesel generators for backup, and if you think how much they're paying for diesel in the middle of nowhere in the Pacific Ocean, this, their micro grids probably 40 cents a kilowatt hour, so the solar is going to be a dime, something, something goofy, I don't know, I don't know what it's going to be, but I know where it is generally, so just a cool story.
• 15:17
  Tim Montague: So, this title of this story was Smart Commercial
• 15:20
  Energy Plans: 18 megawatt solar, 40 megawatt hour battery solution for Nauru. Turns out Nauru is the smallest island nation, and the developer is Sydney-based Smart Commercial Energy, that is working on this project. I mean, islands are some of the earliest adopters, right? We look at our own state of Hawaii, and the penetration of solar and batteries is higher in Hawaii than any other place.
• 15:49
  Energy Plans: Is in the US, and that's because they have to ship everything in.
• 15:52
  Energy Plans: Right, it's expensive to ship all that energy on boats to the island, and so converting to solar and battery, it's just a..
• 16:03
  Energy Plans: it's a no-brainer. We see the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, right? That crisis is a major wake-up call for all of society, actually. Right, and we're buffered, John, because we have a lot of indigenous-like fertilizer resources. It's not just oil that's going through that strait, it's massive amounts of fertilizer, urea and phosphorus and anhydrous ammonia, I mean, so many things that generate food, ultimately, right. And when you look at the Middle East, Northern Africa, they import a ton of food because that place is a desert, they can't grow their own food, and so they're really going to be in a bind, we, as I said, we are buffered, and while that's a blessing in some ways, right, it's not going to be as big a hit, it's still a hit, right, gasoline is up 30% from two months ago, it's insane what we're paying at the pump now, but that is going to trickle down now into the food sector in a big way, and there's going to be food shortages if this war goes on. I mean, we will see it is, but it's all a legacy issue.
• 17:27
  Energy Plans: It's like, yeah, we're trying to, we're trying to somehow, I've come to the conclusion we're trying to poke a stick in China's eye by closing the straits, and it's just going to backfire. I just don't think it's, I don't think it's going to play out well for us, but only time will tell.
• 17:50
  John Weaver: Yep, we'll see,
• 17:51
  Tim Montague: all right. What else do we got?
• 17:54
  John Weaver: Well, next story is looks at, you know, this sun
• 17:57
  Tim Montague: is,
• 17:58
  John Weaver: yeah, sun grow slightly outside of my, not slightly, significantly outside of my true skill set, but it's cool to read about, and they said they did 14 unique scenarios whose purpose is to test whether a battery can exist during blackout events, during fault conditions, during arc faults, during just different events that would crash the grid, and you know, I don't know enough about this, but apparently this, these 14 scenarios represent the world, do a good job of around the world with the way the different energy groups on earth, protecting Europe, protecting Africa, protecting China. What they look at, and so yes, yes,
• 18:47
  Tim Montague: the story is in Renewable Energy magazine, and it's called Sun Grow completes world's first large scale grid forming validation. When I hear the word grid forming, I think micro grid, but does this have to do with or what is forming the grid? The battery,
• 19:08
  John Weaver: yes. So you know how you always hear about the spinning mass that spins at 60 times per second, which drives the Hertz grid-forming batteries seek to replace the spinning mass that brings stability to the grid, because that big old thing, the grid goes crazy, that thing keeps spinning because it weighs 100 tons, or whatever it is, so we're now seeking to replace the spinning mass with electronics, right? And so, grid forming, and while you're correct in a certain sense that you're thinking micro grids, yeah, because micro grids had to do grid forming, and technically, you and I, we've been doing off-grid solar to some degree, for decades, I've been my first off-grid solar project was in Northern California, 2011 It's beautiful, still runs. Recently upgraded the batteries, so we've been doing grid forming for a long time, but not big grid. Big grid forming started with SMA, to my best knowledge, started with SMA in Australia, because Australia has had so much, and it has expanded outwards, so now when the grid goes sideways, these inverters, they know how to respond within milliseconds to balance out events, and these tests represent that these inverters know how to do this, and I thought it was a fitting thing to put right behind an island nation moving away from emotionally stable diesel, saying, "Oh, what happens? Is this gear going to work well?
• 20:46
  John Weaver: Some grows works, SMAs works, other peoples are working. On the big grid, not on these little cutesy ones at our, you know, guest house up in the woods, and so it was exciting.
• 20:57
  John Weaver: Somebody made a joke on a blue sky when I posted it. They said the severe arc fault is that just a guy who's dressed up in PPE with a crowbar just going, and he said yes. It sort of, kind of is sometimes, because you physically have to just create it, and then it made me think, I don't want that job, because I would be terrified, but you know, I just, it was just neat to see this, I like seeing this grid forming thing, because, as you know, I'm a battery fanboy these days, and if the batteries can take over the grid, that's that's powerful for us in many ways.
• 21:36
  Tim Montague: I don't really understand, I guess what's novel about this. It's like, I mean, they're doing a test, they're doing these blackout tests, and well, yeah, like that's the point to have a battery to provide grid services while the grid's on, and then to provide resilience when the grid's off.
• 21:58
  Tim Montague: So, what is novel about this, though? John, like, why is this a big deal? Do you think
• 22:03
  John Weaver: the degree of services offered? So, prior, we did have grid services like ancillary services and frequency, and this and that, but there are additional services. There's black start service. There's the ability to power the broader power grid from zero without any outside support from a battery. Now, in your home, to a degree, you're actually right, Tim. The novelty isn't as great as some of us might think, because we've been doing this already on our houses, on our private military bases, on little grid, but now the novelty is that we're doing it full force and doing it on the big grid, that's the key, that the standards are being met for the big grid, not just for our local grids, that's maybe the biggest, and to be honest, maybe we need some grow on here to talk to us about it, because you know people at Song Group, right?
• 23:51
  Tim Montague: I don't.
• 23:53
  John Weaver: Oh, thought you knew some people, you know people everywhere. Tim, actually, by the way, anybody, if you want to meet somebody and connect with somebody, high probability Tim knows them, or he's about one person away from them, so just FYI.
• 24:04
  John Weaver: Well,
• 24:05
  Tim Montague: yeah, within a degree of separation. I don't, I don't interact a whole lot with Sun Grow, because I'm sponsored by Chint, and I need to talk to Sun Grow.
• 24:15
  John Weaver: So you should ask Chint. Chint has here. Let's just look up Chint, Chint CPS grid forming. We should ask Chint to teach us about, yeah, they have true grid forming capability. I'm looking right at their top, and they had it, so we should ask them about what this means, so we can understand better, and so that people who own businesses and electrical gear can trust these batteries.
• 24:35
  John Weaver: And I don't know, call Chint,
• 24:42
  Tim Montague: well, that's no, that's a no-brainer. So, yeah, I'd love to interview to have that conversation. All right, so we're looking at Blue Sky. You made a post about a Resi. Is this a Resi project?
• 24:59
  John Weaver: Sure, but no.
• 24:59
  John Weaver: Technically, technically it's a medium commercial apartment building. Yes, low-income apartments,
• 25:05
  Tim Montague: trying to hide the electrical.
• 25:08
  John Weaver: Yes, yes. This is our project of the week, one of our projects that we have under construction right now.
• 25:13
  Tim Montague: Cool.
• 25:13
  John Weaver: And the key that's going on with this one is, well, begin click on that top left image if you can.
• 25:21
  Tim Montague: Yeah, tell us about the project, high level project,
• 25:24
  John Weaver: so it's about 700 kilowatts behind the meter. It's connect, it's on 14 unique roofs, five unique interconnections. So we have, yeah, so like five inner five projects behind one transformer, three behind another, so like a nice mix, and it's going to offset about 85 well, could be more, but 85% of the onsite electricity. This is one of the buildings. This is a 133 northernmost building, and one of the keys here is that we wanted to minimize the amount of ground level infrastructure that would be outside the buildings, because all of the access for the building was near entrances, where people are, and so having like big inverters, street level, big switch gear, big disconnects was challenging, and then having conduit that goes there was challenging. There's not a lot of space inside of these buildings to move stuff, so it was preferred for everything to be outside, and so what we had to do was move stuff, so wires are coming down the backside of the building.
• 26:31
  John Weaver: So, if you go to that first picture, well, if you look at this picture first, you can see that little red dots, they're up there at the north building, and kind of off. To the right, that's things coming over the back side of the building. If you go to the prior image, you can see the drawing for how our path is coming down. We're hiding behind a chimney, we're going to paint things, and then we're going to sneak into the back side of the building. And if you go to the next picture, you can see how on the front side of the building we're going to be allowed to move our disconnect from the top of the stairs with that green boxes to the bottom of the stairs. This has been approved by the fire department and the local jurisdiction. And then the prior image, the very first image of this collection, you can actually see visually how we've brought the conduit back. So this is the back side of the building, it's hidden behind the chimney, and then we're gonna have to paint all conduit, because the customer wants, and they have a contractor already to handle the painting, but the painting has to match the siding, because it's all brand new siding. This whole site is, it's getting like a $30 million upgrade, it's really cool to be a tiny piece of it, but that
• 27:44
  Tim Montague: so talk about the economics for the, for the owner, because this is a multi-family facility, and that's traditionally a tough nut to crack. So, how are you cracking that nut?
• 27:58
  John Weaver: The number one driver is that the asset owner, the building owner, pays all of the electricity bills, that is the key. Yes, sir. So, there's really only five electricity bills for
• 28:11
  Tim Montague: HUD bills included in the rent.
• 28:13
  John Weaver: Yes, sir. Yes,
• 28:15
  Tim Montague: yeah, that's awesome. So, the owner is highly motivated to reduce their power bill.
• 28:19
  John Weaver: Yep, and it's also getting a little bit of HUD funding, and the state of Rhode Island housing is involved, which is part of the reason the esthetics matter so much. The state wants to make sure the housing that they support is solid, so we, everything we do, it gets vetted by first our internal team, then our installer, then the building owner, then the state, and so it's like every every t will be crossed, every i will be dotted, and and it's a great project.
• 28:48
  John Weaver: It's an end phase 208 volt, so it's my first time doing an official commercial project with end phase. It's pretty cool.
• 29:00
  Tim Montague: Well,
• 29:01
  John Weaver: and shout out to Bob Montanaro, who's my sales guide and face, because Bob's awesome, and recall Bob, he's from Jackson. Well, he's not from Jacksonville, he's from Boston, but, but he lives in Jacksonville.
• 29:15
  Tim Montague: Cool, good job, Bob. All right, we got a story in PB Magazine about Goshen unveils five megawatt 18.8 megawatt hour enclosed battery energy storage system by Maria Maish. How
• 29:32
  John Weaver: big that thing is.
• 29:32
  John Weaver: Yeah, look at that. Everything is huge, man. I just.. I'm very interested about form about forms of these structures. What batteries are going to look like? How we're going to use them? What's going to happen with them? Very interesting.
• 29:53
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I've been geeking out on utility batteries. Those each of those modules that you see is about 40 or 50
• 30:02
  John Weaver: kwh. Wow,
• 30:04
  Tim Montague: you know, they're the size of a good size suitcase. I don't know how much they weigh, but they're heavy
• 30:13
  John Weaver: enough.
• 30:14
  Tim Montague: So, yeah, I mean, so everybody is coming out with a five megawatt. This is an 18 megawatt hour, I mean,
• 30:24
  John Weaver: yeah,
• 30:25
  Tim Montague: I'm more familiar with, like, a five megawatt hour solution, so this is three times bigger than a five mega, five megawatt hour solution, but do they talk about, or does the story talk about what is the, what is the market, is this for North America?
• 30:42
  John Weaver: No, none, they didn't get in any real details.
• 30:46
  John Weaver: It did seem like this was a trans, a transmission battery, so they, they talk about an interesting thing about cascading inverters. So, there's actually like multiple inverters within this unit, which brings it into a three phase large scale unit. If you click on the ESS news link, which I normally do, I should have done that. You would have gone straight to the site, but that's but what they talk about is just high level stuff. So I don't know the market for this, you know, there, but the key is it's it's it's being used for transmission level stuff, and they talked about this being a data center thing, where they can customize the voltage, because apparently data centers work on different voltages that are more close to the line with the chips, and then nowadays are even looking for pure DC block batteries, which I found to be interesting, I. But, but these are just big.
• 31:42
  John Weaver: I just, I was just infatuated with 18.8 and then I learned they had a 20 megawatt hour unit as well. The biggest I knew before that was BYD, who I think was in the 16 to 18 range, and I mean I remember being just absolutely gobsmacked when C A T L Cadal came out with their nine megawatt hour battery, and now we're more than double it, and, and I don't know what to say, but it's cool.
• 32:14
  Tim Montague: Product was first unveiled at Sneck. Are you familiar with Sneck?
• 32:19
  John Weaver: I am going to Sneck in two weeks, going to China, going to Shanghai, Tim Sneck, yeah, Sneck is the world's largest solar conference. It's the Chinese major one. It's located in Shanghai, and on the 25th-ish I will be flying to Hong Kong, and then headed over to Shanghai for two weeks of mostly vacation, and then four days of walking the floor, man, shaking some hands,
• 32:47
  Tim Montague: very cool. Can't wait to hear about that. I think the trip overlaps with one of our dates, right? It
• 32:56
  John Weaver: does. It does. We will not be meeting either the 29th or the fifth, those two days, 29th of May, or the fifth, so I guess the 29th would be our next meeting. We're gonna have to talk about that
• 33:09
  Tim Montague: one, sir. All right, um, what's next? We got time for a few more stories.
• 33:15
  John Weaver: This is an important public service announcement. Tim, please manage your skateboarding.
• 33:21
  Tim Montague: It says, Tim, I know you're hip and doing all cool kid activities like pickleball, but stay off your board and don't do this. Okay, I was, I was a pretty decent skateboarder when I was a kid.
• 33:32
  John Weaver: I knew it, I knew it. You look like a board guy, you're cool that way.
• 33:35
  Tim Montague: But
• 33:37
  John Weaver: turn the volume up, you gotta turn the volume up a little on this one.
• 33:40
  Tim Montague: Volume,
• 33:40
  John Weaver: yeah, we need some noise. Might have to share it myself since I'm logged into Blue Sky properly. This is a good see now you're laughing.
• 33:50
  Tim Montague: He blew up the trail. Oh
• 33:52
  John Weaver: yeah, see there you got you got to play it now. Tim, you're teasing all of our readers and watchers. Come on,
• 34:00
  Tim Montague: that's too funny.
• 34:02
  John Weaver: Yes, yes. How's share working?
• 34:08
  Tim Montague: The kid blew out the transformer, but
• 34:10
  John Weaver: you got to share it. You got to share it for everybody. Tim,
• 34:13
  Tim Montague: oh, sorry.
• 34:14
  John Weaver: Yes, yes, everybody's listening. They're hearing you laugh, they see it, they're like they hear your wonder and your joy. All right, here we go, he jumps all right.
• 34:35
  John Weaver: Yes, yes, pretty cool. Kids, kids doing kids things. So, there you go, Tim. Keep your board off the transformer that looked like an old transformer, and would probably never be installed to code these days.
• 34:50
  John Weaver: It's right next to the road, there's no bollards, but and it looked really old and green. It was a really rusty old transformer, but now you know, Tim, no, no ollieing onto your..
• 35:04
  Tim Montague: Do you know where that was?
• 35:07
  John Weaver: I have no idea, but I assume California, because kids in California are cool. I have no idea, though.
• 35:14
  Tim Montague: That's a good..
• 35:14
  Tim Montague: yes,
• 35:15
  John Weaver: it was from the internet, it was from Reddit.
• 35:17
  John Weaver: That's where I get all my cool stuff. All
• 35:21
  Tim Montague: right, Africa cell phone towers turn to solar as diesel costs surge.
• 35:27
  John Weaver: Yes,
• 35:28
  Tim Montague: yeah. In a way, the Hormuz crisis is going to accelerate the energy transition eventually. I guess that's the only silver lining I can think of right now. But all right, so I
• 35:43
  John Weaver: definitely believe that
• 35:44
  Tim Montague: that's a screen
• 35:48
  John Weaver: I was surprised at some of the numbers, I was really surprised at the numbers about the amount of money these companies are spending, about the amount of telecommunication towers, there's half a million towers in Africa and more than half of them are diesel powered, and 60% of the operating cost of a telecom in an off-grid area is fuel, and
• 36:15
  Tim Montague: believe
• 36:16
  John Weaver: it. I, it wasn't in this article, I looked it up in parallel. It's like a two-year payback, it's a two-year payback for these
• 36:24
  Tim Montague: to convert to solar and battery,
• 36:26
  John Weaver: yeah. And then some people are just using, and this is mentioned in the article, which I was like, yes, of course, the tower is the anchor customer to a micro grid, so not only do you now have communications, you have energy.
• 36:42
  John Weaver: Energy and that energy is going to be subsidized by this tower, so now the rest of the town can plug into the solar system, or the solar system can add to the global grid and add some stability, and it was, you know, it's just, it's just like obvious, I want to say something mean, you know, we are lucky, so amazingly lucky that we're hidden, and you mentioned this at the beginning of the, we're insulated from the challenges of this war, and we have so much natural gas that our electricity prices are still bottomed out, and you heard me a month or two ago say the price of electricity might grow up, but I was wrong again, and, and it's like, ah, cheap electricity is a good thing and a bad thing. It's bad when it's fossil fueled, it's good when it's, you know, used for industry, but the rest of the world's going to get forced, and electric cars are selling higher, batteries are selling higher, and the price of energy is going up. These people won't turn back, so once that solar
• 37:44
  Tim Montague: microgrid,
• 37:45
  John Weaver: yeah, is
• 37:46
  Tim Montague: how many kw of generator do you need to run a cell tower? Say that I don't think
• 37:53
  John Weaver: was it
• 37:53
  Tim Montague: flexity, probably knows, but I'm curious, how big of a solar array and how big of a battery do you need?
• 38:03
  John Weaver: How large of a solar system and battery generator does a communication power need? I think they're like one to 200 kw. I remember reading about them recently. I asked Claude, it's gonna give us a few ideas. I just, the thing I absolutely know about though, is that diesel generation - it's in the 30 to 40 cents per kilowatt hour for small scale systems.
• 38:33
  John Weaver: And here we go. Here's a few links - anywhere from 100 you know, some of them are small, five to 10 kw, 20 kw, 100 kw.
• 38:44
  John Weaver: 300 kw for these units, but not huge, not a megawatt, much smaller than a meg, so it's, it's again, though, it's another inroad that solar and storage is going to have, and it's just again and again and again, the use case, the use case, and it's hitting, and this company is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in, in Kenya alone to upgrade systems, so it's, you know, batteries are the thing, man, batteries are bacon, just add batteries,
• 39:24
  Tim Montague: should we close out with this Ethiopia story?
• 39:28
  John Weaver: Let's see, Ethiopia silver stolen batteries. Yeah, this is a cool story. I
• 39:35
  Tim Montague: like the winter story, right?
• 39:37
  John Weaver: Well, sorta. It is a win story, but it's also solar, but it's really about something bigger. This is about economic development.
• 39:47
  Tim Montague: So, this is a story in PV Tech.
• 39:48
  John Weaver: Yep,
• 39:50
  Tim Montague: Ming Yang, China's Ming Yang secures 14 point 1,000,000,002.8 gigawatt Ethiopia solar investment.
• 39:58
  John Weaver: So, what's occurring here is that first, so minyang is ming yang is one of the largest wind manufacturers.
• 40:06
  John Weaver: I think they're the one with the 20 plus megawatt turbine, like the largest one in the world. It could be 26 megawatts, and they're looking to build factories in Ethiopia to make wind turbines, to make transmission gear, and to make green ammonia, but what they're starting with is a combination.
• 40:28
  John Weaver: I mean, they're pretty much building up their own power grid. They've got $7.5 billion to build five and a half gigs of wind in almost three gigs of solar, and so they're literally building the power plants, the network, the grid, and then they're going to come in and build industry behind it, like that. I don't know, it just kind of blows my mind a little bit. I know people do that with gas and nuclear, they're like,"Oh, we got this power plant now, we do society. Well, in this case, they're doing the other direction, they're saying,"You know, we have society nearby, let's build industry and power at the same time, and, and I guess this has happened back in the day, like you know, back in the 1900s people built a steel plant, and they built it on the river, so that they had a power plant right there, and they had their own power plant, but this just seems different, this seems a little bigger, a little broader-minded, like you know, the Chinese are an intelligent group when they're looking at geopolitics, and they are literally building a small industrial hub that their power, and they're going to make money off of in Ethiopia. This is like the hardest soft power in the world, you know, hard power being milled. Terry might soft power be in politics. This is politics, but it's really they're putting steel in the ground, and it was just cool to read a wind manufacturer is just gonna build an economy, and that's just cool. The breadth of it is cool.
• 41:58
  Tim Montague: It's like they recognize that Africa is, you know, the frontier in many respects, economically, there's a big labor force there. They don't have the infrastructure, so you got, you got to build the infrastructure, and they're smart to build it with wind and solar, that that buffers it from these other shocks, these energy price shocks, which we're experiencing and Ethiopia is not the only place this is happening, but great story. I love
• 42:31
  John Weaver: it. Yeah, Ethiopia is actually turning on, or has just turned on, one of the world's largest dams, and it has caused stress in that north eastern portion of Africa, because downriver is the Nile, you know, the one of the most important rivers to the human species, and so it has caused stress, and I assume this project will integrate with that grid. I don't know anything about Ethiopia, though, but I just, the breadth of it, man, it's just like, you know, you and I, we were like, all right, How do we, how do we pass local zoning, and this dude, he's like, How do I create local zoning or something? I don't know, he's, he is the zoning board or something. It was just, it was cool, cool thing to read about. So, Tim, how can our listeners find you?
• 43:20
  Tim Montague: Good question, John. Check out all of our content at Clean Power hour.com and you'll find links to all the audio platforms, Apple, Spotify, and, of course, video on YouTube. Tell a friend about the show, that's the best thing you can do to help others find this content. So many people do not know about the Clean Power Hour, that would love it if they knew, if they only knew. John, how about you, John? How can our listeners find you?
• 43:48
  John Weaver: Commercial Solar Guy com, that's my website. You can also find me on LinkedIn, John Fitzgerald Weaver. And if you're ever in the Northeast, you can visit Cambridge, Boston, Massachusetts, and I'll buy you a slice of pizza, Joe's in Harvard Square, and that'd be the best place to find me.
• 44:08
  Tim Montague: All right. Well, we'll be back. Are we going to be back in two weeks? I guess that's a question.
• 44:13
  John Weaver: Nope, because I'm going to be in Shanghai.
• 44:15
  Tim Montague: All right, so we will let you know when we're back. But we had got a, we got to rejigger the show for Sneck.
• 44:24
  Tim Montague: I'm excited to hear how Sneck goes, John. And with that, we'll say let's grow solar and storage. Thank you so much, John Weaver.
• 44:34
  Unknown: Bye.