Latest / Clean Power Hour / FEOC Fears, Grid Costs, and 25% Efficiency: Solar Industry Transformation Update

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FEOC Fears, Grid Costs, and 25% Efficiency: Solar Industry Transformation Update · Clean Power Hour

• 0:51
  Tim Montague: Tim, welcome to solar and storage news with Montague and Weaver. I'm Tim Montague, check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com it's on audio, it's on video.
• 1:01
  Tim Montague: You can find it anywhere you want. And I'd like to welcome my co host, John Weaver, the commercial solar guy, welcome.
• 1:10
  John Weaver: Welcome, Tim. Nice to see you again. I hope everything's well, it's a beautiful blue sky outside, like not even a single cloud the haze from the forest fires of Canada is gone. So going to be checking some solar generation on my own M stuff today, just to see if the charts look cool, because everything should be maxed out as high as it goes, mid summer and no clouds, so looking nice
• 1:37
  Tim Montague: when you're talking to customers, commercial customers, about the performance of solar projects. What are the weak links in your mind that can lead to underperformance?
• 1:50
  John Weaver: Inverters. It's always inverters. That's what it always is. It's always inverters. We don't really have too much that fails. It's always a fuse or a wire loose or or some weird grid fluctuation that has a feedback loop into the inverter. You know, voltage range. It's almost always something funny with an inverter. Sometimes it's the communication and the inverter is fine. In fact, most of the time it's that but I did just have a project lose. There was lightning local in on the Cape in Massachusetts, and a disconnect and an auxiliary transformer backing up, the communication system got zapped.
• 2:31
  John Weaver: So we're gonna have to shut down a system. Well, it's already halfway shut down with with, with the way it's set up, but we're gonna have to shut down the whole transformer with the utility as of where the disconnect is relative to everything in line. So, so every once in a while, it's lightning, and in fact, I've actually had two systems within the last, let's say year now nine months, had one system hit by lightning last, I guess, a year now, last September, really lost an inverter. Yep, whole building got zapped, and it just hit that right side of the building, right where our gear was. So we had a melted wire, and it melted the inside of the inverter, and then this one where that hit a disconnect, disconnect and auxiliary transformer that was managing the monitoring system.
• 3:20
  John Weaver: So still sort of inverter, but you know, technically, it's the giant volt of static electricity traveling through the atmosphere.
• 3:32
  Tim Montague: So here's the here's the tough question, what do you think is the average uptime of a commercial solar project in the United States? I don't know the answer, but I'm asking what you think that is?
• 3:46
  John Weaver: 97 98% maybe 99 smaller the project, the lower the uptime, the bigger the project, the higher the uptime.
• 3:56
  Tim Montague: I'm sure solar boy knows the answer. So if you're listening, solar boy tell us, perplexity probably knows the answer as well. And All right, well, let's get into the news.
• 4:11
  Tim Montague: You got a story in PV magazine on deployment of solar in the US and FEOC. I am dying to get to the bottom of FEOC, and many of my colleagues are dying to get to the bottom of FEOC, but the title is, US may deploy 53 gigawatts of solar in 2025 61 gigawatts in 2026 but FEOC looms by John Weaver in PV magazines.
• 4:38
  Tim Montague: What's the story? John So
• 4:40
  John Weaver: Bloomberg.
• 4:40
  John Weaver: Bloomberg Nef, this is their data, their projection for the next two years. Mostly the projects in 25 and 26 won't have any FEOC challenges foreign entities of concern is what that is, and particularly it's China.
• 4:56
  John Weaver: And so the the analyst at Bloomberg said, you know, if FEOC starts to hit hard, and it's really hard to get projects through FEOC, we could see installations fall in 2027 to just under 60 gigawatts, and then collapse in 28 because by 28 that's when we'll start to see the teeth of Fiat kit projects. Because 28 projects probably don't have construction already started right now, and they might not have construction started by the summer of next summer, which is when the FEOC rules really start to chew. I think they do, December 31 this year. There's some nuance.
• 5:40
  Tim Montague: FEOC isn't just specific to the ITC.
• 5:45
  John Weaver: It is, well, most solar Well, it's the ITC and the tech. Neutral energy credit. So it's so it's the past, so technically, it's not applicable to the ITC. It's actually the inverse. So any projects that were ITC are done, they're not going to have any FEOC concerns.
• 6:02
  John Weaver: But ITC technically ended end of last year. The only projects that are still in the ITC are those that have already started construction safe Harvard. So they they're they don't care.
• 6:15
  John Weaver: But for the tech energy neutral, which is related to the tax credit, same thing, just the new name. It is, without a doubt, FEOC. So if you don't get your if you have FEOC violations, you don't get the tax credit. Simple as that. You have to be within FEOC rules to get the tax credit. And so this is what their Bloomberg is seeing. Now this is for overall, for wind, solar and storage in this graph, but you can see the hit. This hits wind. This hits storage. It hits wind really hard, and it hits solar. If FEOC is what Bloomberg has said, is challenging, impossible to move through. They also give an optimistic one, and say, if we figure out FEOC, solar might actually go up in 2027 and we might actually have much better numbers, like they actually think solar might hit 63 plus in 27 so we could have 250 220 gigawatts of solar installed in four years. It might be a beautiful four years of solar to be honest. You know, 2425 2627 so
• 7:24
  Tim Montague: very good statistic here from Enver us, right? It estimates that once the investment tax credit expires, only 30% of planned solar projects will be able to deliver competitive prices and are expected to survive,
• 7:36
  John Weaver: but understand that there's expected to be solar projects being built through 2030 surviving underneath the safe harbor of mid 2026 because I think that's how they have to work. Yeah, so and then you have four years, but maybe that'll change. We're still learning Tim,
• 7:56
  Tim Montague: but so if you're, yeah, if you're a CNI installer, and you're self developing large CNI, these are megawatt to five megawatt projects, the strategy is to Safe Harbor 5% is that what you have to save harbor of the equipment?
• 8:15
  John Weaver: Well, technically as of today, yes, however explicitly, Trump said he's going to make it harder. So we don't know what's about to come.
• 8:25
  John Weaver: But yes, as of, as of right now, as of the signing day of that document, July, 2, 2025 5% as of tomorrow. Who the heck knows?
• 8:37
  John Weaver: But we're waiting on guidance.
• 8:40
  John Weaver: But yes, so for the big solar contractor, you want to have that safe harbor done by July, 3 or second next summer, but you can also just have your project turn on by the end of 27 but once you start getting bigger, it gets a little, gets a little harder. So if you have development risk, you gotta, you gotta make sure you safe harbor.
• 8:59
  John Weaver: If you think you'll get stuff turned on by the end of 27 that should be your goal. So you know, I'm talking to plenty of people who have these big four to five year project timelines, and and lots of people are safe harboring batteries and panels and transformers, all kinds of gear, listening. It's, it's a there's lots of legal work going on, because then you have to prove it. You have to have the documents, you have to have the warehouse. You gotta have the pictures. There's or whatever the people are doing. I'm not in that business so much yet myself,
• 9:30
  Tim Montague: but you're because you're mostly installing for others.
• 9:34
  John Weaver: So, yeah, so mostly installing for others. But also, my projects are smaller, so I'm not worried about hitting deadlines as of
• 9:42
  Tim Montague: yet. Well, we got a megawatt scale project that we're about to talk talk about here from National Grid, right?
• 9:48
  John Weaver: I expect that project to start construction in 26 and it'll be or maybe even 25 and it'll be done long before the end of 27 so
• 9:56
  Tim Montague: this is one of our projects of the week. What is it we're looking at here? This.
• 10:00
  Tim Montague: This is a beautiful, large, flat Earth, commercial, solar, Oh, yes.
• 10:06
  John Weaver: So this is a roof and Fall River. It's nearby. We have leased this space from the building owner. It's 999 kW AC.
• 10:14
  John Weaver: We're pushing the DC up to 1718, because the incentive per kilowatt hour is over 20 cents.
• 10:19
  John Weaver: And we think we're going to get at least a 40% we're going to get domestic content on this project. And where we're moving through the studies. We've gotten through our first round of interconnection analysis. We started the Impact Study, which involved a 29 or $32,000 payment. We've been given a high level analysis of what to expect. There are some questions, though, we have two feeder lines that come. To this building. One of them has solar on it. One of them doesn't. And we're trying to figure out which feeder line is better. And since we're looking to put a MiG, we really got to figure it out. We also have two other buildings for the same owner. Both of them are 499, AC, but one's like 675, DC, and the other is 800 so we have about three megawatts DC.
• 11:14
  John Weaver: Oh yeah, there goes, hit the back button once. So that's our impact study for this. So this is our so we already paid for interconnection analysis and engineering. So engineering for us is in house impacts or interconnections. 4500 bucks now we got another 29,000 of just grid analysis. Then at the end of that, they'll say, here's what your solar power project will cost to upgrade and we're moving
• 11:41
  Tim Montague: forward. Do they use levels or what? How do they move project from quicker, cheaper to more complicated, more expensive. What is that process?
• 11:55
  John Weaver: So step one is based on system size. So like, if a system was above, I think 300 AC, 300 or above, so 299 or less, you get away with it. But if above 299 then, by default, you have to do an impact study.
• 12:08
  John Weaver: However, in some cases, if you do, uh, they do, um, a test. I'm trying to remember the test, but it's a capacity test. And if this capacity test is triggers based upon your system size, then you get an impact study, because it depends on the available capacity on your filter, on your feeder line going into the substation transformer.
• 12:33
  Tim Montague: But so they don't, they don't have a it's just, it's, it's like a level system we in in miso or in PJM, we have levels two through four.
• 12:43
  Tim Montague: Projects usually start with a level two, which is pretty quick, and then go to level four, and then it's slower, and then they charge more. And they always have these, okay, now we have 30 more days or 60 more days to review. It's a way for them to slow things down, honestly, and make it more expensive.
• 13:09
  John Weaver: Yeah, well, the levels for us, we have the different studies that can occur. We do get charged more per project, per kW AC, so that dollar amount increases based on system size. Hypothetically, we could get money back if the company doesn't use the engineering services that are needed the 29 grand. But that never happens when you expect a 55 business day response for this three projects
• 13:35
  Tim Montague: and for a megawatt? Okay? So ostensibly, we're looking at a megawatt of solar, right?
• 13:41
  Unknown: No 1.81 point
• 13:43
  Tim Montague: 1.8 megawatts of solar DC. Yeah, you really loaded the the DC to AC ratio 1.8 ratio. Wow.
• 13:52
  John Weaver: Where New England?
• 13:52
  John Weaver: We're way north, then we're at 510 degrees. So the design allows for it.
• 14:00
  Tim Montague: It has to do with the incentive as well, right?
• 14:03
  John Weaver: Oh, absolutely you can be less. This is the magic being in the northeast, you have high electricity prices, so efficiency isn't your number one goal. KWh generation is we're above 20 cents per kilowatt hour here. Tim so above 20 cents means we can go up to we can blow past that 1.3 kW eight, DC to AC ratio. We can have modules that aren't Tip Top perfect output.
• 14:32
  Tim Montague: And what percent of the facilities load are you offsetting?
• 14:36
  John Weaver: This is a 100% being sold straight to the utility in front
• 14:41
  Tim Montague: of the meter.
• 14:41
  Tim Montague: Okay, yeah, yes, sir, yeah, you started by saying you were leasing the roof. So, yes, leasing the roof. So it's not community solar, though, or it is, it
• 14:52
  John Weaver: could be. It could be that that's going to be a decision later on in the process, the development process, to be honest, commercial solar guys not an expert, but let me rephrase that, commercial solar guy has not done a single community solar project through the end, having to do the procurement of the community solar buyers and dealing with that headache. This is our first collective batch of projects that we can truly own, and so community solar could be added, but, and that can add a penny or two in revenue per year, but it increases the interest cost, because your risk of offtake is slightly higher than if I have a fixed 20 year contract With the power company, yeah. So as a low asset company, I might go for the simpler contract because of easier costs.
• 15:40
  Tim Montague: Yeah. So I have two questions. One, is FEOC A concern here at all for you? I
• 15:48
  John Weaver: don't think so.
• 15:48
  John Weaver: We're gonna buy domestic. To content modules. We're going to buy inverters, you know, really got to pay attention to inverters. But I'm not buying I'm buying SMA inverters, and I'm buying, you know, maybe modules from Haley. So we'll see. I'm going to work for domestic content. My I'm not going to have very much gear coming from China. So I don't think
• 16:13
  Tim Montague: we're not, and that is explicitly a strategy to avoid FEOC problems, because you're not trying to get you're not trying to get ITC, or you are trying to get ITC for the domestic you're trying to get the domestic content
• 16:26
  John Weaver: adder. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. In fact, two of the projects in this portfolio, we're going to get a domestic content. And we're gonna get the low income adder, we're gonna 50%
• 16:35
  Tim Montague: it. And to lock that in, all you have to do is safe harbor.
• 16:40
  John Weaver: No, you got to buy domestic content stuff. It's still domestic content is still viable, going through 20 into 27 so safe harbor is two independent things, yeah, mess the contents, buying the right hardware, and as long as I turn it on before the end of 27 Yeah, we're cool, yeah. So
• 16:57
  Tim Montague: we're and my second may accident, yeah. My second question is, do you have a rule of thumb for estimating the interconnection costs of a project? You know, when you look at, okay, it's 500 KW or it's a megawatt, it's offsetting some big percent, or it's front of the meter. Do you? Yeah, just like when you walk into these things, there are a lot of surprises that can happen. And you know, I always encourage my clients to just exclude any upgrades to the grid, for example, that the utility will require, but, but anyway, what?
• 17:34
  Tim Montague: How do you approach that?
• 17:36
  John Weaver: 15 cents a watt is my default number, okay, but real fast we start making some judgment calls about what we think is going to need to be there, because we we rough, you know, we're starting to learn our medium voltage better. And so the medium voltage is going from our gear into the transformer that may be ours or the utilities, and then into the poles. Those Poles have things like reclosers and CLS, you know, different types of disconnects and fuses. And so we're a number of poles, and we're starting to get a feel for that when, when it comes to big grid upgrades, like running wire and stuff like that, it's real hard to tell that info in Massachusetts, you know, if we have to reconduct or upgrade transformers. So, so I don't know. I mean, a good rough number might even be three to 400 bucks per kW AC nowadays, because in Massachusetts, we're starting to see upgrades, substation, upgrade, back pay.
• 18:41
  John Weaver: So the thing we call CIP, can't remember. It's something infrastructure payments, where it's they they upgrade the substation, and the state funds it, and then they say, Okay, you now have five to 10 megawatts of space on the substation. And all of you, when you look Connect, you have to pay a CIP fee. So far, I've seen them ranging from 317 bucks per kW up to like 379 and so you know, a megawatt is going to be a 30 $347,000 upgrade fee. And that's one 1.8 megawatt. That's like 18 cents.
• 20:12
  John Weaver: It's a little strong, but that pays for everything to upgrade to the grid and connect and all the fees. So 15 cents, maybe 10 cents. And a good time. 20 cents is I put 15 by default to my spreadsheet when I know grid upgrades are coming. That's just my that's my rule of thumb.
• 20:36
  Tim Montague: I had another comment, but I forgot what it was. Well, that's a great project. Good luck with that. I hope it succeeds. Oh, I did the quick math. Your 15 cent rule would mean like $270,000 for this 1.8, megawatt DC.
• 20:58
  John Weaver: Do you ever see on that's gonna be low? I think that's gonna be low for this one. Because we know we have, we know we have big, great upgrades coming to some degree, we just don't know what yet.
• 21:08
  Tim Montague: And did you see those stories about nexamp?
• 21:11
  Tim Montague: Yeah, uh, where they're covering great upgrades as a way to expedite development, they're
• 21:18
  John Weaver: doing the work.
• 21:18
  John Weaver: Yes, I wonder if they're going into the substations. I doubt they're allowed to touch where.
• 21:25
  John Weaver: I wonder if they're just installing on site gear, like doing the on site transformer, maybe a recloser on a pole, or stuff like that. I doubt they're going into a substation. I looked at those three systems.
• 21:37
  John Weaver: They were all smaller systems, one two megawatts. So they. None of them were like, you know, five megawatt plus, yeah, yeah, they're doing some work, which was kind of cool.
• 21:49
  Tim Montague: But, I mean, if you're developing a one megawatt project, there's no, there's no substation work involved, it's just, what is the capacity? I don't know, yeah, I'm just curious about that. All right, we should move on. Um, I found a story this is a little dated.
• 22:11
  Tim Montague: Now it's a week old. On Peak Energy, a company out of California is shipping a sodium ion battery, and I'm still learning about sodium ion, but basically, you're relying on sodium instead of lithium, is my basic understanding. And so, you know, they're both super abundant elements. Okay? I think sodium is perhaps a little more easily accessible. Even though lithium is super abundant, it's easier to get sodium. The battery looks just like any old battery, right? It's a container. It's got space conditioning, blah, blah, blah, and you know what it boils down to Johnny is, you know, the cost per kWh and the overall lifespan, which translates into LCOE, effectively, right? And in this case, it has passive cooling, which is in is, which is interesting, most lithium systems have active cooling, not all, but most in they even have a coolant or water or air. They can be, you know, either or. And I know that C ATL is getting into the sodium battery space so it, you know, it tells me that there's potential legs. I think today the cost is not competitive with lithium ion. Is that your understanding
• 24:00
  John Weaver: correct the stats I've seen for the best price, lithium ion is, you know, middle to upper 10s, you know, 50 to 70 cents. And the best I've seen for sodium is like buck or 150 you know, sorry, they're 70 to 80 bucks per kilowatt hour, whereas sodium is 150 130 per kilowatt hour right now, sodium in China, from C ATL is double, maybe less than double, close to double, the price of lithium, and it's and also doesn't have the same performance characteristics. It's not as dense, and I don't know about the lifetime yet, but I but maybe it does actually, maybe it's better. I mean, I'm looking here, it says cut degradation over 20 year lifetime, that kind of stuff. That's
• 24:45
  Tim Montague: awesome. Yeah, yeah. So they make, they make a couple of claims, which is, you know, kind of their secret sauce, you need less active cooling. And the batteries can perform well under a greater variety of of extremes. Like lithium ion is very finicky. It doesn't like sub freezing temperatures at all for charging or discharging, and they don't like to get too hot either. So, you know, you want the battery at like 70 degrees for optimal performance and degradation. And that zone is bigger. I don't it doesn't say exactly what that zone is here. And so, you know, it's the thing that people forget, John, is that when you see stuff being deployed on mass in the world, it is largely about LCOE. It is about the cost of the technology. Ultimately, cost wins. Of course, it has to be durable, it has to be effective, it has to be available. The All these things have to line up, but at the end of the day, caught. If something isn't cost competitive, it's not going to happen right in the market period. You can love it all you like, and and so it's still early days for, you know, form energy, their iron, air, battery, all these, all these liquid batteries, that's not the expression, what's the expression, where the electrolyte is a fluid, flow batteries. All these flow batteries, you see them, but they're still dancing around the edges to lithium, right? The vast majority, I think more than 90% of deployed batteries in the US are lithium, right?
• 26:30
  John Weaver: I would say 95 I'm looking for, actually, a thing I've seen, but yes, it's almost all lithium ion, the volume. I actually have a story about more lithium one. We both do, but yeah, it's almost all lithium.
• 26:43
  John Weaver: It flows great, but it's just not cost benefit yet. It's going to take time. People believe that the fundamental cost of a of a salt battery could reach below like 10 to 15 bucks per kilowatt hour, whereas lithium, right now is being suggested in the 30 to 35 as the like, the lowest potential price it could reach. And so I think that's what's driving the salt stuff.
• 27:09
  John Weaver: It's, you know, such a common, easy to work with material. Yes,
• 27:16
  Tim Montague: lithium is not easy to work with, I don't think. And it's great. Just to wrap this up with a bow peak.
• 27:24
  Tim Montague: Peak is saying that they've got nine utility and independent power producer customers doing a shared pilot, and they're going to be deploying a gigawatt hour of a product in the near future.
• 27:40
  Tim Montague: And then they're propping up a cell factory, which is going to open in 2026 so, you know, the the BBB has really rained on the manufacturing parade, big time in clean in clean tech. And there's more factories getting shut down than getting planned and built. So I'm curious to see what battery factories actually come to see. The light of day.
• 28:01
  Tim Montague: Announcements are one thing, but a whole it's a whole other thing to actually get the production line rolling. Yes, all right, what's our next story?
• 28:16
  Unknown: Well, another battery storage
• 28:18
  Tim Montague: project.
• 28:19
  John Weaver: Yeah, I think, I think this is actually a neat
• 28:22
  Tim Montague: one. Oh, used EV batteries.
• 28:25
  John Weaver: And I just like the terms that this guy used. So this is JB struggle. Used to work for Tesla. He's the owner of he's a founder, owner of redwood, and it's just, you know, this paragraph, he said, We're confident this is the lowest cost solution out there.
• 28:40
  John Weaver: Yeah, not only lower than new lithium ion, obviously, because it's used, but lower than compressed air, lower than iron air that's form, and lower than a number of these other ones that carry a little more technology risk. So JB, who knows some stuff? I mean, he's a smart guy. He comes he's got good pedigree. It comes from Tesla. He'll bring them up. He started a company that's now, you know, it's probably a billionaire. Now, Good job, buddy. Good job. JB, but he sees used EV batteries as the lowest form of long duration energy storage, and that's interesting, yeah, and I, I'm, I don't, I think he's right, so I'll just stay there. I don't know how to say, like, a more refined, cooler thing right now, but the volumes of car batteries that are going to be manufactured and deployed will be 10x No, not 990 X. You know, the grid is going to be 5% of the batteries we deploy. So it'll be 20x sorry, not 90x so 5% will be grid. 95% will be car, and a third, a half, a quarter, some large, percent of these car batteries are going to be just fine when they leave the car I'm driving.
• 30:06
  John Weaver: I have my car, my Hyundai IONIQ five. We're at like, 55,000 miles. My battery capacity is about 98% 96% of its original Yeah. And I fast charge that thing every single time, like I rarely get a nice, slow charge, and it's lasting forever. These Tesla batteries, they're at, like, half a million miles at 90% the car is going to melt away before the battery goes bad. So if this guy can figure out how to manage these, and somebody on Blue Blue Sky said his biggest fear were failures?
• 30:41
  John Weaver: How are they failures going to be managed? Are they going to be individual failures? Will they be fires? What? What are the control systems? That's what his worry was. And I think, I think JB smart enough to be paying attention to every little component and using the electronics and and knowing these systems. And, yeah, yeah, I, I believe in the concept without a doubt, reuse, there's there's repair, reuse, recycle, something like that, and and no reduce, reuse, recycle. So, you know, reduce. We're Americans, we don't know how to reduce, but in this case, we might reuse.
• 31:19
  John Weaver: And so I'm cool. I'm cool with that. I'm happy.
• 31:23
  Tim Montague: Yeah, so here's the second story, also in Canary media, that Julian Spector wrote, Redwood mature has built record grid storage project using old EV batteries. It's about the same thing, the same story, but it talks more about this micro grid. So Redwood is working with a data center developer called Crusoe. So just like Robinson, Crusoe, okay, Google them. They are doing a bunch of massive data centers in Texas, in Wyoming, and some of these data centers are slotted to become 10 gigawatt data centers, but they build a one megawatt data center with Redwood that is off grid. It has 63 megawatt hours of used EV batteries. Okay, you see them here covered with plastic to keep the dust off them. This is the high desert near Lake Tahoe, and a 12 megawatt solar farm.
• 32:21
  Tim Montague: And the batteries apparently can give this data center like five and a half hours of pure off grid operation. Now I don't know if they have another backup data source, energy source, or if it's all battery and solar. That question is TBD, but this feels John like a in a way, a new era is starting, and that is the era of off grid data centers. And it's important because, well, our data center usage is exploding because society has realized that we can make money with AI and make our businesses more efficient. And so there's this rush into AI, and it's all about infrastructure. You need data centers that are full of these NVIDIA GPUs, right? That is the bleeding edge is the Nvidia GPU data center and their energy hogs, but if you build them off grid, you can actually get them online faster with solar batteries, and they're including gas generators oftentimes on site. So it's a both and, and I don't know that we're going to reduce our carbon footprint by doing this, because there's so many data centers that are getting built, but it is going to be a boon for solar and battery professionals. So just if you're listening to this, just know that micro grids are the future, and they're they're both and right? You're connected to the grid one moment, and then you're disconnected in your micro grid at the next moment, or they're completely off grid. But the hybrid is quite common. Where they're they're grid tied some of the time, and then they're micro gridded some of the time.
• 34:06
  Tim Montague: And this is a very unique value stack that you can do at scale now, right at at hundreds of megawatts, and soon gigawatts.
• 34:17
  Tim Montague: And it's, I just think it's very exciting.
• 34:25
  John Weaver: I'm hesitant to jump on the off grid train. What I what may occur those that they may in order to get their machines up and running, because they just want to get it built to get going, is go off grid first and say, Okay, we got 100 megawatt hour battery. Got 100 megawatt of solar, we can run our system at 80% capacity, and we'll just wait for the grid to come to us, and it'll get there in a year or five, and then we'll add a new gas generator when we finally get one delivered to us. But maybe, maybe, I mean, we'll see. It's just, it's so big to do these data centers, it's hard for me to believe, but who knows. Yeah,
• 35:10
  Tim Montague: yeah, one of the projects, I think it was in Wyoming, the data center, was going to consume more electricity than the entire state otherwise. And it's, and I think that's a one gigawatt phase one, and that's scaling up to 10 gigawatts of load. So they measure data centers in gigawatts generally. I mean, this is a smaller one in the in the story about redwood. But do you want to wrap up with a story about solar panel technology? Or should we call it a day?
• 35:40
  John Weaver: Should we do solar panel tech or China exporting.
• 35:45
  John Weaver: Let's do, uh, let's do 20. Let's do the ICO module, and then we'll do because that one, I think is pretty cool. It's got, it's got a good little headline that I like. I want to talk about, I go a little, just a tiny bit, one day I want to buy a module from I've never actually seen one of their products or sale, I expect them to be expensive.
• 36:04
  Tim Montague: I go into upgraded infinite series, featuring first ever 500 watt solar module under two meters squared. So if you bought a solar module, a 500 watt module from, you know, Canadian solar, what would how many meters squared is that?
• 36:23
  John Weaver: Well, it's probably 2.4 it's probably, it's probably a commercial sized panel from two years ago, okay? Because nowadays the standard commercial panel is probably 570, 600 from, from, from a Canadian solar type. This is a residential panel. Okay, that's what's cool about this. Or a small business,
• 36:46
  Tim Montague: you don't see a lot of 500 watt residential panels. I don't
• 36:49
  John Weaver: think you see any.
• 36:49
  John Weaver: I think this might be the first.
• 36:53
  John Weaver: I think the highest I've seen is 470 ish. And when I talk residential, residential is a panel that's below 50 pounds, so that one person can move it on a small, inconvenient place, yeah, and that's kind of the OSHA regulation is under 50 pounds.
• 37:10
  John Weaver: So a 50 pound module and and the the efficiency is high, the efficiency is over 25% so that's actually the next one I'd love to just show for a quick second is that there's a series of modules that are now above 800 watts, large commercial, but a whole bunch of modules that are above 25% efficiency. I've never seen one, I've never touched one, never smelled one in real life, so I think they're real but there's 17 modules, and this is one of them, and this Ico brand, they've made a decision that they're not going to sell for cheap. They're going to sell for value. They're taking the Sun Power road from way back in the day when sun power modules were like $1 a watt, and everyone else was 60 cents, and that's part of the reason sun power went out
• 37:59
  Tim Montague: of business. Yeah.
• 37:59
  Tim Montague: So this table's this table's on screen now five companies surpass 800 watt solar, B PV module power ranking, July 2025
• 38:10
  Unknown: and who is that?
• 38:15
  Tim Montague: 830 watts? 840 watts is the number one. That's from Trina. And then it goes down to 745 the low end is 745 and it gives the dimensions. So we could do the we could do the area calculation, but
• 38:35
  John Weaver: yeah, so these were all modules in the 2223 except for those tandem modules, like the first two are tandem. The Ico one isn't a tandem. The fifth one is a perovskite, but the top two are very high efficiency modules. We're talking like 26 27% because those are next gen, they're not really available, but they'll be here soon. What is those? What
• 38:58
  Tim Montague: is the ICOs ABC technology, though I've never heard of that,
• 39:02
  John Weaver: back contact. Oh, so this is this, yeah, it's just back contact, like sun power, right? Absolutely, Sun Power.
• 39:11
  John Weaver: It's what long G is moving toward, and a lot of their stuff, okay, so ultra high efficiency. And the back side, the interconnects are made out of copper, yeah, instead of silver. So they save good money.
• 39:20
  John Weaver: That's one of the benefits of this product. So it's it's a premium product that is cost effective in some aspects of it, which is great. So I want to buy an Ico module at some point. I went to one of their parties when I was in Munich, and the room was giant. They had one of these cool beer halls, and, oh, it's awesome. Just good social event to talk to people. Met some distributors from Italy, and I thought that was pretty
• 39:47
  Tim Montague: neat. I go south.
• 39:47
  Tim Montague: Japanese is Japanese. I'm pretty certain It's Chinese, Chinese,
• 39:52
  John Weaver: okay, yes, yes. I mean, I don't know.
• 39:54
  Tim Montague: Well Well done on them for making a Chinese name that sounds like Japanese.
• 40:00
  John Weaver: Well done for making a 25% module. That's what I like. So what
• 40:06
  Tim Montague: do you mean a 25% module? 25% efficiency? Oh, 25% efficiency. Yeah, good on them.
• 40:11
  Tim Montague: That's, that's, that's very cool.
• 40:15
  John Weaver: Well, check out the very next link this. We do this one for the last one, super fast. Right below it, solar, B global, that's 17 project products that are above 25% efficiency. Now it goes on that list a couple times. Okay? This is a list of cut of hardware that'd be cool to install one day, just to have you know efficiency. I like efficiency.
• 40:37
  Tim Montague: Okay, 17 products from 14 companies achieve over 25% efficiency. Solar, beef, PV, module efficiency ranking, July 2025 are these solar B dudes for real?
• 40:49
  John Weaver: Yeah, absolutely.
• 40:49
  John Weaver: It's good site. They don't do depth research, but they find that good data. Some of their articles are a little longer, but look at the top 678, modules. 26, 30% see the top one from Trina, 30% Tim holy, something. Tim, it's
• 41:06
  Tim Montague: coming. But that's tandem.
• 41:10
  John Weaver: That's a tandem perovskite. Yes, sir, yes, sir.
• 41:13
  John Weaver: Now you can see, is Iko even on this list? Yeah, Ico solar number 14. That's that 25% Yeah.
• 41:17
  John Weaver: This is cool, man. A lot of these models aren't available.
• 41:23
  John Weaver: You know, HBC from long G that's one of the most efficient normal that's module number eight.
• 41:31
  John Weaver: That's the most efficient normal model module in the world is that it's a, it's a back contact, h, i, b, c, I don't know what their h i stands for, but it's just. Coolest. This is the coolest list. This is the race car list. Tim,
• 41:46
  Tim Montague: yeah, for sure, and you see some of the big players here, though, the JA solars, Trina Solar, Ginko solar, longI and Trina um.
• 41:57
  John Weaver: GCL,
• 41:59
  Tim Montague: hongway. GCL, yeah. GCL, number two, oh, yeah, GCL there, yeah, okay. Um, I'm less familiar with tongway, but
• 42:11
  John Weaver: they're big. They started at the other end, and they've moved upstream. So they started as or that downstream, pardon. They started as one of the largest makers of polysilicon or cells or wafers, one of those three and and now they own the whole supply chain, from Poly through wafer cells, modules probably project development as well, because big name, lots going on too.
• 42:37
  Tim Montague: Well. You're always you're always good for a little PV technology update.
• 42:39
  Tim Montague: John, so I appreciate that going
• 42:45
  John Weaver: about it particularly, I didn't have one one of the prior weeks. We didn't have much PV update I'd had to make. I think it might perovskite fix that was necessary. Yeah.
• 42:55
  Tim Montague: So we're back on August 22 if all is well. And we're doing this every other week at noon, Central, 1pm Eastern, check us out on cleanpowerhour.com. And YouTube.
• 43:10
  Tim Montague: John, how can our listeners find you?
• 43:14
  John Weaver: Commercialsolarguy.com, that's the best way to get us. Got a website, got a contact form. You can call us 5084999, sun. That's cool way. Now about Tim, are you going to
• 43:26
  Tim Montague: re plus in Vegas, going to Vegas, baby? Heck yeah.
• 43:30
  Tim Montague: All
• 43:30
  John Weaver: right. Do we want to do a show from Vegas? Oh, we
• 43:34
  Tim Montague: can totally do we can totally do it. We may be in the press. We may be in the press room, but, but, well, yeah, but, yeah, we can. We can do a show from Vegas. I'm all about
• 43:47
  John Weaver: that. I got my press pass. I hope you do too.
• 43:50
  John Weaver: So, you
• 43:51
  Tim Montague: know, I haven't got my press pass yet. I need to get on that.
• 43:54
  John Weaver: Yeah, Tim Morris, Tim Morris said, Are you plus he's a guy,
• 43:58
  Tim Montague: yep, for sure.
• 43:58
  Tim Montague: Alright, well, we'll see you in Vegas, but we're going to be back here before that. So we'll be back, yes, the week before Vegas, or two weeks before Vegas. And with that, I'll say, let's grow solar and storage.
• 44:12
  Tim Montague: I'm Tim Montague. Have a great day. You.