Latest / Clean Power Hour / Clean Power Hour LIVE Feb 2, 2023

Transcript

Clean Power Hour LIVE Feb 2, 2023 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:52
  Tim Montague: Welcome to the Clean Power Hour live. It is Thursday, February 2 2023. I'm Tim Montague checkout all of our content at Clean Power hour.com.
• 0:58
  Tim Montague: Please give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify so that others can find this content. We are speeding the energy transition. One podcast one interview one news roundup at a time. And today's a special day because we have an awesome guest. We have Harnois Q sells, Scott Moscowitz on the show, and we have a major announcement.
• 1:23
  Tim Montague: But first, I'd like to welcome John Weaver, my co host and the commercial solar guide to the show. Welcome, John.
• 1:30
  John Weaver: Hey, Tim, I don't hope you don't, all right. It's gonna be negative eight degrees here tomorrow night. So I hope it's warm for you, Tim.
• 1:40
  Tim Montague: It'll warm up soon. It's in the 20s here and it's a beautiful sunny day.
• 1:43
  Tim Montague: We're actually having a very mild winter. I'm ready for some more snow. I like winter, I like snow. But c'est la vie. Right?
• 1:50
  Tim Montague: Who knows. February can be very snowy here in central Illinois.
• 1:56
  Tim Montague: And I like snow because I like to play in the snow and go skiing. But
• 2:02
  John Weaver: I like this image I have behind me, which is one of my projects is in the middle of winter. So winter time skies are nice for taking solar picture.
• 2:09
  John Weaver: So it's winter. I don't complain about it. I like it. I like it.
• 2:14
  John Weaver: Scott, though. You're in Atlanta. So you're like, you're 50 degrees. Nice, nice warm weather. It's
• 2:23
  Scott Moskowitz: it's a rainy 50 degrees today. But I was I spent a couple of days in South Florida this week was 85 and sunny. So I've been a little bit spoiled over the last couple of days.
• 2:33
  John Weaver: solar solar people like sunny stuff.
• 2:35
  Tim Montague: Well, before we dive in to our conversation with Scott Moscow, which I want to make an announcement that we have a major sponsor for the show, finally, and that sponsor is tint power systems. They have a headquarters in Dallas, Texas, and there is an Innovation Day coming up on March 14, I will be there doing a podcast recording for all the installers and EPCs that come to visit their facility in Dallas on March 14.
• 3:07
  Tim Montague: So looking forward to that reach out to me, Tim at clean power hour.com You can check out all the news, of course at clean power. hour.com. So Scott, so so happy to have key cells on the show. There's a whole lot of news that you've been pumping out to talk about. And I'll let you decide what is the you know, the order of those things. But the thing that is driving this, like so many things now in the US in the clean energy transition is the IRA legislation. But what's going on ACU sales.
• 3:42
  Scott Moskowitz: Yeah. Thanks, Tim. Thanks, John. Delighted to be here. It's been a wild month for for us as a company. And for me personally, I've you know, I've been working in this industry for a decade, I've been with q cells for the last four to five years. And before that I was with GTM research and McKenzie for five years. And, you know, I think what we've seen since the inflation reduction past is just monumental changes in our industry. And we've gone from the sector that has always grown and done, you know, well, it's had its hiccups over the last couple of years. But, you know, it's really poured fuel onto the fire, right? It's already a demand has already exceeded supply in this market for forever. And now I think we're finally seeing some of these big new manufacturing investments that this markets that desperately needs. And hopefully some of these other policy issues clear up and get the kind of guidance that's going to give a lot of us competence for the next 10 or so. Yeah, we q cells announced back on January 11. At two and a half billion dollar investment in solar manufacturing in Georgia. It's the largest investment, the US solar industry history of any kind deployment, manufacturing and you name it. Since then, we announced a two and a half gigawatt multi year partnership with Microsoft to build and supply projects within across the United States. We are a parent company, the Hammar Group announced a potential US investment in battery manufacturing for energy storage specifically. And then just yesterday, we announced a 10 year offtake agreement for us made poly silicon with Rec silicon who is a company we invested in about a year and a half ago and are working to get their Moses Lake Washington facility up and running by the end. So lots of huge things happening. It's been a really exciting time. Happy for all these positive changes within the industry.
• 5:35
  Tim Montague: Yeah, that's pretty awesome. When you tally that up 8.3 gigawatts of American American made solar panels are on their way via q cells. And I mean, the really big news of course, is that you're doing this soup to nuts approach I'm in get to panel which is, which is very unique.
• 5:54
  Tim Montague: So, John, what do you think about what's going on with q cells?
• 5:59
  John Weaver: So the facility that's in Georgia will bring in silicon ingots, cut them into wafers, and then refine them into cells, and then deliver them to a panel. Is that correct?
• 6:11
  Scott Moskowitz: Yep, that's right. So what we'll do is, there's technically going to be two facilities. We've been in Georgia since 2008. To 2018, we started making panels there in 2019. That was a $200 million 1.7 gigawatt module assembly investment, what we've just announced two things were tripling the size of that factory of five gigawatts of modular assembly. And building a second one in between Dalton in Atlanta and Cartersville, Georgia, that was the 3.3 gigawatt fully integrated facility. Well, you will manufacture the ingots, wafers, cells and modules at that plant.
• 6:44
  Scott Moskowitz: Again, we are going to be using poly silicon from among others from from the rec silicon factory in Washington State. So it will be a fully end to end US supply chain for that core silicon based piece of the market. In which is right now, there's various huge demand for products that are that are meeting that specification primarily because, one, you know, we've all had supply chain issues over the last couple of years and then to the inflation Reduction Act is gonna have a domestic content and additive.
• 7:11
  Scott Moskowitz: And it's not yet clarified exactly what's going to meet it.
• 7:14
  Scott Moskowitz: But presumably, if you have specific specifications around
• 7:21
  John Weaver: Do you think the five gigawatts of panels that are assembled in the US will count? I mean, this is an answer, I guess we don't know yet. But with a five gigawatts count for domestic content, or will they get like a partial credit? Like, how am I obviously the product that's at the 3.3 gigawatt end to end facility?
• 7:40
  John Weaver: Well, but the five gigawatt facility, I don't think Moses Lake has an additional five gigawatts of power silicon content. And then obviously, you don't have wafer and cell facilities. So, you know, my those panels count toward?
• 7:56
  Scott Moskowitz: It depends, right? The Treasury Department has to guide what the interpretation of the inflation Reduction Act adder is, the language in that bill is is relatively new, it's sort of based on by America sort of based on binary. Yet, it doesn't exactly explain how to calculate it. So they'll likely do that within the next couple of months. But what are my best guess is that their their interpretation of this is likely that congressional intent intent is to drive manufacturing pretty far up the chain, I think it's more likely that we'll be able to hit it with the integrated capacity than with just module assembly that the Dalton plan is historically going to rely on the cells that we make in relation Korea. And depending on how they calculate that it's likely that they will have to take that fully integrated piece together.
• 8:47
  John Weaver: It would be a challenge. The Do you have any insight onto whether or not the Moses Lake facility can grow? Or is that a couple years away from? Well,
• 9:01
  Scott Moskowitz: it's right now it's coming from nothing, right?
• 9:04
  Scott Moskowitz: That factory has been idle since 2018 or so they're the US poly silicon industry has suffered for forever, from just an absolute lack of customer base anywhere in the world. And so now with us wafer facilities opening up we've announced one, Georgia cubic PV announced a 10 megawatt facility. And they haven't specified yet where but there'll be built in 10 gigawatts of waiver capacity.
• 9:28
  Scott Moskowitz: There's, of course, been a number of wafer investments made over the last couple of years in Southeast Asia, there's really starting to open up a market for us poly silicon. And so that factory is, again, it's been idle for a while. It's still a state of the art billion dollar facility, but it's going to be up and running by the end of this year. And that means we're like, there's a lot of people to hire a lot of equipment to upgrade. But yeah, it's on its way there.
• 9:57
  Tim Montague: You're referring to the the rec facility in Washington State, right? That's right. And just for our listeners, where does the silicon come from that that then feeds that machine?
• 11:03
  Scott Moskowitz: Yeah, so RSC silicon. Both day and week, q cells have announced a number of Mo use in the last year. So again, really looking taking a holistic approach to localise the supply chains and really create as get as much of it from domestic or North American sources as you can. So RSC silicone announced to partner to mo use one with a company called Ferro globe, which has a silicone raw silicone manufacturing facility in West Virginia, and then another another called Mississippi Silicon City. So they will predominantly be getting it from those firms typically the supply for US companies consider from North America. It will be predominantly mobile.
• 11:51
  Tim Montague: Very good, very good. And tell us a little more about the partnership with LG batteries are top of mind as we, you know, make the expansion of electrification of transportation. Batteries are, of course, a limiting factor. So how far back does the partnership with LG go and what's what is coming down the pike?
• 12:16
  Scott Moskowitz: Yeah, we don't have time to speak to detail about it yet. We announced a couple of weeks ago, a MoU with LG to build us battery manufacturing, the location or scope or size of that is yet to be determined, but something that we'll hopefully see relatively soon, there's obviously a huge demand for batteries, they have faced their own supply chain constraints and cost increases. And, you know, we compete very, very hard for batteries with the electric vehicle industry. That's where the majority of them go. And so having a facility that is really dedicated to supplying energy storage projects is it's going to be for us really valuable.
• 12:56
  Scott Moskowitz: You know, there's obviously incentives in the employment regime after that, too, right.
• 12:58
  Scott Moskowitz: We've got a number of deployment incentives with investment tax credits, production tax credits, we've got manufacturing pieces, very specifically with what we call the solar energy manufacturing for America Act, which is, you know, it really is the clean energy manufacturing for America Act. It's got incentives to manufacture wind batteries, trackers, all sorts of inverters, all sorts of components necessary these products. So yeah, lots of exciting things ahead, that should emerge from this.
• 13:29
  John Weaver: I like that you call it the solar energy manufacturing act, because, you know, we know we're all focused on what we do. But you're right, it does include everything and has hydrogen and has wind, it has batteries. So that's cars, Heat pumps are included in there. Well, I don't know exactly where those types of the manufacturing pieces go. But there's, there's a lot of different items in there. So so it's not just solar, even though solar is awesome.
• 13:56
  Scott Moskowitz: 45x for the policy nerds out there. So that's, that's good that it lives in which, you know, there's a number of them that are relevant, you got 48 for the commercial investment tax credit, 25. D for residential 4548. C is another manufacturing credit within the bill. Again, there's so much funding and policy within the inflation Reduction Act that there are programmes out there that people are just still still looking to understand and explore billions of dollars in grants available for our for all various parts of an energy industry. So there's lots and lots of opportunity.
• 14:34
  John Weaver: So you mentioned something in the pre show, as we were chatting that kind of caught me. And it took me a little bit to process it because it was like, two or three things together. It's like, oh, he's right. But you mentioned that the residential incentive, which is the what you just said, the 25 to 25 D, you know, it's different than the commercial incentive for solar. And the domestic content portion of that doesn't apply. So homeowners are not motivated to buy domestically manufactured content, only commercial utility business projects, then you added another layer. And this is one that's a really interesting nuance, and actually a prior talker, a prior guests on our show, referenced something to this nature. And you said, the fact that we don't have a residential solar incentive for domestic content leads toward third party ownership. And I'm I know exactly why. But I would love because you Scott, you're the expert on the show today, and I talked way too much. But if you wouldn't mind, tell us why that is occurring. And that's such an interesting nuance that you brought up. I've never thought about that. But please tell us why no domestic content leads to third party ownership.
• 15:56
  Scott Moskowitz: Yeah, you know, John, you're the you're the one out there building and really monetizing these credits. So probably got, honestly a better handle on a lot of it than me.
• 16:04
  Scott Moskowitz: But there's definitely an inconsistency in the bill between those two sections of the code as it relates to the domestic content. And part of this was just because, again, a bill of this size, there's a lot of a lot of sausage making in there, and particularly how this one was sort of negotiated behind the scenes over the last couple of weeks before it was rolled out and then ultimately passed with no changes at all.
• 16:27
  Scott Moskowitz: You know, this is just sort of how the how the cards fell on it, but the 48 section 48 has the 10% average domestic content and are 25 D does not and, you know that doesn't mean that homeowners can't take manager if you're, if you're installer out there, if you are using a third party ownership model, you sell that product, lease or PPA, you're always going to monetize that credit with section 48. And there's not a size limit on what you can do to qualify for that.
• 17:00
  Scott Moskowitz: So
• 17:02
  John Weaver: make sure people know why.
• 17:05
  Scott Moskowitz: Yeah, so because though they're bundling these systems, and these are commercial entities, monetizing the credit, so they are taking advantage of that section of the code. So they'll get that 10% out or, and they can pass that on to homeowners to do their research. If you are a customer that is buying your system and paying cash, or you're taking out a loan, you monetize that credit through the residential credit 25 D credit and that does not have the answer. And, you know, I think that doesn't mean that there won't be solar loans, or some states, like my own state of Georgia don't allow third party ownership. So there is no, you know, you're gonna have to use 20 by deed, and otherwise, if you're in a state like Georgia, but yeah, it's gonna, in states that have it, it will encourage some of the leasing, leasing PPA companies to provide further incentives to take that type of system. And, you know, that's sort of exacerbated to at the moment, we were talking about this before the show to have just these increased interest rates over the last year, you know, have really, the market was sort of already kind of pushing a little bit more from this, this loan back towards leases and PPAs.
• 18:14
  Scott Moskowitz: And there's been a 10 year ebb and flow of this right.
• 18:17
  Scott Moskowitz: Historically 10 years ago, the market was 70 80% PPAs, and loans, contestable or PPAs and leases from Tesla, and SunEdison, and others. And now it's sort of shifted as solar has gotten much cheaper in loans had been so pervasive you can get it's going the other way to get 7030 70% loans, 30% leasing PPA, and it's probably going to shift back towards this equilibrium, given those two factors of increasing interest rates that are sort of it gives the commercial entities a bit of a leg up because they can find all them and get some more attractive financing options, but then to this domestic content adder will, you know, just to some degree, favour economics for using using efficient.
• 19:01
  John Weaver: And you folks, I've seen the headlines that you're one of the your your modules are one of the top selling commercial and residential products in the United States, like one in two, almost like if not every quarter, you know, whenever I did a press release, you guys are always in the top one or two. Do you feel this?
• 19:19
  John Weaver: Could I mean are you as Q Cell attempting to talk to Joel Joseph ASAF? Sorry, I'm terrible names. I read it more than I hear. Are you pushing on him to be conscious of this? Does he have time to pay attention to such nuance of legislation? Is it worth it? I guess, you I see you slightly nodding. So then yeah. So this is something that you guys are gonna, you know, see if you can bring up
• 19:49
  Scott Moskowitz: it's less of an issue. I mean, I wouldn't describe it as an issue I would describe. One that certainly won't like, you know, if if I could snap my fingers and have this domestic content ad are applied to both sections in the code. And I think we would all gladly have that happen. I think we all have to be practical to understand like, what are the odds of that happening? You know, the inflation Reduction Act has passed, it's not going to be opened back up anytime soon. We now have a Republican House of Representatives. You know, there's always potential that at some point, there can be a tax extenders package. And you know, those happen every couple of years, probably towards the end of the year to clear the decks and extend some of these expiring credits that have really strong bipartisan support. The investment tax credit has historically had bipartisan support is extended, you'll recall a couple of years ago, at the end of the year under President Trump so there will always hopefully be some potential to get this type of equality within the code, but probably not a near term, Type change.
• 20:53
  Tim Montague: And Scott, tell us about Microsoft because I see that they're also investing in cubic PV. We've had QB PV on the show. I think of them as kind of a next gen solar technology company, but are they going to be producing traditional photovoltaics it with this 10 gigawatt facility?
• 21:13
  Scott Moskowitz: Yeah, that's a good question. So Microsoft is a they are not a direct investor in QB PB but Breakthrough Energy is which is the four gates investment in venture arm and yeah, there so Kubik was announced the 10 gigawatt wafer facility there. As far as I understand this will be sold on a third party basis. You know, that's also still perspective.
• 21:35
  Scott Moskowitz: So like they as in all of these major corporations have huge renewable energy targets and there was a report from the mayor including viruses he issued a couple of weeks ago, ranking where these companies fall Microsoft's pretty close to the top. But you know, they are an enormous company and a really big target. So we're helping them immediately to start solving some of those issues and getting as much solar and everything else they need on the grid as quickly as possible.
• 22:02
  Scott Moskowitz: What is unique about that deal, is it's one of the, as far as I'm aware, it is the first time that a major buyer of energy is procured panels directly from a supplier. Typically, they'll go to an IPP developer or some other entity that's going to build and instal in that company in the beautiful terminal models. In this case, we're doing it all for them. And then we will build these projects, construct them, supply them, and really work as a long term partner to ensure that they can meet these targets. And I think, you know, I think that's just it's a it's part of the new world we all live in, where we've had two years of supply chain constraints, we've had 10 years of supply disruptions from trade issues and other things and, you know, for for them, and for us, it's just the type of partnerships. So yeah, John, we we are predominantly known for supplying panels in the residential and commercial markets have been active in the utility space for a long time.
• 22:59
  Scott Moskowitz: And that's the type of projects that Microsoft would be installing.
• 23:01
  Tim Montague: But so yeah, that's, that's something that we need to talk about is how you have vertically integrated and propped up a development arm now. So you are a full fledged solar project developer. And I can see, you know why, if I was Microsoft, I might want to participate in that directly, historically, big corporates are just buying third party PPAs, these are virtual PPAs. So they're buying the power from a solar wind facility that's in some remote location, and then decarbonizing their value chain with those assets. Now, Microsoft is going to buy a bunch of Q Cell solar panels, and q cells is going to develop projects or is developing projects then that you will, basically I mean, is this what you would call a joint venture?
• 23:52
  Tim Montague: Or what exactly is that relationship? And and then a second question is, does this jeopardise other developers access to q cells, T cells product?
• 24:08
  Scott Moskowitz: Now good questions. I mean, we'd characterise it as a long term partnership, you know, they will be a big customer in several different ways. And yes, we have a pretty vertically integrated model at this point, which is a bit unique, you know, there historically have been a bunch of vertically integrated firms in this sector, you know, there's some power for solar, some Edison, other and others.
• 24:30
  Scott Moskowitz: And I think we've sort of come to this at a stage when the market is hopefully a bit more mature. And also just really leaning on the fact that we are a, probably more than any other solar company out there, backed by a diversified conglomerate.
• 24:43
  Scott Moskowitz: Anwar group is one of the biggest entities in Korea, and also to sales, of course, is still joined headquartered between Germany, Korea, and also in the US, it's actually our biggest market presence. So that's sort of how we focused over the long term in terms of what it means for the rest of the market. I mean, this is a two and a half gigawatt multi year agreement, we're going to have within two years, eight and a half gigawatts of US manufacturing capacity alone, around the world where I think our capacity at the moment is well over 12 gigawatts. And so you know, I it's a big deal. But we're, we're still going to be working with a lot of different partners.
• 25:27
  Tim Montague: Gotcha. So go ahead
• 25:29
  John Weaver: drop us development arm that's seven for energy, right?
• 25:33
  Scott Moskowitz: There's some top two entities in the broader umbrella, there's 174 Power global. And then there's another entity that is the one that's working with Microsoft comm know how to use those USA and USA and in the module entity are under the same general work. They're under the same general umbrella work very closely together. But both of those entities are utility developers, USA is actually formed, was released predominantly in EPC. For doing all the engineering, procurement and construction work. And yeah, we do that. And of course, like on the residential side, we have financing arms, we've got software to both software technology we invested in acquired jelly a couple of years really Yes. Have Been working on commercial into some commercial offerings for a while.
• 26:29
  John Weaver: I covered with PV PV magazine scuze me uncovered a a 174 project recently, and in our research, we figured out Oh look, it's owned by Harnois as a Uh, you know, just going up the line. So I thought that was neat. Are you conscious? And this is me getting into the Sci Fi whiz bang stuff, Scott. So sorry. Are you conscious of any perovskite work that's going on in Europe? And I don't know if you just know any of the cool stuff I Harnois has, via their cue. Tell me. So first of all, for people that don't know Q sells is a German manufacturer, a German scientists group that the Harnois conglomerate, which is a South Korean major, massive conglomerate, they do everything they block you so time ago. So there's some DNA, European design DNA, and now Q Cell slash hotwire, I don't know, I always mix up the the names, but Q cell has somehow tied into a European Commission that's developing a perovskite solar cell. And one of the people that are in it are one of my favourites. One of your competition. Sorry, Scott.
• 27:46
  John Weaver: Marburger. But it's, do you have any cool info on? You know, are we gonna have prostate solar cells tomorrow? I know we're not. But I just want to say it anyway.
• 27:58
  Scott Moskowitz: Nothing that I can disclose publicly right now.
• 28:01
  Scott Moskowitz: But yeah, we've been working on tandem cells with Grace guy technology for a little while.
• 28:04
  Scott Moskowitz: We talked about that as part of our long term vision and roadmap. And I think everyone recognises that perovskites that have a tonne of promise, they can add a lot of efficiency, they have really strong theoretical values, there's some work to do to get them to be durable and ensure that they don't degrade. But otherwise, yeah, I think all of us probably in the sector are looking at at any given time. What's the next evolution of technology? How do we get these products, cheaper products, cheaper, more efficient? What are customers demanding? Whether they want to put on rooftops whether they want to empower clients out there? And so yeah, we're we're always looking to explore those things.
• 28:43
  John Weaver: I noticed you said, you don't have anything you can publicly disclose. So what that what I'm how I'm going to interpret that? Is that Hey, everybody, next time, you see Scott asked him about stuff that he's not allowed to publicly disclose, see if you can get some good information out of him. So and let us know so that we can disclose it.
• 29:02
  Tim Montague: Cool. Anything else? We should be asking about Scott that we haven't talked about so far?
• 29:08
  Scott Moskowitz: Oh, my goodness. There's I just took all the time that there's never adult in the centre, there's always something happening, something changing something crazy going on. And so I think for now, it's good news, and that most of it is pretty positive. So lots of exciting things ahead. Thrilled to talk to you and you get to share some of the stories and Yeah, appreciate all you guys do to to publicise it and keep folks informed.
• 29:33
  Tim Montague: Yeah, well, thank you for being here. Scott Moscowitz. With Q sells, we look forward to visiting you in Georgia and seeing those factories expand and come out of the ground. And with that, I think we will move on and say Sayonara, Scott.
• 29:48
  Scott Moskowitz: Thanks, guys.
• 29:48
  Scott Moskowitz: Have a good day.
• 29:52
  Tim Montague: All right, John.
• 29:52
  Tim Montague: Well, that was that was very cool. Great to have a legendary manufacturer like yourselves on the show. Can't tell you how many developers I talked to developers and installers, you know, who are using q cells, we used q cells on several projects at continental and they're, yeah, they're just a beast. So great company. And it's great to see real soup to nuts, solar panel manufacturing coming to the US. That is what is really exciting about IRA. And now first solar has a true competitor, so to speak. for solar, obviously, manufacturing thin film panels, totally different technology. And they too are expanding. It's time to get get first solar on the show.
• 30:42
  Tim Montague: I think I've I've geeked out with them on their software that got bought by Tara bass, but never talked solar panels with with first solar. We got bogged down in a conversation about sustainability. And they wanted me to give them 10 questions I was gonna ask or something and I could never digest all of their marketing material now because they're very, they're very focused on you know, Cradle to Cradle at first solar, rightfully so because, you know, the cadmium telluride is well known for being toxic. Cadmium is a heavy metal and so you don't want that stuff getting out in the environment. But shall we? Should we dive into the news for the next half an hour, John,
• 31:31
  John Weaver: can you use Timothy there's always news. I think it's cool that Q sells here.
• 31:34
  John Weaver: Customers seem to be happy with their product. They always seem to be delivered. I don't have Bad modules. I appreciate that Scott jumped on here. The the push that they had through their senator was very helpful and very valuable. The Georgia voters have really been an integral part of the IRA. And so it's, it's cool. It's cool that Scott and Q Sal are part of it.
• 32:04
  John Weaver: They were helped to push. And sia and Abby, and I can't remember Abby's last name right now. Goodness, Abby, something, Abby, but Abby hopper? Yes, sir.
• 32:18
  John Weaver: Thank you. Sorry, Abby, I forgot your last name. So I know Abby, because I follow her on Twitter.
• 32:22
  John Weaver: And she always drinks Dunkin Donuts. And she always takes pictures when she's behind the seat. And she's like going to Atlanta, and she's got to work.
• 32:33
  John Weaver: So I know that a lot of a lot of labour, a lot of pushing, probably a lot of stress went into the work that q cells has done, and ESEA has done and everyone else down in Georgia.
• 32:47
  John Weaver: And so anybody who's from Georgia, thank you for voting for your senators, because they were fundamental in us being able to get this through. And so many other things, of course, but you know, from a purely solar standpoint, is invaluable for for what we got going on now.
• 33:04
  Tim Montague: Totally agree and well, let's let's, let's get into the news. We have a story from Illinois, a couple of stories from Illinois. And the first one is Wait, yeah,
• 33:16
  John Weaver: sorry, I didn't interrupt. Um, so CPS, you got to CPS, people to work with you.
• 33:20
  John Weaver: Does that mean we can do some training on CPS gear because I as a small time installer, I'm having challenges getting certain gear coming up over the next year. And I'm told that I should be checking out the 25 Kw CPS unit. So I need to get some spec pages and some documents, if you could, Tim, now that you have a connection and a congratulations, this is my first time hearing about you getting a sponsorship, I just hang out with you. Because I like to you let me run my mouth and talk about solar. But now that you have a sponsor, that means you're big time. So so good. So cool. And
• 34:01
  Tim Montague: and you know, it's great to have chin power systems as a sponsor because I am near their products are near and dear to my heart. We've installed many 125 Kw chintan burners here in the Illinois community solar market, they they dominate the community solar market across the US with their 125 Now they're pumping out 250 and 300 Kw inverters going after larger utility projects. So of course you can I can I can help you connect to their technical staff come to Dallas on March 14, fail and geek out with with their staff live, I would say, you know, Dallas is easy to get to.
• 34:41
  Tim Montague: That's one of the nice things I have a direct flight from Champaign, to Dallas, I'm excited for that. And but yeah, best of breed three string inverters and also getting into storage. So check them out cheap power systems.com, we will be bringing you a couple of while we'll be doing a quarterly interview with cient and or cient, and their customers. So you'll see four sponsored episodes coming out on the Clean Power Hour, and then occasional product reviews or product spotlights or project spotlights on the live. So definitely, please reach out to me if you are a manufacturer, and want to get your product on the Clean Power Hour bringing you to our 1000s and 1000s of engineers, EPCs financiers, project owners, asset owners IPPs. Please reach out to me Tim at clean power hour.com Or just go to the website and fill out the contact us form. And I can send you our media kit, which is a beautiful document. So thank you for your great idea.
• 35:49
  John Weaver: Tim. If we were to review one component per week from some random manufacturer, just come times, it's hard. And I'm still a small shop. So I know there's procurement specialists who just know everybody by the back of their hand. But it's it's tough. I mean, when you you were working for a big EPC and they were an electrical shock. Did you have to deal with procurement directly? And like did you have like a connection to say CPS or whomever? Or did you have somebody who's doing all your procurement after it goes through your engineering engineering team? Well, it
• 36:23
  Tim Montague: was a mixed bag, right? Because we were doing a lot of work for developers and so the developers were often doing the procurement themselves. And I Tim Montague never got directly involved in procurement. It was the project managers that were doing the procurement and then in collaboration with the procurement department at continental But so there's many layers to that. But, you know, I did always have an influence on selection of product. And, you know, there are many good solar products. Solar is a mature industry and that's one of our challenges is finding the right fit and availability with solar panels for example, right, you'll often have a brand in mind but then when you go to actually procure some panels you go up well, they're sold out for two years, or, or more. Now, you know, supply chain is a real challenge. And, and then you've got things like the tariffs on Chinese products. And so it's a it's it's deep water, you've got to really know what you're doing. And, of course, you want a high quality product that's not going to break in, keep the solar array up and running. And that's also a thing you know, there can be a race to the bottom. Don't and don't instal the cheapest equipment instal the best equipment, because you need that energy. You can't monetize a solar facility if it's not running.
• 37:48
  John Weaver: All right, Illinois. Alright. So standardising laws.
• 37:52
  Tim Montague: Yes, we are.
• 37:52
  Tim Montague: There's a story in the National Law Review. And the title is Illinois enacts new law to standardise local permitting for renewable energy facilities.
• 38:04
  Tim Montague: This was Monday, January 30. And so Illinois has passed public act 102 hyphen 1123, which applies to wind and solar facilities. And the gist of this is to prevent local H J's authorities having jurisdiction from interfering in the development of solar and wind farms or making it too difficult, it's quite easy to throw a wrench into project development by for example, creating setbacks that are too far. And sometimes counties are trying to create like 1200 foot setbacks from solar facilities.
• 38:42
  Tim Montague: And if you do that, then it becomes very difficult to find the necessary parcel space.
• 38:51
  Tim Montague: Because the landscape, albeit very rural is dotted with farm houses and farm facilities. And so if the if the county says, Look, you can't build your wind farm or solar farm within 1200 feet of a facility, then you have no access to the necessary space. And so this, this law is saying, Look, Illinois, we're going to standardise this and level the playing field and set a floor. And, and this is these are these are reasonable standards, we're not going to, you know, make you live with a solar farm in your backyard. But we're going to we're going to make it accessible, because we need to make the energy transition, we're not going to achieve our RPS. And this applies to many places, right?
• 39:41
  Tim Montague: Many places need to do this, John, because getting your project permitted is is is difficult enough. Period. But if if if every jurisdiction has very different rules and regulations that can be extremely challenging for developers. So check out public act 102. It's a very good thing for Illinois, and levelling the playing field for solar developers and preventing these obtuse rules that can really put a damper on wind and solar here in Champaign County where I live. We have a wind ordinance, which is very restrictive. And I'm curious to see how this plays out. We do have a large wind farm, that Invenergy is developing in the southern southern part of the county now.
• 40:33
  Tim Montague: But for the most part, we've been surrounded by wind farms on all sides, but not very many of them have come to Champaign. And you know, the way this plays out on for for local communities is that wind and solar are producing tax revenue for school districts. For example, there's about 15 taxing bodies in Illinois. But the impact of a solar farm or a wind farm is that the tax revenue for those parcels that are leased to renewable energy developers are going to produce about 10x more tax revenue than the farmland that is being left behind, so to speak. So it really is good for local communities, it's good for landowners, they're gonna get more income. It's good for the taxing bodies, meaning school districts, you need money to run a good school and education in the United States is a challenge where we're languishing on public education. We're falling behind in STEM education. And so the quality of our education is directly tied to the amount of money that we can put into our schools. And with that, I want to go to a second story from Illinois, and that is the Illinois Power Agency has launched the energy, what is called the Energy workforce equity portal, and we'll put a link to the show notes on this.
• 42:01
  Tim Montague: So it is a portal where individuals can post their information if they fall into a equity category. These are people from low income communities or people of colour, and then equity will be. So those are called equity eligible persons. And then equity eligible contractors can also participate by posting their job openings. As I like to say human capital is a limiting factor in the clean energy transition. And we want to make the train the energy transition as equitable as possible and accessible to all groups, not just the wealthy elite, so to speak. So this is a very good thing. It's a cool portal. And it's a step in the right direction. Because, you know, it's one thing to say to contractors and developers, look, you need to hire a certain percent of low and middle income people in your projects. It's a whole other thing to get access to that talent, right. And so there, there are now resources flowing into, for example, workforce training, with organisations like Sita and GRID Alternatives, and the IBEW, and they are really leaning in to training many, many more young people in the trades, to become solar installers, electricians, steel workers, carpenters, etc.
• 43:23
  Tim Montague: The people that build the infrastructure that makes the clean energy transition possible. So this is very good.
• 43:34
  John Weaver: A quick comment on your prior story about the county level jurisdiction, documentation, and two states over from you in Ohio, there is at least 10 counties that have outright banned large scale wind and solar, mostly solar, a couple of counties have banned when and then one state, your neighbour, the fair for Indiana up has also got some complexity, and some bands, some local moratoriums and local bands, including state level very strong control by the fossils.
• 44:11
  John Weaver: So it's, it's I'm when I saw the legislation, and I've seen this Illinois legislation floating around for a few weeks month now, when I saw it, I wasn't surprised, because it, it almost seems like you have to regionally consider what's going on. Otherwise, the laws from other states might sneak in. So this might have been a good push from the other direction to make sure that citing issues don't dominate and take over. So interests in law, I hope others on a state level start to push downward. So maybe that'll help.
• 44:47
  John Weaver: Maybe it'll keep helping?
• 44:51
  Tim Montague: Yep. Yeah, it's, it's a, it's absolutely a good thing to create a floor for renewable energy development, it's going to streamline the process it's gonna give, it's gonna give developers a fair chance, you know, in all parts of the state. And honestly, it's, it's, it's not good for individual counties, for a few decision makers, a few residents who are anti renewable energy to have such a big influence on the economy. Because if if you have a moratorium in your county, that means your county is going to get passed over for all of this potential revenue that goes to the landowners, and it goes to the taxing bodies. So yeah, it's it's a, it's a public good.
• 45:37
  Tim Montague: And, and I consider this not just a, a, you know, a very important economic phenomenon, but it is also a national security phenomenon. I guess that's the thing that that, you know, to circle back to Q sells real quick. We need to make more stuff here in the US, right, that we're using in the energy transition. If for some reason China decided to shut off the tap of batteries and solar panels to the US, we would be pretty apt and and they know this right. And so we really need to lean into building our or rebuilding. I call it onshoring and reshoring. Our US manufacturing, and it's it's high wage jobs. It's I mean, it just creates so much more of a smooth ride for the clean energy transition, right having access to locally made products. You're not waiting for the shipments to come on ships across the ocean, which of course we're going to continue to do that right now.
• 46:40
  Tim Montague: Uh, but But 8.3 gigawatts is a real chunk of the US market. You know, the US market is around 20 gigawatts, and, you know, quickly going to 30 gigawatts.
• 46:54
  Tim Montague: So it's game on, but we need, we need more q cells in the world.
• 47:00
  John Weaver: I mean, we do have actually a great article for us to transition to, is that China, this past week, I think, on Monday, put out legislation stating that their solar companies along with other technologies, are not allowed to export them. And included among the things that Chinese manufacturers are no longer allowed to move overseas, are technologies for the large silicon cells, the 188, and 210s, Black silicon, and cast moto silicon. part, and this is to make the ingots way back in early in the supply chain. And that's pretty interesting that now we have the Chinese who are saying, No, you folks that want to expand and grow, you can do it, but you have to keep your base in China. And you know, there's a couple things that are come up this one is that others are going to react to this and politically speaking, you know, politically speaking, people will be like, Alright, now it's our turn to catch up with the Chinese because the Chinese have been developing this technology for a long time, and are the leaders in it. But now it's going to evolve a little bit, and it's going to be interesting to watch. And then, you know, nation states will react, the United States will react. Europe will react. So, so yeah, that's interesting. We do need more q cells, we do need more Meyer burgers, we do need. We do need more Chinese manufacturers too, because they're doing good work.
• 48:39
  John Weaver: But it needs to be a world thing. You know, specifically this article referenced, also slowing India's progress toward being a powerhouse, because India's trying to make it a domestic industry very strong.
• 48:51
  John Weaver: So China has other things to deal with, of course, than just United States and Europeans.
• 48:58
  John Weaver: It's got the largest country in the world as its neighbour. And, you know, every once in a while they have little skirmishes on their border. So
• 49:05
  Tim Montague: second largest, China is still bigger, isn't it?
• 49:08
  Tim Montague: population wise? I don't think so. India Past China could be I know they were there knocking on the door. But anyway,
• 49:17
  John Weaver: discussion that if you delve into it, you'd be like, Oh, maybe.
• 49:20
  Tim Montague: So this story was China bans export, of course, solar panel technologies in Asia, Asia time. So check that out, we'll put a link in the show notes. Good story. And yes, China has a major competitor in India. And and of course, he's trying to pull back on that, that sucking sound of the manufacturers moving their facilities to Thailand, and Vietnam, and Malaysia and Singapore, because the US was saying, Look, we're not going to allow you to buy product, or we're going to put a tariff on it. If it's made in China. Oh, well, we'll make it in Thailand.
• 49:54
  Tim Montague: And and this is a common phenomenon. And it's, you know, it's good for the Southeast Asian economies. And, you know, very good for the clean energy transition at at large, because the products are still very affordable. But we need at the end of the day, we really need this stuff to come back on shore to the US. And that was cool about the about cubic PV to hear them scaling 10 gigawatts that's a big number of solar cells. So we'll have to see about getting them back on the show to to get an update
• 50:32
  John Weaver: standard mono cells so not the perovskite plus silicon product,
• 50:37
  Tim Montague: yes, flooring.
• 50:37
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I'm not surprised. You know, they gotta get their start. They gotta get their, their revenue stream going, right? Why Why not lean into some easier lower hanging fruit?
• 50:45
  Tim Montague: Right? That makes sense. And then also continued to develop that next gen. hybrid technology. So, real quick, you know, I did, I saw the story that Tesla, giga Texas is expected to increase their square footage to 5.6 million square feet. That is one big number John of Ford factory, and they're planning to invest $717 million into an expansion. This is like phase one adding 1.4 million square feet. So there's several waves of expansion headed to giga Texas. And I, you know, I don't want to dwell too long on this, but I'm just a huge fan of what Tesla's doing.
• 51:39
  Tim Montague: I can't wait to get my grubby hands on cybertruck I'm not holding my breath, mind you because they're pumping out the model y's and threes as fast as they can. And you know, and doing very well doing that.
• 51:53
  Tim Montague: Right. So yeah, yay for a for Tesla.
• 52:00
  John Weaver: Yeah. And how do you have any recent detail? I saw a full burn or a full full load of the biggest rocket. Do we have any ideas when the when the big one that's fully loaded?
• 52:15
  John Weaver: is gonna get launched?
• 52:16
  Tim Montague: I think they're I think they're I think they're saying 2024. Now, I, it's conceivable it's going to happen in 2023. But it seems it seems like a stretch to me an orbital test? Is that what you're referring to?
• 52:32
  John Weaver: I just want to see the big one get launched? Yeah, I have no idea which one they're doing. I just want them all. You know, I just want to see things on fire go up.
• 52:42
  Tim Montague: Yeah, well, we'll have to, we'll have to circle back. I don't I don't have I don't have my finger on that pulse. I just very occasionally glanced at that news. It is it is an impressive feat. Putting that rocket together, no doubt.
• 52:55
  Tim Montague: And I forgot to mention that the Tesla Gigafactory expansion in Texas. That story is in clean Technica, Tesla's huge expansion plans at Giga Texas. And we'll put that in the show notes as well. And we just have a few minutes, John, so we should be selective what, what is the next story and that you want to talk about?
• 53:16
  John Weaver: I guess I would have a two combo if we have few minutes. One is that for the first time, in 2022, we broke $1 trillion invested in clean energy technology, we grew 31%, the total amount invested equals the total amount spent on fossils, and everything on coal on oil on on construction, new facilities, on boats on everything. And this is the first time and expect it to keep growing. But it's again, it's the first time that this has occurred. And this has also occurred in the year when the price of fossils increased greatly. The amounts of revenues, I keep seeing the the profits for Exxon and BP and everybody, it's in the 10s of billions for every versus the prior year. It's like Oh, my goodness, 10s of billions. And but the green energy world is seeing investment now. More than 50% of this investment was made by China. And a huge portion of it was made in electric buying literal electric vehicles. So it's now we're starting to see the clean energy Dragon, I guess, start to develop more.
• 54:34
  John Weaver: Now. I'm also told this number needs to like quadruple in order to be on our pace on goals. But things like solar and wind are on pace EVs might be on pace, I'm not exactly sure. But they're close. But $1.1 trillion was spent in clean energy. And and that's, you know, it's a lot of money.
• 54:53
  Tim Montague: And that story was from Bloomberg, it's called Clean Energy sets $1.1 trillion record that now that's bound to be broken. Yeah, that that resonates that we need to Forex that pace to really make the energy transition by 2035 2040.
• 55:13
  Tim Montague: Because it's, it is really game on to try to keep global warming below two degrees Celsius, we're probably going to blow through 1.5. I think we're at 1.3 already. And so if we could stop it at 1.2. Sorry, at two degrees, that would be that would be huge. It would be a huge feat. It's totally non trivial.
• 55:38
  John Weaver: expect that number to keep flying because you know just a quick ad or article. Also on Bluebird. They show the amount of fossils that Europe was buying from Russia, and it went like crashed through the ground. This is a Bloomberg article. Russia can't replace the energy market Putin broke.
• 55:59
  John Weaver: And so they show the volume for the same time yesterday we had an announcement from the head of the EU, I can't remember her name. But she said we cheated that the EU had completely got rid of their dependency on Russia and fossils. And they did it faster than they expected.
• 56:19
  John Weaver: And they saved 250 billion euros. So they have the possibility to redirect reorient that initial funding into renewable power in the US. And she used to our net zero industries, not renewable us our E power EU pardon me. And so 250 billion euros was a number that the leader of the EU just said out loud, that could that was going to be put into renewables into clean energy. So this 1 trillion, you're absolutely right, it's going up and it might go up by 250 million 250 billion euros just from Russian fossil fuel savings. So I thought that was perfect one two combo of articles like yeah, trillion, and it's about to jump another 100 yen or something.
• 57:17
  Tim Montague: Yeah, you know, it was it was cool to see that Europe has passed from an energy generation perspective, right, wind and solar, have now passed fossil fuels in Europe, and so that that renewable rocket ship is launched, and it is only going to pull away now, as fossils become less and less economical. That's the key is they're not competitive economically. Of course, if we did full cost accounting, and took into account the health and environmental impacts of fossil fuels, we would make them much, much more expensive, and it would would happen even faster.
• 57:56
  Tim Montague: I have an episode dropping next week. And our which features an article my dad wrote, called old white men are ruining the future for young people. And it's about the 45 Q tax incentives in the IRA legislation, which is fueling further fossil development in the United States, especially what's called Enhanced Oil Recovery with co2.
• 58:28
  Tim Montague: So there's these tax incentives in IRA to capture co2 from smokestacks for about 1000, smokestacks. These are ethanol plants. These are oil refineries and chemical plants around the country. And then pump that co2 in pipelines, there are 66,000 miles of pipelines that are planned to, among other places, oil fields, where, you know, historically, what happens is they can only get 40 to 50% of the oil out of these wells, and then they move on, because it's quote unquote, not energetically feasible or not economically feasible. Now, with the co2 incentives, they're going to pump co2 down, it does, it is a solvent, and it makes it possible to get more oil out of those wells. So this is what's called a poison pill in the IRA legislation. So look, stay tuned for that next Tuesday, that episode is going to drop on clean power. hour.com. Well, John, I'd love to talk about Hyundai, but I think we should just wrap up and let our listeners know how on earth they could find you, Mr. commercial solar guy because I want more of our listeners to find you and do commercial and utility scale projects with you you're building rooftop CNI, solar, you're building residential solar with whaling city solar.
• 59:53
  Tim Montague: And of course, you're developing community or small utility scale solar projects. So how can our listeners find you?
• 1:00:00
  John Weaver: easiest ways, commercial solar guy.com, we have a contact us page, you can send an email. You can also email me at John at commercial solar guy. I'm also on LinkedIn and Twitter a whole bunch, just john fitzgerald Weaver or commercial solar guy, you'll find me but all over the internet, just type in my name, you'll find me John Fitzgerald Weaver.
• 1:00:20
  Tim Montague: And John has regularly penning stories in PV magazine. So you can also find him if you go to PV magazine.com. And you'll find John there. So with that, you can find all of our content at Clean Power hour.com. That's our website, find the audio, find the video, subscribe to our YouTube channel. And please give us a rating and review. You can do that right on the website.
• 1:00:41
  Tim Montague: There's a link for giving us a review on Apple or Spotify. And that's vital so that others can find this content. We need 1000s and 1000s of more people to become informed about the energy transition and the great economic opportunities that it presents. It is the wealth, creation and wealth, transfer opportunity of our lifetimes.
• 1:01:06
  Tim Montague: And so it's a great, good for humanity. With that. I want to say thank you, John Weaver and let's grow solar and storage.
• 1:01:13
  Tim Montague: We'll see you next week, John.
• 1:01:13
  Tim Montague: Oh, no, we won't see you next week. We're going to be doing our episode on Wednesday, not Thursday, John's going to be on vacation. And I have Julia Piper coming on the show as a co host.
• 1:01:23
  Tim Montague: We're going to be geeking out on residential solar. That is one of her expertise. So you can look for a slightly different episode next week but and John where is it that
• 1:01:37
  John Weaver: you're going? Costa Rica.
• 1:01:39
  Tim Montague: Yes. I love it.
• 1:01:39
  Tim Montague: I've never been so I look forward to hearing about that trip so with that I'll say Have a great day everyone