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Iran War Sends Natural Gas Prices Soaring: What It Means for Solar · Clean Power Hour

• 0:51
  Tim Montague: Welcome to the Clean Power Hour live. I'm Tim Montague, your host, bringing you the latest in wind, solar and battery news every other week with none other than the commercial solar guy. John Weaver, welcome to
• 1:02
  John Weaver: the show. Hey Tim.
• 1:02
  John Weaver: How are you? I hope healthy.
• 1:05
  John Weaver: Sell healthy, wealthy and wise, right?
• 1:11
  Tim Montague: Well, I'm healthy.
• 1:11
  Tim Montague: That's I'll take. I'll take healthy.
• 1:15
  John Weaver: That's the start.
• 1:15
  John Weaver: I'm
• 1:19
  Tim Montague: not a soldier in the American military machine or in somewhere in the Middle East with bombs falling on my head, so I'm very grateful for that.
• 1:27
  Tim Montague: It's such a strange time, John, I don't know how else to say it.
• 1:32
  Tim Montague: It is a sad day. In my mind. I'm not happy. I'm very sad that we have to report what we have to report. You know, consumers in America are already being squeezed, and they're going to be squeezed even more consumers and business owners. It's going to affect our economy and our well being as Americans. But before we go to the natural gas story, John big picture, what does the war in Iran mean for American energy professionals and consumers.
• 2:13
  John Weaver: So I stay away from the broader geopolitical moral stuff, because that stuff just sucks. Yeah, that so I guess the things that I posted on our document that we're going to review first, I wanted to point out natural gas globally, because natural gas has the greatest direct effect on the electrical price, electricity prices in the US. And so if you do that, first link we have on there, you can see a map of the natural gas pricing in Europe immediately when the war started. Now, most natural gas in the US is direct from the source, so we don't have to liquefy it, so it's not 3x the cost of what the global market pays, 345, x. So yeah, look at that chart, and then look at the very end of it, and you can just see that massive jump, if you can zoom in on like one month, and you can just see what happens. The price of gas in Europe has almost jumped like 70, 80% from where it was before this war started, and and that represents and why that really affects the US is, number one, a lot of that gas is coming from the US. So this is gas that's being liquefied in Texas and Louisiana along the Gulf Coast, going in giant tankers to Europe. And so one, the gas industry is going to be more profitable in the US. But two, that gas price does have an effect on the US. Gas price now it's muted, because we have so much gas in the US, so much across the nation, and our price of gas domestically is, like, three, three and a half bucks, but the price of gas did go up, and this is what really matters for, you know, commercial parties. I mean, so John, where I'm the commercial solar guy, that's, you know, what I do, Tim, you do commercial solar consulting, development, work, construction. So we're so I'm trying to keep us a little bit there and and so what we should also be thinking about professionals is that there's a lot of business people that are thinking about this war, and we need to understand how it could affect their business, and we need to communicate that to them, and understanding how natural gas globally affects us and affects our pricing, and may affect the businesses that you're selling to think is important, if you look at the next link there we have, you know this is related, still more, to Europe, but I'm just trying to frame a broader picture. Russia is talking about cutting off all natural gas going to Europe. When that occurred, as the European Ukrainian war started, that caused some challenges that pushed up global pricing, that pushed up our price. If we go back into that chart that we had on prior, we can see us and global pricing during the Ukrainian war. When it started, it doubled, it tripled. Solar sales started jumping because the price of gas was going so that is happening right now.
• 5:13
  John Weaver: Another thing that's occurring is that right now ships aren't going through the Gulf of Hormuz. So this is an area between, I think it's Oman, but I don't know the countries along that chunk of of Arabia that are between Iran on the tip of Arabia, south of Iran. So this gulf, it's only 20 miles wide.
• 5:39
  John Weaver: And if you look at the next link, there's a picture of tankers that started stopping right outside of that Gulf. And this is because Iran has, like, missiles and ships, and they know how. Manage and control this. And if ships are going through there, they're getting attacked. So, so this is just having a broader effect on the price of gas. Yeah, if we just scroll down just a tiny bit on that share, you can see a collection. So normally, all those lines should have kept going. Those are just random ships at some point as the war was starting, but they stopped, and they all stopped there and started hanging out. And that's because a few hours north of them, a day north of them. As you scroll up on that image again, I'll show you the little area right at that tip. See where that tip goes if you go just tiny bit higher the pink cluster, yeah, so that big cluster is that ships that are all hanging out. Let's scroll up on that image a tiny bit, okay, now you can see it. See that little where the blue gets narrow up at the top left in that image there, Tim like, you know, the Gulf of Hormuz right below,
• 6:43
  Tim Montague: you know, on that, talking about in here
• 6:46
  John Weaver: that, yeah, that is the pressure point the North is one of the largest, most training professional militaries on Earth. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard has, this is part of the plan, you know, shit hits the fan. They have leverage right there, and so that's going to affect us. And so all of this is cumulatively coming together, which is why I put up this next article, which we should share.
• 7:13
  Tim Montague: Yeah, hold on.
• 7:13
  Tim Montague: Let's slow down a little. I don't
• 7:18
  John Weaver: want to get too deep into it, because this isn't a war show. I mean, we're not Bloomberg,
• 7:22
  Tim Montague: yeah, no, I think this is very relevant to energy professionals. The signal I think that we need to notice and anticipate more of is that the cost of energy is going to go up as a result, the cost of fossil energy and the cost of electricity, and of course, they're connected, but we make electricity from a whole variety of sources, but we now have a bottleneck with 20% of the world's oil supply being cut off from flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, and that is going to have many ripple effects. And of course, it already has caused energy prices to go up. And the net effect, though, for Americans like we, we might.
• 8:09
  Tim Montague: Some people might think, well, that that's over there. That's their problem. That's, you know, Saudi oil. We've got all our own oil. We're good, right? But the fact is, is it is intimately connected, right? These economies are tied together and and now we're just stacking bad news upon bad news, and this is going to affect American consumers. Now, the way this plays out for the solar or solar and battery industry, though, John could be a net positive in some regards, it's it's hard to know because, for example, shipping stuff around the globe, like we do with solar panels and inverters, for example, is going to get more expensive. So the cost
• 8:58
  John Weaver: and trucks and diesel and trucks, the price of diesel just popped like 20% Yeah.
• 9:03
  Tim Montague: So it's more expensive to send stuff around, so the price of goods goes up.
• 9:05
  Tim Montague: But as the price of electricity goes up, the value of solar goes up, so it's TBD. I guess exactly how this plays out. I don't want to, I don't want to say, Oh, we're going to be, you know, good. I don't think there is a net positive actually, for the world as a result of this war.
• 9:28
  Tim Montague: But only time will tell.
• 9:31
  John Weaver: Yeah, so, so the the very next document, on the article on the article on the document, the C, A, T, f.us, yeah, and we don't have to go too deep into that, but really clean
• 9:44
  Tim Montague: our task force.
• 9:44
  Tim Montague: Okay, yeah.
• 9:46
  John Weaver: So really what the report does? It explicitly shows that states with the most natural gas generation during 2223 when the war started in Ukraine, showed the largest electricity price increases. And then, as the war started to ease, and we figured stuff out, they it led to the largest price decreases. So pricing volatility follows natural gas, and the United States still gets like 30 some percent of its electricity, 40% of its electricity from gas.
• 10:22
  John Weaver: So this suggests that, you know, we should be conscious of this, and businesses should be conscious, and us as professionals should be conscious of the price of gas right now, and that we have another war going on, and it's an energy war. The war in Ukraine was an energy war. Is an energy war. This is an energy war, and we need to be conscious of this. And this document looks at every state and says. Hey, what happened last time we had a war? And this screen what you have up right now. Tim, if you could zoom in a little bit on that chart, that chart shows inflation, and then it shows the price of electricity on a state by state basis. And if you look at that chart, 75% of those states are above that inflation number. There's a purple line going across it, and it says, Here's inflation, about 3% it has a bunch of dots, and they're all way above inflation. We are in a you know how, on our spreadsheets and our sales documents, Tim, we put 345, percent as the increase the price escalator for electricity.
• 11:26
  John Weaver: We're in that 5% window right now. The thing that I'm afraid of putting in my documents, but that's the reality we're in as an industry. We're in an energy outpacing inflation world, and that means you got to update your spreadsheets and your models and think about that.
• 11:45
  John Weaver: What your forward price curve is. That's very technical term, but you know, you know, you got to think about that right now.
• 11:52
  John Weaver: You can do 4% 3% 5% for four years, and then 3% after that, I don't know, but that's what we got to think about, and that's the world we're in. And gas drives electricity pricing in the US right now. There's an interesting chart I can show you, Tim, but we won't do it today, but there's a post going around in Europe, and it's showing every single country's electricity rates and gas price, wholesale gas price. When the war started in almost every country across Europe saw their wholesale gas jump, except Spain, because Spain has a massive amount of solar and has a minimal amount of gas. And so we might start talking about Spain in a few weeks, saying, Man, look at how Spain is weathering this war from an economic standpoint. And you know, who else isn't feeling it?
• 13:37
  John Weaver: China has 120 days of oil. They have a massive amount of solar, they have a massive amount of wind, massive amount of electric cars. This, this could be a um political awakening for a lot of people about energy and warfare, or maybe a reawakening or reaffirmation, because a lot of us think about this a lot.
• 14:01
  Tim Montague: Yeah, it's true.
• 14:01
  Tim Montague: It's true. Yeah, I love this. So this was Clean Air Task Force, which was reporting on a report from LBNL, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. And EIA, right? EIA, yes. EIA, all right, are we ready to move on?
• 14:27
  John Weaver: Or that's time.
• 14:27
  John Weaver: It's time. Let's go to the other news. Let's, let's look at some good news.
• 14:32
  Tim Montague: Tim solar's fastest growth in a decade.
• 14:38
  Tim Montague: Electricity generation in the US grew by almost 3% capping and almost 9% expansion in demand since 2021 while solar has more than doubled in the same window, including 28% growth in 2025 Yeah, all right.
• 14:55
  John Weaver: Magazine. Real good looking guy.
• 15:01
  Tim Montague: Let me get this on screen. So you wrote a story in PB magazine dated the 12th of March.
• 15:10
  John Weaver: That's yesterday.
• 15:10
  John Weaver: It is
• 15:16
  Tim Montague: solar's fastest growth decade in a decade.
• 15:20
  John Weaver: Yeah. So the real interesting thing about this story is that this because of the way the lag of electricity generation works. This is actually a story about 2024 2024 we installed 50 gigs of solar.
• 15:34
  John Weaver: We set a record, and now that 2024 solar, look at that chart.
• 15:39
  John Weaver: Oh, man, look how. Look at that growth, but now that 50 gigs, the benefits of it, are coming home to roost, because we got a full year 2025 of that 2024, capacity running. And what it meant is that we're now at for last year, 8.5% of our electricity was purely from solar photovoltaics and maybe, but probably not, but maybe we'll hit 10% this year. Maybe gonna be a little short, probably because of demand growth, but whatever, we'll be at 9.75% because of just an awesome 2024, the first year, where the IRA really spread its wings, and it just grew. And this chart is kind of cool, and it looks real simple, but the coolness is, if you look back in the beginning of it, you can see that big number on the left.
• 16:36
  John Weaver: It's a hard chart to see, sorry, but what that says? That's percent. Of growth. So how much did solar expand by that year?
• 16:44
  John Weaver: So what do you think those first two years were there? Tim, those big ones at the top of the chart? At the beginning, 40%
• 16:52
  Tim Montague: what year were they? Oh, 2015, 1617,
• 16:57
  John Weaver: they were about that. Yes. The last time the IRA was collapsing, right before it got re upped, the US said, Oh, man, we got to go gangbusters.
• 17:03
  John Weaver: And so there was massive growth.
• 17:06
  John Weaver: We doubled. We went from like seven gigs in 2014 to 15, and a year or two later, and so then following that, a year or two later, we had massive growth in generation. Last year, we that chart jumped again. It was the highest it's been since 2017 and that's pretty awesome. The really cool thing is a really weird little data thing, but the growth that occurred last year was bigger than all of the generation in 2017 which is cool because that means that we grew like we just added 2017 on top of the prior year, which is cool. So we grew from a big base instead of a small base, and that's just impressive. We dropped 50 gigs. Man, that was awesome. It's just cool. And last year we did slow down a little bit. We only, it looks like we may have only deployed 43 gigs of solar, and we can discuss that maybe later in the show. I do have it on the dock, we can talk about that nuance.
• 18:11
  Tim Montague: But what's the story with emissions?
• 18:14
  John Weaver: So emissions technically went up a tiny bit.
• 18:16
  John Weaver: So this is a this is a nuance here. So first off, solar grew a bunch. Wind technically shrunk, kind of like, ah. So because electricity demand grew by a certain amount, and clean energy only offset 80% of that growth, 20% of our electricity growth, 20% of that 3% that we were talked about at the beginning was supplied by fossils. We get into the specific numbers, it's like 25 terawatt hours. So emissions grew by 25 terawatt hours of electricity. We got to figure that out technically as a percent, fossils fell, but in an absolute number emissions grew, which means we're not meeting the goal yet. So this demand growth is, it's, it's, it's hurting us. It's hurting us from an emission standpoint, and it meant that electricity growth outpaced clean electricity growth, and that's something, you know, we don't want, we want clean to outpace the other way.
• 19:31
  John Weaver: And in prior years it had, but last year it didn't, because it was a big growth year.
• 19:36
  Tim Montague: So that's, well, this is why we need climate restoration. We could simultaneously as we're cleaning the grid. I mean, this is impressive. 43% of electricity coming from non emitting sources in the US, but we still have 57% coming from fossils. So for our listeners, though that aren't aware of this, we have a trillion tons of legacy carbon.
• 20:00
  Tim Montague: The economy is about 50 gigatons. And so that trillion tons is a 20x bigger problem, and it's getting slightly worse now, about on the order of a percent a year, I think. And so if we net zero the economy, we flatline that and and we stop adding carbon to the legacy carbon in the sky. So we have to figure out ways to vacuum that carbon out of the atmosphere.
• 20:29
  Tim Montague: Check out. Peter Fikowski, I've done a couple of interviews, including this year. He's got a great website, and it's totally within our economic reach, a billion or to $2 billion so we're we're spending $2 billion a day John on the war in Iran.
• 20:51
  Tim Montague: We need to spend $2 billion a year to restore the climate. So that's a good juxtaposition, and all energy professionals need to be aware of this, that the energy transition is not the answer to climate chaos.
• 21:05
  Tim Montague: Unfortunately, it's a good part.
• 21:09
  Tim Montague: It's a good it's an important part. I feel very proud to be a clean energy professional, but I also have to recognize that I'm not solving the climate crisis.
• 21:15
  Tim Montague: Most people don't want to talk about
• 21:24
  John Weaver: it, but it's hard.
• 21:24
  John Weaver: It's challenge.
• 21:28
  Tim Montague: I want to talk about it because it's it's a silver lining for me that we actually can solve this problem.
• 21:37
  Tim Montague: So let's get back to the news.
• 21:40
  John Weaver: Two quick, one.
• 21:40
  John Weaver: That are related to capacity growth,
• 21:44
  Tim Montague: solar and wind past nuclear in 2026 hydro around 14% globally. Yeah.
• 21:49
  John Weaver: So this mighty liebreak, yes, librick put together a neat little chart, just a quick thing, just to show how well solar, well, at least solar is going globally. So from a career standpoint, this goes away from, the US, but you can see there how solar, wind and nuclear are all congregating around nine to 10% of global electricity, each on their own.
• 22:17
  John Weaver: And that's pretty cool. It's sad that nuclear is shrinking.
• 22:20
  John Weaver: Hopefully it can hold its own for a while and just flat line there instead of going down. But I don't know, I'm not real hopeful, but wind and solar are doing their job, getting going.
• 22:32
  John Weaver: And you know, maybe they're not going fast enough, Tim right now, but they're moving. And so now between those three, that's 30% of the world's electricity coming from clean sources, and then hydro. On top of that is another 14. So that's 44% globally, electricity coming from clean sources, which interestingly, is close to the US, is number of 43 you know, slightly different composition, but close ish, a little more nuclear in the US, and less hydro. Wind and solar are closes, you know, need similar ish, so it'd be kind of cool if the world and the US cross 50% in a few years. You need, if it was a little faster, but, but that, that's just just a neat little chart showing how solar and wind will pass nuclear as a generation source this year.
• 23:28
  John Weaver: Yep, so that was it. That's interesting. I mean, there's a lot of things to talk about there we can unpack, like why wind has been going a little slower and nuclear has been shrinking, but solar is going gangbusters. But there's lots of we could do whole shows on each one of those topics.
• 23:48
  Tim Montague: Is it because we've kind of tapped out the easy places to build wind power?
• 23:50
  Tim Montague: Or what's your theory on that?
• 23:55
  John Weaver: Um, I think it's wind going through transitions.
• 24:00
  John Weaver: It took longer for the and this is going to be the blunt truth, it took longer for the Chinese to jump on wind and say, Hey, let's Let's hammer this. The European, more expensive pricing held on to it. But now let's put it this way, wind grew last year at a record volume. And I may not have shared it, but I just look, saw the story the other day, and that record volume, 85% 75% was in China. So it's really that China is now grabbing on wind, and wind is taking off.
• 24:26
  John Weaver: Wind grew a little slower, little more expensive. Solar had its blowout of what's occurring, but I think wind is going to start moving a little faster now. I mean, in the US just got whacked, though, by Trump, so we're gonna have a that's going to be a remnant going out for a few years because of because it takes wind a long time to develop. But interestingly, India is now the number two wind location on Earth, which is cool, and they're about to be the number two for solar as well, which is cool as well.
• 25:01
  John Weaver: They might well, we'll see. I mean, this year, they could take over spot number two with solar.
• 25:04
  John Weaver: So it's, um, it's growing wind.
• 25:08
  John Weaver: Wind is good. We need wind. We need a lot of wind. It's very complimentary to solar.
• 25:14
  Tim Montague: So scia has released one of their market reports. Yes, and this is hot off the presses. March 9. You
• 25:26
  John Weaver: you. This is the 2025 solar installation report for the US, and it actually says that solar deployed 43 gigawatts, about 15 ish percent less than 2024 the report gives a hint, though, why this occurred, and it points out that q4 of 2026 2025 was 40% slower than q4 of the prior year. And I have some things in my mind about why that might have been, but they hint, and I sort of kind of saw it a tiny bit, but not really. I sort of saw it a tiny bit, but they hint that developers, due to the nuances of tax law, weren't pushing to bring their projects on in q4 and that's why we saw a massive fall off. And so I'm wondering if that means we're going to have a massive pickup in q1 of 2026
• 26:34
  Tim Montague: we are going through a boom because of the phase out of the ITC, right?
• 26:37
  Tim Montague: That's forcing a compression of development time.
• 26:42
  John Weaver: Lines, but whose development timeline with residential? We did see a jump with commercial. And it's in this report we see like a jump for the first time. It's like, great, 6% growth across all the small scale. We saw a jump.
• 26:57
  Tim Montague: Well, residential decline 2% it says, oh, did it
• 27:00
  John Weaver: Geez, which I can't comprehend, because the end of the incentive just seemed like it pops stuff. It definitely grew for us. But I guess maybe that's because of California is still having its Nim three hangover. Yeah,
• 27:15
  Tim Montague: yeah, things grew well. Solar grew 6% That's music to my ears.
• 27:21
  John Weaver: And so the community, but utility fell off, so there's some nuance about why and how. Now, with our construction, we did have a couple of partners who allowed their projects not to be turned on, but they had to get PTO, which I don't understand the tax implications, but they said it was okay,
• 27:39
  Tim Montague: which I don't get not to be a Debbie Downer here, John, but it says here, Community Solar was down 25% year over year due to Maine and New York slowing down.
• 27:55
  John Weaver: There's lots going on. New York slow down, and community makes sense because they've had just so many grid buildups. But they they're part of the solar coaster with community. They have such a good program that they affect stuff so much.
• 28:11
  Tim Montague: So let's just look at this. It's hard to get it on screen properly. Annual generation additions, solar, storage, wind, coal, natural gas, other I mean, we still have an upward trend.
• 28:42
  Tim Montague: There's no doubt about that, and I do think that 26 will be a good year, but we'll see it's, I mean, I'm, I'm, I am starting to have a fair number of conversations about how the phase out of the ITC has these ripple effects. You know, resi finance has gotten very tight, and commercial finance is going to get tight. I've heard from credible financiers in 27 in probably q2, 27, so
• 29:27
  John Weaver: better be able to guarantee your project's gonna turn on.
• 29:32
  Tim Montague: Yeah, right. All right, is there more about this report we should discuss?
• 29:39
  John Weaver: Oh, yeah, there's a million things, but not today, because who the heck knows? So just, you know, it's a complex market we're in. What's happening? How are these tax credits evolving? You know, what are the big installers doing?
• 29:53
  John Weaver: And you know, we actually have a story from solve energy. I want to like, just highlight them a tiny bit. But you know, those are real interesting places to be, small, utility, utility scale. The ITC is not going away for them, the ITC is going to last for a couple of years
• 30:08
  Tim Montague: for utilities.
• 30:08
  Tim Montague: Talk about solve energy or Virginia. Let's do solve energy first.
• 30:13
  John Weaver: Let's do that.
• 30:13
  John Weaver: Okay, my stock pick of the week.
• 30:18
  John Weaver: But by the way, don't ever pick.
• 30:18
  John Weaver: Listen to me for stock picks. So this is just me summarizing Roth capital. Roth capital put out a report on solve energy. They look at them as an investment.
• 30:35
  John Weaver: And I wanted to say, you know, just some they said some nice words. And as an EPC myself, I'm watching other EPCs, and what's impressive about them and what people like, and one of the things I really liked is that they said MWh, I guess that's their stock ticker. It's one of the best utility scale solar storage EPCs, their commissioning is awesome, and even though their O and M revenue is small at the point, the fact that they do. It helps drive sales, and it means they're a better EPC, and we in house at commercial solar guy, we now have an O and M department. It's very modest, but we use it to help drive sales and to, you know, get better, because it's us who's going to have to deal with the crap, and we better do a good job, and when we see the mess ups later, it helps us do our job better. So I just liked this review of them. It made me want to think more about my own company and and grow and and be smart and, and, yes. Stock, pitch, stock, pick, Solid Energy. There you go. So they're big. They're big. They got a lot of they got a lot of capacity in their pipeline too. Probably 100 gigawatts that they'll construct. Who knows? I don't know exactly what the number is, but it's massive.
• 31:59
  Tim Montague: Yeah, just for our listeners, solve has built more than 20 gigawatts of projects since 2008 so they're very large EPC, and they're doing O and M on 18 gigawatts across 146 plants in North America.
• 32:22
  John Weaver: Any one of those is bigger than any one of those planes is bigger than our entire O and M portfolio.
• 32:31
  Tim Montague: Probably trying to see where their headquarters is, I don't see that
• 32:36
  John Weaver: they're like South California or Texas or Arizona.
• 32:41
  John Weaver: There are southern energy headquarters, San Diego. That's where they should be from. Solar construction company should be from California. You should you should be legally required.
• 32:57
  John Weaver: You're a solar construction company above 100 people. Have one Californian on staff from the old school solar industry, just to keep you real,
• 33:10
  Tim Montague: you're funny, all right, Virginia, and then we've got a deep geo Story, yeah.
• 33:22
  John Weaver: So Virginia is really a story about the solar coaster and politics and the RGGI, which a lot of people may not know about if you're not in the space in the Northeast. But Virginia's nominated new governor. She's a Democrat, and she's pro clean energy in general, one of her collection of initial things to do. You know, she's been in office now for a couple months, so it's not initial, but it's still early.
• 33:48
  John Weaver: Ish is that she moved the state back into what's called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, and this is a north eastern US grouping of states who have some taxes in place on those who emit emissions. And these taxes where they have to buy renewable energy credits from, say, solar projects, these taxes lead to energy investment, and the RGGI helps fund say, renewable energy certificates, which are worth three to four cents per kilowatt hour and various states. And so getting back into the RGGI represents, you know, a little bit extra bump in the price of your electricity in Virginia. And really, this also talks about the solar coaster, because this is the flip flop in Virginia.
• 34:44
  John Weaver: Virginia had a Democratic governor who got him in the RGGI. Then they had a new guy who was Republican, who took him out, and now they have somebody back. And so we're talking solar coaster, and the stress of developers and business people trying to think about how to do this. And so this is a CNI thing too. You know, it's like you put this on your spreadsheet. Rex, how many years? Five years, 10 years, 20 I only put them for 10 years in Massachusetts, because who knows about politics? Maybe they'll go away. But we have RECs for projects that aren't in our default incentive program.
• 35:24
  John Weaver: We put it up there three. You know, it's a three, four cent per kilowatt hour air,
• 35:29
  Tim Montague: and that's helpful. So they also recently passed balcony solar,
• 35:34
  John Weaver: yes, which is cool.
• 35:34
  John Weaver: I'm gonna have story about that soon. I hope.
• 35:39
  Tim Montague: Here's a story in solar power world by Kelly pickerel from March three, and apparently that bill passed unanimously.
• 35:49
  John Weaver: How cool is that?
• 35:49
  John Weaver: And unanimous, Tim, what things pass in the United States unanimously?
• 35:57
  Tim Montague: Well, it's good for consumers. I think everyone likes solar deep down it it reduces your power bill. What's not to like about that? I'd like to know how much balcony solar I could attach to my house. Is there an easy calculation to make based on the size of your the amperage of your panel, that kind of thing,
• 36:27
  John Weaver: well, so the standard number that a lot of people are being allowed to connect, and we can double check, is either 800 KW AC or 1.2 kW AC. And there's a logic, I mean, 800 watts. Watts? Yeah, AC. So it's either 8800 or 1.2 and the logic is driven by maximum amount that a 20 amp circuit can take. That's what I see for a lot of these programs, is, is that, if you do and so from a solar panel standpoint, you know that's 1.5 1.2 to 1.5 KW is what can, you know, healthily, be put on a circuit.
• 37:10
  John Weaver: Now, I if you have a battery, you could, you know, do a whole bunch more two you could triple that, quadruple it get like four or five, six kW there and run that 24/7,
• 37:30
  Tim Montague: so Is anybody selling a balcony solar and battery kit?
• 37:36
  John Weaver: There's a company in Florida. So buyer, be warned, who's been doing it, and he's been doing it for a long time, and I can't remember their name right now, but if you tell me to find it, I will. And he's got a kit where he says, Listen, you don't need anything. You don't need UL approval. You don't need any of this crap. That's well, you know, from Florida, he goes, because our kit won't export to the grid. It has some smarts.
• 38:00
  John Weaver: It, you know, it won't shut down, or will shut down when required, and he had that kit, but now there's more coming.
• 38:08
  Tim Montague: I have a colleague in the Chicago suburbs who will remain unnamed, but he knows who he is, who's developing a kit.
• 38:17
  Tim Montague: He He calls it going small and but I think, I think we're gonna see a huge wave of small scale solar and batteries in the US.
• 38:29
  John Weaver: Absolutely, it could be gigawatts worth if we, you know, 100 million houses with kW,
• 38:39
  Tim Montague: and it's, you know, it's, it's good for resiliency, right, to have a couple kWh battery some solar panels. You never know when you need to hunker down for a few days without grid power. You never know
• 38:56
  John Weaver: it becomes a much more interesting question when you are literally at war with a nation state and multiple nation states who have what's called persistence hacks, or something to that effect, a persistence attack, where they they they hack your grid, but not to steal something, but to place themselves inside of the grid in a protected sleeper type of position, so that in case of more complex events, like a real world war, they can attack you from inside and shut down your grid. And that's literally a thing that we do to others.
• 39:45
  John Weaver: That's what we did in Venezuela.
• 39:45
  John Weaver: Yeah, we literally shut down their grid because we were already inside of it. And the Chinese the Iranians, the Russians, we are all doing this to each other, trying to that's why you got to have a car with V to G. Man, that's it. That's that's like a killer app, right there. V to G as your backup if you're worried about it, V to house, vehicle to house, that's that's awesome, right there. So we need more of that on the grid.
• 40:12
  Tim Montague: All right, let's talk about deep Geo. Here's a story in Canary media by Maria galucci on March 3, quays looks to advance super hot geothermal power plant in Oregon, and I've been following quays and a few other companies that are doing this deep Geo. I think by deep Geo, we're talking, you know, on the order of a mile deep, 1000s of feet. There's 5280 feet in a mile, in case you were wondering, but these guys raised 200 million to develop a next generation geothermal plants in Oregon. And you know what's cool about geothermal? John is nowhere. No matter where you are on the earth, if you go down, you're going to hit super hot eventually. And the challenge is that you run into really hard rock and designing drill bits to go through that rock efficiently is difficult, and the economics of that can be difficult, so, but they're calling this a super hot power plant. I'm not sure what the definition of super hot is. It's a 50 megawatt facility in Central Oregon using the firm's novel rock melting technology. So they're, they're using, not sure if it's laser, I gotta see here if they explain the technology, but it's, it's some very high tech technology.
• 41:40
  Tim Montague: It's not traditional data. Just drill bit on rock. It's an energy beam of some form. And, yeah, don't try this at home, kids. But I think we're gonna see. Oh yeah, fervo is mentioned here in the Enhanced geothermal space.
• 42:04
  John Weaver: They're about, they're probably about 15 cents per kilowatt hour right now, I saw him put in the bid at a dime, and that's with the tax credit. So furvo is probably costing 15 cents wholesale, which is probably a little strong for what the world is willing to pay, but maybe not in certain places for 24/7, clean.
• 42:30
  Tim Montague: I also think that you think of the fleet of existing power plants, whether they're, you know, coal, natural gas, nuclear, you could take, you could go to any of those campuses. Call them campuses.
• 42:43
  Tim Montague: They tend to be, you know, these are 40 plus acres. I mean, nuclear power plants have 1000s of acres around them, and insert a geothermal facility which has a small footprint, relatively speaking, it's like a drilling rig, right? And, yeah, then you have to build a, you know, a turbine, etc. But I think, I think bolting on geothermal to existing power infrastructure is going to make a lot of sense. It says here, though I looked up in perplexity, my favorite answer engine that they use a device called a gyrotron to melt and vaporize rock instead of crushing it with a mechanical bit. So there's a new word for you, John, gyrotron. I need you to write a story about the gyrotron.
• 43:33
  John Weaver: Gyrotron. Man,
• 43:37
  Tim Montague: it uses millimeter waves, a metallic wave guide to the rock face, where they heat the rock to 1000s of degrees.
• 43:50
  Tim Montague: ARGON purge gas carries the vaporized and particulate rock back up to the bore hole. Yeah, this is, this is some high tech stuff. I wonder how they how they power this gyrotron. It sounds like it needs a lot of juice,
• 44:12
  John Weaver: anything with two names, twice as much energy, right?
• 44:21
  Tim Montague: All right. Do we have any other stories we want to cover in our last few minutes.
• 44:26
  John Weaver: Let this be our last one. This is this is me finally getting to talk about other weird stuff. Man, we haven't talked about any solar panel stuff. We gotta have one perovskite article per show. I think that's a legal requirement in my contract.
• 44:42
  Tim Montague: It's true. It's true. You are a fan of perovskites.
• 44:47
  John Weaver: I negotiated it with the union.
• 44:51
  Tim Montague: All right. The story is Maxwell equipment platform enables 32.5% efficiency in perovskite, slash h, j, T, tandem cell in PV tech, march 5. By JP Casey, what's the story?
• 45:06
  John Weaver: So there's, you know, there's the headline story, which is boring at this point, because we've been hearing about perovskites for like, seven years. It's like, ah, perovskite, perovskite. So it's just, you know, all right, 32 and a half percent wonderful.
• 45:16
  John Weaver: What really matters here, though, is who this is, and the fact that it's part of a deal that's with a big manufacturer, and they don't mention it, but I think this deal right here, this transaction that's being talked About, might be, might become, the first large scale manufacturer who starts selling a perovskite tandem module, and it could be from this transaction. So Maxwell. So first we'll start there. Maxwell makes the machines that make solar panels, they don't actually sell solar panels. So I want to buy solar panels from Maxwell, but you probably already do. You just don't know it. It's like that company, BASF. We don't make the things you make, we make the things you make better. This is kind of like Maxwell, and they make cells, they make machines, they make assemblies. And so they are making a big manufacturing line for a big company, and that's why this excited me. It's just because it's Maxwell. It's like, you know, it's like, you know, we have your little side shops and your cool people making making things. You got your boutique shop saying, Oh, we did 10 megawatts of perovskites, and that is awesome. Oh, we installed one megawatt. Yeah, that's awesome. Maxwell. That's like, that's big league players doing it. It's not research labs. It's not this. This is Maxwell coming together to build a manufacturing line for one of the big six, is what I believe.
• 46:55
  John Weaver: I don't know this because they haven't released a name, but somewhere out there, somebody knows, and it's like, Trina.
• 47:01
  John Weaver: It's like, it's going to be one of the big players. Well, maybe not yingly, but you know, the big, the big people that you want on your roof, on the biggest things, I don't think it's going to be long. G, I have a feeling, would it be long? G, I have a feeling it's going to be ginkgo, maybe.
• 47:17
  Tim Montague: But, well, when you were, when you were talking about Maxwell, it reminded me a lot of Meyer burger. And then I was reminded that there was a story about Meyer burger yesterday. Yes, that swift solar has acquired Meyer burgers us HjT manufacturing assets and patents. So Swift is going to be making cells, solar cells in the US.
• 47:39
  John Weaver: They're going to be make this. So they're buying the HjT that Meyer burger was installing. I think this is in Colorado, City, Colorado. It could be in, I think it's in Colorado. Then they had the module assembly factory in Arizona. Good year Arizona. I don't know about that, but I'm excited about that. But this is like a contrast to, like, the Maxwell story. This is swift.
• 48:04
  John Weaver: This is a small firm. They're a startup. They're trying to do good stuff, and I hope the best form. And I think there's a all the coolest guy there, this guy, who I've been reading about forever, is he's, he's a, he's a long time solar person from like, the 70s, and he's got an awesome mustache.
• 48:24
  Tim Montague: And know you're talking about, see, that's it.
• 48:28
  Tim Montague: See the handlebar mustache guy?
• 48:28
  Tim Montague: Yeah, see, and that's swift energy. I think that's swift solar.
• 48:36
  John Weaver: Maybe I don't know the name, with the smaller shops, I get a little fuzzy, but that's, you know, this story caught my attention. And I was like, hell yeah. And I saw it. I saw it on LinkedIn yesterday.
• 48:45
  John Weaver: Gunter effort. He's Gunther. I love him. He posted it. And then PV mag did it too. And I was like, Yeah, but the Maxwell story really caught me, and so that's because it's Maxwell. So yes, I want swift to do it. I will write about him all day long. I even asked Ryan the my new boss at PV magazine, Ryan Kennedy. He's the new senior editor there. Miss Anne Fisher, she retired at the end of last year. I asked him if we could cut, if I could cover it. He goes, nope, we already got it.
• 49:16
  John Weaver: So I was excited. But Maxwell caught my attention, and for that, that's my perovskite story of the week.
• 49:26
  Tim Montague: I was looking at the Swift solar page on LinkedIn, but I I couldn't find the handlebar dude.
• 49:36
  John Weaver: What's his name?
• 49:36
  John Weaver: It's gonna take a moment, but it
• 49:39
  Tim Montague: looks like they acquired Gunter too. Oh, I didn't know that. I don't know.
• 49:42
  Tim Montague: I mean, Gunter is listed on the Swift solar page on LinkedIn.
• 49:46
  Tim Montague: Interesting move. Yeah, I wanted to, I want to bring swift solar on the show. We'll get them on here sometime in the near future. So you can look forward to that. Check out all of our content at Clean Power Hour com.
• 50:04
  Tim Montague: Come meet me in Milwaukee Tuesday, the 17th of March for st Patty's day, I'm going to the NABCEP conference. I'm hosting a reception that evening at third space brewing. I'm also going to re southeast at the end of March in Atlanta, I'll be going to ACP in Houston, there's so many events, but I My goal is to meet 100 listeners on the road at trade shows this year. I'm probably, probably in the 15 to 20 zone right now, so I've got, I've got some room. Come meet me, John, how can our listeners find you?
• 50:42
  John Weaver: Commercial, solar guy, calm, that's my website.
• 50:47
  John Weaver: I'm on LinkedIn. I go to some of these shows. I might send Craig, my sales guy, up to meet you, and in Milwaukee, we'll see but that's where you find us.
• 50:57
  John Weaver: Commercial solar guy, calm, that's the best place. And by the way, Charlie gay. He's the guy that's been
• 51:04
  Tim Montague: in solar. That's the guy Charlie gay. Is he with Swift solar?
• 51:08
  John Weaver: I don't know. I'm not seeing him on the goo when I did a search. So maybe not. So maybe he didn't work for them.
• 51:13
  John Weaver: But anyway, he's awesome. So Dr, solar is his nickname online.
• 51:18
  Tim Montague: Oh, there's another OG that we want to get on the show sometime, absolutely.
• 51:22
  John Weaver: Holy crap. I'd like to shake his hand just be like, Man, you did everything.
• 51:28
  Tim Montague: All right. Well, thank you so much. John Weaver, commercial solar guy, and thank you listeners for being here. We really appreciate it. I look forward to seeing you again next week. We're doing back to back shows. We'll be back on the 20th of march right here, so we'll see you there.