Latest / Clean Power Hour / Clean Power Hour LIVE | July 6, 2023

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Clean Power Hour LIVE | July 6, 2023 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:51
  Tim Montague: Welcome to the Clean Power Hour live. I'm Tim Montague. Check out all of our content at Clean Power hour.com.
• 0:58
  Tim Montague: Give us a rating and review on Apple and Spotify. And please tell your friends about the show. We're dropping a pre recorded interview every Tuesday. And this live broadcast with my colleague and co host commercial solar guy, PV magazine journalist John Weaver, welcome to the show.
• 1:18
  John Weaver: How are ya hope everything's nice. It's summer time officially. So all your solar should be looking good.
• 1:24
  John Weaver: hope everybody's numbers are pretty.
• 1:27
  Tim Montague: It's a lovely summer. And of course, summer is a mixed bag because it brings heat and storms and stuff. But we're having a lovely summer here in the Midwest, basically, despite some crazy weather. We had 100 mile an hour winds last week. And but you know, by sailboat survived, I was not in the sailboat at the time of the storms. So that was good thing.
• 1:54
  Tim Montague: And I'm going sailing this weekend. So I'm very excited for that. How was your Fourth of July John?
• 2:01
  John Weaver: Oh, Fourth of July was nice, visited friends had a nice long, relaxing weekend. saw fireworks from right below, like to the point where like, I'd lay back on the grass. And we were right above. So it was nice. And I brought a wine to a party. Oh, a bottle of wine to a party that everybody's drinking beer at.
• 2:22
  John Weaver: And so I drank the whole bottle of wine on my own, which is wonderful.
• 2:28
  Tim Montague: Drinking wine on the Fourth of July. I don't know that's anathema.
• 2:32
  John Weaver: Yeah, so works for me. But, but solar is going well. It's very busy. There's a lot of things going on, got some stresses on Project signed a new project, I got a new project for the week on the document. It's one that we're signing and moving through now we had a I did my site, a site visit and there was a new nuance that will show you a picture of at the site. There's you know, solar is growing. There's there's a lot going on. And and our company has grown to commercial solar yet. So we're trying to keep it keep it up man trying to do it.
• 3:12
  Tim Montague: Real, you know, the energy transition is a wonderful thing. And it is being driven by the cost adoption curve, right? We're working with this technology called solar PV or wind or batteries. And the cost adoption curve has done some amazing destruction I learned. We're going to talk about this book on the show today. book called Climate restoration. But I learned in that book that the cost of solar has fallen 99.6% Since 1976, which was when the first oil crisis happened here in the US.
• 3:47
  Tim Montague: And Jimmy Carter promptly put some solar panels on the roof of the White House, being the stud physicist that he was. And so 99.6 though, like that's a crazy reduction in cost in our lifetimes. And but that is the power of cost adoption curves.
• 4:10
  Tim Montague: And that's why the energy transition is happening. The energy transition is the easy part. That's the bad news. The hard part is the 800 to 1000 gigatons, depending on who you ask and how they measure of co2 equivalent pollution that's in the atmosphere that we have to suck out. But we're going to talk about four ways that this guy Peter, for kowski has figured out we can do that economically by 2050. So there is there is hope there is there is hope. Keep hope, John.
• 4:49
  John Weaver: I have hope. I have hope. There will be some challenges will bear some consequences. But I do have hope. So.
• 4:59
  Tim Montague: The other book that I'm reading has a very funny title. And that is the end of the world is just the beginning. So you can check that out. That's about geopolitics and the demographic shifts that are happening around the world.
• 5:17
  Tim Montague: Very interesting take on modern civilization. The good news there is that we come out on top according to that author whose name escapes me at the moment but check it out. His first name is Peter also we have too many Peters my dad's name is Peter got to hang out with Peter Montague last week, which was lovely. Or this week, sorry.
• 5:36
  Tim Montague: It's only the sixth of July. It feels like a long time ago that we had the Fourth of July
• 5:48
  John Weaver: was long day.
• 5:48
  Tim Montague: I know. The Fifth of July was is not a lot of fun, I have to say. Okay, getting back in the office. But anyway, well, we have a little housekeeping a little more housekeeping. We are so busy here at the Clean Power Hour doing wonderful things. And we do that with the support of chin power system, CPS America, maker of America's number one three phase string inverter, we want to give them a shout out. And Dino watts, solar Dino watts.com, check them out.
• 6:20
  Tim Montague: Performance Monitoring and analytics platform for utility solar, including community solar, grateful to our sponsors, we are hungry for more sponsors, this show is only possible because of our sponsors. So if you're a company that makes money, and wants to reach our listeners, which are energy professionals writing this thing called the solar coaster, and the energy transition, which is a huge wave of resources that are just flowing into this technology or these technologies, we would love to hear from you, you can reach out to me at Tim at clean power hour.com or go on the website and fill out a little form there clean power hour.com. No, it's not. It's not hard. I'm also easily findable on LinkedIn, Tim Montague. So reach out to me, we would love to get into dialogue about how you can support the show, we have a new project at the show, and that is the Clean Power Media Network, go to go to clean power dot media for that project, which is featuring several other podcasts. So please be curious, check it out.
• 7:28
  Tim Montague: Let us know what you think. If you know of a great show, in the clean energy transition that might fit the network, please reach out to me again at Tim at Clean Power hour.com. That's the only housekeeping I have. I announced last week, you know, John, that we would like to do a segment called Ask the commercial solar guy. And I think that is a brilliant idea.
• 7:53
  Tim Montague: But we have not had any questions from our audience. And so we need you to tweet about this, John, because you have an audience. And I'm sure we will actually get into some of your journalism this week as well, I hope in PV magazine. And I would be happy to lead off with some news from John Weaver actually, if you have something interesting to say.
• 8:21
  John Weaver: Sure. Um, I do like the idea of s commercial solar guy, that'd be cool. Maybe I should a tweet and LinkedIn every week and see what we can we can do. You know, the two articles that I've written since last week, when we chatted, the first was something on N row.
• 8:38
  John Weaver: And let me move it up toward the top of our document. Cool. And so Enrile did a called a time motion study. And this is a interesting thing. And it's what they did, they looked at a residential installation of roofing integrated material, and one of the installations Now technically, they didn't say what the product was. But I could kind of hint that there were two separate product types.
• 9:05
  John Weaver: One of them I thought was a Tesla roof product of solar roof. And the other may have been like a shingle product, like from ghf or CertainTeed.
• 9:12
  John Weaver: Again, they didn't know mention it, but they talked you could get some hints that maybe it was these projects. And then they also so they looked at two projects. But then they also looked at 19 projects that were being built with roof integrated product. Again, they didn't say what it was, but in this case, I know it's not a Tesla. And it was 19 houses. And and here's the key kicker that really kind of caught my attention and made me even right enrol to ask for more questions. They said that a roofing integrated product constructed with the new house at time of new construction, as you can see on the headlines, took 44% less time to instal the product than a standard solar product. And that's significant.
• 10:01
  John Weaver: I mean, it's almost half you know, if components are the same, if interconnection and permits and everything else are cheaper, because it's being done at time of construction, and then we chop off, you know, a huge chunk of labour costs. Um, you know, this should be it's, this is the way things should be happening. Now, of course, we already have an existing 100 million houses. So the retrofit market isn't going anywhere. But for new products for new houses, new construction over the next 2030 years. I don't know how much we're going to build millions of houses 10s of millions of houses. These things need to have solar integrated.
• 10:39
  John Weaver: And if it's cost and 44% less time, that means it's going to cost X percent less money. And if you integrate it into your mortgage now we're talking to 30 year finance at whatever percent, it starts to look like a cashflow, positive item on day one, as long as, and this is something I want to do some work on. But as long as the solar contractors who are getting a deal with the house builders don't just jack the price up, which is kind of happening in California a bit. I'm actually working with a politician in Rhode Island to help them refine some legislation so that they can talk about numbers that are being presented as the cost of solar at new construction, because they're thinking about submitting legislation to the state and saying, Hey, we can only you know, all new construction gets this. So, so it was cool to see this there was great timing for it. Some of the lessons learned in it is that really we're just new at doing building integrated, and we mess up a bunch. When you when you went through the long paper, you would see the contractors were like, Yeah, we needed this component. And we had to wait two hours. And two hours for residential installation is a lot when you're going to knock out a project 85 90% of it in one day.
• 11:56
  John Weaver: So there's a lot of supply chain upgrades and a lot of technique upgrades for this roofing integrated product for retrofits. Because right now the machine the trucks that are delivering hardware are optimised for standard modules, the supply chain, the components, the experience, the lift, you know, just the processes are optimised for standard retrofit. So that says that we have a lot to go forward to get better at roofing integrated, and it shows that we have a great opportunity with it, too. So I I just thought it was cool when we when I went through this study and started to see this data and how it compares and it was just neat.
• 12:38
  John Weaver: Bernie
• 12:43
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I love this.
• 12:43
  Tim Montague: And, you know, the, the so there's the upside of it's faster, it's more efficient, overall makes makes good sense.
• 12:52
  Tim Montague: The downside is it's still more expensive to do. Rip V I'm used to saying bi P V for building integrated, okay, B rip V roofing integrated, I'm just gonna call it all bi P V. But and I want to highlight that we did a great interview with JF energy. GF is the largest roofing materials company in the world. And they have a dedicated division now to a solar roofing tile, or roofing shingle that is installed with a nail gun, just like a composite roofing shingle. So though, so the roofers do their job exactly the same as they are used to doing and then you hire an electrician to come in and do the do the wiring. Or, you know, maybe the roofers are connecting the, the, the easy part on the roof, but, but then running that to the electrical closet is done by an electrician. So anyway, there's no doubt that bi PV is the future of solar. There's just absolutely no doubt. And so it's the early adopters who are going to who are going to win out. And if I was a roofer today, I would absolutely be a roofing and solar installer. There's just zero question about that, don't you think?
• 14:14
  John Weaver: Yeah, I mean, they're very different teams and very different sales cycles. So a roofer today might be very hesitant to move to solar, because roofing sells at a certain rate at a certain price, and it moves fast. And if you have this business, you got it.
• 14:26
  John Weaver: But if you're a bigger company, and you can combine the two and be conscious and patient with both products, and integrating them and having, you know, a little more complex sales process, but maybe one that's more consistent than I, you know, what I would love for my residential company wheeling city solar, I would love to find that perfect roofing partner who is okay going back and forth and, and will work with us and we can work with them because you know, just be a great lead source, I think it's the best lead source that you can have out there is a roofing plus solar partner without a doubt.
• 15:00
  John Weaver: So, and you know, the one negative of VIP is that our building stock just moves slowly, you know, we have probably the super majority of structures that we're going to have for the next 20 years. And you know, we'll add 10% More 20% More. So that leaves, you know, the retrofit market, which is significant 7080 90% of what's going to happen, it's already built, so we just have to accept that as reality and work with it. But with new structures. I mean, it just makes just such good sense. I really love the idea of innovating on the roofing material and roofing layout to integrate racking technologies. I haven't really seen any advanced racking technologies and then Having a separate team, then the mechanical solar team to do the basic electrical installation stuff. So having your electric panel already ready for the solar having some conduit going from the solar having space for maybe extra metres or whatever switchgear we have for the solar you know, just having certain pieces of components already prepped, maybe the racks attached to the roof for things like inverters and our PV load station combiners and you know, gear like that just having some forethought so that when we come out to blast the solar was already a bunch of stuff there.
• 17:22
  John Weaver: And it just makes great sense.
• 17:25
  John Weaver: So So yeah, Roofing roofing integrated that like and I think last week, we showed that really cool all white module from Onyx that looked weird. It was it's almost it's weird it looking into pure black modules, which are weird. Like you can look at them. You can swim in them.
• 17:42
  John Weaver: They're so dark, you can just fall into them forever, like my background here this week. But,
• 17:49
  Tim Montague: John, we've lost in space.
• 17:53
  John Weaver: So yeah, roofing integrated, big fan of it. I really hope Tesla figures out their half of it because they have such a nice product that they've made. They got to figure out how to scale.
• 18:03
  Tim Montague: Yeah, it is. It is interesting, how much trouble Tesla's had with their roofing tile. And I don't I don't hear a lot of good news about it.
• 18:11
  Tim Montague: Honestly. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. Okay, granted, but it's super expensive. And super hard to instal, I think. And so anyway, you know, they're working on it. And I, you know, I get it. I have I have a glimmer of what Elon Musk's vision is. And he gets it right, that VIP v is the future. He's very clear about that. He was an early adopter, clearly, not that there weren't earlier adopters, you know, building solar shingles have been around for decades. And in various flavours. There's just not one that has truly gone mainstream.
• 18:53
  Tim Montague: I think JF is on the right track with a nail double shingle. So check out the interviews on clean power hour.com with JF Ray Holmes, who is the VP of product for JF energy, and he came from, interestingly, he came from Tesla and Solar City. So he was intimately involved with the solar shingle or solar tile project, so to speak at Tesla, and decided to go elsewhere. So anyway, let's keep moving. I'm about your book. Yeah, I wish this was my book. This this is an amazing find. I have to thank my father actually for bringing this my attention. And I'm just going to put the Amazon page on screen. But this gentleman named Peter for kowski, who is a astrophysicist by training. And he worked for years as an entrepreneur in the AI space, he came up with a vision technology for manufacturing, I'm not I don't know the details. But anyway, he he now and again, comes back to and now full time, climate change and how humanity can step back from the brink of climate chaos. His book is titled climate restoration, the only future that will sustain the human race and what Peter has done. And I'm about halfway through this book now, so I don't have an encyclopaedic knowledge of it. But he has broken down the key elements of stepping back from the brink, in other words, nurturing the economy, that's 40 gigatons of co2 pollution. And then removing 1000 gigatons, we're a billion tonnes of carbon pollution from the atmosphere using four pillars. And the pillars have three things in common. Those three things are that they are permanent. So these are solutions that will last for hundreds or 1000s of years, not just a few decades. They are scalable, meaning we can do them on mass, in in, in the current timeframe, right. We have to be doing this action today. And then that they're fundable or financial. So permanent, scalable and financial. And the four things are synthetic limestone manufacture, seaweed, permaculture, ocean iron fertilisation, or Oli F and enhanced atmospheric methane, oxygen nation. Now those four things, John, I would be very surprised if you hadn't heard of all of them, or most of them, but I had not heard of enhanced ocean enhanced atmospheric methane oxidation, I have to say, are you familiar with all these four things?
• 21:59
  John Weaver: Two and Three, I've heard a bunch about one a super tiny occasionally. And I think that's associated with like concrete manufacturing and stuff. Yep. And so I've heard tiny bits of around that. Number four, I haven't heard, but I'd like to throw on number five.
• 22:13
  John Weaver: And that one, great, well, one hypothesised pie in the sky view is that we get better at co2 extraction just straight from the atmosphere. And we do something parallel to number one. And we figure out how to make building materials because remember, we are taking out carbon, and oxygen, and carbon can be turned into many things, including carbon nanotubes, and all kinds of weird stuff. So, you know, I think I just have this weird idea that one day, we'll be able to go straight from the atmosphere into some sort of carbon fibre or carbon nanotube, carbon, whatever, and build stuff with it, which is really parallel, I think, to number one. And, you know, if we could just go straight to concrete, sweet or limestone.
• 23:02
  John Weaver: Great, I guess that's a parallel idea. But really, I think the number one thing about removing co2 from the atmosphere is turning it right into something right away. And if we can turn it into bricks, wonderful. And that's what the limestone is doing. If we're doing something else with it, like fertiliser, awesome.
• 23:22
  Tim Montague: Yeah, all of the above, you can, you can just take co2 and pump it down into the ground in the right geologic formation, and it will turn to limestone. In places like Iceland, for example. Now, this isn't true of every place. So you have to be careful. And you have to make sure the chemistry and geology is proper for that.
• 23:40
  Tim Montague: So So anyway, and then you can also just capture it and turn it to stone via various processes, it is energy intensive. But as you and I know, we are just truly swimming in energy, we have 5000 to 10,000 times more solar alone than humanity uses.
• 23:57
  Tim Montague: And and so we do need to instal a lot of solar and wind and batteries to fuel all this industrial processes. And that is a point that he makes, but the technology is there today to do this. And yeah, make building materials. And it won't just be limestone, it will be things like carbon nanotubes, and, and other materials that we make out of carbon that can be made into useful stuff like buildings, etc. So that's all well and good. And but yeah, I'm reaching out to Peter on LinkedIn. And if you're a friend of Peters, please let them know that we would love to bring him on to the show here on either the Thursday live or a pre recorded interview of so very much looking forward to meeting Peter for kowski FY e k. O WSKY. And his co author is Carol Douglas.
• 25:01
  Tim Montague: So check that out. And we're gonna talk about not John's project of the week of Utah aeroplane. Are you back, John?
• 25:13
  John Weaver: I just moving stuff around on you, man. There was a there was a How about can we talk about that rooftop solar was overlooked in New England.
• 25:20
  John Weaver: And people were like, Oh, we don't think it's going to be work. And then suddenly, rooftop solar. They said, Oh, it's so good that we're not going to cut down.
• 25:30
  Tim Montague: I don't understand. I don't understand when you say rooftop solar was overlooked. Yes, we can talk about this. But when I'm on the East Coast, which I was just recently in the Hudson Valley. I see a lot of rooftop solar.
• 25:41
  Tim Montague: There's more rooftop solar in New York state than most other places I visit in the United States. I have to say. My sister commented that she was in Florida recently and saw very little rooftop solar. And I explained to her, she can thank Florida Power Light for that.
• 25:55
  Tim Montague: But
• 25:59
  John Weaver: it was before that it was before. Actually no, it was them. But it was back in the 70s when it first went to the laws really got hammered. But yes, and that's why commercial solar guys based in Massachusetts. Okay, so here's the story. So it's the next story on the paper. It's from the E News. And the article title is rooftop solar was overlooked. Now it's closing a New England power plant. And the people who said it was overlooked are the people who are managing the is oh region.
• 26:22
  John Weaver: So the inter the service operator the I can't even remember what The I stands for right now. But the ISO the New England ISO, and they are the grid managers, and they're now saying that rooftop solar is providing some Oh, much consistent energy, that it's enough to shut down the mystic power generation station, which is a gas plant. That's, I think 1.4 gigawatts. And they say that that gas plant, which was a peeker isn't going to be necessary very soon because of rooftop solar. And, and now the New England ISO website, they now have, you know, because they show all the different generations, they have all these cool little charts, you can click on and look at and see, oh, here's how much energy here's what it costs. The wholesale, just like California is ISO has their neat site. But New England ISO added rooftop behind the metre, no behind the metre solar, which is even better than rooftop because rooftop is one thing, it's behind the metre and standalone but behind the metre solar is added. And this behind the metre, this rooftop volume is so significant. It's shutting down power plants. And I think that's awesome. And so I, I'm happy that it's happening up here in the north, northeast, and New England has some of the largest rooftop behind the metre solar installations in the nation, specifically Massachusetts with its smart programmes, has got like 15 or 17% of its electricity coming from behind the metre solar, which is a small scale solar, which is huge. I don't think anyone else has anywhere near such a high number for specifically behind the metre small scale, but I wouldn't say that California has a huge amount to I just percentage wise because Kelly's got everything else too. Because in New England, we don't have much large scale solar. It's almost, you know, in Massachusetts, it's all five megawatts or lesser because those are the programmes that were in place. We don't really have a utility scale big land.
• 28:25
  John Weaver: So
• 28:28
  Tim Montague: what are the states in the New England ISO by the way? Do you know?
• 28:32
  John Weaver: Yeah, so we got we got Vermont got Massachusetts.
• 28:35
  John Weaver: We are Connecticut. Rhode Island. We got New Hampshire we got me. So northeast of New York.
• 28:42
  Tim Montague: New York and its own ISO right.
• 28:45
  John Weaver: New York is NY so yeah, of course, New York, you know, New York's like California that like, you know, if California and Texas got it, we gotta have it on our own. So, so yes, they're their own ISO. And, you know, states, like Southern states, southeastern states have a lot of control on a state level. So Florida, in essence, runs its own grid. You know, Alabama runs, Georgia runs it.
• 29:08
  John Weaver: North Carolina, South Carolina.
• 29:12
  John Weaver: So, you know, different states.
• 29:12
  John Weaver: They don't have regional authorities, like PJM. And, you know, Southwest Power Pool stuff like that. Right. So yeah, so rooftop solar was overlooked. We love rooftop solar. You know, that's it. Yep. Talk about that.
• 29:29
  Tim Montague: Good story, shutting down gas plants.
• 29:33
  Tim Montague: Because of rooftop solar. It's, it's significant. And, you know, the reason we're installing so much rooftop solar is because it is economical. We have to remind our listeners it is the economics that are driving the clean energy transition. And, and it's game on, and we're just getting started. But by 2050, the grid is going to be 50%.
• 29:52
  Tim Montague: Solar, here in the US and globally. And so get into it if you're not into it, tell your kids we need a million electricians, a million electricians. And so let's talk about this solar project of the week Solar Site visit Friday got Seagull nests and eggs shells and at least for flying poop warning shots. Bursting like you've been on the roof, John,
• 30:22
  John Weaver: make sure you show the pictures man. At least have the nest. Yeah, it's just nice roof. 114 Kw was on it on Friday, last Friday. And just had to take a few pictures this is me climbing into my little hatch. And that hatch was kind of annoying to open we had to go to had to fiddle with it was locked from the roof. So I had to get on a different way, come back, whatever. But then, you know, just have a normal flat roof on the one side of it.
• 30:48
  John Weaver: There's a bunch of stuff, the other side's halfway clear. And there were three routes so we could you know, bounce around three sites. But the real key thing is that there were seagulls everywhere. And I learned something interesting from the customer. They said a few years ago they did a new roofing material they put up like a white stone and there goes an egg we're good so we're gonna have to you know manage this we will see when we get on the roof and whether that bird is still I'm guessing the eggs gonna hatch long before we start our solar because that eggs been laid. But we're gonna have to manage it and but I was told that the old roof Oh yeah. This is going to be the issue. 1010 Do
• 31:30
  Tim Montague: you know what that is? That's a conch shell.
• 31:32
  John Weaver: Yeah. What the heck is a conch shell doing on a roof and with 10 or 15 of its friends.
• 31:39
  Tim Montague: It's it's trying to become Seagull food. I think you
• 31:42
  John Weaver: Yes. And you know what happens with conch shells and how that process works they get dropped from the sky.
• 31:49
  Tim Montague: That's that's painful for solar panel.
• 31:51
  John Weaver: Yes, sir. So, so the roof used to be a white stone. And now it's a black mat.
• 31:55
  John Weaver: So they took off the white ballast and so we're gonna have to deal with seagulls and den stones and we're going to tell the customer you guys need like 10 panels extra sitting in your storage and we got to figure out how to how to work with you and take care of everything.
• 32:14
  Tim Montague: So that's the that's the way to do it is just have some extra panels. You might, you know, lose one here and there but it's not going to be catastrophic. What could be catastrophic is hail. And then I saw a crazy photo. Yeah, when we go find it. Yeah, go find that crazy fat salutely
• 32:34
  John Weaver: I know the one you're talking about in Nebraska.
• 32:36
  Tim Montague: Yeah. So they got hit in the in the Great Plains virtually if not all of the solar panels were shattered.
• 32:46
  Tim Montague: Yeah, did you have a question?
• 32:46
  Tim Montague: You know, when you're when you're dealing with commercial or utility solar so do the panel's resist hail and the answer is yes, up to one inch.
• 32:59
  Tim Montague: And you know, an inch is a good size hailstone you don't want to be out in a one inch hailstorm.
• 33:03
  Tim Montague: that would that would be painful. And very dangerous but but hail does get quite a bit bigger. And you can have 234 inch hail and then you're gonna have a lot of busted glass.
• 33:21
  John Weaver: I'm going to share my screen real quick sir. Show a picture solar farm pelted All right.
• 33:33
  Tim Montague: Yeah, what was what was black panels are now white because glass is shattered. And what a bummer.
• 33:43
  Tim Montague: Yeah.
• 33:45
  John Weaver: 4.3 meg AC. So like, not a small project. So we're talking like six Meg's five and a half DC. Apparently the same storm, the same cell injured eight people at a coal mine. Wow. I didn't even know that. This was a different one.
• 34:01
  John Weaver: And look at that, man. You can see. I mean, and it wasn't just one piece of hail Tim. I mean, these things you can see like dozens of spots on each one, man. That's, that's rough. So that's a five it was 5.2 megawatts system. Geez. So there you go. Man, I think got whacked. That's a that was a that was a system that just took a beat in there. So yeah, gotta got to account for it.
• 34:34
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I know an entrepreneur who's who's working on a solution for this. And look forward to meeting him at RV plus in Las Vegas in September.
• 34:43
  Tim Montague: If you don't know about already, plus, it's the largest solar and storage conference in the US and it's going to be in Vegas this year. So come meet us hang out.
• 34:58
  Tim Montague: Drink beer and network with 1000s 10s of 1000s of solar professionals. You founded electric aeroplane John.
• 35:09
  John Weaver: I like electric aeroplanes. I love the concept of it. And, and there's cool stuff. You know, we talked about some batteries in the last couple of shows where the the weight, the watts per kilogramme, I guess the watt hours per kilogramme is a measure. And we're moving upwards it seems it seems like magic is starting to arise. And so flying stuff is going to become real, lots of flying stuff. Not just a little but a lot. And I'm really interested in some of the reading I'm hearing about business plans, where they're thinking that sub read the sub regional market could massively change if we started Oh, yeah, check that out. The sub regional market can massively change which is a very complicated looking aeroplane.
• 35:58
  John Weaver: But you know, I guess it's a it's what it is or helicopters.
• 36:02
  John Weaver: Looks more
• 36:04
  Tim Montague: like a drone.
• 36:04
  Tim Montague: Yeah, but I count six propellers.
• 36:11
  John Weaver: VTOL
• 36:12
  Tim Montague: it's actually carrying carrying humans on.
• 36:16
  John Weaver: Yeah, yep. Yep.
• 36:16
  John Weaver: People in there flying this was out in California. picture is not loading the best there but whatever.
• 36:22
  Tim Montague: So this was a a V tall meaning it takes off vertically but then it can also fly. So maybe it has a wing in there somewhere. It's hard to see really the shape of the aircraft. Yeah, for some reason the video is not loading very well. But here we go. I blame Elon. It's Twitter.
• 36:42
  John Weaver: Oh, you probably right. And then our connections a little funny too. But I mean, you get a nice clear view of it there. So I like this concept of the shorter flights, the half hour to two hours to three hours. You know, really, these are flights that should be taken by public transportation trains, other things like that. But if we could, you know, get people out of their cars on the highways on 100 foot on 100 seat aeroplanes that were electric and just cleaner, smoother, faster. I think there's something there. This is neat looking. I mean, those those rotors are all in sync. Cash.
• 37:19
  John Weaver: That's a cool, and it's electric dude. And that's, that's the key thing. It's not burning fossils.
• 37:23
  John Weaver: And yeah, it's just cool gear man.
• 37:30
  Tim Montague: Yeah, you know, I think the age of electric air transport really is, is upon us.
• 37:35
  Tim Montague: It'll, it'll be slow at first, and then it'll be fast. You know, there's, there's a story in The Guardian, which I'll put on screen here in a second.
• 37:51
  Tim Montague: About Toyota having a battery breakthrough. Have you heard about this?
• 37:55
  John Weaver: Yeah, yeah, that was one of the things I was mentioning. Did you know we cover it last week? I think we covered it already a couple of weeks ago, because I brought it up immediately one when it hit the hit the new string?
• 38:05
  Tim Montague: I don't think so I don't think we talked about this, I would have to remember it because Toyota is such a standout, right? They're holding on tooth and nail to the ice engine. And they're in their hybrid technology, and not doing a lot of EVs. They have one, Evie on the market, I think in the US. But they're now claiming they could make a solid state battery with a range of 745 miles that charges in 10 minutes. And that's a lot of charge in a very short time.
• 38:39
  John Weaver: Well, first off, that would mean that people have one megawatt plus chargers in their house. So we're not going to are not going to do that. So but yes, it's going to be something cool. You know, I can see that. We referenced it on the document, but we didn't have the article on it, which is weird. It's an aberration for how I would post articles for a sorry, but But yeah, Toyota, I mean, I can go find that. But that's that's getting some headlines and getting some interesting pushback and conversation. That battery.
• 39:10
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I got it on screen now. Who knows? Maybe it's hype. It's so funny, because Toyota, it's like one week. They're in the Evie industry. The next week, they're out. You know, they're sending a mixed signal. I'm no longer loyal to Toyota 502. Toyota, I owned many Toyotas now. I own a Hyundai. And I love it. And now I don't own a Hyundai. Evie yet, like you do. I know. I know.
• 39:38
  Tim Montague: It's pathetic. It's really it's really no bueno. I get to drink that Kool Aid again. It's funny.
• 39:50
  Tim Montague: My son, Finn, the solar installer drove my brother's model Y over the over the holiday. And I asked him afterwards. So did you miss the model? Why? Because we had a model Y for a while, as you know. And he looked at me, he said, Now, the thing. Phantom braked three times in 15 minutes, he said. So he didn't like the self driving. In the model Y he was he was very disapproving. So that was telling, although I also read recently that the model Y is the most popular car in the world now by numbers. I don't know if we reported that on the show or not, but and it will be the most popular car in America soon if it's not already. So Elon is doing something right. Very few things.
• 40:46
  John Weaver: I mean, there's been people predicting that the model Y would become the
• 40:51
  Tim Montague: most popular us queue. And I think, right, like,
• 40:54
  John Weaver: we've been hearing people talking about it, we've been chatting about it, too.
• 40:58
  Tim Montague: I believe that it will be the most popular car in America. It's just a great car and the right size. The price point is a little tough, but it's getting it's coming down and and if you do the federal incentives, the Tesla's are eligible for the for the federal tax break, are they not?
• 41:17
  John Weaver: Yeah, they are and they're evolving. Like they're they might be a car that'll turn out to be a fully Tesla, a full tax break $7,500. So, but it's evolving, you have to pay close attention to that and double check. So I you know, regarding this Toyota battery, what do you have there? Because
• 41:37
  Tim Montague: last year, last year, Toyota recalled 2700 of its first EVs because As the wheels could fall off, literally, that doesn't sound like the Toyota I know. But anyway,
• 41:50
  John Weaver: it's cool to see these batteries. There's other people doing other things, the Chinese came out with a new battery of 700 Watt hours per kilogramme. Kale has one that they're selling at CTL has one that they're selling at 600.
• 42:02
  John Weaver: Yeah,
• 42:02
  Tim Montague: we record. Right?
• 42:02
  Tim Montague: And that makes that mean,
• 42:08
  John Weaver: selling car q1, sorry, yes, interrupted. Yep.
• 42:11
  John Weaver: Thank you Facebook user. Yep.
• 42:16
  Tim Montague: But that's 700 Watt hours per kilogramme, that makes electric aeroplanes practical, I think.
• 42:24
  John Weaver: Now, I think that's on the sell pouch level. So it's not like one or two pieces higher. So maybe it'll be 600.
• 42:30
  John Weaver: But 700 Man, that's, you know, I was reading a year or three ago that four to 500 Watts were it.
• 42:35
  John Weaver: And then somebody gave me a real neat stat, they said, for each additional volume of watt hours per kilogramme, you get this much distance out of the plane.
• 42:49
  John Weaver: So we've done, there's some good hard calculations on what's necessary for aviation in energy storage, and there are people working great at it. So I'm, I'm getting more and more optimist about how we're going to deal with aeroplanes. And I'm getting a little more pessimistic on any sort of hydrogen travel, and I almost put an article in the document that two things have occurred, a European truck industry group has said that they're not going to go forward with hydrogen trucks, because for major road deliveries, because they're just too expensive, crosses way too high.
• 43:22
  John Weaver: And they're going to push with electric. And then a large mining group said that they're going with electric, they've been doing electric and hydrogen mining vehicles, and they said no electric is, is it is where we're going. So that tells me that the big trucks, the big vehicles, they got to lead with electric and, you know, having having a company like Tesla, scaling the battery costs, having your battery scale with your laptops, with your phones, with all that stuff. It's just getting, you know, there's such a lead with lithium ion technology, that it's it's going to it's going to attack and it's do well and, and hydrogen is going to have to figure out how to scale separate from vehicles.
• 44:10
  John Weaver: Because the reality is when you look at the stats, diet, you know, you some document I saw from like Bloomberg, it showed the volume of solar car of electric cars being sold. And then it showed the volume of hydrogen, and hydrogen was just a flat buy. Right? Pardon me?
• 44:25
  John Weaver: Sorry.
• 44:29
  Tim Montague: It's interesting when you google hydrogen trucks in the US, okay. You find stories about Hyundai Honda has launched a hydrogen fuel cell truck in the US. You read about Volvo. You read about Nikola, although barely, like Nicholas been so absent from the news.
• 44:47
  Tim Montague: Right. And they they had that major implosion fake news, right? And you and I predicted that, that was just not going to end well. Right. They were they were a bunch of scammers.
• 45:00
  John Weaver: They were about to go out of business. They they switched from hydrogen to electric trucks, just you know they did. They're about to go out of business. Yeah, they're not a hydrogen company anymore.
• 45:07
  John Weaver: I mean, maybe they do, but the only thing they're selling are electric trucks now, like from something else? Yeah, the coal is that company is going out of business.
• 45:17
  Tim Montague: And the fact that Elon doesn't believe in hydrogen is says a lot, right? Because as I as I had to point out to my dad over the holiday, Elon just wants to go to Mars, and going to Mars is very expensive. And while he does talk about Greening the Grid and making creating a sustainable transportation industry, which is true, he wants to make sustainable electricity and transportation with solar and EVs. He truly just wants to fuel his mission to Mars. And to do that, he wants to do stuff that's economical. And he's very precise about that. Right? And so the fact that he's not going after hydrogen, I think is quite telling. And nobody's had a good retort really, to me about that.
• 46:05
  Tim Montague: Like, if it's so good, why isn't Elon doing it the same with alternative battery chemistry is he's doing lithium batteries.
• 46:14
  Tim Montague: He's not doing zinc batteries.
• 46:17
  Tim Montague: He's not doing manganese.
• 46:17
  Tim Montague: There's a lot of alternative chemistries. Now for stationary, it's a different matter for stationary storage. You know, we've got the iron air battery, for example, which is massively heavy, involve voluminous, but it's going to be cheap. And so for grid storage makes perfect sense, right? You just build a big bunker and fill it with hydrogen. I mean, sorry, iron air batteries. I love that. We need lots of storage. because the sun is intermittent, unfortunately, I don't think it would be fun living in a world where the sun was not intermittent though John
• 46:52
  John Weaver: might be a little warm forever, every single day forever and ever and ever and ever.
• 46:59
  Tim Montague: What a nightmare.
• 47:01
  John Weaver: Yeah. So Hey, real quick. I want to introduce everybody to Caesar who just said hello in our
• 47:08
  Tim Montague: chat, Caesar Barbosa. Hey, Caesar. Yes.
• 47:12
  John Weaver: So Caesar is the thing that I know him about is as a decommission recommission rooftop solar guy in California, mostly. And he has great posts and great data and images on LinkedIn. And if you really want to see some of the process about how a rooftop solar project will come out how beautiful it can look, once it's all stacked nicely on palletized. And then how it gets redeployed. When the roof gets redone. Caesar and his group. This can take me 10 seconds to come up with his company name. It's dangit Caesar I shouldn't own it. It's new life.
• 47:51
  Tim Montague: The invitation Stan Caesar, if you want to come on the live sometime we'd love to talk to you again. It's been it's been over a year? I think so.
• 47:58
  John Weaver: Do like New Life power services that Caesar shop.
• 48:02
  John Weaver: So what do
• 48:02
  Tim Montague: you do in July 13?
• 48:02
  Tim Montague: Caesar we could bring you on the show. We love having guests on the show. And and repowering old solar facilities is very important. That's going to be a huge industry and repurposing the solar panels to you know, give them a second life in a less developed country or a low income community. These things last a long time. And there is a second life for solar panels. So
• 48:33
  John Weaver: yeah, and you know, I think Cesar just said that your service. So now we got to message them on LinkedIn and start the conversation. But one neat thing that Caesar does as part of his sales package is that he if for a project that's getting rid of their solar or do a new solar is a he offers a breakdown of the components that he's going to sell to buyers of the gear, so he will manage the selling of your hardware getting into the second life. And I think he offers the customer like, well, we'll have to ask him now because looks like we're gonna get him on the show. And Chris Christopher, Mr.
• 49:15
  John Weaver: Letterman, I will contact you to via LinkedIn, because I'm connected with both you. But Cesar. He gives customers $1 amounts, saying, hey, we'll sell your hardware for this, your takedown price will be this and somewhere within that machine, customers gets to sell their hardware via Caesars group, which I think is cool. So back to the document. And Cesar, you'll be on the show soon.
• 49:42
  Tim Montague: Awesome. Well, you, you know, we got to continue our theme here with the Evie revolution, you found a story about using your Eevee for other things. And it says for the first time we blocked some of our cars because they could create more value is a battery than as a shared car. What's that about?
• 50:05
  John Weaver: So there's places around the world where you can connect your battery to the grid, and your car to the grid and via a Vita G vehicle to grid connection, you can sell that electricity. And this gentleman I believe is based in the Netherlands could have been in Germany. But there are car share service. And I just I know him via Twitter. Well, I don't really know him, someone else knows him. I saw them shared, and they rent cars. And they said, you know via the tweet, you can see there, the tweet that was shared and the video and everything and, and they have a little image of the and so this is the I guess you can't really see it clearly. But if we, you know, if you follow the link to it, you can see that the cars are exporting electricity to the power grid. And they're doing it overnight, which is interesting. So they're exporting overnight. And they're importing during the daytime charging in the daytime because there's a huge amount of solar to be used on that local grid.
• 51:05
  John Weaver: And these are two ionic five. So this is my car. They have a really high speed. They have nice sized batteries like 75 kW, these guys charge on solar, and it's just cool. It's just cool that we are using car batteries for the grid. And it's the neatest thing is that we at least have this option because we're going to have so many car batteries on the road that we could backup the grid we we could backup everything with our car batteries, and we will just be fine. And if we you know, this is all the pie in the sky Thinking. But if we were to ever do anything like 100% of our cars on the power grid, then battery backup would be great because number one, load demand would be coordinated because the car in the United States is generally associated with the local location of the human being, and the human being drives electricity demand. And so if it became a normal thing that when you showed up into a place, you always plugged your car and you would, in essence, be bringing your energy, you bringing your backup, bringing your capacity to where you are.
• 52:15
  John Weaver: And if you're driving electricity down demand and you bring a battery. It's just it just seems the job is having a certain level of value. So yeah, look at 5% their part 95% of the time, man. So this is we got to move to the future with this.
• 52:31
  Tim Montague: This is a clear win win for for EVs, you know, 75 kWh, that's a week's worth of electricity for the average home. And of course, you got to have a way to charge that battery with a solar array if you want to have power when the grid is down. But that's a very big power bank, right? And it makes perfect sense that, that vehicle to grid is gonna be a great service that these EVs make for us. And then once we robot a robot eyes, the vehicles someday, I'll probably be in the grave John, by the time Musk figures that out, but, but he will eventually figure out self driving, and, and then you won't need a vehicle, you'll just use transportation as a service, the robot will pick you up and deliver you where you need to go. And then it'll go back to providing grid services when it's not needed. Or we just won't have nearly as many vehicles. The other you know, the other thing I like to say is that today, less than a percent of Americans have a battery in their garage. In 10 years, many Americans will have a battery in their garage of some shape or form. My father does not want to have a lithium battery. I told him Look, Elon is figuring out the thermal runaway thing. You very likely will have a lithium battery, but maybe a zinc, maybe an iron. There's alternatives.
• 54:00
  Tim Montague: And I want an iron air battery in my garage.
• 54:05
  John Weaver: I want to go visit one man. I can't. I want to definitely go visit an iron.
• 54:09
  John Weaver: Just see what's out there
• 54:13
  Tim Montague: because they're cool. What is the iron air battery company called again?
• 54:15
  Tim Montague: Form there's
• 54:17
  John Weaver: form energy and there's a what's it called? Also ESS? They're both iron batteries, iron flow batteries.
• 54:25
  John Weaver: So they're, they're both cool. I like them both. Alright, what's next time we're gonna talk about we got a million things to talk about every day.
• 54:35
  Tim Montague: You know, we've got no shortage of stories.
• 54:38
  Tim Montague: Sammy Roth had two article series come out one talking about challenge deploying solar in the southwest deserts. I'd be interested in solar in the southwest. Oh, right. Yeah, this is this is a legit story. Yeah, and, and a bummer. There's, you know, the Clean Energy Transition is not without its foibles, let's, let's be clear, right, it comes at a price. And we are going to have to instal solar on to one and a half to 2% of the landscape, including the already built environment, but including some knock built environment because of the scale. And the economics right of solar farms. They're just much easier and faster to instal at scale. But it does mean putting solar on land. And some of that land has other things going on, like tortoises in the desert southwest. And so that, that habitat destruction is a real thing. And and a real concern. I'm more I'm more upbeat about taking farmland, which is you know, here in the Midwest, corn and beans with heavy chemical inputs, heavy carbon footprint, and converting it to either pollinator friendly or agro solar, dual use. And then it's a win win. We're already stomping on the ecosystem with that industrial AG. Not so much in the desert southwest because you can't grow stuff. Because you don't have water. And that problem is not going away.
• 56:24
  John Weaver: Yeah, so so. The story first off, the story by Sammy is great. And Sammy in general. He's one of my favourite people to read about solar. He, in my opinion might be the one of the better non trades people To really get into the meat of things, because he writes a lot more than just solar. And if you follow him on Twitter, you'll learn about Dodger baseball too. But, you know, first I started following Sammy when he was writing for a smaller local paper. And he, he broke a story about a conflict of interest with consultants and a big battery. That was like 10s of millions of dollars, and the battery deal went to nothing, because California Taxpayers might be getting defrauded. So, so Sam is great. Now this story, as he said, it talks about the stresses of the desert region and getting solar deployed and how much faster it can be. And, you know, there's a lot of pristine desert. That's beautiful, beautiful stuff down there, and real life, and I've travelled through that area, Joshua Tree National Park, it's really just another really diverse. Yeah, oh, my gosh, and you, you know, the South Florida and you're thinking, Oh, it's desert, it's the Sahara, and it's all grass. When you get there, you're like, oh, my gosh, this is just a different version of the Everglades, you know, weird looking trees and, and lizards and just plants on the ground. It's like, wow, this is something and so. So I'm conscious of it. Um, you know, I've heard that some of these projects have been put in very challenging places, so. But there's one thing I wanted to push back, I'm gonna write a story, and we'll have it in a week or three. It said, some of the data Sammy uses for quantifying how much rooftop and parking lot solar can be deployed. This is a little dated. And I want to write an article and respond to this and say, hey, you know, and I did already a long tweet thread, showing that we actually could get a huge amount of solar electricity from rooftop and from carports. And those two alone, and that the amount of electricity that we could get is increasing, because our panel efficiency is increasing, you know, enrolled did an analysis that suggested with a little bit of enrol Analysis Plus low growth has suggested that normally, we can get 13% of our electricity from rooftop solar with a 16%. Solar Panel. But if we double our 16%, solar panel to 32%, perovskite, plus get silicon, which is coming, then now we're at 26%, of all electricity coming from rooftop solar. Now, tin, if we believe that wind power is real, and hydro is real, and nuclear is real, then we should say that 40%, you know, here's one pitch 40%, solar 40%, wind, 10%, nuclear 10% hydro, something like that, which would mean 40% of our electricity needs to come from solar. And if 26% of it can come from rooftop alone, 26 of that 40 Then that means we need 14% from carports. And we already know that parking lots and carports can double what rooftops can do. So hypothetically, and this is in the extremist world of a pie in the sky dream or like you and I, we could get all of our electricity that we need from solar, from rooftops and parking lots, we could get 40% of our energy. And so that's where I'm going to give an elbow.
• 1:00:07
  Tim Montague: And the figure he gives his 25,000 square miles.
• 1:00:10
  Tim Montague: That is point. Oh 7%. It is less than 1% of the land area in the United States. So again, we have to remember we're not paving over the breadbasket. We do have to be conscious of paving over the desert. And, you know, I would say let's find those areas that are already, you know, negatively impacted by human activity and build solar farms there and give them a priority.
• 1:00:43
  Tim Montague: And, you know, and various programmes to their credit in the United States do incentivize the use of brownfields, right?
• 1:00:52
  Tim Montague: Yep. And Massachusetts, New York, Illinois. I'm sure California, I know less about the California market. But less.
• 1:01:05
  Tim Montague: Nevada may be a different story.
• 1:01:05
  Tim Montague: I don't know.
• 1:01:09
  John Weaver: All these places are gonna get a lot. Nevada has a lot of pristine deserts as well in Nevada is getting a lot of ground mount solar, including some of it that has been sent to California.
• 1:01:21
  Unknown: So yeah, you know,
• 1:01:22
  John Weaver: we we got to take care of these places. Yeah.
• 1:01:26
  Tim Montague: Well, we've done it again, leave. We've used another useful hour of your day.
• 1:01:31
  Tim Montague: And we'll be back hopefully with Cesar Barbosa next week, on Thursday the 13th I want our listeners to please He's checkout clean power hour.com.
• 1:01:45
  Tim Montague: Give us a rating and review on Apple and Spotify. Tell your colleagues about the show.
• 1:01:49
  Tim Montague: That's the best thing you can do to spread the word about the Clean Power Hour, check out the Clean Power Media Network, clean power dot media. And reach out to me, Tim Montague, on LinkedIn, how can our listeners find you John?
• 1:02:06
  John Weaver: commercial solar guy.com. That's our website. We got a contact us page. The that's a good contact us there.
• 1:02:17
  John Weaver: Also via Twitter and LinkedIn, more than happy to discuss things go over things. We want to build projects for you in Massachusetts in Rhode Island, New York and Pennsylvania. We want to develop projects for you and consult. And we have a residential company that's super focused in mass commercial projects. We go a little further and, and that So Tim, where can people learn how to get their own podcasts? And don't you have like seven podcasts now that you manage for people like something significant?
• 1:02:49
  Tim Montague: We're, you know, we're bringing a family a podcast to our listeners via clean power dot media. This includes Shaun White, and Peter Kelly Detweiler, and a handful of others will be bringing these lists these other podcasters onto the show, many of them have already been on the show. Shaun White is a household name in the solar industry, of course. So check out clean power dot media.
• 1:03:11
  Tim Montague: If you're a podcaster in clean tech or clean energy, please reach out to me I'd love to learn about your show and see if it's a fit for the Clean Power Media Network. I also want to give a shout out I forgot at the beginning of the show, John to thank our friends at mrea. I was at the energy fair. Earlier this month or last at the end of last month. The Midwest Renewable Energy Association. I saw Joe sharp there. Thanks for being here. Joe. Good to see you in the flesh again. Joe is a native midwesterner. He's actually from Wisconsin. He owns a farm in Wisconsin. Now he lives in Northern Illinois. And he's breaking into the solar industry getting out of the tree industry. He's an arborist, but he's also a mechanical engineer.
• 1:03:59
  Tim Montague: And we had a nice chat at the 32nd energy fair. So that energy Fair has been going on for a long time. I first visited in oh six. And so I got to see some friends shout out to mrea though they do great work. Wonderful training facility. They trained many many solar installers who are pursuing NABCEP certification. So with that, I want to say sign our John and we will see you next week. Thanks for being here. I'm Tim Montague. Let's grow solar and storage