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Why Battery Storage is Your Survival Strategy · Clean Power Hour

• 0:50
  Tim Montague: Tim, welcome to the Clean Power Hour live bringing you the latest in wind, solar and battery storage news.
• 0:58
  Tim Montague: I'm Tim Montague. Check out all of our content at clean power hour.com Give us a rating and review. Check out my new book.
• 1:04
  Tim Montague: Go to the Book link on clean power hour.com and welcome to the show. John Weaver, commercial show. Commercial solar guy and my co host, welcome
• 1:14
  John Weaver: commercial.
• 1:14
  John Weaver: Shoulder guy, yeah, shoulder.
• 1:17
  Tim Montague: Today it's shoulder. I have trouble talking
• 1:20
  John Weaver: big words, big words you say probably 1000 times a day. It's probably stressful to say it too many more times I see you. Tim, uh, glad to, glad to talk with you again. Sorry missed you on Friday at a company event. So we're we got together. One of our sales guys visited Boston, and the team took a summer Friday. Is the term I hear, we socialize, and hung out. So that's awesome. Bringing you some news this week.
• 1:46
  Tim Montague: Yes, that is awesome. It's important to take time out and take care of one another. The industry runs on people. Sometimes we forget this. It's not just about deploying technology. It's actually people that matter most, and we're trying to create a safer, healthier future for humanity. If anyone asks you why we want to do the energy transition, like, why on earth should we do this. It's about the future of humanity. Really, the earth is going to be fine, totally fine, with or without us. It's a question of, will we survive, and under what condition that's gonna be a question that's the main motivation for what, why I get up in the morning and go to work is trying to create a safer future for humanity. So let's get into the news. There's there's good news, there's bad news, there's weird news. Of course, in 2025 there's lots of weird news, but you found a you found a story. Trump's law to cut us clean energy installs 41% I would, I would put this in the bad news category, but that's life in 2025 right? John,
• 3:01
  John Weaver: yes, yes. And, and this is a complex story, like all everything we're dealing with these days. No, it says clean energy installs. So this is a lot of things and but there's also a shorter term window that's still good for us as people who are working day to day. So first off, at the highest level, Bloomberg is looking at where they think the solar industry will go. But notice this says, right here, we'll plunge 41% after 2027 so we're still in 25 Tim, we still got some work to do for a couple years. And and here's the chart.
• 3:42
  John Weaver: And this is clean energy. And before we finish, I'm gonna talk about solar, because Tim, that's what you and I do. But this is everything. So in 25 we're expecting 72 gigawatts, AC of clean energy capacity to be deployed. That's going to be energy storage, that's going to be wind and solar. And 26 we're expecting 85 gigawatts. 2781 this is all coming from Bloomberg, so these are numbers still going up over the next couple of years.
• 4:14
  Tim Montague: Yeah, because the ITC doesn't go off the cliff until the end of 27 for commercial, right,
• 4:20
  John Weaver: correct, correct.
• 4:20
  John Weaver: And I don't know if you remember, but 2016 we had a massive run up, because the ITC was going to end and so, so So what's going to happen over these next three years, two and a half years from today, maybe something of that nature. So that's kind of positive. Ish, yeah. And so that's, you know, that's, that's it. So that's what we're working on now. Now, Tim, I don't want to jump to the document, but would you do me a favor and read what I have from Jenny Chase, that's actually on the document that you can see for this article How much DC capacity of solar she suggests on the document that I pasted there, right above the link, so that we can compare.
• 5:06
  Tim Montague: Us clean energy installs 41% BNF says us solar forecasts megawatt DC, totals, 2025 2627 base case, fioc, basically impossible to meet.
• 5:18
  Tim Montague: 53.1 gigawatts, 61.1 59.8 32.3 I don't quite understand, but
• 5:31
  John Weaver: All right, so let's go over it and I can so first, 5362 and then back to 50. This is with and so this, I'm going to say, is really positive.
• 5:40
  John Weaver: We're expecting an expansion of solar, 5362 and back to 50 for the next three. Years if fioc, foreign entity of concern is a big challenge, if it turns out that the Trump administration is going to attack everything that has any association with China, and we have to really mess up our supply chains, yeah, those are the numbers that she's that BNF, Bloomberg, New Energy Finance, BNF is accepting 5360 backed it into the 50s now with fioc and so read the rest of it with fioc being manageable. What kind of capacities does she project? That's the second half of that little column of that row,
• 6:36
  Tim Montague: 5361, 50, well, 60 and 32
• 6:44
  John Weaver: and that's with the fioc manageable, or is that the first one? Let's see. Wow. So then with Oh, so it's similar, ish, so a little bit all else.
• 6:50
  John Weaver: Maybe that's just the Fiat number. So, so, so what this is, is that in the next two and a half years, we're going to deploy a lot of solar, we're going to set a record, maybe this year, with 53 gigs, because last year we were like 49.9 Yeah. And then next year, we're going to set another record, maybe over 60 gigs, and then we're going to have another 50 gig plus year in 27 that's if the Fiat stuff is really hard, it might ease a little we might have a little bit cheaper hardware. We might get a little more installed. But with the negative and the positive here is after the next two and a half years, we all got a lot of work to do, and we need to pound and get through things as fast as we can. And then, what the heck's going to happen in 28 I don't know. Maybe we're going to have, you know, it says 32 gigawatts of solar. That's still a big number. I mean, 32 gigs is a great number, but it's going to be less dispersed. It's going to be heavy in the commercial space. And and 2829 30 that's when we're going to start seeing problems in the industry, size, capacity, maybe people getting fired. And so that's, you know, we got to push hard. Well, two years we're already seeing people get fired. Tim,
• 8:02
  Tim Montague: yeah, we are already seeing layoffs, just to be honest, right? The layoffs are happening, and companies have to be conservative about the forecast. It's, it's hard to know what the true impact of fioc is going to be, you know.
• 8:17
  Tim Montague: And at its core, you know, the problem with fioc is that China is, is, is one of these foreign entities. They're the main maker of, for example, battery cells.
• 8:25
  Tim Montague: Our battery cells on the fioc list, I think, I think they are, it's
• 8:35
  John Weaver: IP, it's not even cells. I don't even think they talk about hardware. They talk about IP, yeah, so if the cell can be made in Ohio, but if it's Chinese, IP, yeah. And there's a challenge. So even Tesla, who is the biggest of us in the US making batteries. They get cells from catl, C, A, T, L, and for their energy storage, for their grid stuff. So we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to see, I mean, they do have a new LFP factory coming online in Nevada, so that's gonna help. Yeah, but you know, we gotta look at IP and and it's not zero for fioc, for IP, it's, it's a percentage, but it's, it's a percentage.
• 9:18
  John Weaver: It's gonna get harder and harder as the years go on. Yeah. All right, so well, so we got some volume coming. We got to
• 9:27
  Tim Montague: get to this is, this is why we call it the solar coaster. We get these bumps and dips, and we're getting a bump.
• 9:34
  Tim Montague: So ride the wave energy professionals, and just know that as soon as we get a new administration, things will change, and the landscape will change, and the energy transition is full steam ahead globally. So you can have a bright future in clean energy.
• 10:44
  Tim Montague: There's just going to be turmoil. Resi is going to have a harder Cliff sooner, and then commercial and good companies will survive. You got to you got to have a good strategy. John, the thing that you know, the take home for me so far is lean into batteries and lean into diversification of electrification, meaning HVAC or even an allied trade, like roofing and electrification of transportation, car chargers. I don't know if you have a Have you boiled it down for people how to survive the downturn?
• 11:37
  John Weaver: No, I think number one in the residential space.
• 11:43
  John Weaver: Yes. I mean, I know how I'm going to survive it for residential, my residential company is going to be supported by a commercial company. I mean, that's really what's going to come to for us, because we're not a great residential company.
• 11:56
  John Weaver: We build well, but we're not a big firm. We don't have all the resources. We all have a sales team. We just have inbound leads. And so my company is going to have to be supported by a previously existing commercial team. That's what's going to make my resi company work. My commercial company is going to work because we're going to keep doing solar and mass in Rhode Island, which are very expensive markets for electricity, and have state incentives. And then we're going to add and this is something I'm slowly working through right now, a construction arm specifically focused on energy storage and and that's, you know, we're going to keep building, and that's how we're going to figure it out. We have to get tighter in cost, those residential costs, they have to come down.
• 12:42
  John Weaver: And, yeah, one way that we're going to do it is just you know, we're going to be a low volume rezzy shop, so we're not going to represent the real market, but people are just going to have to tight costs. I mean, that's just going to be reality.
• 12:54
  John Weaver: Um, people will still
• 12:55
  Tim Montague: any other way to do it. People will still install solar at the at the residential level, and it'll be, it'll be smaller volume, so there will be a market contraction. So if you're a good company doing good work, you'll you'll be fine. If you're a solar bro, selling super expensive solar, goodbye, and that's okay. All right, let's get into the project of the week. You found a very beautiful, 875 kW carport superstructure. That is one badass carport.
• 13:34
  John Weaver: That's, that's, that's how I reacted. I was like, Oh my gosh, look at all that cool stuff on it. I mean, look at the walls. It's enclosed. So it's coming from Dallas, Dallas Fort Worth area gentlemen on blue sky, we were talking about carports, and he posted their carport. The company is CLS sustainable, and some of the details, it's fully walled and and it has a drop down facade. On the inside, it's, it's very it's lit like standard, as any carport would need to be with lighting. But it's also by facial modules, so it's very naturally lit as well.
• 14:13
  John Weaver: And it's on top of a parking lot, and it's just a beautiful square. I mean, cleaning it should be. I mean, it's probably going to be required because there's, looks like it's a zero slope, but I assume you could just put a robot on there and let that thing just kind of go back and forth on its own, but I don't know, and it's downtown, so of course, it'll get dirty, but it's just looks so cool.
• 14:38
  John Weaver: When that guy shared it with me, I was like, Oh my gosh,
• 14:42
  Tim Montague: yeah, it's pretty clean, I have to say. And I'd like to know what the installed cost per watt was, just curious.
• 14:51
  Tim Montague: But, you know, shade is of a premium. A lot of we're going to do a lot of carports eventually, carport solar alone could completely green the grid, like, that's how many parking lots we have in America. So there's more than 10,000 I think the figure, it's in my book, there's 13,000 square miles of carports in the United States. It's a huge that much. Yeah,
• 15:22
  John Weaver: I remember there's like 2 billion parking spots, but I don't know how many of those are, like, fully facing the sun versus inside of a carport or in a house or something. But
• 15:33
  Tim Montague: well, gardening spots, most of them are, are exposed. Yeah, something like 30% of LA, of the geography of LA is parking a huge percentage.
• 15:43
  Tim Montague: So you can imagine a lot of that converted to battery containers and solar panels. And it's a good thing, and it's good for the grid. It's good for consumers because it brings prices down. That's one of the bummers, I think, about the BBB John is everybody in America is going to see spikes in the cost of energy at a time when we already have inflation. And you know, our paychecks aren't going up. So it's just, it's just, it's a tough time. And you and I know that LCOE of solar and battery is is lower than the Do Nothing strategy. So that's, that's what we should do.
• 16:36
  John Weaver: I get mad when you tell me 30% of LA is parking and people whine that we might. Want 1% to power the whole nation. I just want to punch things and sometimes people. Tim, not a good thing. All right, to the show. Tim, back to the show.
• 16:57
  Tim Montague: Back to the show.
• 16:57
  Tim Montague: Global grid scale best supports a deployment increase over 50% in h1 2025, reaching 87.6 gigawatt hours, 14 Giga scale projects have entered operations so far this year. All right, that's a good story. Get this on screen.
• 17:18
  John Weaver: I like that.
• 17:18
  John Weaver: Batteries are growing. Man batteries at a new solar Tim. We we gotta, we gotta be on the ball. We gotta be pushing it. We gotta understand it and know it better. The report that they give you can sign up for. They don't let us get into it, but we get to see some cool data here.
• 17:36
  John Weaver: You know, China's starting to deploy massive batteries.
• 17:39
  John Weaver: California is we may, if we get a chance talk about how batteries are affecting curtailment, which is a weird word for most people in California, but but battery growth, for me, is story of the year. Is a story of last the story of last year was battery price falling, and it's still falling this year. So this right here. This is going to be the growth story, the growth engine, and this Tim, you want to keep your business alive. Learn some batteries. That's it. You want to get rid of net metering.
• 18:11
  John Weaver: Learn some batteries absolutely demand charge. Learn some batteries. You know what? That's that's what we're going to try and do. We got to stay alive.
• 18:21
  John Weaver: Yep,
• 18:22
  Tim Montague: I completely agree. Batteries are so three dimensional compared to solar.
• 18:25
  Tim Montague: We love solar because they collect photons. Solar panels collect photons. Photons are free, but batteries allow you to store those electrons and then deploy them on demand, 24/7, and that is super valuable. That's something a solar panel cannot do, never will do, and that's fine. That's why we have batteries. We just need to build a lot of batteries, and that's a problem when we're not really incentivizing factory construction in America. So a lot of the factories are still getting built in Asia, and that's a conundrum that we haven't quite solved, but lean into batteries for sure.
• 19:05
  John Weaver: So, so, yeah, so I just, you know, this is benchmark. I We should get this guy on the show again one day.
• 19:11
  John Weaver: He's busy. He's all around. They started covering copper recently, yeah, but they stopped putting out that cool chart, which showed battery announcements, because I guess it got above 10 terawatt hours of factories, and they're just like, oh my gosh, there's so many factories to track, but it's growing. This is what we're talking about. And what's neat, I like the little chart at the bottom. We can see how much of the batteries are just connecting straight to the grid versus how much are connecting to solar plants and direct to wind plants. And I think this straight to the grid thing is pretty cool. Uh, what's the term wireless transmission? So what they mean by that is, instead of upgrading the power grid to add new wires, if you strategically add batteries at a certain spot, they can move the electricity during non traffic jam times. So to say, because the power grid gets a traffic jam, just like the highway. And so if we move electricity and off times, we can get it to the batteries, and it can hang out there. And then when it's needed, then it can shoot out. So like downtown LA, you want some of those parking spots that have batteries, so that at 5pm when all that solar in the desert is starting to slow down and trying to get electricity downtown. You got the batteries and and they're just literally putting batteries in wherever, you know. So it's just neat. I think the grid is going to get smarter quicker. I don't know, all kinds of things with batteries on it, so, so this is cool. You're gonna hear me constantly talking about
• 20:46
  Tim Montague: big batteries too.
• 20:46
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I I love batteries. It's not easy. I don't think it's easy. I don't want to trivialize Okay, for the average solar professional to understand the value stack, if you're still on the sidelines, it boils down in a simple way, though, earn, save protect, which I talked about last time we did the show. Earn, save protect, check out intelligent generation, and they flesh this out for you. And you just there are very few technologies that have the stack that batteries have, and that's why they're being deployed on mass. And if you're a grid operator, they're just great news, right? They're so flexible and and as prices have come down, and will continue to come down, right? The more we build, the less the price will be. And that's a virtuous cycle, all right? What's our next story?
• 21:45
  John Weaver: New York State?
• 21:46
  Tim Montague: Oh, I love this story. So you know, I I love to tout that I live in a top 10 solar market, but I'm barely in top 10 solar market in Illinois.
• 21:56
  Tim Montague: John, New York is a top five solar market, and they've achieved this by setting ambitious targets, and now they've just released a plan to target 35 gigawatts of PV and 9.4 gigawatts of battery storage by 2040 I also love this photo.
• 22:20
  Tim Montague: I don't know if this is even real. This photo showing rooftop units on a green roof, but the rooftop units have cooling, solar cooling shades over them, which is fascinating.
• 22:40
  John Weaver: Super cool. It can't be real. Whatever that is that can't be real New York City. I don't know what that
• 22:46
  Tim Montague: is. The thing that makes me think it's real, John is that you actually have these little openings in the solar panels for some access. And a normal, a normal, AI generated photo would not have included those, and they're uniform across the rooftop. But I don't know so, but yeah, New York is a leader. If you if you live and work in New York, you know this, it's like Hawaii, California, Texas, New York. And New York has NYSERDA, which is a powerhouse, and they are doing very ambitious things, which starts with these goals, right?
• 23:26
  Tim Montague: If you don't set a goal, it's not likely that you're going to green your grid here in Illinois, our goal is 25% by 2025 and so this drop plans to target 14 gigawatts of solar installed by 2030 and that's a lot of solar like we're gonna do. We're gonna do 10 gigawatts in 10 years, I think, is the plan in Illinois. So this is just, yeah, it's it's ambitious, it's good and it's ambitious
• 24:07
  John Weaver: and it's um, so first off, I'm looking at a chart right now, just to kind of give you a little more credit, though. But so New York is not a top five in terms of generation.
• 24:18
  John Weaver: They only get six and a quarter percent of their electricity from solar as of the last month that took puts him around 15 to 20. Illinois is only a few states behind him at 3% but New York is trying very hard. They are pushing energy storage. They are pushing, they are maybe the nation's leader community solar market. And they are, you know, working really hard. In fact, their utility scale is equal to their distributed solar generation. So they are doing well. They do have some challenges in that they have probably five gigawatts of capacity they've awarded starting in 2017 18 in what they call their large array program that have ever so slowly rolled out. It's it's just hard for these projects, and then the covid inflation hit, and our current inflation that's hitting those two things have also slowed these projects. So they have great they're pushing hard.
• 25:20
  John Weaver: They're pushing batteries. In fact, they just saw a their bulk storage battery program. It's going into the next round.
• 25:28
  John Weaver: They're looking for RFPs. So this 35 gigs, 35 gigs of solar and nine gigawatts of batteries.
• 25:36
  John Weaver: It's going to probably even be bigger, because it keeps growing. But the state's also now considering a little bit of nuclear to get to plug a system in a gigawatt of nukes, which would be great. It's very far north state. But in the northern half of the state, they have a lot of hydroelectricity.
• 25:53
  John Weaver: However, most of that's Canadian. Bunch of it's from Niagara Falls, though. So there's, it's a complex state with a lot going on, and it's a big state, New York State.
• 26:02
  John Weaver: There's 24 ish million people in the States, yep. So then they have this massive, wide open upstate area and this ultra dense city area. So it's, it's a state that has a lot of work to do. They have a lot of smart people working on it. NYSERDA is just full of professionals, people that call could be working on Wall Street if they wanted to. And they just, they know so much good stuff. So I'm I of course, love being nearby New York State. Every once in a while we get to work in the state. I was working on a proposal for somebody within the state today, and we hope that the under 750 kW incentives.
• 26:42
  John Weaver: Stays in place for this customer, so we could keep their ROI decent. But yes, they're working hard. They got a lot of challenges. It's a big state, a lot of challenging upstate permitting and zoning. Battery fires have caused some tension with the people, and there are regions that are now banning batteries. So, you know, I was just talking about batteries, but just like solar gets pushed back, there's also battery pushback in a lot of areas. So it's working. I New York's leading and pushing. They need to deploy a little faster, though they got to deploy a little bit faster, at least on the solar side. Wind is hard to man. Wind is hard for those folks. They're they're fighting every project.
• 27:26
  Tim Montague: My definition of a good solar state is a state that has a good DG market, meaning rooftop solar, and that includes community solar, and then commercial and residential, and then also utility. And that includes New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, New Jersey, and then the the big dogs, okay? Texas, Florida, California. You know, Florida and Texas are mostly utility scale. They're on the map for utility scale. There is a lot of DG happening. They're both big states with big populations. So there is a market for solar installers in those states relative to their population.
• 28:10
  Tim Montague: It's just relatively small peanuts compared to a New York or Illinois on the DG side, but definitely robust markets. So I'm just a fan of setting ambitious goals, and I wish more states would do this. That's another signal from the BBB John, is that the state leavers are more important now than ever. Right? Yes, this is a way for states to incentivize solar when the federal government isn't incentivizing us anymore, or, you know, that's coming down the pike. Incentives are going away. We all want incentive free solar, fundamentally, but we also want a level playing field for energy writ large. And so that's, you know, we know we don't have that. No, we don't, not even close. So, all right, what's our next story?
• 29:14
  John Weaver: Tim? Tim, you got to keep your career focused. But if you are having challenges with sales, I have some suggestions on how maybe we could, you know, compliment your income. Tim and so with that, would like to introduce to you an article on distributing methamphetamines.
• 29:37
  Tim Montague: US customs agency seizes 146 kilograms of math hidden in solar panels. Story in PB magazine by Emiliano Bellini.
• 29:45
  Tim Montague: What's the story?
• 29:48
  John Weaver: First off, look at that panel. Can you zoom in on that real quick? I mean, look at the thickness of that panel. And there was some other things. I don't know if it's
• 29:59
  Tim Montague: gonna let you zoom but zoom in. All right, okay,
• 30:03
  John Weaver: so I went to the original Facebook posting, and there were just some pieces of data that were just off the wall. First off, these solar panels were being air shipped from LA to New Zealand. Who's gonna send us manufactured solar panels via an airplane to New Zealand. That's one of the longest flights you can take on Earth. And and then the weight of each panel, I think, I can't remember right now, but each panel was, like, 130 pounds. And so, I mean, these customs people, they look at projects products all day long. And so I'm sure that they were like, wow, those are, that's some expensive shipping on those solar panels. I mean, who's sending US manufacturing modules to New Zealand when they can literally have them boated direct from China for probably 15 cents a watt? I wonder what the price was listed here. Like, the meth is like a million bucks. That's like a 500 watt panel. So these are, like, I don't know, $10,000 per watt panels, roughly.
• 31:11
  Tim Montague: You know, I did see a documentary about drug cartels recently, and apparently, a large amount of illegal drugs are being shipped on commercial airlines in the luggage, in the standard luggage of the passengers, unbeknownst to the average Joe consumer. So now this is a little extraordinary that they used solar panels and they were air shipping solar panels, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense Most solar panels would ship. On a container ship. And New Zealand can buy cheap panels from Southeast Asia, which is in their backyard. But, yeah, so this, you know, it is an interesting story. They are they? Are they real solar panels? Do you think or they're just fake solar panels? The
• 32:02
  John Weaver: images I looked at, they look weird. Like, click on that. See if you can click on the image on the left, they were, like, really thick, yeah, look at that. That's like a four inch thick solar panel, right? I don't, I don't know if they were actual, real units, and it looks like they were individually boxed the individual modules, yeah? So, like, all kinds of weirdo stuff going on here. But I guess you know that's meth dealers selling solar panels.
• 32:28
  Tim Montague: But to your point, if, if you're casting about for a new career,
• 32:35
  John Weaver: don't, don't do this one. We like you, solar people. We need you. We need you. Keep stay with us, please.
• 32:42
  Tim Montague: And you want to go to jail? Then, yes, you could become a drug smuggler, but it would probably be a good way to go to jail. Yes, you might get rich, but you might also end up in jail. All right, so electricity rate hikes, yes,
• 33:02
  John Weaver: wanted to brought it up to a degree last week.
• 33:04
  John Weaver: You're going to keep hearing me bring it up slowly. Tim, it's going to be a new topic, and it's going to be when we see dumb hikes like this is your neighbor. Man, these are people you might even know who are getting this hike. I believe that's Ameren. Is that Ameren in Missouri? Yes. Man, those rates, that's like 30% so everybody Amerindian Missouri has submitted a rate request, and the lowest increase in the price of energy was 30% if you can click on that image, it might let you zoom in on it, and 30% maybe won't let you zoom maybe you have to squeeze your browser window in from the width. Make it not as wide you think. There you go. That helps. Well, it looks a little bigger, and then give it a moment to sharpen. All right. So if we look at the difference here, we see 39% 32% 31% 29% this is a massive increase in an electricity bill for people. You know what's going to be the biggest motivator over the next 10 years? Tim it's going to be the price of electricity getting jacked up. That's going to make our spreadsheets look just look so much better. And I feel sorry for all of us and how we're going to have to pay for these electricity costs going through the roof. But then the other side of me, the mean portion of me, Tim saying, You know what, people, it's about damn time you're gonna have to deal with the consequences of cheap fossils. And this is it. This is what's going to happen. You're going to start paying some cheap fossil electricity that's now not so cheap, and your price of get everything's going to go up.
• 34:43
  John Weaver: And those solar plants which and those wind wind turbines which were getting incentives and had a nice low electricity price, that's going away now, ladies and gentlemen. So now your new price is going to be higher, and solar is still cheaper than new gas turbines, definitely cheaper than new nukes. So your cheapest energy is going to be now 30% cheap, more expensive, and it's almost representative. We got rid of a 30% tax credit, added 30% to the price of your electricity Missouri and your Senator, Josh Hawley, he voted, he voted for you to jack up your electricity rates. So Missouri, give your buddy Josh a call, see if you can find him running away from the Capitol building.
• 35:29
  John Weaver: That's, that's, he does that a lot. So that's, that's going to be a thing. Price of electricity. Every time I see a goofy request for a price increase, I'm bringing it here so I can remind our sales people understand what the price of electricity is and change those variables in your pricing model.
• 35:46
  John Weaver: Now, because the world is different than the way it was the last 10 years, electricity increases were slow. Right up until covid hit. Covid hit, we got a big whack. But in the teens, electricity rates were going up very slowly due to all that new natural gas. Now the gas is starting to get tapped out a little bit. The new stuff, we're sending it internationally. Oil prices are weird. So there's no free grass gas. So there's some dynamics.
• 36:14
  John Weaver: And then we have all this AI stuff. If AI is really going to expand the way it is, if we do it, and it don't matter, we're going to pay even higher rates, so so that. So I just, you know there's going to be pricing of electricity coming, and it seems, and that's going to be bad for us individually, but as an industry, it is our expertise to attack expensive electricity, so there's going to be more of it. Yeah.
• 36:42
  Tim Montague: Yeah, the higher the price of electricity, the faster solar pencils, or solar and batteries, or whatever alternative technology should we give? Should we cover the news from Europe? You've got a story from Germany and a story from Norway?
• 36:58
  John Weaver: Yeah? Well, the I mean this, these are both really quick ones. So the story from Germany is kind of our second project of the week. I just saw it and thought it was the neatest thing, just this building. It looks like the NSA building, so you gotta Yeah, the whole facade and the roof is covered with solar panels the west side and the south side.
• 37:19
  John Weaver: And I just think that's neat look at that, and it fits a megawatt of solar on that and, and that's just cool. So that was it. I just wanted to show off a solar building. I mean, oh yeah,
• 37:33
  Tim Montague: a whole office park. All these buildings you see here have rooftop solar and facade solar, and it looks damn good, I have to say, I mean, I don't know what the experience is on the inside of this first building. It might be a little dark, but this is definitely the future. I like to say, want to see the future go to Northern Europe and Jeopardy set the same latitude as Canada. So, you know, lower insulation, you know where, you know we're talking 11 109 to 1100 kWh, kWp, but they're making a pencil and,
• 38:20
  John Weaver: yeah, just neat, just neat seeing this like the whole facade is solar panels.
• 38:23
  John Weaver: And, yeah, just cool. That's it.
• 38:29
  John Weaver: And speaking of northern Europe and cool tech, yep, look at that. Look at that chart. Oh, man,
• 38:35
  Tim Montague: share of cars currently in use that are electric, okay? Norway.
• 38:42
  John Weaver: Now this is, you know, on an annual basis, their sales of electric cars, yeah, are like 95% right? And so this now,
• 38:52
  Tim Montague: 30% of their cars on the road are a third of their cars are electric.
• 38:58
  John Weaver: They must have chargers everywhere, I mean, and all those cars are running on hydro, because Norway is like 90 some percent hydroelectric. So the cleanest cars on Earth are in Norway, at least the electric ones. Pretty much
• 39:14
  Unknown: feels like it, yep. Oh,
• 39:15
  John Weaver: man. And so that.
• 39:15
  John Weaver: Just thought this chart was cool. Now there's one thing I did notice, the rate of change is slowing. So if you move your mouse away, you can show us that curve. You can see that rate kind of peaked,
• 39:26
  Tim Montague: yeah. It's starting to flatten off, right?
• 39:28
  Tim Montague: Yeah.
• 39:29
  John Weaver: So I there's going to be a dynamic that they talked about, and we're, I guess we're starting to see it. There's a difference between and notice that China's rate is like ticking upward
• 39:38
  Unknown: a little bit. Yes, it is.
• 39:40
  John Weaver: So there's a so you have the flow, and you have the storage. So the flow is that we have 90 plus percent of new cars coming out that are electric, but you have the existing volume of cars which are which are big.
• 39:55
  John Weaver: And so how is that rate going to change? How is that rate going to evolve? Is it going to stay flat for a while, till we get to 50% because these cars, last, you know, a car bought a gas car bought year 2020, that should be on the road until maybe 2030 maybe 2035 so it's going to take a while for that to move towards zero. But it is kind of cool. It is cool seeing it so big there.
• 40:23
  John Weaver: Man,
• 40:26
  Tim Montague: yeah. I mean, these pure electric vehicles, they can go a million miles.
• 40:28
  Tim Montague: They have so many fewer moving parts, so the ice that that is ultimately, what is the nail in the coffin of the internal combustion engine is it just will not be able to compete. Now we're still a few years away from that, and our federal government isn't helping at all.
• 40:48
  Tim Montague: But, yeah, we're at a whopping what, 2.7% here in the US now.
• 40:56
  Tim Montague: Now in places like California, 20% of new cars are electric, so California is doing a good job, but they're by far a standout, right? And I saw this morning that rivian stock is in the toilet. They they're an Illinois company. They have a factory just an hour away from where I live. I'm a huge fan. I don't own a rivian. It's a premium car. You can't get a rivian for less than $70,000 but tough times for the EV industry in the United States, including Tesla, their sales have been down for other reasons, I think, more political reasons than anything.
• 41:36
  Tim Montague: But
• 41:41
  John Weaver: so so it's interesting. Interesting seeing, uh, that cool building. Norway's doing its work. Last Story, Tim and we gotta run. Okay, we got one more. One more. Super fast.
• 41:53
  John Weaver: Okay, so talk about California.
• 41:53
  John Weaver: We talk about California a lot.
• 41:57
  Tim Montague: So there's this guy, John Weaver. He does good he does good journalism in PV magazine. California, solar curtailment down 12% on back of batteries. All right, yes, get this going. What's the story
• 42:12
  John Weaver: at high noon during spring in the fall, California has massive amounts of electricity that it has to what's called curtail. And curtailment means it literally tells the power plants you need to stop producing electricity.
• 42:27
  John Weaver: And there's a very cool little technical way it does it. But last year, 13% of all solar electricity through the end of May was curtailed. That means there's like, places that don't even get there. I like the amount of let's put it this way.
• 42:48
  John Weaver: 25% of all solar electricity generated in the US comes from California. Now 13% of that was just not produced. So imagine if California's extra 13% was generated. That'd be like the top or the bottom 10 states.
• 43:03
  John Weaver: That might even be like New York. You know, the amount of electricity that California curtails is bigger than probably the bottom 20 states. Now, here's the key last this year, this spring, because the amount of batteries being installed, curtailment has started to fall look at the orange versus the green. So we've had batteries coming on and on and on, and we started off the year with a lot of curtailment, but then as the batteries kept coming online, this year, we're now seeing curtailment fall off versus last year. Now last year we may have had a stronger April and May, and this year, there are some weather effects, but we also have and this is the key, we have 18% more solar this year, and curtailment is still down as a percentage. This is because of batteries, and this is the real reason I wanted to bring this up. We're now installing enough batteries that, not only that, we can install more solar and more evening electricity the system stability. So batteries and solar are now going to become a compounding effect.
• 44:17
  John Weaver: Your batteries, your solar will need batteries. Your batteries will allow for more solar. And in fact, your batteries are going to need solar because they're going to need custom energy. So we're, I guess we're going back to that first conversation. Tim is, what are we going to do as an industry keep ourselves running? And it's going to be batteries. And Rick, we're going to get to these charts. Message me on LinkedIn, or wait about a week, somebody's commenting in our room. Tim, wait about a week and it'll come through. And Aubrey also thinks he sees some choppy video and audio, just to let you know too.
• 44:57
  Unknown: Sorry.
• 45:01
  John Weaver: Yeah. So, so cool, yeah. So here, check this out.
• 45:04
  John Weaver: Check out this chart. This is curtailment. This day. This all that blue is curtailment. That's a lot of curtailment. Yeah, but if you run the numbers, scroll down just a tiny bit. I did a little bit of math. Without batteries in place, their curtailment would have been 67% higher. And without the batteries that we've installed since 24 and 25 their curtailment would be 38% higher.
• 45:25
  John Weaver: So right now, batteries are allowing 67% more energy to come out, like there would have been a massive amount of curtailment, except batteries are starting to change it. So, so that was it. I just wanted to get this curtain.
• 45:43
  John Weaver: We talk about California a lot because that's the place. Lot because
• 45:45
  Tim Montague: that's place to be. But yeah, so in markets like California, where we have high penetration of wind and solar, that grid is 50% wind and solar powered. Now on a windy, sunny spring day,
• 45:58
  John Weaver: right? It's 100% no on a wind on a windy, sunny day, it's 100% solar.
• 46:04
  Tim Montague: Really, California's achieved 100%
• 46:08
  John Weaver: renewable, not renewables, Timothy solar, okay, California,
• 46:14
  Unknown: check that listeners next in two weeks, ladies and gentlemen, two weeks.
• 46:19
  Tim Montague: Okay, all right.
• 46:19
  Tim Montague: So anyway, so when you have high penetration of renewables, sometimes the utility has too much of a good thing and they have to curtail, yes, and they're just, I mean, there's a variety of ways of doing this.
• 46:37
  Tim Montague: Sometimes they just run the electricity into the ground. So.
• 46:42
  Tim Montague: Sometimes they just technically, that's not what occurs
• 46:44
  John Weaver: throttling the inverter, but that's actually technically what happens is the inverter throttles the solar panel. It causes that cool little curve to run a little bit off, and so the efficiency of the solar panel adjusts. So that's technically where it's going to occur. Is the they tell the inverter you need to curtail, and the inverter tells the solar panels to run at a slightly different PowerPoint.
• 47:08
  Tim Montague: And what about any What about with wind?
• 47:12
  John Weaver: Oh, with wind? I Oh wind. Haha, wind, they will slightly turn the turbine away from the the wind, or they will feather the blades. And when you feather the blades, because those blades aren't solid chunks, they actually have little turning abilities. So when you turn, you're slowing the turbine down, essentially, yes, sir, yes.
• 47:37
  Unknown: Cool. Well,
• 47:39
  Tim Montague: we should let our listeners know, by the way, yeah. Well, let's
• 47:42
  John Weaver: talk about Rick.
• 47:42
  John Weaver: Rick is today having 410 kW Franklin wh batteries added to his existing 24 KW solar array.
• 47:50
  John Weaver: That's awesome, dude. Nice, nice system there. Rick,
• 47:54
  Tim Montague: 40 kilowatts of batteries. And that's, that's what, like 60 kWh, that's a lot of batteries. Looks like Rick Hannah is going to be completely off grid after this installation. He's getting, well,
• 48:12
  John Weaver: he's not taking a risk, and this is what a lot of people are going to do. Man, price of electricity is going to go up. Your household price is going to go up. Somebody in Missouri is going to see their bill go up 30% if they were asked me, I would tell them to call Rick say, you know, here's how you fix it, buddy.
• 48:29
  Tim Montague: Did he say what market he's in?
• 48:32
  John Weaver: Well, I bet we could go on LinkedIn and find out, because he's following one of us, Rick Hannah. LinkedIn, oh, man, there's like 100 link.
• 48:40
  John Weaver: Rick Hannah's on LinkedIn, sorry, Rick, you're gonna have to tell us
• 48:47
  Tim Montague: all right, so check out all of our content at clean power hour.com, follow us on YouTube, give us a rating and review and reach out to me on LinkedIn. How can our listeners find you? Mr. John Weaver,
• 49:03
  John Weaver: LinkedIn and blue sky and my website, commercial solar guy.com um, I'm on blue sky bunch. Not on Twitter, so much. LinkedIn, lots and, uh, commercial solar guy.com we got phone numbers emails. You can even come visit our office if you want. I'll give you a coffee and some tea, and we have a wonderful conversation about solar.
• 49:27
  Tim Montague: All right. With that, I'll say, thanks so much for being here all of our listeners, and let's grow solar and storage. We'll see you in a couple weeks. You.