Latest / Clean Power Hour / Clean Power Hour LIVE feat. Sean White, Master PV Trainer | Aug. 10, 2023

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Clean Power Hour LIVE feat. Sean White, Master PV Trainer | Aug. 10, 2023 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:50
  Tim Montague: Welcome to the Clean Power Hour live. I'm Tim Montague. Your host Today is August 10 2023. We're here in Boulder, Colorado, at the ACES solar 2023 conference with Sean White, our special guest today.
• 1:02
  Tim Montague: Welcome to the show, John Weaver, my commercial solar guy and my co host.
• 1:11
  John Weaver: Hey, Timothy, thanks for all the hard work you guys are doing to set this up remotely. That's pretty cool that you're in Colorado. Great.
• 1:17
  John Weaver: Great volumes of solar out there. So good place to be.
• 1:23
  Tim Montague: Yeah, for anyone who doesn't know this. Colorado is a real thought leader in the renewable energy industry. It was an early adopter. There's a lot of programmes educationally a lot of organisations we're we're here to conference for ACES, the American Solar Energy Society, but there's also cosa the Colorado solar and storage Association. There's also cress, the Colorado Renewable Energy Society, I think is the name of that organisation. So many storied organisations, Asus dates back to 1954, Sean and forbury Speaking of Sean, welcome to the show, Sean White.
• 1:58
  Sean White: Yeah, thanks a lot, Sam and John, commercial solar guy, it's great to be here with you guys. Great to be in Boulder on a nice sunny day with not too much atmosphere in the way of the solar arrays here. So we're maybe peeking out at over 1000 watts per square metre today, which is pretty exciting.
• 2:18
  John Weaver: Today, like it's Sorry, I'm gonna interrupt you.
• 2:20
  John Weaver: I really love anybody who's conversation basis starts with the watts per metre squared, because that means you're a proper solar professional. So Sean? Yeah, there we go. That's what
• 2:30
  Sean White: it's all about, you know, it was kind of Governor polis was days ago, given a little bit of a talk. And he said solar module. I never heard of a actual real politician saying the word solar module, you know, because they're always saying solar panels. So this guy's educated.
• 2:48
  John Weaver: The guy No, this is,
• 2:50
  Sean White: this is a great solar place. love being here.
• 2:55
  Sean White: Nice. Mountains. I'm looking at a rocky mountain right now. So
• 2:59
  John Weaver: and you guys are now nearby, the soon to be Meyer burger, solar cell facility.
• 3:03
  John Weaver: That's just going to be south of where you guys are in Colorado city, I believe is that I think is where it's going to be old Intel facility if there's a Colorado city. But there's I've just been watching and you're also really close to Golden Colorado, of course, which is the home of inro. So it's, you're just in one of the most beautiful places on Earth, man.
• 3:28
  John Weaver: Good. Yeah,
• 3:30
  Sean White: yeah. Yeah, Tim has a booth right next to the N rail booth. And so it's pretty cool to see all the n rail stuff coming on. And we had actually a really awesome speaker named Peter Green. And I think he's the Deputy Director for N rail.
• 3:44
  Sean White: And he was given out all these great statistics about how fast the solar industry is growing.
• 3:48
  Sean White: And when we're gonna get up to 100% renewables and things about like how it would be great if we had transmission lines all the way across the country, but we don't. So that will require more nuclear power, according to, you know, the way that he looks at things. But I want to look, apparently, all of these asis talks are posted online, or will be posted online. If they aren't already. It's in the process.
• 4:13
  Sean White: And then I'm going to go back and I'm going to watch that one and learn some neat stuff from all the smartest people in the world in rail. Okay. And that's the National Renewable Energy labs. In fact, there's, I believe, it's right now, I think there's a tour to enrol for people at the conference. So they can go check it out. I've been there a couple of times, doing B, you know, it's like pre COVID, doing some national electrical code writing workshops. Or, you know, we come up with new things for the code.
• 4:42
  Sean White: So that it was kind of fun to see this really fancy billion dollar Lab, which probably more of a billion dollars, and it was put together originally by Jimmy Carter, we got to say his name while he's still around. And, and Jimmy Carter called it the Solar Energy Research Institute.
• 5:05
  Sean White: And then the guy who was after him, I can't remember his name just kidding. But he he kind of changed it around a little bit and took away some of the funding and, and and changed it to Israel, which is fine with me. That's a nice acronym National Renewable Energy Lab. I got PVWatts all that good stuff over there.
• 5:25
  Tim Montague: Yeah, we're very lucky to have unreal. If you're not familiar with Unreal, check it out National Renewable Energy Laboratory. One of the cool things I learned is that they're not actually part of the DOD.
• 5:34
  Tim Montague: They are a subcontractor. So it's a semi private institution.
• 5:39
  Tim Montague: I always thought it was part of the DoD but it is not
• 5:46
  John Weaver: something new.
• 5:46
  Tim Montague: Did you know that John,
• 5:48
  Sean White: I don't know that. I know. It's got a.gov App. for it, so it's
• 5:51
  Tim Montague: Yeah. Yeah, they pretend to be part of the government, but they're not.
• 5:56
  Sean White: I can, I'd like to get myself a.gov And, you know, maybe we could do clean power our.gov out there.
• 6:05
  Tim Montague: The Governator?
• 6:08
  Sean White: Yeah, we yeah, we had one of those over there. And over in California, behind the California Solar Initiative, you know, muscling in all this renewable energy. So.
• 6:19
  Tim Montague: So I want to, I want to talk about the myths of the energy transition today with you, Sean, because you're so knowledgeable about solar and storage. And as, as John and I are, as well. But, you know, one of the myths is that we don't have enough precious materials, like copper or silver, or lithium to make enough solar panels, wind turbines and batteries to clean the grid and decarbonize the economy. And even I run into energy professionals, clean energy professionals who have heard this myth so many times that they've incorporated it into their story. And it's just plain wrong. We have credible evidence, and Chris nelder has broken this down on his podcast, the energy transition show. If you're not familiar with that, check that out energytransitionshow.com wonderful podcast, it is behind a paywall, but you can listen to the first 20 minutes of all those episodes for free. And it's, I don't know, it's like $6 a month. So it's a very reasonable fee to join Chris's podcast. But what do you gentlemen have to say, when you hear that criticism that we just aren't going to have enough stuff here on planet Earth, to make the clean energy transition?
• 7:41
  Sean White: You know, I know that some people out there listen to Rush Limbaugh and you know, you can get your information from one source or you can get your information from another source. And according to some of these people, even like a solar module will never pay for itself. I've heard that one and it and that, you know, it's like a solar module will never make as much energy as it took to make it.
• 8:01
  Sean White: And that might be true, if you don't ever use the solar module, or it's like on the Sun box where nobody uses it, something like that. But for the solar that we're doing, where we have a terawatt of it in the world, it's takes I don't know, maybe about a year to compensate, you know, make the energy that it took to make a solar system or solar modules, depending on your sources, and all that kind of stuff. And so the systems, you know, they're gonna go for a long time, a lot of people are worried all worried about recycling. And if you want to know where to recycle your solar modules just given to me because I'll go put them up and I'll put another 30 years on him. And then somebody else could do that. After that. I have solar modules that have been working since the 80s. So the good old arco solar modules that were out of the Carrizo plains, which is now a really big solar place, too, I think I flew over it the other day. We have tonnes of solar there. And so it's another thing that too, that just another hobby of mine is geopolitics. And so listening to how everything works, and there's this guy that I kind of like listening to, his name's Peter Zion, and he's actually out of Colorado, he's out there, like doing some hike. And then he puts in, he makes these crazy statements, that sounds like he got his information from Rush Limbaugh saying that solar is never going to make the energy that it took to make it or something like that. And it kind of just throws me off. So if you wanted to, you know, get the, the exact data of what it's going to be, you can look to look to end rail, lithium, there's tonnes of lithium in the world, we're not going to run out of lithium, and lithium is what you make lithium ion batteries. Most of what's going on in a lithium ion battery is what we're using. We're not using like lithium metal batteries with a lithium metal anode is it's it's just lithium ions, it's more nickel than lithium, they maybe they should call them a nickel battery. And if you want to get a bunch of nickels, just like melt a bunch of nickels, you know, in fact, I've heard that you can if you melt it a whole million dollars with a nickels you know, like our five cent coin, you get $2 million for a million dollars worth a nickel. So they're there. That's an idea for somebody who is good at melting things, like our like some of our ancestors did, you know melting metal and all that stuff. So I believe that you have something like in the ground that lithium reserves, something like enough to get 10 billion Nissan LEAFs, and that's plenty. And then after that, what you can do is you can go into the, into the sea, like there's lithium and seawater, there's tonnes of lithium, it's the third element on the periodic table. It's the lightest metal. And you know, first in the beginning, there was hydrogen, then there was helium, and then there was lithium, and that's the version of the Old Testament that I read. And so that was right after the that was right after the Big Bang. No, sorry. I make some jokes that sometimes people don't think I'm funny. So I apologise.
• 10:57
  John Weaver: We like those types of jokes on the Clean Power Hour. Okay, yeah, my Tim, my biggest response when people say, Hey, we're not gonna have enough is that before I was born, people were saying we'd run out of oil in the 70s. Then after I was born, they were saying we've run out of oils in the 80s and the 90s. And the aughts and the teens, right. And my personal opinion is that we will never run out of oil, for the same reason of that other phrase, which I really like the Stone Age didn't end, due to lack of stones, it was advanced technology that left the stones in the ground. And we're probably going to have oil seeping up out of the ground for the rest of human existence that we will soon see as valueless because we're going to come up with new technologies, which will leave this archaic burning of goods in the ground. And like Sean said, lithium is, you know, the third most maybe still the third most abundant item in the universe. It's very reactive. So who knows how much is left. But we also don't even have to worry about lithium necessarily.
• 12:03
  John Weaver: There's now sodium batteries, there's flow batteries, there's, there's recycling of these batteries, the batteries are so valuable, that they don't go to get recycled, or they don't go to the garbage. Because people are literally bidding on old car batteries, they're worth so much. So I lean towards Sean's answer if we're not going to run out of stuff where we got plenty. And if we ever get to the point where we've manufactured so much of the Earth's surface, we're probably and this is where we start getting into our fun stuff, Tim, we're probably going to be mining asteroids in space and doing three 3d robotic printing, or something cool like that.
• 12:44
  John Weaver: Because we've have grown so much as a species. So I've, we got plenty of goods. So I
• 12:51
  Tim Montague: found the reference, it's episode 194 of the energy transition show called materials requirements of the transition and he has a guest on the show called Zeke house, Father house father, ha us father, and Zeke and company wrote an article called future demands for electricity for electricity generation materials under different general materials under different climate mitigation scenarios published in joule volume seven January 27 2023. He also also references Dave Roberts podcast or article sorry, in carry media, February 4 2023, what you need to know about minerals, and the clean energy transition. And so these dudes analysed 17 key elements for clean energy generation materials, and concluded that lo and behold, we have plenty. So and this is a jewel is a legit peer reviewed scientific journal, very credible. And there's a bunch of other references there on this on this landing page. So just check that out. And I love this myth, but it is has been completely debunked. So if you're an energy professional, or a clean energy professional, much less, do not let this myth come out of your mouth because it is not true. There's a couple other myths, though, that we need to address here, gentlemen, and you, you you have already referred to one of those, and that is the fossil fuel myth.
• 14:21
  Tim Montague: There's a myth that we can't make the energy transition without fossil fuels. And, you know, Sean was talking about a solar panel, for example, pays for itself energetically in a couple of years. And in fact, we now have the technology to make solar panels with pure electricity from photons from the sun. So what do you gents have to say about this myth about the need for fossil fuels in order to run a clean economy?
• 14:52
  Sean White: You know, I was thinking about going taken one step back to because John got me all excited when he was when he mentioned the Stone Age, and we're in Boulder, you know, and I really liked
• 15:03
  Tim Montague: there are lots of rocks here.
• 15:05
  Sean White: And then so you're looking at those stones and what are they made out of silicon and oxygen and a couple other elements like that iron in there for the lithium iron batteries, lithium iron phosphate LFP. And, and so all we really need to do is to refine that silicon is to get our DC arc furnaces from PV.
• 15:26
  Sean White: From that we get out of these stones from the Stone Age that we're still in maybe we could say and then and then we we vaporise the rock with that as DC arcs just like they can do with coal power. And then we are making solar modules. You know, and we could do that here on Earth. We could do it on the moon. And there's a lot of talk actually in the space community about doing stuff on out on the moon, you know if we if we we get there because it's made out of the same thing as the Earth is made out of second most abundant element in the Earth's crust is silicon. And so that's just pretty much a stone that it's coming out of there. But yeah, after after what iron, oxygen actually breathe. So oxygen is very reactive and it oxidises things and silicones very reactive to so pure silicon doesn't exist on Earth until we refine it. And then we get it to be seven nines pure, that's 99.99999% pure silicon. And then that makes computer chips that makes solar cells. And it's super abundant. It would be we have plenty, we could recover the earth Earth many times over with solar cells. So that would look sort of like the Death Star, though not too pleasant.
• 16:42
  Sean White: I'd rather go hiking in Boulder.
• 16:45
  Tim Montague: Well, that is my concern that we're going to create an AI that wants to go intergalactic. And it's just going to cover the earth in solar cells, and then we won't have any food or drink. But John, what do you say about fossil fuels and their their need relative to running a society on wind, solar and batteries?
• 17:06
  John Weaver: Well, we do need them for the transition, because we need energy for the transition. However, once the transition occurs, we probably won't need them for energy's purpose, we could use him as a great backup source during the late transition, for say, low capacity factor peaker plants is one item, where we use gas plants and their current status where they are only used from like three to 10% of the year.
• 17:37
  John Weaver: And in places like Minnesota, or Tim, where you are in the Great North Central. Where, you know, there can be some doldrums during the wintertime when solar is low, before we say winter size, or solar. So in the late transition, we probably will still need gas. But then after that, we're not going to need it. There's multiple layers where we could remove these high risk moments, we could do transmission. If we do transmission, we fix a whole bunch. However, we might only do a third of the transmission we need or half of it or we might not do say in the US and national HVDC network. If we don't do that, then guess what's going to come in batteries. And we're going to be inefficient relative to transmission. But we can manufacture batteries, because we are expert manufacturers as a species. And it'd be unfortunate if we do this many batteries, but I feel like it'll win. And it'll still work. You know, Each place has plenty of sun, plenty of wind, I've seen analyses that said we have enough land surrounding every large population centre to do solar to meet their basic needs. So if we're forced, because we choose, that's a choose Word, we choose not to do HVDC, then we'll figure it out with batteries. And we might still use oil though. I mean, oil is a useful material. We make tonnes and tonnes of things of it. But we just might not burn it. And we can make the manufacture of products from oil emission free by capturing it or you know, sometimes when the oil breaks down, it keeps the material in there and the co2 in there. So I critique on energy standpoint, we're going to need it.
• 19:22
  Tim Montague: The critique that I that I heard recently that really irked me was well look, even the back sheet on a solar panel is made of plastic. And that is true that today, for a mono facial solar panel, the back sheets are often made of plastic. But tomorrow, we're going to use glass on glass and glass and glass is taking the industry by storm. And all solar panels are going to be by facial in within a couple of years I predict. And even some of those major manufacturers are moving away from mono facial completely right.
• 19:55
  Sean White: So we had Peter Green from the deputy director of Israel here and he had some pretty neat terms. I remember one of them was the inverter grid. But another one was he was talking about electrons to molecules. And so they can take hydrogen, which you can make with electrolysis. And you can turn that into all kinds of different petrochemicals by combining it with co2 Taking co2 out of the atmosphere. You can make aeroplane fuel, you can make plastic and so you can make back sheets so you can do the whole thing. And I think that we could get along just fine without having any gas. If I was just in Alaska, I used to live there. And there's all these people living out there for 20 years. And most of them just figured out how to do it themselves. And they have they live off of pure solar energy and they have some wind turbines up there to get them through December and stuff like that. So it's totally possible. I mean, if these people can do it with that old technology and Um, I kind of one time I like kind of ran some numbers and tried to figure it out like, what does it take out for one person like 10 kilowatts, 20 kilowatts of PV something like that. So what if everybody in the world installed 20 kilowatts? How long does it take a person to instal 20 kilowatts? What if the whole world took a year off? And just and and then did the transition?
• 21:12
  Sean White: That would be kind of the equivalent of what it would take? And so I'm kind of of the opinion that, yeah, humans are smart, we have we came up with people like Einstein, and we could figure this thing out, we could engineer it out. It just takes the will. And we've no problem, we got it.
• 21:32
  Tim Montague: That's a very good point, John, that we can just make artificial, so to speak, right? Plastics, from co2 directly capturing it from the atmosphere?
• 21:42
  John Weaver: Well, you know, this comment that you just brought onto the screen. Tim,
• 21:46
  Tim Montague: Christopher, Sylvia, thank you for the comment. That's one of my favourite responses as well, let's save it. Right.
• 21:52
  John Weaver: And, and with that response, though, my my response with that is, I don't really care if we use oil for stuff, the gold oil in and of itself isn't bad. Burning of oil, and its emissions going into the atmosphere, causing the greenhouse effect is the issue, oil and in this in and of itself, whatever, you know, it's not it's toxic to touch and all kinds of stuff. So you don't want to like bathe in it. But it's not oil isn't bad. It's the burning of oil. So if somebody says, John, your back sheets made from plastic, I'm like, Yeah, who cares? You're missing the point, my friend, pay attention to the real game. It's not about oil, it's not about gas, it's about releasing it into the atmosphere. So if we take some plastic, and we take some oil, and we throw it through the plastic machines and and outputs plastic, great, as long as we did that work using electricity that's clean, and we didn't allow the emissions from the oil breaking down to escape.
• 22:54
  John Weaver: That's what matters. So. So yeah, 10. If we have glass glass by facial modules, great. We don't have to worry about the fact sheet. But we still got junction boxes that are probably made out plastic, we still got copper wires that had an outer UV protective clay layer that's made out of plastic. Wonderful.
• 23:11
  John Weaver: Make it do it, like Chris Christopher said, just don't waste it burning, it uses oil for something useful medical supplies, whatever. So those people are just missing the argument that they're not even in the same playing field. We got to recognise that sometimes.
• 23:28
  Tim Montague: So the other the other criticism, or the other myth that I want to talk about is that we don't have the time money, or manpower or human power to make the energy transition and achieve a net zero economy. I will point our listeners to Peter for kowski.com. Okay, Peter is a scientist and engineer, and a serial entrepreneur. He's an AI scientist and an AI entrepreneur, trained astrophysicist. He has a wonderful book called Climate restoration. Peter is going to be coming on the show in the next month or so. And the website is Peter, the kowski, FYI, EKOWSK y.com. And he what he what he did is a first principles analysis. So he made a huge list of all the potential solutions to the climate crisis, how do we take carbon out of the economy and then suck it out of the atmosphere because there's a trillion tonnes of co2 pollution in the atmosphere from industrialization. And he concluded that there are four simple solutions and the price tag is only a billion dollars a year now we have a $20 trillion economy. And Elon Musk, his personal wealth is something like $200 billion. So one billionaire amongst us, and there's now I think, over a dozen billionaires on earth could completely I hope so.
• 25:52
  John Weaver: Tim, Tim hundreds, there's hundreds I think we're like 400 billionaires. Oh, wow.
• 25:54
  John Weaver: Hundreds of billionaires. Yeah.
• 25:59
  Tim Montague: So what do you what do you just have to say to this, this meant that we don't have the time, money or talent basically to make the energy transition?
• 26:09
  Sean White: Yeah, a billion dollars a year sounds pretty cheap to offset that. But one of the I this morning, I was on LinkedIn, and I saw somebody had a picture of like waves in the ocean that were plastic that cut you couldn't see the water, you could just see the plastic it was somewhere down in South America. And so we got to take that carbon that's in the plastic or wherever it is, could even be woodchips and stick it down in those oil wells back where we took it out from where we stole it from the dinosaurs.
• 26:36
  Sean White: From the you know, from the dinosaur burials. I'm just kidding. You know, it's mostly plant So, but that, you know, what are we going to do with that co2 There is just plain old chemistry. Humans are smart, we just got to do that chemistry and put that co2 Someplace besides the atmosphere. And so co2 could be like anything like, you know, carbon based life, wood, wood, biomass, whatever, and make it so it doesn't go back into the air. So like we look at the back sheet of PV module, if we don't let it go back into the air, that's great.
• 27:10
  Sean White: We don't want it to go into the ocean is, you know, burying it will somehow it seep out or decomposing it? What will happen with that, that, that those are all things that we can solve?
• 27:22
  Sean White: You know?
• 27:25
  John Weaver: Yeah, I mean, that, that just seems like somebody's throwing up every single argument they want him. We don't have enough time. Well, you know, what, if we don't do it, we're gonna die. So there's that we don't have enough money?
• 27:41
  John Weaver: Well, I mean, I last I saw a document the other day from the World Bank that says we have$100 trillion global GDP. I've seen numbers saying it might cost like $60 trillion to completely upgrade the global system. So are you saying that we have enough money that we can make it in like Q one, two, and three, and then have some leftover, like an extra $15 trillion in q3. And then q4 is all for Christmas presents? You know, we got money, talent, listen to him, we have you. We have Sean, that's all we need.
• 28:13
  John Weaver: We're good now.
• 28:17
  Sean White: So solar guy and the commercial solar, yeah.
• 28:20
  John Weaver: And then, you know, and people, you know, so all of that is just somebody just throwing spitballs at the wall, and we built a global, we, we can manufacture so much stuff, we're like so good at it, that it's bad for us. We've now gone from people saying, Oh, you guys will never be able to make enough solar panels to you guys are making too many solar panels. And same things about to happen with batteries. I mean, we're in the same curve, downward and price upward and capacity. These are boring people don't hang out with them anymore.
• 28:54
  Tim Montague: So the the the element of this myth that I am concerned about is that we don't have enough talent. And, and I, on some level concur, right, we do need hundreds of 1000s more people to come into the energy transition, they're coming. And Shan Shan is helping them with his NABCEP training. We need a million electricians, for example. That's just here in the United States. So if you're, if you're listening to this, and you're casting about for a career, run to the trades and run as fast as you can, because these are well paid jobs. And you can, you know, get started today with a high school education, you don't need to go to college. Now, if you want to go to college, that's great, too. And become an engineer or part of the finance team, or part of the sales team or the marketing or project management, etc. But we do need to get serious about bringing our young folks and I'm talking starting in middle school into the energy transition because a 12 year old becomes a 22 year old in just a decade. And here we are in 2023.
• 30:04
  Tim Montague: So in 2033, right where we need to build that. And and and I'm curious what you gents have to say about the talent pool for the energy transition.
• 30:15
  Sean White: I mean, that we do have something called low unemployment, which kind of means a labour shortage. So it gets a little bit tough. And then we have a lot of anti immigrant sentiment. And we have also it's, it's, it's kind of natural for if you were the only electrician in the world to keep it that way. Because you could charge a billion dollars an hour, you know, but we need to do things so we can get more people into these careers as fast as we can. And, and so like one thing that I tried to tell people to just kind of inspire them is like, Do you want a million dollars? Because this is how to be get a million dollars, you can get an A million dollars by being an electrician. So is that 100,000 A year for for 10 years? Is it 50,000 year for 20 years? Depends on where you live, and then you have higher cost of living where it's$100,000 a year. But it's totally doable. And and so these people just have to do it, you know, and it could be all kinds of there's just about every kind of career that you can think of.
• 31:15
  Sean White: I forget exactly what year it was. But also, once again, the guy Peter Green from Israel was giving some numbers I think it was something like 25% of people are going to be in renewable energy jobs coming up or was that or was it Larry Sherwood but there's that he's another guy. He's the president of Irek.
• 31:35
  Sean White: Remember which guy did the talk but there it's just there's so many jobs and in whatever job you Yeah, even if you don't know, you're, you're dealing with renewable energy, the UPS driver, I would just answering somebody's question on my class today as a UPS driver taking my solar class, on on heat spring.
• 31:53
  Sean White: And, and I was saying, You know what, you've already worked in the solar industry, because you probably delivered some MC connectors to a job site, you know, might not even have known it, right. So there's, there's just all kinds of jobs and careers out there, if people want to get into the industry, and they don't know where to start, they should probably start off with doing something like the NABCEP Associate exam, and by the time they've finished that, take a little class. And then they, you know, it's takes about equivalent of a week's time for the average person, and they can pass the Associate exam. And then they'll know where to go to next, and how to adopt their career if they're in finance, or whatever. I mean, I imagine the three of us just, you know, we're not, we're not 20, in our 20s, we probably had previous careers, you know, and so that so many people can adapt what they were doing to the renewable energy, and then this is also a time and the world where it's the first time we're doing the right thing is doing the thing that makes you the most money. So before people were doing all kinds of bad evil stuff, to make the most money.
• 33:00
  Sean White: And, and now, you want to make the most money, you know, you gotta get into renewable energy, you know, that's where it's at, you're going fossil fuels that that industry is dying out, if you didn't know it.
• 33:13
  John Weaver: So, so short, I saw that same stat that you saw recently, within the last couple of days, 25, to 30 to 33%, of all jobs that are coming in, like the next 10 years, or 20, or something like that, will be in the advanced energy, renewable energy world. I think, you know, we're putting out bids right now, for projects that are larger than one megawatt AC. And that's a grid connection, one megawatt, and these projects we have, and I'm still learning how to do this art. But in these projects within our Gantt chart, as we're developing our bids, our labour costs are now double what they were. And I'm ecstatic about the opportunity to pay people prevailing wage, and even to bring in the union guys now, because we can afford them in our projects, and our customers will pay it because they want the 30% tax credits from the IRA. And so I got to tell whoever decided to put that thing into the IRA. Yeah, it was scary at first to think that, oh, my gosh, we have to pay people 7080 90 bucks an hour to sling some solar modules. But now I'm kind of happy about it in reality, because we're going to get good people who want to, we're going to earn some good money, and we're going to take care of them. And that makes me feel like a real business owner, that I'm really taking care of my employees and the people working for me. And so I think that we're going to have a massive volume of electricians, and installation crews, mechanical installation crews, who are going to be very well paid, and very highly motivated to give their time to the solar industry. And, you know, that's, that's our million people, you know, we got 340 million in the US. That means we need less than 1/3 of 1%. To fully kick out the solar industry. Just in the US.
• 35:11
  John Weaver: I've heard there's like 10 million people in solar global here, three to 10 are five to 10. I won't get there. We just gotta pay him and be patient.
• 35:22
  John Weaver: We're growing, we're growing.
• 35:23
  Tim Montague: Another. Another wonderful resource for our listeners is a book by Eric PASI, fellow solar professional up in Minnesota, he wrote a book called Clean wave. And Eric does a kind of soup to nuts analysis of all the opportunities in solar wind and energy storage.
• 35:40
  Tim Montague: And so if you're, if you're looking for a career, it's a great overview of all the different types of careers that you could have. So check out clean wave, I interviewed him on the solar podcast, the previous previous version of the show, when I was at continental energy solutions, so you can catch that on YouTube on the continental YouTube channel. So in our last few minutes together here, I'm curious, Sean, you know, you're you're here giving some NABCEP training on solar batteries and the NEC what you know what, what is what is keeping you up at night, Sean, in terms of the energy transition, or are you very chill about the whole thing and you think everything is gonna go swimmingly?
• 36:35
  Sean White: Yeah, you know, I mean, what keeps me up at night is Well, I actually I tried to go to bed early and get up real early. There's too much work. I mean, you talk to anybody like some, it's hard to refer somebody to somebody, you know, to get solar on their roof, I get people, you know, asking me like, who should I get to do this. And the people that are doing it are so backed up, that they can't take on the work, or they promise. And then they, they're two years later it gets installed. I mean, you hear that story all the time. And other thing is just, there's some of these people out there, you know, selling solar that totally don't understand solar. So if people are going to buy solar, I recommend them to buy it from somebody that maybe has the NABCEP PV technical sales certification, it takes Tim Montague and Shaun White's class classes and heaps bring on TV technical sales to get certified. But, you know, we don't want to get a bad reputation. But I see that there's just there's, there's so much work. Have you ever met anybody or at least recently in the solar industry, that's not too busy, everybody's got too much work. One way is to people sometimes compensate with that is to raise their rates. There's just lots of money in this industry now, especially due to the incredible renewable act.
• 37:51
  Sean White: That's the IRA, otherwise known as the inflation Reduction Act, but it's the best thing ever that ever happened for solar.
• 37:57
  Sean White: And it's also really good for manufacturing, bringing manufacturing back to the US.
• 38:00
  Sean White: One of the things that I hate seeing is people that are getting abused, to say it nicely in different countries for doing work in the solar industry. And then us and other people in Australia and all over the place using solar modules, that if I, if I said, what I think it is, like what we used to, you know, when you make somebody work for free, I would probably get cancelled. So I'm not gonna say that right now. But it's, it's, it's terrible. Some of the ways that things are being made and bring it back to the US, there's, there's just tonnes of jobs, it's growing like crazy.
• 38:38
  Sean White: And if you're not already in the industry, we need your help. And if you are in the industry, be one of those people that jumps up, you know, use your brain. A lot of people start off installing, but in that you want to go beyond installing and start using your brain so you can work in an air conditioned office, that's where the air conditioning is paid, is powered by solar PV when, and those electrons are kind of evened out on the grid with energy storage.
• 39:08
  Tim Montague: I loved Peter greens comment or slide, you know, showing that the IRA has doubled the amount of solar and wind that we're going to instal by 2030. And that is what good government is for is leaning into these big transitions that society goes through. And yes, it's a combination of government and private industry, we all work in private industry. And but it's both and and the Biden administration has has done very right by the current and future generations of Americans. We see the the sheer volume of factories, this is battery factories, Evie factory solar panel factories that are now planned and under construction is just mind boggling. And that means high paying jobs, it means much easier access to these materials, right? We don't want to, we don't want to ship them across the Pacific Ocean if we don't have to. Right now China make 70% of all the solar modules in the world. And we can change that. But we have to get serious about that. And we have to incentivize companies to prop up factories in the US. I guess that's the question, are we going to have enough factory workers to make all those solar panels? That's one of the things that I am concerned about? And that's where immigrants come in?
• 40:38
  Tim Montague: Yeah, we have, we have 300 plus million Americans. But we are a country of immigrants and to be anti immigrant is to be anti American, in my opinion. We are built on and stand on the shoulders of being an immigrant nation. And we should welcome more capable willing workers to this country from other places.
• 41:04
  Sean White: Yep, I totally I totally
• 41:05
  John Weaver: agree with this.
• 41:08
  Sean White: Yeah, you know, we have robot technology and stuff, but we also have demographics, the baby boomers are retiring.
• 41:14
  Sean White: So it's, it's like, and that's like, you know, the biggest generation ever. And so we need replacement for that. And it's wages are high. People running a business are freaking out because they have to pay so much money for employees and things like that. And, and so, you know, and if you also if you look at people like you mentioned Elon Musk, he's an immigrant too. We want to bring all the smartest people in the world to be over here working for us and crew writing jobs.
• 41:43
  Sean White: And I've a lot of friends that do stuff like that, that are from different countries,
• 41:49
  Tim Montague: it really pains me that we have such a wonderful educational system, right. And we're training millions of students from Asia and Europe, and then sending them home, right? I'm saying, let's train them here, give them a good degree in engineering and retain them and make them citizens of the United States, not send them back. That brain drain is is very painful.
• 42:13
  Sean White: Yeah. And I see that, like, I live near Silicon Valley, and my girlfriend's in tech. And she was born in a different country and top of her class. And now she's over here and just got, you know, she's got US citizenship, she's been here most of her life. And I wanted to say one more thing, because earlier, I was beating up on oil companies really bad.
• 42:33
  Sean White: What companies are better in a better position to make this transition happen. So there, let's not call them oil companies, let's call them energy companies. And when instead of billing the field in these big old oil rigs out in the ocean, let's make big old wind turbines out in the ocean, instead of distilling fossil fuels. They're going to be putting together hydrogen and carbon dioxide and making other types of fuels that didn't that came from co2 in the air and, and hydrogen from h2o. And, and so there's just we just need to retool everything, and it's everything's there in place. And so it's going to happen. So we still need those energy companies. They just have to transition away from oil.
• 43:14
  Sean White: They're not bad people. I've done a lot of work for them.
• 43:17
  Sean White: There are a lot of my classes too.
• 43:26
  Tim Montague: All right. Well, we've got just a couple of minutes left, I want to thank you, Shaun White for joining us today. Here in Boulder, Colorado. I want to talk about upcoming events we have already plus happening in Vegas, all of us will be there hope you are to listeners, join us in Vegas, September 11th to 14 in Las Vegas. In October, I'll be going to mn sia up in the Twin Cities.
• 43:51
  Tim Montague: And then in November, I'll be going to Houston to energy storage North America A Reuters event I'm going to be moderating a shark tank on energy storage.
• 44:06
  Tim Montague: So excited for those events.
• 44:06
  Tim Montague: What are you guys looking forward to on your calendar?
• 44:11
  Sean White: Wow, I guess I'd have to look it up. I get to go home for two weeks I've been out I think it'll be five weeks that I have not been more home for more than a couple of days. And then I'm going to be catching up on my 2023 National Electrical Code. Videos for heat spring.
• 44:25
  Sean White: And then after that, I think I have a class for community college in New Jersey. And then on to more things like that. Of course, you said already plus there's going to be InterSolar.
• 44:37
  Sean White: In January, there's going to be Tennessee. And then you can find out. If you go to solarsean that solar S E A N.com. On the homepage there, I'm going to I have something set up for the Philippines. Probably going back to Washington DC to work for GRID Alternatives is totally awesome. And I was there last week. And and kind of
• 45:03
  Tim Montague: since you mentioned GRID Alternatives, Sean, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about GRID Alternatives.
• 45:08
  Sean White: So speaking to Jimmy Carter, he's he is affiliated with Habitat for Humanity and the Habitat for Humanity for solar is GRID Alternatives. And in fact, they even have a picture of Jimmy Carter working on a Grid Alternatives job. And, and so they do solar for low income people, I do a training that's based on a grant Washington DC for low income people. They they work with tribes and things like that.
• 45:37
  Sean White: They actually administer some programmes for the state of California for like multiple affordable housing. So people that live in apartments and things like that can get solar, which is kind of a big deal. So they're totally awesome. They have 10 different offices, you can sign up to 10 different offices throughout the United States. And you could go to the grid alternatives.org. And if you're in the right area, you can sign up to do some solar installing just like people do Habitat for Humanity. You could do GRID Alternatives, solar installers. And so that's how a lot of people get their hands on experience. I'm recommending them all the time. And they are i It's hard to say my favourite nonprofit because I'm actually on the board of a nonprofit myself, but they're my favourite nonprofit Asus is a nonprofit to their my other favourite nonprofit there and they all work together and they're just totally awesome. They have like great energy, great people.
• 46:31
  Sean White: Anybody that's ever worked at GRID Alternatives. I love them.
• 46:34
  Sean White: So what about you John?
• 46:39
  John Weaver: I think my favourite thing in Vegas, cuz it's Vegas this year for already plus, you know, commercial solar guys grown as a company. And as we're growing, I'm starting to be able to actually talk to some of these vendors better. And so it's gonna be about walking the floor as always, and just listening to people in a different way. So in a way that my company actually can use them. And so I think for me, it's going back to the basic beauty of the show, walk in the floor, seeing what's available, meeting some salespeople that you can learn hands on, have a handshake with that, when you follow up in six months, you, you have a face with them, because it's, it's the best, easiest way to meet buyers and sellers of hardware, or sellers of hardware, and services.
• 47:36
  John Weaver: Because it's hard, it's hard to find, you know, hardware, it's hard to find this hard to find that. And it takes time, if you got a nice long list, and you got a collection of business cards, which I really use, but if you if you have this list, it just helps. And so I've been thinking about this next one.
• 47:53
  John Weaver: And you know, I'll be there with PV magazine, writing some articles walking the floor, but the I'll be really paying attention this year to people who are making stuff so I can shake some hands and know some folks and
• 48:07
  Tim Montague: and for our listeners who are, you know, technology companies and manufacturers, or, or other types of energy companies? What are you looking for in a story?
• 48:19
  Tim Montague: What types of stories do you like to cover?
• 48:25
  John Weaver: We cover my goal, when I write stuff for PV magazine, USA, is to find articles that really educate our readers, and that have new data and new information. I'm not looking to just cover a press release, unless the project has some knowledge I can share with our readers. And because my goal is number one is to teach myself, so that I learned but and also, it's also to teach everybody who's reading and everybody who's paying attention. PV Magazine readers are very high percentage professionals, people like Sean, people like YouTube, people who know solar who are looking for knowledge. And so if somebody has a piece of hardware that's coming out, and they have good feature set, send it to us, if they finish a great project, and they want to show off how they financed it or, or the fact that they're good construction firm, send us the project with some images with some documentation on the finance tools. If you're a say, a developer, and you're looking for certain types of projects, tell us the projects you want. And then tell us some projects you've already signed and found that kind of fit within your niche. I want to put documents out that aren't just you know, entertaining reading articles. We're not where we're here to do business. So give us some meat so that we can educate our people. So we can link back to your website. So we can talk about like real solar knowledge, educational stuff, if you guys look at my Twitter account, it's really boring. I don't make any jokes. I don't do anything cool.
• 49:55
  John Weaver: I don't say anything funny. I just talk about solar. I talk about agricole tags. I talk about modules I talk about batteries. I talk about EVs and I specifically go for the meat of the articles, the stats, the hardware, the cost to the capacity. I know that sounds really mean to all the well meaning PR people and the executives. But to be honest, most of the quotes that you folks put in your PR articles are fluff. And I'm not we're not interested in fluff, give us some math, give us some data, give us some hardware, give us some gear that we can build, we can sell to our customers and show off. That's that's what I want.
• 50:36
  Tim Montague: So check out John's website commercialsolarguy.com Of course, you can find him on PV magazine as well. And Sean White can be found at solarsean.com Unless there's a better website for you, Sean.
• 50:49
  Sean White: That's a good one solarsean.com or heatspring.com You can find my classes there too.
• 50:53
  Tim Montague: Excellent. And then all of our content is at CleanPowerhour.com. We're dropping a pre recorded interview every Tuesday and this live on Thursdays which also then goes on to our YouTube and audio channels on Fridays. So please check out cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify. And most importantly, tell your friends about the show. We are growing the energy transition one podcast, one news roundup at a time. We'll be back next week. Thursdays at noon eastern most Thursdays of the year. So thank you all for being here. We do this for you. I'm Tim Montague. Let's grow solar and storage. Take care John and John.
• 51:38
  John Weaver: Let's grow