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The #1 Reason Data Centers Are Driving The NEXT BIG THING in Solar Energy · Clean Power Hour

• 0:50
  Tim Montague: Tim, welcome to the Clean Power Hour live. I'm Tim Montague, Today is June 13, 2025 and we are here to give you the latest and greatest in solar, wind and battery news with my co host, none other than the commercial solar guy. John Weaver, welcome to the show, John. Hey
• 1:09
  John Weaver: Tim. Thanks for inviting me, and it seems like your stream yard accounts pretty terrible, because your nice green color goes nicely with your blue eyes. Though
• 1:19
  Tim Montague: I kind of look like a ghost. Um, you look. I like it.
• 1:22
  John Weaver: Tim, you could, you could, like, float away, and there you go. So stream yard, Tim, needs help on the Clean Power Hour. It's got a
• 1:32
  Tim Montague: green Halo. I mean, I do have a green screen.
• 1:34
  Tim Montague: It's seeing the green screen.
• 1:34
  Tim Montague: Oh, it does. It really a lot around my hands. But anyway, life is good. John, it's good.
• 1:44
  Tim Montague: You know, some people are freaked out about what's going on in the United States, but, I mean, in our industry, there's a lot of stuff going on in the United States, but I'm talking about the solar industry. I just came off of being in Chicago at the Midwest solar Expo for two and a half days, and I've arrived at a place of it's all going to be good. It could be better or less good, but it's not going to be horrible. And so if they pass the bill that they're trying to pass the the you know, the big, great bill, the budget reconciliation bill, you know, it does reduce the solar industry by 46 Well, solar and wind by 46% between now and 2030 and that's a bad statistic.
• 2:32
  Tim Montague: It's not going to help us achieve the energy transition in a timely manner. But on the other the flip side of that is that sooner or later, we're going to have a 50% solarized grid. It's unstoppable. So just hang in there. I say ride on.
• 2:51
  Tim Montague: Give me the solar coaster right on,
• 2:54
  John Weaver: you know, then actually, that comment, that thought, actually leads into one of my articles that I wrote this week for PV mag. Um, last week, I was in New York City for the a core financial forum, the American Council on renewable energy cool for New York City, we had two days of people speaking and, and if you want to share one of the articles I wrote for PV, mag in the room for the for review viewers, that'd be cool. Oh, but yeah, you just got to scroll down that document a little bit. You'll see a core and, but the thing that I heard from the people speaking, and this, I think, kind of had an impression on me, is that the biggest driver right now, like a big driver, not the biggest, but a big driver right now, is more demand for energy.
• 3:43
  John Weaver: So there are, there's lots of people seeking more energy right now, it seems, and I think it's a little less than some of the headlines suggest, and Wall Street thinks it's a little less than some of the headlines will suggest, because there's lots of speculation. There's like, hundreds of gigawatts of demand of data centers, but only a 10th of that is going to come through, much like the interconnection queue, probably.
• 4:09
  John Weaver: But nonetheless, there still is growth, it seems. And this growth means that new capacity means to build be built. And everybody at the show was saying, listen, people just want capacity. They don't care where it comes from. They just want it and they want it now. And everybody's saying, listen, solar and storage is pretty dang cheap, irrelevant of tax credits, irrelevant of the import tariffs, it's still pretty dang cheap. And then the next layer is that solar and storage is the fastest to be deployed. Everybody kept saying that gas turbines had challenges. It might not last until, might not be getting deployed in new volume until the end of the decade. Like everything that's being installed through the end of the year is, like, accounted for and so. So, for instance, these two, Sandia and Jim from Invenergy, Jim Murphy from Invenergy, like, holy crap. And then EDP renewables like, so we just had, like, two awesome people to start off day two. And both of these people, if you read in this section, they're like, listen, more capacity is coming, and it's going to be solar and storage. It's going to be driven by solar and storage. And so from their perspectives, first off, they want to pound getting projects started right now. So if you're an EPC and you have resources, you might be able to sign some pretty quick contracts with some pretty big companies and start construction, just to make sure stuff is happening.
• 5:42
  John Weaver: And these two people who are leaders of some of the largest renewable companies on Earth. So we're like, Hey, this is happening. We're going forward.
• 5:53
  John Weaver: Yeah, we really would like to see the ITC stay. And no, we don't like this foreign require, foreign thing. And no, we don't like the 60 day start. And yes, we should have a construction start versus construction Finish, finish for the ITC law.
• 6:10
  John Weaver: But the passion, the belief that this is just going to go forward, that we're still going to be building utility scale solar and storage, and that it is the number one resource, was solid and these two, Sean and Taurus. So Taurus and Toland, Sean Toland from Copenhagen infrastructure partners, again, one of the world's largest investors in renewables. His perspective was twofold. He it was really nice to see he's like, first off, I've been in the US for a decade, and people on my team longer, and we've seen the US grow be a mature environment or mature renewables industry for a decade, and we've seen the solar coaster, and we've seen it in the country, and from tolan's perspective, we've seen it globally. And he said something really smart, because as a global investor, and you can see it right there, you have to have a broader perspective and realize that there are challenges everywhere, and we as Greenfield investors who are globally conscious.
• 7:14
  John Weaver: We're used to taking on these risks. And so he goes, You know what the US is rough and tumble right now, but that's just the nature of Earth and and we're okay with it. So this, this feeling of, I loved it, this feeling of effort. We're going through it, we're building it, and there's going to be challenges, and we're going to deal with it. Matched what you said to start the show, and I heard it over and over from people on stage, and it was, everybody was questioning things. They're like, we don't know what's coming next. You know, it's different, and we hope the US doesn't use lose its leadership position. But they were all bullish. They were all aggressive. And it makes me feel about the 20 megawatt and above space, very strongly. 20 megawatt AC and above space in the US, very strongly. Yeah.
• 8:02
  Tim Montague: I think the contraction will be harder on the residential market if they end the ITC in 2025 Yeah, that will be a serious blow to residential solar. There's no doubt about it. Will residential solar exist? For sure, there are some people that are going to get solar, whether or not there's a tax credit, it will reduce their power bill. It just won't have as quick a payback period. And the states have levers too, John that they can pull. And I interviewed Doug Scott, who's the Chair of the ICC, that's our PUC here in Illinois. And we talked about this, and Doug reiterated something else that you referenced, and that is that some of these large data center projects have multiple applications in because they're not 100% cited in a specific location. They're they're trying to figure out where they going to go to, just like solar farms do, and so there's a lot more congestion in the queue than is actually going to get built.
• 9:05
  Tim Montague: But, but the levers that the states have are very important.
• 9:10
  Tim Montague: Illinois, I think there was a story in PB magazine about the Midwest solar Expo. Check that out. It's not on our docket, but, but it called Illinois a top seven state. I call Illinois top 10 state. It's a top community solar state the there was just a report out from ilsr, the Institute for local Self Reliance out of Minnesota that ranked Illinois number one in community solar nationally. We were the only state that got a B. No state got an A. It's an ABCD. There were several BS, including New York and Massachusetts, and then there were a bunch of Cs and Ds, but, um, but for larger solar, including community solar, for sure, there's there's growth ahead, and there may be consolidation, of course, but it's like we think of us on a diet. Okay, we're going to lose some fat and gain some muscle, and we'll be stronger and better, and we are going to continue to grow a green grid, and we're going to 10x the amount of solar on the grid in the United States, people. So buckle up and get serious right.
• 11:16
  Tim Montague: Start developing projects. Don't run, don't be don't be afraid.
• 11:20
  Tim Montague: Don't get distracted by the noise. This is a good time to double down if
• 11:27
  John Weaver: you're going to take that risk. I mean, using the word double down insinuates a risk. And there's risk in everything, yeah. And so this, if you're going to take that risk and double down, this is that moment where a lot of people are, you know, I got email. Else. Tim, very interesting for the first time, with people wanting to sell assets that they've developed after 2028 so if you are someone with a long vision, they're going to be assets that may be valuable post ITC, and that represents change. That represents people thinking about how this is going to evolve. And maybe those asset
• 12:08
  Tim Montague: are they assets that have already reached cod or not? No, no CO,
• 12:12
  John Weaver: the two emails I've seen, they had co proposed cod of 2029, both of those. And so this is an evolving moment where people are making judgment calls, yeah, and if a lot of people run, I guess this is that moment when, uh, Warren Buffett said, when everybody else is scared, don't be, when everybody else is greedy, don't be. And, you know, if everybody else is scared, right now, maybe it's a time to settle yourself, focus, double down and, you know, be in it. If this is your career, be in it and go, because this is that, this might be that moment.
• 12:48
  John Weaver: So, yeah,
• 12:51
  Tim Montague: do you want to talk about your project of the week?
• 12:54
  John Weaver: Sure. Okay, talk with a nice, little, cute en phase system that we built. I was very happy about it. It was just clean and nice. So this is our new residential company.
• 13:07
  John Weaver: That's not our new residential company. This is whaling city solar. Us working through things. I was very happy with the quality of this install. The roof was a little older than we were happy with, but the customer wanted it on his roof, and he believes in the length of it. I like, I've been working with these envoys. So the box on the right, the end phase box to the far right, is an in phase envoy. That's their kind of control system. It's funny, they say they, you know, they have micro inverters that are on each module, but then they still have another big box that's almost the size of an inverter. It is that you got to put down there.
• 13:41
  John Weaver: Yeah, so whatever, such is life, but that's the envoy, and the envoy is nice, though. It allows you a control system, and within that, I can limit the output of a system. So for instance, we have a few residential projects that have a grid interconnection limitation. However, the customer's electricity demand is double, and they have batteries, and they have this, and they have this. So we recently submitted for 20 kW project, 18.9 actually. And the grid limitation is 13.05 kilowatts of solar output max. So using the PSC, the control system that's within the end phase, we were able to D rate the maximum output. And then that means no transformer upgrades, no this, no that. And we're using batteries to capture clipping feed it back into the house after the sun goes down. And so it's kind of, you know, just kind of nice. And then if you go through these couple of images, there's just a nice clean I like to I took the picture of the grounding just because I like the look of the nice grounding that is this is going to be snapping rack,
• 14:58
  Tim Montague: hey, I guess, right. Yeah, yeah.
• 15:00
  John Weaver: I like their so this is a nice splice between two rails to keep the grounding, those little gold colored clips for the grounding. And it's just a nice, clean, simple little project. Oh yeah, I took this.
• 15:14
  John Weaver: We took this picture because I liked this is a heat pump. The white plastic, they have a heat pump down below, and that's the path of the heat pump. I love that. We snuck our conduit, tucked it in right next to it, kind of kept it clean.
• 15:31
  Tim Montague: Good, clean look.
• 15:31
  Tim Montague: Yeah,
• 15:32
  John Weaver: yeah. It's just a nice little and if you scroll down a tiny bit, there's a couple other images, yeah. So some seg modules, decent price.
• 15:38
  John Weaver: That's what the customer wanted a little junction box on the roof the snap and rack product.
• 15:48
  John Weaver: I like how it has space to put the wiring inside of it. So our wire management is clean. So thank you. Snap and rack. Good product there.
• 15:57
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I agree. I like wire. Good wire, integrated. Wire management
• 16:00
  Unknown: is key. Yes, wire management is great. So modules
• 16:04
  Tim Montague: for these days, John, I'm just curious, do you know? Oh, it depends.
• 16:08
  John Weaver: It ranges. It's been going up, uh, segs were in the lower 30 cent range. Um, then we have, like, say, Hyundai and Ginko that are in the upper 30. Then we have, um, next level stuff that can be 3045, to 65 you know, if you get the eight, just depending on the product, you know, if you're, if we're going with, like the Rex, the alpha pures, those, those can be a little more expensive, yeah.
• 16:32
  John Weaver: But it varies. Like, for instance, we had a warehouse that was invaded, I guess, or two. Customs, and it was apparently unrelated to solar, but we lost access to our segs for two projects, and we switched to either Hyundais or jinkos, because that's what was available for, like the two week window, because we had a scheduled installation for two resi projects and no modules. So
• 17:00
  Tim Montague: it's your warehouse was rated by ice or by who?
• 17:03
  John Weaver: Customs, I was told customs. But I was also told it was unrelated to the solar modules. I was told the the warehouse raid, you know, someone else may have been selling something out of the warehouse. It wasn't solar panels. So project of the week, yeah,
• 17:19
  Tim Montague: cool. Thank you.
• 17:19
  Tim Montague: We got a story here in energy story, storage news, which is the PV magazine? Is that the PV
• 17:26
  John Weaver: magazine? No, no.
• 17:26
  John Weaver: This is No. This is competing.
• 17:29
  John Weaver: This is energy
• 17:30
  Tim Montague: because their name, this is dv tech. Their name is also very similar, right?
• 17:35
  John Weaver: Yeah. So PV mag went with ESS dash news, okay, their Energy Storage Desk news, but this is the PV tech battery arm. So,
• 17:46
  Tim Montague: okay, yeah. So this story hythium, LG es begins US manufacturing of dedicated battery storage projects. Heam is a joint venture.
• 17:56
  John Weaver: Hithem is actually, no, it's Chinese manufacturer.
• 17:58
  John Weaver: There's they're a really big company, okay, um, the new thing they're doing here, though, is a joint venture with LG and
• 18:06
  Tim Montague: 10 gigawatt hour battery module and system factory in Texas.
• 18:11
  John Weaver: Yes. So I think it's five gigawatts, each five gigawatts for modules, and five, five gigawatts for completed systems. So I think it's a, it's really a five gigawatt plan.
• 18:23
  John Weaver: What I really thought was interesting about this, and the reason I brought it up is that, first off, they're expecting it to be finished and completed this year. And if this building is able to output five gigawatt hours a year of battery storage systems, so full on systems, yeah, roughly this year, I think we're estimating 45 to 55 gigawatt hours of capacity to be deployed. So this one facility could knock out 10% of US demand. And I think that's pretty sweet. I would also though estimate that that 10% number, it's going to go down, because our capacity that we're going to install is going to go up. So while it may be 10% that we need this year, next year, it's only going to be 8% and then the year after that, it's going to be 7% but for now, this factory turns out, at the end of the year, it's pretty awesome.
• 19:21
  John Weaver: It's gonna be a big facility.
• 19:24
  John Weaver: Now, hit them, being a Chinese manufacturer, yeah, it might cause an issue, because we have a lot of challenges going on and, and I don't know, I don't know what that means, but so I hope we don't lose them or, or maybe they build the factory, then they flip it to a US investor or something. But I hope we don't lose it this factory
• 19:50
  Tim Montague: China's on the short list of countries that that the big, beautiful bill is trying to hurt. Yes, we could say, but, but, you know, yeah, so I like it big factory. I just think if you want manufacturing in the US, you have to lean into the energy transition, because that's a big part of the the opportunity. Batteries for stationary, batteries for cars, solar panels for rooftop, for utility, obviously. And what other segment of our global economy is growing as fast?
• 20:32
  Tim Montague: Okay, AI data centers. But it's that. It's that and that. And what else? What else are we going to make in America? John like we're not going back to clothing manufacturer or furniture manufacturer, or, you know, so many things in our lives, right? We just cannot be competitive. Tech, high tech manufacturing, I think, is where it's at, right? Yep.
• 20:59
  John Weaver: So, yeah. I mean China, other places around the world, they look at this industry as now as a thing to do to boost their economy. Like China looks at renewables not only as a thing they have to do, but to boost their economy, literally for the purpose of boosting the economy. So yeah,
• 21:23
  Tim Montague: you see right here in this story, it's talking about some of the gyrations that the manufacturers are going through. Yeah, LG had originally planned to open a dedicated factory in Arizona for LFP, but instead opened up the to retool production lines for EV batteries at existing plants in Michigan and a strategic.
• 21:40
  Tim Montague: Rebalancing of production capacity. So many gyrations, so many gyrations. That's got to be very painful for the manufacturers. I feel bad for them. I feel bad for anybody impacted by the chaos. But these manufacturers are investing billions of dollars. What was the figure SEIA put out like$350 billion is at stake if we, if we crush the IRA, right? That means jobs, it means taxes, it means the energy transition. I mean supply chain. We had so many supply chain woes, right during COVID. Have we forgotten John all of a sudden? Like that?
• 22:25
  Tim Montague: We actually want to make this stuff on shore so that we don't have to ship it across the ocean. Somehow we forgot that.
• 22:36
  John Weaver: Well, it's crazy. I mean, there's another little gorilla sitting on our shoulders, on our back right now, and the fact that we literally a war just kind of kicked off in the Middle East last night.
• 22:51
  Tim Montague: Yes, it did.
• 22:51
  Tim Montague: Israel bombed Iran. Iran, yeah.
• 22:56
  Tim Montague: And so how do you think that affects the energy industry?
• 23:00
  John Weaver: Ice oil shot up 10% maybe so supply chains. You know, how's China going to react to one of its close trading partners, a strategic partner, being attacked by Israel? You know, that's, that's, that's the thing. You know, China buys a lot of oil direct from Iran, because it benefits China, because they get cheap oil, and because it goes around sanctions and and that's a close partner.
• 23:34
  John Weaver: And you know, Iran isn't within their sphere, not their direct sphere, but their close partner, and so I don't know, you know if it could affect supply chain, because we already had the Houthis, who are a direct group, who are supported by the Iranians, who are shooting missiles and drones across ships going into the Red Sea. And I know of a company who had solar modules on a shipping container that was shot at or struck or slowed, and they're like, Yeah, we had a one month, couple week slowdown because our modules couldn't go through the Red Sea or got stopped or something. So we're living within a complex world. There's a lot of people who are working very hard to work through these challenges as professions, professionals like shipping and getting things moved, because that's their job, and now they're pushing hard, but that's going to be upward pressure on pricing. You know, shipping container used to cost three grand, now it's going to cost 1015, grand.
• 24:44
  Tim Montague: Shipping Container, just a container, you mean, or to
• 24:48
  John Weaver: move a container from China to the United States use cost three grand, irrelevant of what's in it. That's just cost of one container. Now they're double, triple, 5x you know, during COVID, they were over 10k per shipping container across the sea. So it's, we're gonna have, there's dynamics.
• 25:05
  John Weaver: We're in the midst of it, the solar coaster coasters on, and we're in the energy industry, you know, we're, there's an energy war still going on in Europe, or at least the initiation, it was initiated as an energy war, uh, complex, you know, we got a lot going on. So you
• 25:23
  Tim Montague: mean the war in Ukraine?
• 25:25
  John Weaver: Yes, sir, yes, sir, yeah. So, so, yeah. And then, you know, maybe, funnily enough, the very next article on our list is an energy war that didn't go against us. Texas, yes, sir, I'm ready
• 25:41
  Tim Montague: to put that on screen, yeah. This is Rachel meadows, Mattia. Story Ends PV magazine, anti solar. Bills die in Texas House legislation that would kill renewable energy in Texas failed to progress in the state's House of Representatives. I'll note that Texas installed 11 gigawatts, I think last year just in the one state. It is the largest solar market in the United States.
• 26:06
  Tim Montague: It's pretty awesome. We installed 2.4 gigawatts in Illinois.
• 26:16
  John Weaver: That's pretty awesome, too. It's not bad, yeah. So three bills in Texas were put out. They had a lot of restrictions on how solar could be deployed. They were requiring things like solar, like if you built solar, it had to be coupled with energy with gas, so that you had guaranteed 24/7, uptime. Um. Uh, and that was pretty interesting, um, the the laws, the fact that they all died, though, was interesting.
• 26:54
  John Weaver: And in the interim, while they were dying, the governor of Texas multiple times came out with communication saying, hey, Texas is an all of the above.
• 27:05
  John Weaver: Texas is a renewable plus oil state now. And so that was pretty good.
• 27:15
  Tim Montague: Um, very interesting. Yeah.
• 27:19
  John Weaver: So I thought, Uh, I thought, you know, I was surprised. I was like, Ah, this is gonna hurt, but we're crossing precipices because of the capacities that we're deploying, because Tim It's coming down to money, and if it's coming down to this money, and solar and storage are able to push the money, then that says we're reaching a new precipice that's similar to those people at eight core, they're talking about a post incentive world. They're talking about a utility scale, demand driven world, and you gotta have it now, so we're
• 27:53
  Tim Montague: moving beyond it.
• 27:53
  Tim Montague: And ERCOT needs the power this, this, these two sentences say a lot here, right? Texas would be far more vulnerable to grid outages if new generation were limited to a small number of facilities, the simple fact is, Texas needs every resource on the grid to keep prices low for consumers and meet the demands of future population and business growth. Yeah. I mean those outages that Texas has had are the real deal, and they've come to be, they've come close to being much worse disasters than they turned out to be. So I am not surprised that the governor is taking a quiet stand. He may not say the world's the word solar and storage, right? But we can read between those lines. Anything else about this story you want to say
• 28:56
  John Weaver: nothing, nothing other than I like to hear that Texas is going solar and storage and that the politics tilted in our favor and held. And that speaks of the size, capacity and importance of the industry, yeah. And so that gives me, uh, that gives me some confidence.
• 29:11
  John Weaver: Like it,
• 29:16
  Tim Montague: we should probably be selective about what else we we've got a big docket. What else should we talk about?
• 29:23
  John Weaver: Well, you know, I'll talk about a high level thing. Let's talk about batteries a tiny bit more, just because I don't know, you know, I'm really interested in the volumes of batteries that are getting deployed. And we have like three articles right there, but I'm going to start an article soon on curtailment, and maybe you could click on that PV magazine article, 2528 solar power curtailment rises in California, and I've done a little math, and I think that, uh, I think, I mean, we're seeing it. But I want to do an I want to write an article, and we'll do some math, and I talk with a professor I work with at Occidental University out in California, physics professor, and I'm going to do math and figure out this curtailment, because we're seeing curtailment go up. However, I think that the amount of curtailment that's happening in California, the growth is much slower than the amount of new solar and storage, and I believe that batteries are now lowering the volume of curtailment and enabling more solar to run. And so we might even calculate curtailment as the same amount, but it's a lower percentage of overall generation now. And so I think we get a front row seat, similar to people in South Australia, the South Australian state which has a massive volume of solar we're getting a front row seat of the energy transition occurring. And right now we're getting the next round of it with batteries occurring with California on the grid. And this chart represents something. I don't know what it represents yet. It's it represents curtailment. I mean, I know that. But what does it represent in the long game? Does this represent an opportunity?
• 31:15
  John Weaver: Because there's not a huge amount of energy here, like this, like I did the math. So last year, 24 Kaiso curtailed 3.4 million megawatt hours. I mean, that sounds like a lot.
• 31:31
  John Weaver: It's up 29% but if you run the math the state, let's see what's the total that they did for total energy. It's like 1000 this is like 1% Percent of energy. Like I have the math somewhere I did it and I wanted to show off. But if you then do the math on the amount of batteries that are on the grid, we actually have enough batteries in California to 100% soak up all of the curtailed electricity. Yeah, utility scale alone. So there's some dynamics happening here. There's growth, there's batteries, there's this curtailment that everybody's been crying about that really is a trivial issue. And so I'm having fun watching and learning and reading and and just just watching the way they work, because a commercial solar guy, we're going to try and partner up with somebody and do battery EPC work. We have good civil experience. We have good electrical experience in house, and we now have a new partner.
• 32:34
  John Weaver: So, so just watching this stuff, I mean, you've seen me talking about batteries for the last six months, just something kind of really interested in them, but just cool. So So watching California, watching this curtailment, watching how the batteries go, I think that's very key thing for us to look at, and then watching the same thing in Texas, because batteries are now taking over as the marginal price setter for many times. And that used to be gas, and gas was the thing that could always come in and buy the next electricity rounds. But now batteries are doing it from 5pm to 10pm that means batteries are taken over the grid. Solar has already taken over the grid from 7am 8am until 5pm now batteries are extending that so we have a full 12 hour daytime solar plus storage economy in Texas and California, coming in California already, but it's coming in Texas and so, yeah, so I think that's a big topic, and I'm gonna try and do some research and learn better on it.
• 33:37
  Tim Montague: Can I talk about Gibson City,
• 33:39
  John Weaver: Illinois? Heck, yeah, that's a big power plant.
• 33:42
  John Weaver: Man,
• 33:43
  Tim Montague: very interesting story. I just stumbled upon it today. And Gibson City is a small farm town 40 minutes north of Champaign, where I live, and a company called Earthrise energy is developing a 270 megawatt AC, which is, I don't know, 350 DC, something like that. I gotta get this on screen. Can't find stream yard.
• 34:12
  Tim Montague: Share Screen, Earth rise, okay, so the story is that Earth rise raised six 30 million for its 270 megawatt solar plant in Gibson city. And what they're doing, that I think is really cool, is this same company owns a peaker plant in this vicinity, and so they have an existing substation there, and interconnection to miso, and they're using that interconnection as an on ramp for a bunch of this solar energy, and thereby expediting their ability to get an interconnection agreement with miso, which is notably horrible, and this was a theme at the Midwest solar Expo. You know, there's three to five year cues in miso, both at the distribution and transmission levels. So kudos to Earthrise for thinking of this. And I just think there's a lot of subtle innovation like this. John, I mean, this is not rocket science, right? They're going, Oh yeah, we've already got this fleet of peaker plants. They're only running 10% of the time. We could put more juice on the grid, probably, if we built a big solar farm which can sell power to the grid cheaper than the peaker plant can. Right? The peaker the peaker plant juice is expensive, yep, because it's only running 10% of the time.
• 35:51
  Tim Montague: And so that's it. It's, uh, I don't know how many acres the project is, but a lot of electricity. Yeah, there's just a little more there. About the Illinois market, seventh in the country.
• 36:12
  John Weaver: So that what they're doing there, and that that that strategy is super smart, in my opinion. I saw an article recently the strategy of adding new capacities that complement the existing capacity. So, for instance, these peaker plants that generally only run in the evening period or cold periods when they're needed. You know, again, they have 10% some of them have a 5% capacity factor.
• 36:41
  John Weaver: Most. Or 15%
• 36:44
  Tim Montague: but there are. And if you ever wonder, this is what a peaker plant looks like. This these rectangular buildings.
• 36:51
  Tim Montague: Here is the peaker. These are natural gas Yep. These are natural gas turbine generators.
• 36:55
  Tim Montague: Their smoke stocks are quite low to the ground, maybe 20 feet tops, and then there's a substation. Now, some of these peaker plants have many more turbines. This is a relatively small one. I don't know how many megawatts. I'm guessing two megawatts, but I don't know. And there's a ethanol plant next door, but, and then they've already got a plot for a new substation they're going to build here for the solar farm called out on Google, which I thought was cool. But who knows where this I mean, the the solar farm is obviously going to be much bigger, uh, several, uh, maybe, maybe around 1000 acres, I don't know.
• 37:39
  John Weaver: Well, if you think 350, megawatts,
• 37:43
  Tim Montague: 3456, 1500 acres.
• 37:43
  Tim Montague: 100 acres.
• 37:47
  John Weaver: Divide that by four, at least, at least that.
• 37:52
  John Weaver: Yeah. Cool. Very cool. Yeah. So again, as I was saying, though, in California, they were saying that they have 10s of gigawatts, maybe even hundreds. I don't think it's hundreds, but 10s of gigawatts on interconnections that are underutilized. So great idea. Super smart.
• 38:13
  Tim Montague: Okay, we're going to close with China launches world's first grid forming sodium ion battery storage
• 38:19
  John Weaver: plant. Nah. I like this one a little better. Across the United States, residential electricity prices are set to increase, okay, by an average of 13% Yuck, and some as much as 26 and I thought that was both terrible and great. You know, it's terrible, because this is like real human beings, like that sucks.
• 38:48
  Tim Montague: So we're looking at the EIA, the Energy Information Administration, yep, website in depth analysis.
• 38:56
  John Weaver: So you notice price of gas nice and flat. Gasoline is looking down, uh, heating oil looking down, but electricity moving along, and it's going above the CPI, above inflation.
• 39:11
  John Weaver: That's that second value. And then if you scroll to the bottom of this article, there's another chart that shows us on a state level, so regionally, you can kind of see, oh, this is a good one. This shows what people are spending per year. Per year. You know, gaining on $2,000 a year of electricity. But then you go down a little bit further. Next chart, you can see that it's very it's varied, highly varied on a state basis.
• 39:36
  Tim Montague: You can see that dip from COVID, right? That's where gasoline expenditure went way down as people weren't traveling so fascinating. And
• 39:46
  John Weaver: then here, check this out. Like, first off, you see Pacific regions already expensive, and over the last three years, it's up 26% look at New England, the most expensive region, total region in the nation, going to jump another 19% made Atlantic. You know, these are like Delawares, Washington, Virginia, states jumping you see right there in the middle that US average 13% that's pretty big, over three years. So, so this, if anything, this will support the residential solar market. You know, you knock a year off and knock two years off your IRA, your ROI. So, yes, we're going to lose some incentives. It seems price of electricity will go up. We're also going to lose some cost competition, maybe because, hardware costs might get tariffs, but we'll also lose some competition in that these lease companies are going under.
• 40:52
  John Weaver: Mosaic is gone. Sonova is gone now. So that's going to be a different dynamic. And then we're going to have to bark at our distributors and be like, Hey guys, this resi gear. I know those modules are nice, but I'm not paying 60 cents for modules anymore. Friend, you want to sell those, you need to have an ROI that's going to be reasonable for my customers.
• 41:14
  John Weaver: And, you know, I'm just gonna, gonna have to work it that way.
• 41:18
  John Weaver: And I think that we as a small residential company that is backed by a commercial company that has existing infrastructure. It'll make it work. I think we can make it handle. Maybe we can handle it so so that, I thought that was interesting, that those price increases are going to come to utility scale. Those prices increases are going to come to commercial so price of energy, if it keeps outpacing inflation, can create. Current with solar and storage, at least holding flat pricing, if they can keep going down, that would be amazing, and that'll carry us, that'll carry us for decades out. Yeah, so price increase is terrible for people on average, good for us, bad for the average family. But maybe it's good that we pay a little more for energy, because, listen, if we don't have carbon taxes built in, we're getting away cheap anyway, and we're stealing from our kids. So one way or another, we got to manage this. That's it.
• 42:13
  John Weaver: Tim, that's my news. I got Boatload more. We only got so much time. Man, no shortage of news. We got new perovskite record. Did you see that one?
• 42:27
  John Weaver: The next article, 829 watts for a utility scale module. You know, got a so much news. We could talk about good stuff going on, challenging, you know, challenging this week, we might start to see a version of the of the document coming from the Senate this next week, so we'll see. I'm hearing hopeful that the House bill, the terrible one, might get pulled back on a couple of items. So we won't have this 60 day thing. We might have 2028, but, but I don't know. I don't know anything anymore. I'm not a not that politically connected, and all my senators vote a certain way.
• 43:02
  John Weaver: So So call your senators, if you live in a state that has has Republican senators, and give them, give them some feedback about your opinion on the IRA and whether you think it matters, because that can create value for us. And you know, those are the people voting right now, Republican senators, 54 of them. Give them a phone call. 54 people,
• 43:29
  Tim Montague: for sure. Call your senators, let them know you care about the energy transition. It means jobs and tax revenue. I did a great interview with ser Strategic Economic Research, small company here in Bloomington, normal with it's the Loomis family. Dave Loomis is the founder. I had Ethan Loomis, his son on the show. And we're talking about how utility, solar and wind projects have economic impacts, mostly tax revenue for local counties and for for the school districts in a rural county, it can be more than a million dollars a year just one utility project. That's a lot of money for these school districts that are generally hurting. So check it out at clean power hour.com click on the work with Tim tab.
• 44:19
  Tim Montague: I am interviewing EPCs who want to transition into large CNI solar. If you are on that journey, reach out to me. That's one of the things I do. I am gasoline for that engine. And as always, John, how can our listeners find you
• 44:37
  John Weaver: commercial solar guy.com that is our home.
• 44:43
  John Weaver: 508-499-9786, 508-499-9786, but commercial solar guy.com that's where I'm always at give us a call. We're located in the northeast. Mostly. We're an EPC and a developer. So we can build your project from Greenfield to the end. You can also find me on PV magazine USA. It's where I write eight articles a month, try and teach the world a little, teach myself and and that. And Tim, what's your favorite sized EPC? Like, what?
• 45:15
  John Weaver: Like, what's the what's the key?
• 45:15
  John Weaver: Like, what have you found that you can help the most?
• 45:19
  Tim Montague: Yeah, companies that are doing about five to 15 million in sales are a great sweet spot for me and and up to, I would say, 50 million. Above 50 million, you're going to hire some big, fancy Consulting Firm.
• 45:31
  Tim Montague: I'm a solopreneur. I cut my teeth working for Continental energy solutions in Chicago.
• 45:40
  Tim Montague: They they're doing about 30 megawatts a year. So if you're in the you know, couple of megawatts of RE and light commercial, and you want to grab onto a couple more megawatts a year. I'm your guy, John. We have a little bit of a scheduling challenge ahead of us. So, you know, normally, we do this every two weeks, but, yeah, I am going to be sailing in the national flying Scott regatta on June 27 in two weeks.
• 46:12
  Tim Montague: Awesome, if all goes well, if there's wind, it's happening at a lake in Illinois called Carlisle, which is three hours south of us here. And then the following Friday is the fourth of July holiday, so we can't do that. So maybe we do one next Friday, or we are going to wait three Fridays. I don't know.
• 46:30
  Tim Montague: It's your call. Oh, I'm
• 46:31
  John Weaver: gonna make a suggestion that we move it to Thursday the 26th but we'll talk about it offline. We don't want our people bothered too much by our scheduling conflict. Let's talk about solar panels. And batteries and stuff. So, so cool. I hope you have a wonderful time on a lake, doing sailing stuff that sounds awesome.
• 46:52
  Tim Montague: With that, I'll say, let's grow solar and storage. Thanks so much, John, Yep, see ya.