Latest / Clean Power Hour / Solar PV Training, Trends, and Technology with Sean White | EP248

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Solar PV Training, Trends, and Technology with Sean White | EP248 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:50
  Tim Montague: The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, the maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over six gig Watts shipped in the US. The CPS America product lineup includes three phase string inverters ranging from 25 to 275 kW. Their flagship inverter the CPS 252, 75 is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts, the 252, 75 pairs, well with CPS America's exceptional data communication controls and energy storage solutions. Go to chintpowersystems.com to find out more. And
• 1:27
  Sean White: so one of the things I like to advocate for is those people that make policies to not make sudden changes, because there is, you know, eventually the grid is going to get a lot of solar energy on it, and we're going to have to not get, you know, one to one credit and all that kind of stuff. But to go and make it go from like, One to One to One to 10 or something like that, it's, it's just crazy, but it does require energy storage to make it work.
• 1:53
  intro: Are you speeding the energy transition here at the Clean Power Hour, our host, Tim Montague, bring you the best in solar, batteries and clean technologies every week. Want to go deeper into decarbonization.
• 2:03
  intro: We do too. We're here to help you understand and command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get to it together. We can speed the energy transition
• 2:19
  Tim Montague: today on the Clean Power Hour, solar and the NEC. I have a very special guest, a repeat guest. His name is Sean white. You all know him as Mr.
• 2:27
  Tim Montague: NABCEP. He's a NABCEP trainer.
• 2:31
  Tim Montague: He's an author. He has many books about NABCEP and solar, and he's a trainer on heat spring, and he goes around the country and around the world training solar professionals how to be better solar professionals. So welcome back to the show. Sean,
• 2:46
  Sean White: thanks so much. Tim, yeah, it's been, what, a few weeks since I saw you, since we were at the Oregon solar conference, yeah, and they actually had some some animals there that we were playing with.
• 2:56
  Sean White: Oh,
• 2:58
  Tim Montague: you made me famous. I'm famous for my goat yoga. Now,
• 3:03
  Sean White: that was pretty neat. And we could always, like, throw that into like, well, it was agrivoltaics Also, you know, that's right, you got to have your limber goats. But yeah, they did something really weird there where they and I did it the year before. I just think it's really cool. And they do yoga with goats. And so instead of downward dog, it's downward goat, and you're like, you know, on your hands and knees, and some little goat climbs on your back. So it was made that made the experience memorable.
• 3:32
  Tim Montague: Luckily, when the goat climbed on my back, it didn't pee and poop on me. So I'm super I'm super grateful for that. But it was fun, and it was a great conference. I was so impressed to see how dedicated and knowledgeable the DG community is in Oregon. You know, most people don't think of as Oregon as a robust DG solar DG market, but it's, it's got some real, very experienced solar professionals in that market and and their their payback period was surprisingly good. It was like seven years for CNI, and you can't really ask for a better payback period.
• 4:09
  Tim Montague: I mean, we have a slightly shorter payback period here in Illinois, but we have very generous wrecks. So met a lot of lovely people. I gave a training on commercials, selling and developing commercial solar and storage. And would love to do that again. And then you were recently at you were telling me you were at mosia. What Mosiah,
• 4:31
  Sean White: the Missouri solar energy industry association.
• 4:35
  Tim Montague: I've never gone to that, and it's in my backyard. I feel bad for not going to that, but tell us about that. Yeah.
• 4:40
  Sean White: I mean, it was a lot of fun. I really like this, you know, the smaller regional conferences, me too, because you you walk in the room and you could see everybody there, and you could talk to him, you can get to know them, and you don't get lost. And some, you know, like Las Vegas behind, you know, like, Where's all my friends?
• 4:55
  Sean White: Oh, there's a bunch of slot machines. You know, there's a bunch of people smoking and playing slot machines and, and, you know, nothing against the big conferences or anything. I go to those too, but I like that. And then next week, I'm going to be at Tennessee and, and and this time it's going to be in Alabama. So I guess the TVA, that's, you know, the Tennessee Valley Authority utility that was, I guess, put up during the, I think there's, there's actually a song about the TVA, like an old folk song, oh, I'm sure, yeah. And so it goes back to, you know, like, when they were putting America back to work, I think, after the depression in the 30s and all that kind of stuff. So that that's that's always a neat one.
• 5:37
  Sean White: I've done that one a bunch of times, too, so that was kind of fun. Yeah,
• 5:42
  Tim Montague: I recently had Gil, the director there at Tennessee on the show, so we talked a lot about their territory. Tennessee. I mean, the Tennessee Valley Authority, it's a very unique ISO, and they have a ton of hydro. They have nuclear, and now they have a fair amount of utility storage.
• 6:02
  Tim Montague: I mean, solar, it's not a real strong DG solar market, but but very dynamic market. And in interesting history. You know, the nuclear industry has a lot of history in that market. And, yeah, good. I look forward to hearing about that. I'm not going to be able to go myself, but I Yeah, it sounds like they have a good, good, loyal people,
• 6:29
  Sean White: and I've got to see them grow a bit. I think it's been maybe something about this will be like my fourth or fifth time doing that conference in you know, they're they're growing. It's great to see
• 6:40
  Tim Montague: Gil Hough. Is his name? Yeah, I couldn't remember his last name. I had to look that up. It's H, O, U, G, H, but anyway, cool. So I really want to spend some time talking about solar and the NEC. But before we do that, everyone is asking themselves and others about the incoming Trump administration.
• 7:02
  Tim Montague: We're going to drop this episode. It's It's mid November now, when we're recording, we're going to drop this in a couple of weeks. Though we're going to just expedite publication of this. And, you know, I have my opinions. Everybody has their opinion. But I'm curious, Sean, what you think about the IRA, the inflation Reduction Act and the incoming Trump administration, because he talks a lot, or he talked a lot about it in the campaign, about attacking the IRA. But then I go, Well, wait a minute. You know, this is incentivizing the development of 150 factories in mostly red states across America's bread basket and across the country. And he's not going to touch that with a 10 foot pole. But what do you think? Yeah,
• 7:45
  Sean White: so I usually try to stay out of, you know, polarizing topics and stuff, and in even when I'm talking about, like, different racking companies, I don't pick a favorite. I'll talk about all of them, or different styles of rapid shutdown and things like that. And I don't really like, I don't want to offend anybody on either side, because I know there's a lot of good people in the solar industry that are, you know, hardcore on one side or the other. And I think that our our society is is so polarized.
• 8:13
  Sean White: And so let me just say that I, you know, I, I didn't vote for the the the Red Hat Guy that, but I'm an optimist, and so I want to be opt I'm always just like, I call myself a chronic optimist. So whatever happens, I'm just going to look at the bright side of of things and try to figure out, like, why it's not so bad, and why it's not the end of the world. And I like to study geopolitics and things like that. And a lot of times like, people blame the person, but it's also just like the times that that make the person so somebody doing what he was doing, you know, campaigning like he was campaigning in a different time, wouldn't have won. And, and so now, you know, he won and, and so that means there's, you know, a lot of people behind them, a lot of people that are in the the renewable energy industry too. I know a lot of people in the industry, a lot of friends that that are, you know, big Trump supporters and and so one of the things is, we already survived a Trump administration, yeah, and it didn't kill the solar industry. In fact, I got it grew just like it always does. And we've got to the point too, where solar is works really well, as far as you know, just it's the cheapest form of electricity. So if this was happening, you know, 15 years ago, it would have probably been a lot scarier. But then we can even look back, you know, 15 years ago, or something like 2008 I think it was when we extended the ITC for eight years, and that was, that was bush that signed that into law.
• 9:57
  Sean White: And so that's, you know, somebody from Texas and fossil fuels and all that kind of stuff. And speaking of Texas and fossil fuels, that's a fast that's, there's more solar going on in Texas than any other state right now, right which is obviously, you know, very telling, yeah, and that's where the oil industry is from. I mean, the oil industry kind of rules that state, so they just want to make money, and they want cheap electricity. And so we're at a point in time where just the electricity itself being at this price makes things happen. It's always nice to have tax credits. Everybody likes lower taxes, especially the Republicans, yep. So we're, you know, so we're going to
• 10:41
  Tim Montague: mention Texas, you know. And they not only like cheap electricity, but they like reliable electricity. And what's happening in Texas is a lot.
• 10:49
  Tim Montague: Solar and storage, both grid scale storage, but also DG storage. You know, Elon Musk has a company, I think it's called Tesla Energy, that is developing a VPP, a virtual power plant with all these power walls and consumers can buy in. They get paid $400 a year, and then they have some resiliency, but obviously the that virtual power plant is providing grid services, and it's a win win. So yeah, I love your point that we already survived in a Trump administration, so I don't think it's going to be that different.
• 11:26
  Tim Montague: It is fascinating that he's teamed up with Musk to the degree he has. And I, I, you know, I'm curious how long that will last, so to speak, but it is interesting. And obviously, Elon is pro renewables. You know, he talks a lot about the energy transition and the importance of it, and when you think about it strategically, right? I this is one of the angles I think that Republicans probably really like, is China's going hard after the energy transition, they actually have a big plan to convert their economy to clean energy over the long haul. This is a decades long plan, maybe even 100 years.
• 12:02
  Tim Montague: And when you're getting the free sunlight from the sky and powering your society on that well, that's a strategic advantage and potentially a threat. So if we don't do that, I think we're going to fall behind. And I think smart people understand that, but it's just a great economic opportunity. And now, of course, we're building solar panel factories by the gobs. I'm going to visit hone in solar's Factory in South Carolina, in Orangeburg. Shout out to hone and solar, that's a Chinese company that is built, has built a one gigawatt which is going to scale to three gigawatts. I think they're also building a cell factory also in South Carolina. And so we see this reshoring and onshoring of of solar equipment, which is a wonderful thing, because these are high wage jobs. Sean,
• 12:47
  Sean White: Mm, hmm, yep, yep.
• 12:47
  Sean White: And, but that is another thing too, is, you know, as far as the jobs, it might not, you know, we'll see how that works with the unions. I know that that, speaking of Elon, he wasn't too happy with the prospect of Tesla getting unionized, but that is a good thing that he is in there.
• 13:06
  Sean White: So at first, when people see, you know, Elon supporting Trump, they're like, what a traitor and all that. And now that Trump wins, it might be like, well, at least he's there, pulling some strings. And who knows how many strings he's going to pull, maybe, maybe a lot of them. And, you know, he's, I don't think that he would, in any is going to kill the solar industry, or want to see that happen. In fact, at the first Trump administration, when Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement, right? He he dropped out of the Trump round
• 14:31
  Tim Montague: table. He was on that advisory board, and he said, Okay, I'm out.
• 14:35
  Sean White: Yeah. And I have a feeling that he's probably, I almost like, wonder if he won't drop out this time. I mean, it's like, he says a lot of things, yeah, but, you know, it doesn't mean he has to follow through with things. I mean, he's kind of
• 14:49
  Tim Montague: Sure, and he really wanted revenge against the Biden administration, because they stiff armed him.
• 14:54
  Tim Montague: They stiff arm Tesla out of their little EV cabal that they created, right? They were promoting electrification of transportation. The Biden administration was and they and they gave Elon the finger, which was pretty rude, because Elon, pretty much single handedly, created the EV industry in the United States. Thank you, Elon, that is an important transition that we need to make. We he proved that you can electrify the consumer vehicle, and now we see, you know, delivery trucks.
• 15:22
  Tim Montague: We see rivian getting traction their partnership with VW, a major global car company, the model Y Sean is the number one selling vehicle globally. It's it surpassed the Toyota Corolla, which is just amazing, because it's a $60,000 car. Yeah,
• 15:41
  Sean White: I could kind of remember something about that, like, maybe about the first year of the Biden administration.
• 15:46
  Sean White: There's a big campaign to say, like, say the word Tesla. And like, they wouldn't say Tesla, and they were General Motors talking about how they invented the EVA industry, or something like that. But yep, I guess that that made him kind of mad,
• 16:00
  Tim Montague: just a little, and he is vengeful that his recent biographer called it demon mode.
• 16:04
  Tim Montague: So Elon, like any human, he has a dark side, and when he's after, you know, when he gets going he's gonna go, all right.
• 16:12
  Tim Montague: Well, let's talk about the NEC and solar, because this is something that is on all of that's a good transition the solar industries mind, okay, the National Electric Code, it's kind of the foundation for a safe, reliable grid. We want a good NEC, and it's not perfect, but, but anyway, like these things like rapid shutdown are quite dynamic. There's.
• 16:40
  Tim Montague: Different solutions that become popular, and code does tend to favor some technologies over others. But if you would, because you're so ingrained in this and you get, you give a regular training on solar and the NEC, if you haven't been to one of those trainings. I highly recommend it. I can't remember your your partner's name. You do that with a partner who's
• 17:08
  Sean White: Brooks. Bill Brooks, yeah, one of the smartest guys in the world, another
• 17:12
  Tim Montague: goat in the in the solar industry. If
• 17:16
  Sean White: he was runner for President, I would have voted for him. There you go.
• 17:20
  Tim Montague: So what big picture though? Sean, how does the NEC think about solar, and what are some of the trends that are top of mind for you? Well,
• 17:30
  Sean White: I mean, there's a lot going on with the NEC, and what the NEC is is it's the rules for electricity where people use it, so it doesn't apply to like utility scale stuff, PV systems over five megawatts are would apply to Article 691, which points a lot at the N, E, S, C, then that's the National Electrical Safety Code, which is what the utilities use, and things like that. You know, for the power lines that go over your head, that are up there at medium voltage, which means 1000s of volts and things like that. So the the NEC, I mean, there's just, there's a whole ton to it.
• 18:11
  Sean White: It has to do with the receptacles and your walls and things like that. And we look a lot at Article 690 that solar photovoltaic systems. Article 705 interconnected power production sources in Article 706 that's energy storage systems and and speaking of 690 and rapid shutdown, which is kind of famous for being called 690 dot 12 rapid shutdown. And it's also, it's not just called Rapid shutdown. It's called Rapid shutdown of PV systems on buildings. So it's only for PV systems on buildings, and one the reason that they made it is because, let me just kind of give you an example. I was living in the mountains 10 years ago, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and along came a big fire that was like 50 miles by 50 miles. A huge fire came right at where I was living. We didn't even know if our house burned down for a week or something like that. And fortunately, our house didn't burn down. And our neighbors did. He had solar on his roof, and we had a ground mount, and perhaps the firefighters were coming in there, going, which house Do we have time to save? And they're like, I don't want to get shocked, and I don't understand that new kind of weird electricity stuff that the sun makes this thing turn on, and I might get shocked and and so one of the reasons that they put rapid shutdown in there was so our insurance rates wouldn't go up for having PV systems. So there's a lot of rapid shutdown haters out there and that just wish that we didn't have it, and most of the countries in the world don't have it, and but we do have a lot of wooden houses, so things are a little bit different here, and we do respect our firefighters a lot, especially after 911 and things like that. And so there's some different ways to apply rapid shutdown, and there are ways of doing it with module level electronics, and that's been the most popular way of doing it for a long time. So you're talking about micro inverters that are just like one inverter per PV module. Or we're talking about something like solar edge, where they have an optimizer, which is officially called a DC to DC converter. And there's also something called a Tigo APS, lots of different devices that can do that. And a lot of times these devices, it's like, once you're putting electronics up there, you might as well do something else, like optimize the power, be able to monitor on a module level. There's a lot of other different ways of doing that. And then along came some companies that figured out a way around module level, and that's what a lot of people are calling UL 3741 some of the people that originally wrote the rapid shutdown rules and all that are kind of against that way of doing it, where it's a ray level shutdown. And so now there's some systems out there that after shutdown can stay up to full voltage, which is 600 volts, residential, 1000 volts for commercial buildings, not, you know, more than one and two family dwellings. So they could stay up to those higher voltages after shutdown, which gets people a little bit yeah, concern. So
• 21:27
  Tim Montague: here's the trend that I see, and I ride at a much higher level. I'm at the 30,000 foot level. I'm doing system design. I'm looking over my client's shoulders, helping them with designs. But I'm no code jockey, but I saw the. The the rise of mm MLPs, right? Okay, module level power electronics were a way to attack rapid shutdown, and they became quite de rigueur. They became quite popular. There's a double edge with MLPs, you're in, you're inserting a bunch of extra electronics, or points of failure, you're inserting a bunch of extra points of inner of connection, literally, MC four connectors, because all these devices need to be connected. Now it does have some nice benefits, right? The the solar edge optimizer, if you have a complicated roof with a lot of shading, those things are lovely, and they help you get the most out of your array in a very sophisticated way. But guess what? If you're working on a ginormous, let's say, a million square feet of flat roof, you don't really want to install MLPs, because it's so much labor, so many extra boxes that you have to install, you'd much rather just do a big string inverter, you know, a 100 KW, or even now, in some cases, a 200 KW string inverter. And so now there's this trend back away from MLPs that is allowed. Okay, the new M the new rules do allow for these systems to remain at a higher voltage. You said the array level right? And it's a both. And now you can attack the problem multiple ways. And I do think that the solar edges and the micro inverter companies are feeling a little defensive. I've heard them on one of my favorite shows, that's Barry cinnamons, the energy show. He's interviewed both solar edge and who's the popular micro inverter company in phase and phase. He had CEO, this, the enve CEO on two shows, and he had some senior executive from from solar edge, and they were quite defensive, understandable. But guess what? It's a big market.
• 23:44
  Tim Montague: Sean, and as you pointed out, right? We're just growing, growing, growing, growing, growing. We're going to 10x the solar industry in the next 20 years. Solar is going to be 50% of our grid power. By 2050 it'll be 50% solar, 40% wind, and 10% other.
• 24:02
  Sean White: We should lay lay bets on that I'm gonna get bigger. Okay,
• 24:07
  Tim Montague: well, bigger than 50%
• 24:09
  Sean White: Um, oh, sure, yep.
• 24:11
  Tim Montague: Wow, interesting.
• 24:11
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I'm I like, I like the compliment of solar and wind, right? Because in the winter, for example, when the sun isn't shining as much, the wind is really blowing. Here on the prairie, we have a lot of wind going on. And when you look at those annual graphs, they are it's like, yeah, in the summer, the solar is like this and the wind is like this, and then in the winter, the solar is more flat and the wind is cooking and same. There's this day night cycle also, where the wind tends to blow more at night. Anyway. I don't want to live in the shadow of a big wind farm. I don't want to have a wind turbine blowing in on my rooftop. I'd rather have solar, a solar array on my roof. But I
• 24:54
  Sean White: just had an idea they have space solar that they're working on. Maybe we could have space wind. What do you think space
• 25:00
  Tim Montague: wind? That's that would be difficult, because you don't have an atmosphere in space, you have a solar wind
• 25:06
  Sean White: ever been there? You probably think the earth is a globe or something.
• 25:11
  Tim Montague: The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, the maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over six gig Watts shipped in the US. The CPS America product lineup includes three phase string inverters ranging from 25 to 275 kW their flagship inverter, the CPS 252 75 is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts.
• 25:32
  Tim Montague: The 252 75 pairs well with CPS America's exceptional data communication controls and energy storage solutions, go to chintpowersystems.com to find out more. I do. I am a fan of collecting solar photons in space, right and then beaming them back to Earth. We just have to figure out how not to cook the birds, because I am a little worried about the birds flying through that beam. But otherwise it's a thing. And and the Chinese are experimenting with this, the US is experimenting with this. It's very experimental, and it's, I think heretofore, it's been cost prohibitive, but I don't doubt that eventually it'll be a thing. Yeah, it
• 26:16
  Sean White: was kind of interesting that PG E had a contract for space solar that was supposed to take place in 2016 with a company called solar in and it never happened, and they say it was because of the financial crisis. And, you know, yeah, probably some politics, but it's kind of interesting, and now they're actually researching it and doing it. But yeah, a little bit back to to the rapid shutdown too. So.
• 26:42
  Sean White: There's this thing called UL 3741 and you could get a micro inverter listed to ul 3741 in fact, they already have microinverters, because if you took a phase microinverter that put two modules in series that's above module level shutdown, and that is listed to ul 3741 so UL 3741 is just called PV, hazard control systems. They came out with it at the I think it was December of 2020, it takes people a while to start developing products to do it.
• 27:11
  Sean White: And then they got, I think it was Intertek that's first listed, the first one that was like SMA, iron Ridge, salega and Ray tray and Hellerman Titan and all these different companies all together. You have to put it together just like this on the system level. It had to get listed right. And it was like, wow, look at this. It's it does rapid shutdown, and it's still 1000 volts after shutdown with metal frames on the PV modules, which, you know, some people that helped write that standard says that's not the way that it's supposed to be. But the industry is strong, and there's a guy too, that I had in my podcast. Do you know solar boy?
• 27:51
  Sean White: Derek? Oh, yeah, I met Derek, yeah. And he's a, he's a fun guy. You should give him one of your shirts because it matches his beard. It's true. He has a, you know, purple beard. Serious guy, but he went out and he got UL 3740 one.com, and so you can see, and he's very much of a strong advocate against, you know, people having to do module level shutdown. And there's another guy that I call a string inverter activist, and his name is Peter Greenberg, and he's up in Oregon, I'm sure. Yeah, you know him. We were just hanging out with him and and he, I have a picture of him with a shirt on it, and he has, like, some module level shut down devices.
• 28:31
  Sean White: And it wasn't solar edge or in phase, but it's some other devices that caught fire on one of his jobs, plus the newspaper article of how his job got on the front page of the newspaper of a school burning catching fire. Didn't burn down, but it caught fire and and so I call him a string inverter activist, because, you know, and it's like the, in his case, you know, it's like the thing that's supposed to protect firefighters cause the fire, you know, or something you know. So it's there. There's a lot of pluses and minuses. So I'm not you know against module level electronics. There's different ways of doing it, and the industry pretty much shifted to it. First Solar edge was had the majority of the jobs, and then in phase was number one.
• 29:20
  Sean White: And now we see a lot of things changing and shifting, and I know that in phase just did some layoffs. And you could say, like, some people were saying, like, oh, it's because of the election. But also, I would imagine it also probably has somewhat to do with UL 3741 systems that are doing array level shutdown. Possible,
• 29:43
  Tim Montague: possible? Yeah, I still think there's room in the solar economy for MLPs. I think they're going to continue to be very popular in residential and small commercial. I just think if you're, if you're making that journey to become a large CNI solar installer, you need to contact me, because I will help you with that playbook. Okay, there's totally different equipment used in large CNI Sean, different modules, different racking, different inverters, different software for running cash flows, for generating proposals, for doing O and M monitoring. So it's like there's these parallel universes. And then I love companies that go after both. I mean, Barry cinnamon is a good example. He does residential and commercial solar, and he's doing batteries. He's doing electrification of HVAC. That's his niche. There. Some solar companies are also becoming roofing companies. Have you run into any of those?
• 30:41
  Sean White: You know? What's funny is, when I had my first full time job in the solar industry. It was being the solar division at a roofing company, and the other guy that was the solar guy that was working with me was Stuart Wentworth, and I don't know he was the guy that invented quick mount so he invented the square piece of metal. Oh, cool. He's a genius, and struck it rich after doing that. Now he's retired. I see him around once in a while, but, yeah, so like roofing companies, another good friend of mine, Tony Diaz. He's an electrician and a roofer. I think he's been doing solar for probably at least 20 years. He does even a lot of BI PV, because he has his roofing skills, and he has customers that can afford it in Silicon Valley and things like that. And he, I meaning by facial Oh, bi PV, building integrated. Oh, building integrated.
• 31:30
  Tim Montague: Sorry, yes, of course, so. But what Tell me about that? Like, what is the you're talking about? Gaff energy? Um,
• 31:37
  Sean White: he's done it with a, you know, lots of different companies and stuff. In fact, one time there was a product.
• 31:42
  Sean White: Talked about 15 years ago that they don't make anymore, and it caught fire. And because the connections and the heat underneath the VIP v, because there's not as much air flow and stuff like that, yeah, and there's a lot more connections, you're talking about connectors, yeah, and, and so there was some fires, not with his systems, with somebody else's and he actually started a class action lawsuit, and they had to go reinstall all of their systems.
• 32:07
  Sean White: Whoa,
• 32:11
  Tim Montague: we had GAF energy on the show. Check out Episode 146, with Ray Holmes and Sean Riley. Sean O'Reilly, Ray works for gaff and teams, and he came from Tesla. And then Sean works for an installer. I can't remember the name of that installer, but I'll find it
• 32:32
  Sean White: here. And gaff GAF, that's a big roofing product manufacturer, our
• 32:35
  Tim Montague: largest roofing product manufacturer globally. I think, yeah, they've got a beautiful, nailable Solar shingle. I like it that it uses the installation technology that roofers are used to, right? They want to, they want to nail those shingles. And this is a solar shingle that's nailable. It's a little different format, of course, and it's got wires, and so you do need to hire an electrician. And their strategy at GAF is to work, to partner with installers, to kind of like, do this deep partnership, and then they will assist and help them find electricians and the and the roofer is not becoming the electrician, right?
• 33:11
  Tim Montague: But, but, I mean, some, some MC four connections can be made by by roofers. It's not rocket science, but getting the system wired to the grid, that's another matter, right? You need to, you need a qualified electrician to do that stuff.
• 33:26
  Tim Montague: And that's all well and good.
• 33:29
  Tim Montague: I'm glad that. We're glad you brought up BIP V, I P V is near and dear to my heart. I think it is the future. If you go to Northern Europe, you see much more bi P V. They're much more space constrained, and solar is just 10 years further along because energy is expensive.
• 33:43
  Tim Montague: There they're they're further along on electrification of transportation. They're further along on renewable energy,
• 33:50
  Sean White: yeah, and I believe they have incentives that pay extra for BI PV, solar energy.
• 33:57
  Tim Montague: I hope so, because it is expensive in Germany. But that
• 34:00
  Sean White: is the problem with things like BIPV is because it costs a lot more, yeah, just you look at like a regular, rectangular, framed module system, and one of those goes up on a house in a day, and BIPV takes a lot longer, and it takes roofing expertise, and roofing isn't easy, and you don't want it to leak. And then if there's an electrical problem, how do you troubleshoot that, and then they have rapid shutdown too. So my friend Tony Diaz, century roof and solar in Hayward, California, is he, he uses micro inverters. The last time I talked to him, underneath the BI PV, yep, and how he does rapid shutdown and all that kind of stuff, he has to find room to put the micro inverters. I'm not sure exactly how he does it.
• 34:45
  Tim Montague: Yeah, do you know what, what solar shingle he's using? I am not sure. Yeah. And, and, you know, Elon is famous in this space as well, with the Tesla solar shingle, it's a very sexy product, but guess what?
• 34:58
  Tim Montague: It's also very complicated to install. The installers don't really like it. It's extremely expensive. It's like, yeah, if I was a millionaire, I would go for it. But it's really good for new construction. It's not great for retrofitting, because it's the whole roof. Whereas you take a single a shingle roof that's got 20 years of life in it, boom, just slap some solar panels on it, I think it looks fine if you do black on black solar panels. Looks great if you hide the conduit. I don't like con i don't like to see Conduit running all over the place, so, you know, or paint it or something, make a penetration, do it right, get it into the attic. A big
• 35:39
  Sean White: benefit too, is like air flow keeps gets rid of the heat out of the PV modules. And so if you have your PV modules lifted off the top of the roof, yeah, and it's going to get more air flow than bi PV, and that way you get better performance.
• 35:53
  Sean White: And another thing is, before you even turn that system on, it lowers your air conditioning bill, because your roof is cooler when the heat hits when the sun hits the PV. So
• 36:03
  Tim Montague: yep, yeah, it's like a sunshade for your roof, in a way. Um, one time I
• 36:08
  Sean White: was on a train in China, and I was like, what is that? And I was like, that looks like sort of solar, but it wasn't. And they did. They had like, this little sunshade that was sort of, like about the same height, is solar off the top of the roof with air out from underneath it to prevent the roof from heating up too much.
• 36:26
  Tim Montague: Oh, cool.
• 36:27
  Sean White: It was like a fake, you know, fake solar. I think it was made out of concrete even,
• 36:31
  Tim Montague: yeah, wow. All right, well, I'm glad we geeked out on you all 3741 and you mentioned solar. Boy, check out solar. Boy, s, O, L, A, R, B, O, i.com And we'll have to get Derek on the show. I've never had him on the show. I'd love to, yeah,
• 36:46
  Sean White: you gotta get Tony Diaz too. They're the roofer, electrician guy. He's a really good, okay,
• 36:51
  Tim Montague: I would love that.
• 36:51
  Tim Montague: So please make an intro for, frankly, for both. I don't know if I have Derek's contact info.
• 36:58
  Tim Montague: We've spoken at conferences periodically, and he's a big fan of Ryan Mayfield. He references Ryan's article on UL 3741 so check out Mayfield. Mayfield renewables is the company. It's Mayfield dot energy, and Ryan was just on a webinar with me.
• 37:18
  Tim Montague: He's also been on the show. He's really into training in the solar space also. So check out Mayfield dot energy. We did a webinar on safety in grid scale batteries. So he's also deep into batteries, micro grids. And I guess that's something else that you and I should talk about in our last minute, in the last couple minutes together, Sean is the attachment rates of storage, both in the residential and commercial space, is going up. I heard on Barry's show that in California now, in his geography, 90% of solar projects are getting batteries.
• 37:59
  Sean White: Yeah, yeah. And a lot of it has to do with the net metering policy. And so, like, I was just in Missouri, and they have what they call one to one net metering. So you get full credit for exporting, sort of like what we had in California.
• 38:14
  Sean White: And then when we got net metering three, or net billing three, whatever they want to call it in em 3.0 all of a sudden, one night at midnight, that policy completely changed.
• 38:26
  Sean White: And so one of the things I like to advocate for is those people that make policies to not make sudden changes, because there is, you know, eventually the grid is going to get a lot of solar energy on it, and we're going to have to not get, you know, one to one credit and all that kind of stuff, but to go and make it go from like one to one to one to 10, or something like that. It's, it's just crazy, but it does require energy storage to make it work.
• 38:51
  Sean White: So you're making more electricity than you're using in the middle of the day when you're not home, and things like that. Or, you know, it could be different if you're in a building and different times of the day and things like that.
• 39:03
  Sean White: And so instead of exporting it, you do what's called self consumption, and you put it inside the battery. And so one of the things that happened when California stopped giving you credit for exporting, or any decent amount of credit for exporting, it was really good for the energy storage industry.
• 39:21
  Sean White: I would imagine somebody from the energy storage industry might have been lobbying for that, along with the utilities, but it did really upset a lot of people in the solar industry. I saw some kind of study that was saying that was like something in the magnitude of like, 20,000 jobs were lost when that happened, and then that's, could be one of the main reasons, too, why Texas is overtaking California, where California used to always be half of the solar industry, yep. And, and so that's why energy storage is really big in some places, because you just can't make it work financially without it.
• 39:58
  Sean White: Yeah. I
• 40:01
  Tim Montague: think Texas actually has become such a big market because of all the utility solar happening in Texas, gobs and gobs, a big utility scale solar and now batteries the thing,
• 40:11
  Sean White: yeah, good for them, but just for California, bad for us, because we didn't grow as fast as we have been. We are, you know, we're letting other Yeah,
• 40:20
  Tim Montague: no. Net 3.0 has been a wrecking ball for the solar industry, especially the residential solar industry. And it was a, it was a, it was a perfect storm. Inflation rates were high, so consumers were stressed, and then them three hit and the solar, the resi solar industry, collapsed by 70% I think in 2023 so it's been, it's been a tough time the last 12 months. That's, that's
• 40:47
  Sean White: terrible to just make a big, huge change in policy all at once overnight. I remember that, what we used to call the Jolly Green governor, you know, the the Governator, Arnold himself. And there was the California Solar Initiative, and I think it was like a million roofs was the goal, and we met it and all that kind of stuff. And there was, there were these rebates, and they dropped down gradually. So it wasn't like this overnight change, and it was like the rebates dropped down as the price of solar went down, and it worked out perfectly. And it and having huge sudden changes. It's always good when there's a huge sudden change going up, it increases business but it just puts us on that solar coaster, and it makes layoffs, and people can't invest in things because they don't know what the future is going to bring. And so policy people knock it off. Maybe. Gradual changes. That's what I like to say.
• 41:46
  Tim Montague: I'm with you. I'm with you. I love net metering.
• 41:49
  Tim Montague: We're losing our full retail net metering here in Illinois at the end of the year, and it is going to be hard on the resi industry, but because we have Rex, it's it's going to be okay. And then first commercial, it doesn't, it's not a big change, because we've already had the when in Illinois, if you take the smart inverter rebate as a system owner, then you're getting, effectively, net billing, and that's been in the works, that's been part of the system. So for commercial, it's no, it's basically no change. But for resi, it is going to, it's going to take about 1010, to 20% of the value of the system away when they go to net billing.
• 42:30
  Tim Montague: Yeah, and, you know, so this, this is a trend all across the country, though Sean is the solar markets mature, net metering gets stepped on, and the utility wins. And eventually, I think the the utilities will be disrupted because we're so fed up with the slow interconnection, the expensive interconnection, the lack of good net metering rules, the lack of incentive to build a micro grid, like we all want, community scale micro grids, which is actually good for the utilities, because they get to build infrastructure, but they're building it at scale, and then you have that resiliency for when there's a storm or a fire or flood. And clearly, right? We've seen so many times in Texas and in California, those are the two big dogs when it comes to storms and grid outages. It's just it's brutal, and people die and the economy tanks. I mean, it's very expensive and people die. So we want more micro grids. And I just think that if the utilities don't get with it, so to speak, that we will just disrupt them.
• 43:37
  Tim Montague: So with that, we're out of time.
• 43:41
  Tim Montague: Sean, I want to thank you for coming on the show, though, check out his work on NEC.
• 43:44
  Tim Montague: Though, if you're ever at a regional conference of the National Conference, right? The it was called SPI now it's called Ari plus three plus, and it's going to be in Vegas again next year. Yeah,
• 44:00
  Sean White: it's going to be in Vegas. I hate that. And then we also have inner solar coming up in February, yes, in San Diego.
• 44:08
  Sean White: And so those are the two bigger ones that we'll see. We also have re plus regional conferences. And so last year and probably next year, I did Massachusetts, the one in Boston, and there was another one in Texas that I did. I'm teaching the NEC workshops at those conferences too, yep,
• 44:26
  Tim Montague: and I just came from Ari plus Midwest last week in Chicago. I should have said that at the beginning of the show, I guess, lovely event that's been growing. It had to change venues now about 1000 people there, I'm guessing. So it's on par Now with re plus northeast. We're chasing our A plus northeast, which is also growing. That's a great show in Boston. I look forward to seeing you in February in San Diego.
• 44:50
  Tim Montague: Sean, we're definitely going to have to rent that sailboat this time, though. Okay,
• 44:54
  Sean White: that sounds like a great idea. You mean that really big, huge sailboat that was like a million dollars a day or something like that. I'm all for it. I'm all for a millionaire sale, but like no problem, let's
• 45:05
  Tim Montague: do it. You're the NABCEP millionaire, so it's all good, all right. Well, thank you, Sean. How can our listeners find you on the interwebs?
• 45:14
  Sean White: The best place to find me is solar. Sean, that's solar S, E, A n.com, and I have my email. I have my phone number there, and I teach a lot of classes over at heat spring.
• 45:27
  Sean White: That's kind of mostly what I do.
• 45:27
  Sean White: NABCEP Exam Prep, getting people certified so they can get their name searchable on the NABCEP website.
• 45:35
  Tim Montague: Excellent. Well, I'm Tim Montague. Check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and a review on Apple or Spotify, please just do it. Do it on your phone. Do it on your computer. Tell a friend about the show. Connect with me on LinkedIn. I love hearing from my listeners, and with that, I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage. Thank you, Sean, thanks, Tim. Let's grow the Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, the maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over six gig Watts shipped in the US.
• 46:04
  Tim Montague: The CPS America product lineup includes three phase string inverters ranging from 25 to 275 kW their flagship inverter, the CPS 252 75 is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts.
• 46:22
  Tim Montague: The 250 275 pairs well with CPS America's exceptional data communication controls and energy storage solutions. Go to chintpowersystems.com to find out more.