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Solar's Growing Pains: Tariffs, Utah's Balcony Solar, and Commercial Project Updates · Clean Power Hour

• 0:51
  Tim Montague: Tim, welcome to the Clean Power Hour live. I'm Tim Montague. Check out all of our content at Clean Power hour.com and give us a rating and a review on Apple or Spotify, and follow us, of course, on YouTube. The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by the commercial solar guy, none other than John Weaver, and he happens to be right here.
• 1:12
  Tim Montague: Welcome to the show, John.
• 1:12
  Tim Montague: Hello.
• 1:14
  John Weaver: Hello, Timothy, if you were in the wind industry today, you would be doing very well in Boston, because we're getting like 20 degrees of wind chill, which is why I'm wearing a hat and a scarf and everything today. But it's beautiful blue sky out, which makes me happy for my solar panels across the state. Yeah, it
• 1:35
  Tim Montague: is March. March is windy. It's windy here on the great prairie as well in Illinois. And you know, I live on the edge of tornado alley. So come March, April, we think tornadoes here in the Midwest, hopefully none will be striking champagne, but we do occasionally get small tornadoes in Champaign County, little ones, no F fives, good. F5 no bueno. Yeah,
• 2:04
  John Weaver: I'm from Florida.
• 2:04
  John Weaver: We get hurricanes. No tornadoes.
• 2:08
  John Weaver: Well, we get tornadoes nowadays with these hurricanes when they hit the land, but otherwise, there's not too many tornadoes in South Florida that I've ever had to worry about. So
• 2:17
  Tim Montague: we've got a bunch of news to cover, but before we get into the news, John, I was wondering, since we're talking about wind, yeah, you know, offshore wind has been in the news, and I don't think this is on the docket, but what is the prognosis for offshore wind these days?
• 2:37
  John Weaver: So projects that have been officially permitted and have met certain legal steps, they're moving forward in the United States for the offshore area, projects that are in federal land and haven't officially met for certain milestones, the new administration put an executive order stopping all development of wind on federal lands, and since all offshore is considered federal, that's it. Yeah, there are projects a few gigawatts worth that are under construction have been approved and are moving forward, including a couple that are nearby me that I regularly go to visit the the staging area that's onshore. But from what I know right now, there's nothing new moving forward. So we're in kind of a slow it down and see what happens phase of the industry. Yeah,
• 3:36
  Tim Montague: I guess they need an expression for the solar coaster in the wind industry too. And the the expression I've been using for the solar industry of late is turbulence.
• 3:47
  Tim Montague: We're going to have a lot of turbulence. We have a lot of turbulence. We now have tariffs coming down the pike on Canadian equipment, on stuff made in Mexico. I thought Canada and Mexico were like our best friends, but apparently we feel necessary to have a trade war with them. We already have a trade war with China. We're stepping that up, and apparently it's impacting the commercial solar guys business directly, I saw you tweet that the price of energy went up as soon as Trump announced the tariffs on Canada, which kind of makes sense, right?
• 4:25
  John Weaver: It's it's weird. I don't fully understand how the wholesale market works, but the day that the tariffs were going on. The first announcement the wholesale price of electricity
• 4:37
  at like 11: 50pm in the Northeast region in New England ISO was at like, I don't know, three, four cents per kilowatt hour, the standard number 30, $40 per megawatt hour. Then at 12:10am, which is 20 minutes later, it was over 100 and usually electricity is cheap at night.
• 4:58
  at like 11: So why did it jump so much?
• 5:02
  at like 11: Technically, I don't know if it was the tariffs, but it happened the same day the tariffs were announced. It happened the same time that Canada said they would add a 25% tariff that Trump said he would do a 10% tariff. So so I don't know. I just I know that it has been announced. I know that there are tariffs going back and forth. This morning, I hear they might be suspended for four weeks. I don't know, but what I do know is that I received an email from a vendor that we bought a neutral ground reactor for a $19,000 piece of hardware, and I'm told it's getting a $3,400 adder. And we, you know you can, how do I deal with that? Uh. I tell the project owner, hey, yeah, 3400 bucks,
• 5:56
  Tim Montague: right? You know the ground reactor anyway, a neutral
• 6:00
  John Weaver: ground reactor, so connects to a a transformer, and it helps to make sure. Well, I mean me as a guy doesn't know much if lightning hits this thing or some sort of short occurs and electricity is running in the wrong place, yeah, this takes the electricity and puts it into the dirt to mitigate risk. Is the fundamental piece of it. Some of the details I don't know, the drawings look cool as heck. I like looking all this neat, big grid stuff, but it's an important piece of hardware, I guess. And then utilities require a lot more so that we can isolate our gear from the grid and not cause issues. But it's $3,400 and it's a big project, you know, it's not a, you know, this is like a 800 kilowatt project, but tariffs are hitting right now. I'm seeing it in other places. I haven't seen it yet in any of my gear yet. This is the first piece, but I did see somebody talking about their racking product, and I think it was for a residential company, but they're racking product going up from about 12 cents a watt and having a 25% tariff added, so maybe being like 15 cents a watt now. So that's two specific examples of tariffs hitting the solar industry. I did you know, you also have the other side of it. If tariffs hit and the price goes up for electricity, then the ROI of solar gets a little help. You know, I hardware is a small p, not a small piece. It's not the big piece of an install.
• 7:51
  John Weaver: You know, labor and other costs are so maybe higher electricity prices can balance out ROI, but that still means people are paying more for stuff that they shouldn't be, just because we have tariffs and and that's kind of crappy. So, so it's happening. You know, tariffs are hitting, they are affecting the industry.
• 8:11
  Tim Montague: And I, and I'm of the opinion that American consumers will pay Trump tries to paint a different picture, but really it's going to fall on us. And I, yeah, I think life is already expensive enough. But let's talk about balcony solar.
• 8:31
  Tim Montague: You found a story. You wrote a story. My goodness, John, you're a writer. Occasionally, occasionally, you wrote a story about balcony solar. I'm going to put this on screen and what's the story?
• 8:46
  John Weaver: So it seems like the great State of Utah has a representative that likes small solar for regular people, and I don't think it's been signed by the governor yet, but the the House and the Senate of the state Utah, State of Utah legislation has unanimously never seen that before voted for 1.2 kW AC systems being allowed to plug directly into a 120 volt plug, so your standard house wall plug, sure with no Need for interconnection.
• 9:32
  Tim Montague: Will they do this in Europe. And you know, if the plug can put juice out, it can take juice in. It's not rocket science. Yeah, something could happen. But what's the worst that'll happen? The Breaker will go right.
• 9:50
  John Weaver: Hopefully you could also burn the wires within there, potentially, if they're not sized Right. So there's a new nuance that somebody smart taught me. Okay, let's say you have a plug that's rated at 20 amps and a circuit rated at 20 amps. Let's say you have 20 amps of draw coming on that circuit.
• 10:13
  John Weaver: Okay? Now let's say we put another plug somewhere else, and we're now pushing in 20 amps.
• 10:17
  John Weaver: Will it cancel out? Will it cause on the actual cable? Will it cause more than 20 electrons
• 10:30
  Tim Montague: aren't going both directions, right there. The circuit will use the solar electrons first, right because they're they're right there,
• 10:43
  John Weaver: they'll use the solar current, yes, so it'll flow to the hardware instead of coming through the. Circuit. So, yeah, I think, so, I think it should be okay, um,
• 10:56
  Tim Montague: I mean, don't they do this in Europe? It's, it's kind of a thing in Europe, right? Absolutely,
• 11:01
  John Weaver: there's, uh, Germany, uh, the headline with Germany and it's, it's in other countries, Netherlands, I think.
• 11:07
  John Weaver: But the headline number always come from Germany, and they have hundreds of megawatts, um, anywhere from 200 to maybe a gigawatt of balcony solar that was installed in like two years worth of time, a very short amount of time. Yeah,
• 11:25
  Tim Montague: I had Andrew Burch on the show recently. Um, that episode, I think, dropped on Tuesday of this week, and you should check it out if you haven't seen this or or listened to it. It's on YouTube. It's on Clean Power hour.com but Birch is the founder of Open Solar, a well known platform for installers. It's free for installers, which is cool, right? The manufacturers and service providers who want to advertise their goods on the platform make the platform free for the end users. But so this guy, Burch, is is a real he's a thought leader. He started in solar in the Australian market.
• 12:06
  Tim Montague: He's from from the UK, and he's living in the UK again, but he's very familiar with the Australian market and the and the European market, and, of course, the US market, because he works a lot in the US market.
• 12:17
  Tim Montague: And the thing that was shocking, and this isn't news to commercial solar guy, but it might be news to some of our listeners, and that is that solar is three times more expensive in the US than it is in Australia, you're installing, they're installing solar for $1 a watt. In Australia, well, that
• 12:36
  John Weaver: number is slightly off, and that that includes an incentive and their exchange rate. So it's not exactly 3x it's more like 2x
• 12:46
  Tim Montague: Oh, when he says$1 What do you think he's talking in Australian dollars? I think so, I don't know, but I think it's too smart to do that.
• 12:55
  John Weaver: He might be. But there's some other nuance there.
• 12:57
  John Weaver: There's an incentive that goes to the installer. But yes, Germany and Australia much cheaper prices, without a doubt.
• 13:04
  John Weaver: Like, massive difference,
• 13:06
  Tim Montague: yeah, and the big delta is the ease of permitting.
• 13:11
  Tim Montague: It's, you know, they have got universal permitting country wide. Here in the US, we have, what do we have, 60,000 hj, some insane number of ages and and so even within a state, you've got multiple hJS on multiple different NECs, national, national electric codes, Illinois is a great example of this. And like literally, you could go five miles and be on a different NEC. So it just makes headaches and friction for installation. So
• 13:48
  John Weaver: Well, here's a little nuance with the Australian install process. So you show up on Monday, you shake their hand, they sign a contract. Tuesday, you install, there's no permit process to start with it. Yeah, it's an assumptive process, that you're competent, that you can, in fact, install something. And so they allow you to do it. And that's the default with with that, with Australia, you show up, you install, you're done.
• 14:18
  John Weaver: And with the US, you show up, sign a contract, go through a month of interconnection documents and then permitting, and then you install. So a little different, lot of paperwork, a lot of 1000s of dollars of paperwork, front end before, before we can even touch a building.
• 14:39
  Tim Montague: Yeah, and, you know, the sad thing is, is we have the technology to completely green the grid. We could do it in 10 years. It's conceivable we could have a 50% solar powered grid in 10 years.
• 14:52
  Tim Montague: Will we do that? Not at the current pace, but should we talk about the next story,
• 15:05
  John Weaver: cool little piece of hardware. What do you think about this Tim click on it, this LinkedIn thing. Can you if you need help sharing that? Let me know, because I know LinkedIn sometimes doesn't load.
• 15:15
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I got it. I got it. It's a rooftop
• 15:18
  John Weaver: racking system that is one solar cell high. And if you just imagine each solar cell as a panel, I think you can put the same capacity on a roof, as you can just a regular solar system. But I'm not certain yet.
• 15:34
  John Weaver: I'm still deciding what I believe
• 15:39
  Tim Montague: in my head. So those little rows are just like six inches tall. That's one solar
• 15:43
  John Weaver: cell. Man, six inches Yes, sir. Click through the pictures, you'll see it. One of the pictures shows an install. So this is the first.
• 15:48
  John Weaver: First time I've seen it with the racking solution, all shown really nicely. Where is this?
• 15:56
  John Weaver: Oh, this is in Norway. This might be your home. Oh, wow.
• 16:01
  John Weaver: Yeah, this is so this is built for the northern latitudes initially, because vertical solar works best in in those places, sure. But it's pretty neat looking. I mean, could we have it so it's at an angle and just one cell? Do we need a whole big solar panel? I'm guessing the ratio of hardware is more expensive because you got those big rails with smaller volume of modules there. But I'm not certain yet it's, you know,
• 16:29
  Tim Montague: these modules, these modules are a fraction of a kW, right? Or, I mean, they're, they're like, some 10s of watts then, or,
• 16:41
  John Weaver: yeah, probably because each cell is somewhere in the five to seven watts.
• 16:44
  John Weaver: Five, maybe 10 watts per cell.
• 16:47
  John Weaver: Yeah. So we're talking 1234567, under 100 100 watts per module.
• 16:57
  John Weaver: Okay, there you go. Now you know the size. So he says you don't need a mechanical attachment, because the weight of the system and the uplift means that it doesn't catch the wind the same there's no big six foot by three six foot by three foot module, no ballast. No ballast necessary. Wow, no wind up lift due to the vertical position of the modules. Interesting. Yeah, no penetrations needed. And in this case, they do it for green roofs, because their goal is to let the moss go on the roof and do some of that deoxygenation thing, or D CO two thing. So I just, I'm super interested in it. I like the idea of new form factors. I like the idea of innovation. You know, could be that the solar panel of today, that's the end. All be, all of the world. All right, I doubt it futures pretty big
• 17:59
  Tim Montague: well, with vertical solar too. I just think the the cladding on a building, let's just cover the whole building. Cover the roof, you know, do it all
• 18:11
  John Weaver: spoke to the company recently, who was a building material company, and they're looking to do cladding, push more into the space they want to, they want to make it an active project product that they're developing. And so they got on the phone with a friend of mine to help give him some guidance, or at least whatever ideas I had so so I think it's pretty neat.
• 19:26
  Tim Montague: And do you know the name of this product?
• 19:29
  John Weaver: Oh, semper green.
• 19:29
  John Weaver: Um, I can tell you in
• 19:34
  Tim Montague: Semper green, or is it high view? I don't know. I think that's someone else. I don't dare click on any of those links.
• 19:44
  John Weaver: Oh, good, yes, semper green might be the if
• 19:48
  Tim Montague: you can find it, we'll put in the show notes.
• 19:52
  John Weaver: Yeah, I believe it's Semper green. But I'll double check. I'll find out.
• 19:55
  John Weaver: We'll get it into the show notes before the end of the call. You will know, right
• 20:00
  Tim Montague: on, right on, well, you've been a busy man.
• 20:05
  Tim Montague: Another story in PB magazine, solar generation up 27% accounting for 6.8% of all electricity.
• 20:15
  John Weaver: The the 2024 growth in the US was on top of 40 gigawatts of new capacity that was deployed in 2023 Well, no partially in 24 plus a low volume of capacity that was deployed in 23 because we were kind of catching up with the beginning of the IRA, yeah, and it still was a decent volume of capacity. So we seen and then in 24 I believe, we saw 50 gigs fully deployed. So 23 had 4024, had 50. So the the rolling, the growth in 2024 was big. It was based on a big number in 2340 gigs and even bigger number in 24 but when you deploy 50 gigawatts in 2024 you only get it at the very end, because 18 gigawatts hit in December. So it's a so it's a growing thing, but it 27% growth in terms of absolute generation, and it's slightly outpaced growth as part of all generations. So if you scroll up a tiny bit, you can see that 6.84 number, and that.
• 21:42
  John Weaver: Grew by 24% and the reason it only grew by 24 is because electricity growth grew massively on a national level.
• 21:52
  John Weaver: Yeah. So we had a great year for solar, but we had a slight, slight setback in terms of total demand. However, it seems like we had a lot of CO two growth free as well. So it was all it was a mixed report. Um, the EIA said electricity demand was up mostly based upon higher amounts of heat, temperature. Okay, apparently last summer was really hot. Obviously, you're on record, just like everyone. So that might be an interesting continuing trend of growth based on temperature in and of itself, well,
• 22:32
  Tim Montague: and there's data centers right, which is huge, and they're saying, they're saying that they're going to be power shortages because of the growth of data centers. So
• 22:41
  John Weaver: the EIA said that data centers were not the driver of growth. The EIA specifically said it was temperature and data centers were in the forecast, but there was growth in EVs, heat pumps and other places.
• 22:56
  John Weaver: Yeah, this is wind and solar.
• 23:02
  John Weaver: You know, wind and solar reached over 17% of all electricity, which is pretty solid, the total amount. Look
• 23:13
  Tim Montague: at that solar past wind at one point. Yes,
• 23:17
  John Weaver: couple of months there, kind of neat. Never happened before. This is the first year it happened. I think it's, you know, the another number that really matters is the paragraph right below that image, 40.9% of all electricity was emission free. CO two free.
• 23:35
  John Weaver: There's about 45 it's more, if you account things like biofuels and methane from landfills, but we decided not to account for those in our number just because we wanted to be a little more focused on pure electricity that was emission free. So this chart is a little more constrained when it comes to emission free versus the EIA. So for instance, there are renewable sources we don't include in our CO two free but it's growing. Again, it grew by almost a little more than a percent and a half, which is or almost a percent and a half, which is pretty nice. The only issue is, all of that growth came from wind and solar. Hydro was a little bit less. Nuclear ended up a little bit up, but we can't have stuff falling back.
• 24:28
  John Weaver: And then this chart, I really like it, just shows you the difference between the top 10 states, bottom 10 states, it's a pretty big difference. I will say one thing though, North Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma, those three states, have very high levels of wind penetration. So even though they're in the bottom five, they're still in the top five, maybe when it comes to overall clean electricity, particularly Kansas, is they're like they may be one of the top in terms of generation. So it was a good year for clean energy generation in the United States. Um, even with our turbulence, I think a lot of people pushed a lot of power on the end so, so it's pretty cool.
• 25:19
  Tim Montague: Yeah, fascinating stuff. I i love to see how we're Greening the Grid, and I love to also pay attention to the growth of the grid at the same time, and the fact that if we completely clean the grid by 2050 which, which would be a good I think, You know, that's 25 years from now, right? 26 years, 25 um, if we clean the grid, then we're at 450 ppm in the atmosphere. And so, John Weaver, you need to invent a giant vacuum cleaner that will suck a trillion tons. Okay? It's only a trillion tons. Brother, it's doable. I think it would make you rich. Yeah,
• 26:09
  John Weaver: it's true. Let me just do that real quick. I think if we're really gonna extract CO two from the atmosphere, it can't be going straight back into the dirt. I think it has to be used as material. Otherwise, I just so far, we haven't volunteered to financially subsidize things that create no value forever. We just have issues with that, and so until we figure that out with CO two extraction. Unless we become much nicer people. Well,
• 26:45
  Tim Montague: there's value in a safer, healthier future for humanity. Unfortunately, the value of that for society is at the bottom of the list. Future generations rank way low, like we were good at paying attention to right now, but we need to pay attention to 50 years from now, and you know, our
• 27:06
  John Weaver: three months out?
• 27:06
  John Weaver: Man, right?
• 27:10
  Tim Montague: Yeah, we're constrained. We're evolutionarily constrained. This is my theory. Our brain has not evolved as fast as our technology, and here we are.
• 27:22
  Tim Montague: We're the we filled the world with our stuff, and one of those stuffs is CO two. So updated version of my PV Intel page.
• 27:31
  Tim Montague: Wait a minute, PV Intel, you've hardly ever talked about this.
• 27:36
  John Weaver: Yeah, I don't want to bug everybody, but that article you just saw, we had a bunch of PV Intel charts. But this is, uh, this is us working on a slowly, it's like just a little side project, and I put new version of it up. It's got a couple of bugs, but it's leading to that information that we report on from the EIA. We're about to do a portion where we show all the solar projects across the nation, and we're trying to work on manufacturers that could work into the domestic content incentives, and we think that's a good thing to chase, but we'll see about these. But this is just a site that we're working on to create data to make a little better use and help communicate what's happening with solar with clean generation.
• 28:25
  Tim Montague: So give me a I'm trying to get this on screen, but give me a use case for why somebody would use PV Intel,
• 28:44
  John Weaver: the main the main purpose of it right now is simply to access data in a little bit more organized and clean manner with specific solar stats. And the stats that we're looking for, for now is focusing on the amount of solar being generated on a state by state basis relative to electricity use, letting people understand what's happening in, say, Texas.
• 29:12
  John Weaver: I
• 29:12
  Tim Montague: recognize that line graph that's very
• 29:16
  John Weaver: now. Click on the wind and solar one. See how that one looks. That's a nice one.
• 29:18
  John Weaver: Texas has a huge amount of wind.
• 29:22
  John Weaver: We're talking 25 30% of its electricity. Now go to CO two free, and we see Texas somewhere in the closer to the 40. If you scroll down a little bit, we can see another chart and see on the rolling 12 months. Do a mouse over for that 1224 number all the way at the far end. So in December, 36% of Texas's electricity was CO two free, and probably over the last 12 months. If you scroll down a little further, you'll see that they're probably keep going.
• 29:54
  John Weaver: Let's see where Texas fits on the list for CO two free. There we go. Texas is pretty far down the list. 36% Yeah, they're below the national average. But you can see, you know, there's a lot of states doing a lot of cool stuff, some of the ones near the top, like Vermont, Vermont. So this data is also it's got some nuances. For instance, Vermont gets natural gas from power stations outside of Vermont. So the data is not fully pure. It's, you know, there's nuances. This is the the generation. But within the state, 80, almost 85% of their electricity is hydro and solar and wind. So there's, you get to see that a lot of states are doing good stuff. And here's Kansas, the number five state in the nation, yeah. But you notice on the solar list, they were all the way at the bottom right, so they're the sixth cleanest electricity source. You gotta give a lot of credit to their wind and but
• 30:56
  Tim Montague: so if I go solar and then I scroll down, then it is just solar. Okay, cool,
• 31:00
  John Weaver: yes. And then you see Texas has moved up the list.
• 31:04
  John Weaver: They're not that far down the list like they were. Yeah. I mean, California is still the dominant generator. But you know what's neat about the top list?
• 31:12
  John Weaver: Out of the top five or six, three of them are from New England. Got Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, Rhode Island.
• 31:20
  John Weaver: Like, what's going on up in New England?
• 31:26
  Tim Montague: Where's New York?
• 31:26
  Tim Montague: New
• 31:29
  John Weaver: York's pretty further, much further down the list. They're not that far down, right there in the middle, right below Texas, a few, 5.8% Oh, yeah. I. So a lot, lot going on around the nation. Every state has its own little story, and we're trying to get that data out. So now project geyser, click on that, yeah, what is that? So the goal of Project geyser is to show all the power plants within each state that the EIA tracks. And this is the first version of it, where you can see the plants. You can scroll down a tiny bit. You can see the list. And then if you wanted to look at any one of those, you can click on it, and it'll give you say how much energy it produced. You can even zoom in a little further. I bet you can actually see the power plant there. Yeah. Keep going.
• 32:22
  John Weaver: You can see it just to the left, yeah. And so this is just using EIA Data. And then if you scroll down on this page, you can see how much energy it produced, what the numbers were, what's up with that spike? That means somebody probably reported something wrong at the EIA Yeah, because we're using their data.
• 32:39
  John Weaver: But this is that systems production on an annual basis.
• 32:43
  John Weaver: You know, you can see it's 1.5 megawatt owned by the Bandera electric cooperative, and it's just kind of we're trying to show off the solar that exists, and eventually we'll figure out a model to make money off of it, other than showing it off on a website at PV magazine. But that's the goal. Cool, yep, so very cool. Just software showing some data off.
• 33:12
  Tim Montague: Good work. All right, project of the week. And then
• 33:18
  John Weaver: we gotta run Tim, because it's already 130 okay,
• 33:23
  Tim Montague: I'm with you. Want to do this project the
• 33:25
  John Weaver: week. Absolutely, this is what I like. So this is us building a carport, and we're digging out the ground, and at this carport, we're right now doing some of our footings. I thought this was a nice picture of Benji on the left. He's our GC, Daniel. He's an engineer and inspecting engineer. And this is just us constructing, pouring a piece out. We had to dig out this, what's called a spread footing. We have to make a wood frame. You can see the rebar inside of the wood. You can see the son of tube. That's the round thing in the middle that helps the concrete keep its form. And then sitting on top of it, you can kind of see a piece of wood that's going across the top. Right that piece of wood across the top of it, that's the bolts, nice. So we're going to pour the concrete and fill out that form, and then once that form sets. We'll start pouring a bunch of dirt back in and rebuild in a parking lot, and it's going to go into a
• 34:30
  Tim Montague: carport.
• 34:30
  Tim Montague: Excellent. How big is the carport? This one's about 375
• 34:36
  John Weaver: kW. So these last couple of images, so that's poured now. This is a slough? Is it a slough test? I can't remember the word testing the concrete. Yeah. So we're testing concrete to see how strong it is, to see just what it's going to look like when it cures. They want to make sure it's we have the mix correct, because we're putting up a lot of steel, and we don't want to hurt people.
• 35:00
  John Weaver: And then the next image, you can see where they've taken a couple of cylinders that they'll bring for testing and see how they set. These are the cylinders they've taken. They mark them, they time them, they make sure they grab one from each mix of concrete. We're doing just to see that we're putting good material in the ground, because we don't want to mess that up.
• 35:19
  John Weaver: Of course,
• 35:22
  Tim Montague: I had no idea it was so detailed, that's
• 35:24
  John Weaver: cool. Oh, yeah. Oh, there's layers and layers of details
• 35:28
  Tim Montague: concrete. Well, you got to make sure it's not going to crack, yeah, all apart,
• 35:35
  John Weaver: especially when there's bunch of cars underneath it and snow on top of it. You know, we pay a good 10 to 10 to 15 cents more per watt for solar car ports in the northeast, because we have heavier structures that have to withstand snow loads, and snow loads are heavy. So Right? All of our footings are bigger. All of our steel is bigger. All of our Well, I don't know if the bolts are bigger. I'm not that detailed on the technical side, but definitely more steel, definitely bigger footings, more concrete we're paying for it.
• 36:12
  Tim Montague: Well, want to shout out to Chris letman, Zach Witt and Kasai by jiwala, I had lunch with kusai last week. Good to meet you, kiss I in San Diego, and check out all of our content at Clean Power hour.com Please give us a rating and review on Apple or Spotify. Tell a friend about the show, and you can reach out to commercial solar guy at commercial solar guy.com we have the streamer now going across the bottom there, but I want to thank John Weaver for. Being on the show and sponsoring the show, and with that, how else would you like people to find you? John
• 36:49
  John Weaver: commercial solar guy.com gotta contact us. Page.
• 36:53
  John Weaver: That's the best way. Yes, located in the northeast. We build solar, we help develop it, we consult on it, and sometimes we get to hang out with Tim at shows. But mostly we're just in the Northeast doing solar.
• 37:07
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I guess I'll see you in Vegas next unless, unless. And if anybody's listening, check out CPS America. They are hosting an Innovation Day event April 2 in Dallas, Texas. It's a lovely event, lots of installers, engineers, technicians, and, of course, the whole CPS team geeking out on three phase string inverters and battery storage. So join us in Dallas.
• 37:29
  Tim Montague: And with that, I'll say, let's grow solar and storage. Take care. John.