Latest / Clean Power Hour / Solar Grid Crisis, Mega-Projects, and Balcony Solar Revolution on the Clean Power Hour Live

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Solar Grid Crisis, Mega-Projects, and Balcony Solar Revolution on the Clean Power Hour Live · Clean Power Hour

• 0:51
  Tim Montague: Welcome to the Clean Power Hour. Live. Today is May the second 2025 bringing you the latest in solar, wind and battery storage news with my co host, John Weaver, welcome to the show.
• 1:03
  John Weaver: Hello, Tim. I hope you're having a good day. Like your picture in the background.
• 1:06
  John Weaver: That's cool solar project. I want to have a cool solar project like that one of these days
• 1:13
  Tim Montague: that's parking College, just a college, very a mile and a half from my house. I bid that project, but did not get to build it, but it's a lovely project, and my drone ate it up a couple years ago on a lovely, I think it was a fall day, but it was one of the first large behind the meter projects in Illinois. This was like 2018,
• 1:39
  John Weaver: megawatts. See, two megawatts,
• 1:42
  Tim Montague: two megawatts AC, it's a PPA. So didn't cost the college anything. You know, they saved 10% on their energy. It's a good thing.
• 1:54
  John Weaver: Nice project. But
• 1:56
  Tim Montague: it is, it is. So I hear you're going to Iceland,
• 2:05
  John Weaver: yes. So this week, I will, tomorrow, I will be flying to Europe. I was planning on flying, and I didn't realize something was going on. I didn't know this was in a solar week, Tim next week. So I was planning on flying to PV magazines 10th anniversary event, which is on Tuesday, because they invited me and in Munich, on a little island that they're having a little party. And then on the way back, I was going to stop in Iceland and do something cool instead, I just realized, because you told me, Tim, that the second half of the trip is actually into solar Europe. So now I'm going to try and go to the airport a little early and see if, instead of tonight, switching and going to Europe, I just stop and stay in Iceland today. So yeah, so there we go.
• 2:56
  John Weaver: I think you just changed my vacation for the positive, and I owe you beer, Timothy, and I think that means I'll be at inner solar next week, which would be sweet. Well,
• 3:06
  Tim Montague: it kind of explains why PV magazine is doing their Shindig, yes, at this time. Also, right?
• 3:13
  John Weaver: Absolutely. I assume that inner solar was in the in the summer months, June ish, but they also had that big festival, the biggest one, the world's biggest show, that's in Shanghai, I believe Beijing.
• 3:23
  John Weaver: It's the S N, E, C, proud show.
• 3:31
  John Weaver: So, so maybe they moved in. All right, so, yeah, so I'll be at inner solar next week. Thanks, Tim, appreciate that.
• 3:40
  Tim Montague: That's so that's so funny. Yes, yes, yes, but it's good to be able to be flexible. Yeah, absolutely.
• 3:49
  John Weaver: All right, so you got new giant project, 800 megawatts. I think it's the largest east of the Mississippi or eastern US. I know
• 3:58
  Tim Montague: that claim, that claim, is a good claim, but it's, I don't think it's accurate, because, but, but anyway, this is what you see on screen. Is a solar farm just east of Springfield, Illinois, 30 miles east of Springfield, called double black diamond.
• 4:13
  Tim Montague: It's an 800 megawatt solar project. It's a very unique project John because it's built in Ameren territory, okay, in central Illinois, but the power is being purchased by the city of Chicago and several other off takers, but the city is buying a large percent of the power to power their municipal facilities. So now the city, I think, can claim that, and this includes the airports, Midway Airport and O'Hare Airport are now solar powered with this I call it a sleeve through PPA.
• 4:46
  Tim Montague: I'm not sure if that's accurate, but the project is in Ameren, but the off takers are in comed.
• 4:56
  Tim Montague: And so this is, this is, this is a great example of what you know, utilities can do when they cooperate with solar developers and municipalities like the city of Chicago.
• 5:11
  John Weaver: Is this a trick this? But this is a pure transmission project, right?
• 5:17
  Tim Montague: No, this is a, it's a, so it's a solar project, but the it's a front of the meter solar project, right? So the power is just going on the grid and getting used wherever it's getting used, but it's being metered and then through virtual PPAs, they're selling the power to the city of Chicago.
• 5:37
  John Weaver: So if this is a transmission level project and they're connecting it to the wholesale market, they can sign wholesale agreements and wheel the electricity through various regions pretty easily. I. Um, the you'd be, you know, it's probably not being managed by Ameren at all. In fact, it's probably just going straight. Is that peak? Well, it's,
• 6:02
  Tim Montague: it's unique. Think about it, though, because Ameren is in miso and comed is in PJM,
• 6:09
  John Weaver: oh, well, see that's more interesting. Yeah, so it's over. That's two different, two
• 6:14
  Tim Montague: different RTOS or ISOs,
• 6:17
  John Weaver: because emeralds probably not messing with it, though, because they're a distribution level, they don't really, they buy and manage from Wholesale, but they don't really deal with the wholesale same as now comed might help the company purchase theirs through the wholesale market, but, but I get it crossing over the ISO territories, that's pretty cool.
• 6:39
  John Weaver: Yeah. So 800 megawatts, that's a big project. Were you? Do you know any groups that participated in the construction of this? Because you're pretty close to this site,
• 6:49
  Tim Montague: yeah, you know it's only it's about two hours from my house, I have not gotten to visit the site yet. Swift Current is the Swift Current.
• 6:55
  Tim Montague: Energy is the developer. I think McCarthy was the EPC. And you know this, this, these press releases claim that it's the largest project east of the Mississippi. But they forget about mammoth solar in Indiana, which is a 1.2 gigawatt solar farm, which I think may be still under construction. Yeah, that's not gonna have to go with that.
• 7:20
  Tim Montague: It's not complete yet. Okay, so maybe that's how they make that claim. But it's, it's going to be nipping at their heels and eclipsing them here pretty quickly, but, but anyway, it's nothing to sneeze at. It's not every day you get an 800 megawatt DC solar farm in your backyard, and they're using first solar solar panels. So domestic solar panels, I believe it's next tracker racking and, yeah, it's just a good it's a good thing. I love it that the city of Chicago is buying so much clean energy. And, you know, I mean this, this solar farm could power something like 40,000 homes. I think it's a lot of juice. So, good story.
• 8:10
  John Weaver: We like it. So, I'm sure you're paying attention to what happened in Spain, to some degree, I
• 8:17
  Tim Montague: am, and I'm so confused. Okay, so everybody listening to this knows there was a major outage this week in power outage in Spain and France, um, but nobody seems to know what happened,
• 8:36
  John Weaver: right? So technically, I still don't know why. The only thing I've been hearing about is that there were voltage variations going back three hours, back to 9am plus or minus, a really big number. And it's been said for a while that the HVDC, the high voltage connection that's coming across from France, might have had something to do with this, the fact that they only had one, and they've been getting a lot of attention about this. This is bringing up the wrong story, though. Somehow, nope, nope.
• 9:09
  John Weaver: This is the right story? Oh, it is right, yes. Um, so this event started early in the morning, then in the middle of the day, something bigger happened. And some there were two events.
• 9:22
  John Weaver: There were two grid collapse events. The first grid collapse is really small, lasted a millisecond, but, you know, a couple of power plants fell off the power grid, and it was probably because of this voltage harmonics thing. Someone else said a power line might have gotten too hot, and that can happen, and this triggered a couple of power plants to drop, and that messed up the grid voltage a whole bunch then. And this is the key that matters, and that's why this,
• 9:52
  Tim Montague: Article matters.
• 9:52
  Tim Montague: This is a legacy story about Texas, right? 2021
• 9:57
  John Weaver: yes, there's the Odessa disturbance. Then 13 gigawatts of solar capacity dropped out, and we might know why, and that's in my opinion, even though I'm the solar evangelist, that's actually the biggest piece of thing to deal with in this piece of news, at least for us, because the solar piece, the solar hypothetically, should have been able to what's called ride through The disturbance. However, apparently, back in the day, this is now starting to get above my head. But if you read this article and go to the sources of the NERC report that's associated with this, you can get really nerdy. Tim, like, totally like words that I don't even know exist. Yes, so there's these timers. Instead of riding through the event that lasts milliseconds, that's getting repaired by big spinning thermals, a lot of solar inverters from back in the day, I guess, to protect themselves, would shut off and say, okay, when the grid comes back up in five minutes, we'll be good. And in Odessa, that's what happened most inverters, like a, assert, like a, I believe, a gas power plant switched off. And if you scroll up, you can see where the gas power plant switched off in the image, that red dot right in the middle, and all those plants around had a reaction, and they all flickered. The red ones shut down, and they didn't come back up. I believe in Spain, which has an older fleet than Texas, a larger percentage fell down. And in fact, 50% of the grids generating capacity disappeared.
• 12:33
  John Weaver: And I think that led to a cumulative effect, and at the end of it, I think that leads to, like, 0% of the Spanish grid being up and not because of solar. However, a nuance of solar may have extended it and made it worse, and and one of the solutions is batteries, you know, that's, you know, you got to flicker. And so that Odessa article is about it. We think the Tesla battery in 2017 may have stopped Australia from having an event like this, and so, because it reacts to these grid fluctuations, these this
• 13:18
  Tim Montague: is the latest theory on the Spanish outage.
• 13:22
  John Weaver: This is not necessarily. It may be the latest. Yeah, it may be. It's what I got. How's that? I don't know what the latest is. I'm pretty cool, Tim, but I don't always know what's going on.
• 13:33
  Tim Montague: I think it's the Russians myself, but I don't know.
• 13:39
  John Weaver: You know what? You know. Put it this way, all I know is I don't know where the oscillation started, but I know I painted a picture of what happened afterwards. And yeah, and I think the solar has some, some of some quality checking to do. It's my opinion, and a little piece of nuance that's being latched on to and we got to manage it. And this is the key reason you gotta good. This is the key reason we gotta stay on top of this and really know what happened is that a lot of folks are now latching on to renewables being the cause of this. And it's not it's other stuff on the grid. But batteries that have the ability to do grid for me, they fix the issue.
• 14:29
  John Weaver: General batteries can fix the issue. And there's something else I wanted to say on this one, but we'll get there. It's it's a big thing. The grids back up. It's working. We need to be conscious of it. We need to stay on top of these issues and fix them. Part of our it's part of our responsibility now that we run the big grid, yeah.
• 14:48
  Tim Montague: Should we talk about robots? We
• 14:51
  John Weaver: like robots.
• 14:51
  John Weaver: Timothy, I just wanted to play this one so that this one was just another live luminous robot that looked really cool, and it was also, it was associated with an article underneath it. Yeah?
• 15:02
  John Weaver: So this is, I just play this video, but then we can also scroll to the article below. But I just love seeing how smoothly, maybe you have to go to the beginning, where they're not showing the people, yeah, there we go. Just
• 15:16
  Tim Montague: so we're looking at, we're looking at the Lumi three luminous robot. Well, that you and I got to see, well, you and I got to see this in Boston at re plus Boston. But
• 15:28
  John Weaver: we saw the big one.
• 15:28
  John Weaver: We with the bigger battery. That was the smaller one. Oh, this is the older battery. Yeah, I just, I just saw them again on the internet. Yeah, there we go. I just wanted to see him swoosh.
• 15:36
  John Weaver: Ah, look at that. Look how cool.
• 15:39
  John Weaver: That is. Cool to watch, cool to watch on the very Alright. So now scroll down a tiny bit, and I just wanted to point out this one, another company, another technique, similar piece of hardware. There's some I didn't have any good videos on them, but if you scroll up just a tiny bit, they had some nice data that's on the system. It did a 10,000 module install, standard height single access tracker. As you can see, it does 480 modules a day. No, that's, that's their pitch. That's good number.
• 16:15
  Tim Montague: What is, what does a team of humans do?
• 16:19
  John Weaver: 100 okay? I mean, I don't know about doing them on single, single access trackers.
• 16:22
  John Weaver: But I know with my companies, when we do a bid, we got a team of four with a manager trolling around doing other stuff and helping. And team of four does 75 to 100 modules in a tough place. We do 75 in a normal place, we do 100 so for that so so the robots are coming. That led me to a question, Tim, and I'd love to hear Chris and other smart people, what are the big opportunities for saving money and solar utility scale? Maybe home in the future. And the two that come to my mind are utility scale, it's installation and then module efficiency. And I say that because I'm always excited about perovskites.
• 17:04
  John Weaver: Perovskites, perovskites, you know, we're gonna have a 34% module and a 45% module, maybe for regular folks, and that's gonna drop the price effectively, because you have more wattage for the same material, by like 20% by like 30% and another 15 so we might see, like, the price drop by 50% total. Just just from those two, or just from efficiency, that's it. Not even installation techniques or life length, or anything. So I don't know those are. Those are the two I came up with high voltage. I hear about high voltage stuff, and then I hear about medium voltage going straight to 13,000 KV, and so skipping, skipping a transformer level. That must be some really long solar strings or something, I don't know, maybe combiner boxes, 13 combines of 13 strings of 1000 volts or but, uh, 2000 volt systems are coming now.
• 18:05
  John Weaver: Well,
• 18:05
  Tim Montague: Dean Solan, Dean Solon, you know who was at that event that we were at in in Boston, is inventing a 3000 volt 333, 1000 volt solar module.
• 18:17
  Tim Montague: He's going to skip too right?
• 18:22
  Tim Montague: Today, they're 1500 volt for ground mount, and tomorrow they're going to be 2000 volt but he's just skipping it and going to three.
• 18:31
  John Weaver: There's two in the field. I think one company like jinko, like jinko, has a 2000 volt line because they're, you know, they have the whole supply chain or something. But at least that's all that I've heard about. So, so 3000 so I guess that's just really long strings and less line loss, thicker copper, though, on the DC side.
• 18:52
  John Weaver: So more cost and copper, but long strings, fewer combiners, fewer inverters. I can see that's a couple of pennies. You know that's pennies you're dropping off. It's pretty neat.
• 19:03
  John Weaver: 3000 volts. Chris, Chris, you got to tell us some ideas.
• 19:12
  Tim Montague: I think we lost Chris.
• 19:15
  John Weaver: He's working. He's got a job. He's probably on the call with the boss, selling some modules. Chris sells solar modules, everybody. So we ever need some modules? Chris, letman, he's good at it. Some
• 19:24
  Tim Montague: very nice solar modules from Imperial Star. We like the Imperial Star, solar modules made in Texas, and using American made solar cells too, right? And
• 19:38
  John Weaver: by the way, everybody Chris doesn't pay us to say that. We just like Chris.
• 19:40
  John Weaver: So that's why it's
• 19:44
  Tim Montague: good to have a solar panel Guru in your midst.
• 19:47
  John Weaver: Sure,
• 19:49
  Tim Montague: that's true. I mean, you're pretty much a guru yourself, John, but Chris makes his living selling solar modules. So it's kind of next level, yep. Should we talk about NextEra
• 20:02
  John Weaver: terrace and next era. Man, absolutely, tariffs.
• 20:07
  Tim Montague: I'm so sick of tariffs. I think, I think we all are, and we're only getting started.
• 20:15
  John Weaver: So we got a project with a battery being installed up here in Boston, $300,000 tariff on a 1.5 megawatt hour battery. Effectively, 200 kilowatt hours is what the cost of that tariff is on our battery and and that so that really is like, Oh, it hurts. It's painful. I don't know what's gonna happen with it, but that's our new price. 300 G's, man, that's, that's, that's our reality. And so it brought me about this company, next era, and and I was just really interested when I read this article on them, because they're just, you know, seven steps ahead, ahead of us. I mean, that's what you can do when you're worth X, hundreds of billions of dollars, you know, the largest utility, I guess, in the US, by far in terms of market cap. And they said they believe by properly doing contracting and setting documentation up, they've cut their trade risk from 150 to 150 million out of $75 billion in capital expenditures. And so yes, they could have issues with import tariffs on their goods.
• 21:38
  John Weaver: However they expect of those $75 billion only, point. Point 2% of their stuff might get hit. They said, You see, there's a chance of getting zero. As we know, they have a factory with modules. I'm sure they have other module factories that they're partnering within the United States. I'm sure they have massive volume with
• 22:00
  Tim Montague: first, their solar panel partner. At
• 22:04
  John Weaver: one point, they had a module factory with jinko in Jacksonville, Florida, okay, but who knows? I mean, they probably white label stuff from whomever they want. You know, their next era, um, they, they wanted these factories. There's, like, apparently, there's 50 megawatts of module assembly capacity in the United States. Tim, if that's the case, we have enough to cover all of our modules, and that'd be cool. I mean, we don't have all the cells yet. We don't have all the wafers, but people like NextEra, they're fighting hard, and what that also tells me is that next era is not going to be on our side when it comes to fighting back against the tariffs, because they don't have to worry about it. They're not going to lobby for tariffs now.
• 22:47
  John Weaver: What they will lobby for is the inflation Reduction Act, and there's ongoing negotiations right now. I'm starting to see headlines. Tim, yeah, and so this is the week where you start drinking, and next week is when it's really going to start to hit the fan. So I'm glad I'm going to be traveling somewhere else, and I guess I'm going to guess I'm going to in a inner solar I
• 23:11
  Tim Montague: think you'll be able to get a beer. Yeah,
• 23:13
  John Weaver: definitely.
• 23:13
  John Weaver: Alright, flipping my trip around. Gotta call. Gotta call the Iceland people, see if they'll let me do that. That should work. All I gotta do is just get off the plane, you know, and I don't have to get back on, but I need to get a hotel room in Iceland for tonight, Tim or tomorrow,
• 23:32
  Tim Montague: or you can stay right at the airport. There's hotels right by the airport, alright, cool. There's also volcanos. Watch out, yes, yes.
• 23:41
  John Weaver: Don't fall in them.
• 23:41
  John Weaver: You uh,
• 23:48
  Tim Montague: your solar panels arrived. What kind of solar panels Did you buy?
• 23:52
  John Weaver: So technically, I didn't buy these. Customer did, um, I think there's a Zn, Oh, yeah. So both. Go back again. Go back. You just clicking through some real important stuff there.
• 24:03
  John Weaver: Tim,
• 24:04
  Tim Montague: it's a boring pilot of modules. Come on, brother.
• 24:07
  John Weaver: Tim, what's that thing off to the right, though, that's a parapet wall. No.
• 24:10
  John Weaver: Timothy, up one inch. Oh, the capital of the United States.
• 24:14
  John Weaver: There you go. That's it. This is downtown DC. Oh, cool. It's on top of a 3040, story building, 20 No, 26 story building, FBI building is nearby. They had to get clearance from the FBI. I think if you click on the image, you can still float to the next let's see if we can get a big one. Yeah, there we go. So that's the US capital building in the background. That's pretty cool picture. All right,
• 24:40
  Tim Montague: so building a project in DC,
• 24:43
  John Weaver: yeah? Well, no, we're a consultant support feasibility. We help find contractors. We help bring it forward. Actually, a very good friend of ours, Tim, it's Mark at Universal renewables. Is it mark? It is Mark. I think Mark at Universal renewables. Are they the
• 25:01
  Tim Montague: guys that do that funky
• 25:05
  John Weaver: rooftop carports.
• 25:05
  John Weaver: Yeah. Mark Valentin, I know Mark Valentine. We all know Mark. So Mark is building this project.
• 25:12
  John Weaver: This is his. We help bring him in on it. Help move it forward.
• 25:14
  John Weaver: He's been putting a lot of hard work. Man. He got the town, the town, the town of DC, to give him some code changes because he had to be set back four feet.
• 25:26
  John Weaver: But as we go through these images, we're going to see a cool picture or two of how he's attaching this rooftop covered pathway, so a carport essentially on the roof. And so check out that picture that is the Washington Monument in the background. So another cool angle from downtown, so solar plus DC. Man, all right, so now you get your Zn shine nozzles.
• 25:48
  John Weaver: What's next? So we're going to do a partial system that's going to lay flat on the roof, on this material, and then the other is going to be on the covered Parkway. And I, I think these two silver pieces coming up are the foundation pieces, steel beams going up. Yeah,
• 26:08
  Tim Montague: these guys are real. Are real experts at attached it's, it's like a carport, but it's, it's not as tall as a carport, obviously, now just tall enough to go over all that equipment, so that you can actually solarize that roof, which usually would, you know, be able to get very little solar because there's so many obstructions. So that's why these guys have carved out a niche for themselves. And I think there's generous incentives in DC right now, right? Yeah,
• 26:36
  John Weaver: they get a really strong s rack, really strong s correct? Like, like, 40. Like 440
• 26:43
  Tim Montague: you need that. You need that to do this kind of solar, right? Because this is not cheap.
• 26:47
  John Weaver: No, sir, no, this, this took a lot of work. I think you're gonna see some lifts. I mean, they had to shut down streets in Washington, DC. I think the President had to come by and sign off himself. Yeah.
• 26:57
  John Weaver: So, you know, there's the monument again, there's the gear, some of the some of the steel. You can see the hardware that's going into the roof right now. You can start to see how close they are to the edge of the roof. This is one of the challenges. This is a walkway.
• 27:15
  John Weaver: So this is going to be covered walkway. They're gonna, maybe they'll do something with those bricks. I'm not sure. I saw some markups earlier that made it look pretty. But this is where it took a lot of time to get the city to approve the design, because we're within four feet of the edge. And from a visual standpoint, they didn't want anything hanging over and, you know, also, from a risk standpoint, you don't want stuff hanging over the edge of your
• 27:40
  Tim Montague: building. Yeah, is that the high edge or the low edge. Do you think
• 27:45
  John Weaver: it's, well, it's either flat or that's the low edge, but I think it's flat. Is the
• 27:51
  Tim Montague: building north of the Capitol?
• 27:56
  John Weaver: No, but it super close. I think it's, it might be, actually, as
• 28:01
  Tim Montague: if we're looking south and that's the low edge.
• 28:04
  Tim Montague: Yeah,
• 28:04
  John Weaver: I think that's the South. I think we're looking west southwest right here. So I think we're looking toward like, I think the main building, the White House, would be to your right, or right south, right, whatever. Yeah, all right, so that, so that's the covered pathway that we're going to cover, because people go up there and hang out. Yeah? So there's going to be solar that's going to connect on top of the wall to the right, and that's, I think it's four panels across.
• 28:39
  John Weaver: And then you could,
• 28:39
  Tim Montague: you get a, oh, yeah, some bird's eye view. But you, you didn't get any drone photos.
• 28:46
  John Weaver: Well, these weren't my pictures, but I'm there.
• 28:48
  John Weaver: Might be there. I'm I, you know what? I doubt you're allowed to fly too many drones. Yeah, next to the FBI, right? A few blocks from the White House. Tim, that's a cool show. If you do, yeah, and if you do Fly Drone there. It's gonna be found very quickly.
• 29:07
  Tim Montague: Yeah, it's probably the no fly zone. The drone probably won't even take off.
• 29:13
  John Weaver: That's good point.
• 29:13
  John Weaver: Yeah, so I'm not on site. This is being taken by the site manager. His name is Mark Lyons, really smart guy, very determined to move this through, yeah, shutting down roads in DC.
• 29:24
  John Weaver: Man, do
• 29:28
  Tim Montague: you know how many kW the project is? 193 nice.
• 29:33
  Tim Montague: Yeah,
• 29:34
  John Weaver: so I was really happy to be part of that. Met Valentine. He's a smart guy. He knows his stuff.
• 29:39
  Tim Montague: Yeah? I mean, if they didn't do that unique, attached carport style racking, it would be less than half of that, right? There's, there's just no way you could get even 100 KW on that roof. So many obstructions. We call that obstructionosity. I think
• 29:58
  John Weaver: it's cool. I haven't done one of those projects directly, but now I'm getting to see it, and it's just kind of neat to that they're doing that kind of solution.
• 30:07
  John Weaver: State of Massachusetts is offering a potential incentive for that product in their next smart three program. So roof, what's the terminology they have for it? It's the different thing. It's not carport. They use a different word, but roof, roof something. So anyway, neat project downtown DC, project of the week mark, Valentine. US renewable, universal renewables, nice.
• 30:37
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I remember.
• 30:37
  Tim Montague: I remember, I took a photo of their booth for you at the RE plus
• 30:42
  John Weaver: Boston. Yeah, I was really happy you did.
• 30:46
  Tim Montague: So should we, should we talk about solid state batteries?
• 30:50
  John Weaver: Big, solid state battery cells. You found a
• 30:53
  Tim Montague: story in ESS news, ESS news, that's not the PV magazine. It is. It is, okay.
• 30:58
  Tim Montague: It's
• 31:02
  John Weaver: yeah, it's within the TV Magazine. They recently launched. Yes, recently launched absolutely
• 31:09
  Tim Montague: all right, I'll get this on screen. We've been hearing a lot about solid state batteries. It's like we heard a lot about them back in 2020 during the pandemic, like Volkswagen was all in and then they kind of went quiet, right?
• 31:23
  Tim Montague: But now sounds like they're getting traction, because I know some of the automakers are are investing in them now.
• 31:31
  John Weaver: So Solid State did the technology curve, like a lot of things, it's like, oh my god, we got this new idea. This is coming. Oh, it's so beautiful.
• 31:39
  John Weaver: Amazing, amazing. Okay, oh. We gotta figure out how to do it.
• 31:42
  John Weaver: All right, let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Okay, okay, okay. Oh my god, this sucks.
• 31:47
  John Weaver: It's terrible. What happened to all the wonderful Okay, now we're gonna slowly progress.
• 31:50
  John Weaver: That's called, like, the trough of disillusionment, yeah, where people are like, Oh, that's trash, the headlines, where's the real thing. But now it's starting to come out of it. This might be the first solid state utility scale product I've seen.
• 32:06
  John Weaver: I don't know if it's a true solid state the way people believe it's going to be eventually. It could be early.
• 32:13
  John Weaver: But the fact that it was one solid state and two, well, I guess three things, but two and three are the same. The cell it's a 783 Empire amp hour cell, which is like two it's 2000 volts, I guess, and it's like 1.5 kilowatt hours. I mean, that thing could run your house one battery cell for, like, I don't know, an hour or something, maybe. And then it's 8.3 megawatt hours for a single 20 foot shipping container volume.
• 32:48
  Tim Montague: Yeah, that's a lot of storage in a single 20 foot container. Yes,
• 32:51
  John Weaver: all those things coming together. It's like, holy crap. What a cool, big utility scale battery. And I hope we get to build some. So
• 32:59
  Tim Montague: this story is called Narada power launches 783, amp hour cell, 8.3 megawatt hour solid state battery. Ess news, that's the PB magazine, news site by Marija mish. But where is this project?
• 33:17
  John Weaver: Now this is just a product launch. Product Launch.
• 33:21
  John Weaver: Product launch, yes, so scroll down. Show us that big, pretty cell. That thing is huge. I don't know if this represents what the actual cell size is.
• 33:27
  John Weaver: How big is
• 33:29
  Tim Montague: that? Do you think? Uh, it's
• 33:32
  John Weaver: probably about a foot across, four inches wide, six inches tall. And that's a cell I see him on, yeah, that's a cell that is a single cell.
• 33:40
  John Weaver: They're getting huge.
• 33:43
  Tim Montague: That's as big as a module in a lithium ion, Ion battery. Absolutely
• 33:49
  John Weaver: like back in the day, you know, where you said cells that look like nine volt batteries, right? You know, double A, triple A batteries.
• 33:54
  John Weaver: This is the modern cell in a in a battery. So this is what's called a blade cell. And this, I believe, I'm not 100% on it, but I believe BYD was the first one to move blade cells into cars, maybe, C, A T L. There was a recent conversation, apparently, between the CEO of Catal, C, A T L, and Tesla uh, Elon. And apparently the ATL told Tesla, uh, hey, you're going the wrong way with your 4860 batteries.
• 34:31
  John Weaver: You just can't fit the same capacity as us. Here's why. So there's some tit tat back and forth. Oh, by the way, 10,000 cycles. So let's do a quick 10,000 cycles. That's like 10,000 123, divided by 365, 27, years at one cycle a day divided by two for 13.7 years at two cycles a day. So long, lasting product that's dense, that's big, cutting edge. And these utility scale batteries, I think are cool. So I'm following this topic a lot because battery storage is next. I mean, you saw the biggest the best solution to what happened in Spain is batteries. And everybody's been yelling at Spain, hey, you need a little more responsibility for your grid right now. They just got a little busted in the news.
• 35:22
  John Weaver: Type of event needs to be managed. Big grid batteries are going to be it, and they're priced. Well now,
• 35:33
  Tim Montague: Narada sounds in, uh, Indian, but it's a Chinese company. Um,
• 35:40
  John Weaver: oh, no, I just saw another company with the same size battery cell. So it's a standard that's coming. They're all going to be like that. I like big batteries too.
• 35:52
  Tim Montague: Yeah, there's lot to like about big batteries. Um, oh, they have an office in North America too, in Newton, Massachusetts, in Newton.
• 36:02
  John Weaver: Oh, I gotta go knock on the door. Okay, so 8.83 megawatt hours. So times one, I know how to price in kilowatt hours. Now, let's say delivered.
• 36:12
  John Weaver: It'd be 120 bucks. That's a million dollar shipping container. And then what's the that's a million dollar shipping container. I don't know what the tariff is. It's probably a million dollars. Million dollar tariff. So there you go. Instead of, instead of being under $100 per kilowatt hour for that unit, it's gonna probably be somewhere around two, yeah, that's, uh, we'll get there. Tim, keep fighting. Keep fighting. Yeah,
• 36:43
  Tim Montague: should we talk about balcony solar? Maybe we'll close on that.
• 36:47
  John Weaver: That's good idea. I like that. Okay,
• 36:49
  Tim Montague: balcony solar comes to California by John Fitzgerald Weaver in PV magazine. What's the story, John? We've talked about balcony solar not too long ago. I want some balcony solar. I can't do rooftop solar because I have a huge tree over my house, but I could do some balcony solar off my patio.
• 37:09
  John Weaver: You should interview these guys and ask them questions on your show.
• 37:11
  John Weaver: They like to do stuff, make them, make them. They want to get their gear out there too.
• 37:19
  John Weaver: Not this company, but the one they buy from. So let me tell you about this. So
• 37:23
  Tim Montague: this company is brightsaver. Yes,
• 37:27
  John Weaver: brightsaver was founded in California right around the start of the year, and it's a couple of guys who had the idea to bring balcony solar to the United States. And they started looking at the laws, and they came up with the idea that if they install a solar system that never exports to the grid, then it's okay. It doesn't need permits necessarily, right? And it definitely doesn't need interconnection. That's what they're going with. And so they found a company called craft strong, I think it is, and I put them on the document so we can look at them next. But craft strong, they they manufacture this kit that has a little code that hopefully reads the grid and says, up the house demand is lower than the solar generation.
• 38:12
  John Weaver: Let's fiddle with the PowerPoint settings in the inverter, and it makes sure it never exports. And that's what they're building in California. And so they've done like 3040, 50. Of these systems apparently think to like 1800 ish dollars, and they do make them have a unique circuit in the electric panel, so that there's no way to do this thing where you can have a lot of draw on a circuit and a lot of energy coming in and potentially overpower stuff. So this is their way of managing it. And so balcony solar is being installed in the greater San Francisco region by brightsaver, and in some cities, two or three, they have been told you don't need a permit, because it's an A an appliance. It's movable. You plug it in, you remove it very easy, not an issue. All right, in some places, they still said you had to plug it in, maybe, but they're doing it without interconnection. Is the way I'm hearing it. Everything is you, but it's
• 39:27
  Tim Montague: plugging into a wall outlet, right? Yep,
• 39:31
  John Weaver: yeah, with it on a dedicated circuit. But yes,
• 39:35
  Tim Montague: oh, dedicated circuit. Okay, yeah. That
• 39:38
  John Weaver: one adds a little complexity to it. They have to get a an electrician in there to do a dedicated circuit, yeah, and that's the that's the complexity now, but it's
• 39:48
  Tim Montague: just a 30 amp circuit.
• 39:50
  John Weaver: It could be 10, I don't know, but it could be 10.
• 39:54
  John Weaver: I mean, if they just do one big module, 189 amp module, but I don't know exactly 10 or 20.
• 40:00
  John Weaver: It's probably less than 30, is my guess tonight. I haven't done any engineering. I don't know that answer. But in Utah, it's different. In Utah, there is a law that states you can back feed to the power grid just a little bit, up to 1.2 kilowatts, and we'll let you go without permits and interconnections.
• 40:18
  John Weaver: And so now brightsaver, now that the Utah law has come. And we talked about this a couple months ago when the Utah law came to be not a bright saver is see what's happened to Utah.
• 40:28
  John Weaver: They're trying to start some business there. So, so it's pretty cool. It's, it's balcony solar, and this company maybe bring them up. Yeah,
• 40:38
  Tim Montague: I gotta put this on screen. It's so sexy.
• 40:41
  John Weaver: Yeah, yeah. So first off, this company has been hammering me to talk about so they're getting it, but they are the manufacturer, the supplier to bright singer. They also got a story in like two or three different places. Now they're arguing with me and saying the Utah legislation doesn't allow export to the grid, and they're also saying craft strong is saying that this system can be installed today in all 50 states. Balcony solar, from their perspective, with their technology and their pitch, is that balcony solar is legal 100% across the US today. So that's their pitch. You know
• 41:28
  Tim Montague: what crafts? Drum means, right? No. Craft means power. Strum means electricity.
• 41:32
  Tim Montague: Oh, there you go. Power, electricity, solar.
• 41:40
  John Weaver: Well, if you go to craftstrom.com, Wow, that's also their website. So they got to this is for their plug and play solar products, yeah,
• 41:49
  Tim Montague: but so they're selling, they're selling the racking, or the panels, or both.
• 41:51
  Tim Montague: They're
• 41:54
  John Weaver: selling a control unit, inverters, panels, maybe the racking, I don't know exactly. And they also have a battery kit that can go with it, because this control unit, and I think that's the picture of it right there in the middle.
• 42:11
  John Weaver: That's the inverter there, the control units right there, the power meter. Think that's an integral piece, because what that does, it looks at the house. It hooks up, you know, CT, clamps onto the onto the electric panel so it can see how much house demand there is. Then it looks at the solar system to see how much is generated. And if the solar system starts to get close to what the house is at, it cuts out. It says, oh, solar go off, and it measures.
• 42:38
  John Weaver: And it measures, oh, there he is. The power meter measures how much electricity from the utility and the panels, and it matches, because it doesn't want you to export. That's the key.
• 42:48
  John Weaver: It keeps you from exporting, yeah, and so they believe that allows you to be plugged in anywhere in the United States.
• 42:57
  Tim Montague: But what from a, from a from an AHA perspective, John, do you think it's like a two kW limit? Or what is the KW limit for a project like this?
• 43:09
  John Weaver: Well, if it's a movable thing that you can just throw out in your front yard or hang on your you know, yeah. I mean, I don't know two kW Max.
• 43:17
  John Weaver: You know, the Utah law is about two kW DC, four modules because they allow 1.2 kW AC, and that's a nice DC to AC number. So maybe it's two kW before you start getting a little pressure from the ah. It depends how visible your thing is. If it's in your backyard and nobody can see it, you can deploy all you want. If it's hanging out in your front yard, right down the corner, and it's a nice corner. You better make sure you got some nice all black nozzles, and don't have an aluminum frame, and make sure your wires are, you know, at least manageable. The fact that they're movable might help. You know, you bring them in at night, otherwise the kids are going to throw rocks at them.
• 44:08
  Tim Montague: Oh, well, those panels in there, in their photo look like they're not even glass panels. I don't know. Yeah,
• 44:16
  John Weaver: they did look like.
• 44:16
  John Weaver: They may have been frameless, or did you think Matt Tay or something like that, some matte panels? Yeah,
• 44:23
  Tim Montague: I just, I just, they didn't look like glass. Oh, we'll see. We'll see good stuff, man, I like it. Balcony, solar coming to the US. It's about time. We gotta catch up, man, we'll have a great trip to Iceland and Germany, say hi to Helga beer. Nath, for me, have a beer with Helga beer. Nath, do you know Helga? Nope. He is the owner of Sun stall. They're a mechanical installer, and he's the owner of suns on which is a vertical racking company cool that is competing with next to sun, right? Next to Sun is European company. Son is an American company with a German name,
• 45:11
  John Weaver: but they're from Colorado, right? No,
• 45:13
  Tim Montague: they're from the Bay Area. Oh, okay, of course, Marin County. Nice. Alright.
• 45:17
  Tim Montague: Well, they're doing a and just so our listeners know we're doing a webinar with them on July 15, so you can look forward to that on agrivoltaics, we're going to have sandbox solar on that. Professor, Professor Majd from UC Davis and John Langdon of muddy creek solar farm. He's a farmer out in Oregon, so good crew assembling for agrivoltaics on July 15. Are you going to come to the agrivoltaics conference? John, I'm thinking about it. You should. What is it? I think it's in August.
• 45:52
  Tim Montague: August.
• 45:56
  John Weaver: I could take the train to that one, and that's in Chicago, right?
• 46:00
  Tim Montague: Take the train to anyone. It's just a question of, how long do you want to how much of your life do you want to dedicate to riding on a train?
• 46:05
  Tim Montague: It's true,
• 46:10
  John Weaver: that might be the show I get. So I'm going to go to re plus, of course, but that might be another show for me to go to, because I don't have to fly. So I like that idea,
• 46:17
  Tim Montague: all right. Well, check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and review on Apple or Spotify. Follow us on YouTube and tell a friend about the show. That's the best thing you can do to help spread the word.
• 46:32
  Tim Montague: Where can our listeners find you? John commercialsolarguy.com,
• 46:37
  John Weaver: our website works.
• 46:37
  John Weaver: LinkedIn. I'm on blue sky.
• 46:42
  John Weaver: Commercial solar guy, are we sharing good news and give us a ring? We want to build stuff for you in Massachusetts and Rhode Island or consult and, you know, talk to you about Tim and me and all the weird news stuff that we know. Tim and I have been in done a lot of solar, so if you need any help with it, we can build it. That's what we like to do, like to build, develop, that's it.
• 47:04
  John Weaver: Commercialsolarguy.com Thanks, Tim, I see you
• 47:07
  Tim Montague: all right. Rock on. Take care. See you. John, you.