Latest / Clean Power Hour / Clean Power Hour LIVE | June 29, 2023 | Speeding the Energy Transition

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Clean Power Hour LIVE | June 29, 2023 | Speeding the Energy Transition · Clean Power Hour

• 0:50
  Tim Montague: Welcome to the Clean Power Hour live. I'm Tim Montague, your host today is June 29 2023. We're getting ready for the holiday weekend.
• 0:58
  Tim Montague: And it's been a lovely summer here in central Illinois, check out all of our content at clean power hour.com Give us a rating and a review. on Apple and Spotify. That is the best way to help us get traction with this channel. And to speed the energy transition. I want to welcome my co host and commercial solar guy to the show. Welcome John Weaver.
• 1:26
  John Weaver: Hey, Tim, how are you today?
• 1:29
  Tim Montague: I haven't seen you in a few weeks. Yeah,
• 1:32
  John Weaver: I moved and then you had a thing. And then I had a thing and you know, life apparently gets busy occasionally. So
• 1:39
  Tim Montague: busy summer but great summer I went to we cancelled last week because I was on route to the energy Fair, which is an MRE a Midwest Renewable Energy Association event that's been going on for 32 years, I first went to this thing. It's an outdoor fair.
• 1:55
  Tim Montague: It's a great event for consumers and energy professionals. In Custer, Wisconsin, which is right near Stevens Point, which is a college town in central Illinois, in central Wisconsin.
• 2:05
  Tim Montague: But the energy fair is the OG of energy fairs and events here in the Midwest. I first went in oh six to my first one. And so I've been going there for for 17 years, on and off not regularly about every four or five years.
• 2:23
  Tim Montague: But good event got to see some solar professionals I know. And friends from Madison, where I used to live long time ago, and rubbing shoulders with all these cool consumers who are hip on clean energy and energy efficiency and passive house and all that stuff. So fun, fun weekend. And now it's back to reality. And we're going to cover the clean energy news here on the Clean Power Hour live right bring you every week solar wind battery storage. But we have a couple of announcements, John? Well, it is I would like to create a segment in this show in our Thursday live called Ask the commercial solar guy anything. And the the only the only thing that prevents us from doing that John is having a live audience to ask questions. So we have to we have to do our best to get the word out. We do this live most Thursdays at noon at noon, Eastern 11 Central 10 Mountain and nine Pacific and, and we have a small following who show up regularly I did get to see Joe sharp shout out to Joe flew one of our regulars in Wisconsin last weekend. He owns a farm out there in Wisconsin, not too far from where this event was held. But he lives in Northern Illinois. And anyway, good to see you Joe and several other energy professionals from the Northern Illinois area where most of my connections lie in Illinois but okay, so ask the commercial solar guy anything is a new segment that we're rolling out on the show we are launching a network and I'm gonna put this on screen but we're launching a network called the Clean Power media network. And this is a family of shows Inc including some real oh geez in the solar industry. But let me get this on screen so I do this properly.
• 4:39
  John Weaver: So right now Tim, how many semi regular shows do you have? You have interviews?
• 4:43
  John Weaver: You do almost an interview every week with somebody you have clean power hour that you work with? You're starting a new show or two that's going to be consistent separate from your interview so
• 4:58
  Tim Montague: yeah, so we've got the Tuesday interviews like pre recorded interviews with energy executives these are solar wind energy storage companies for the most part and and related tools and technologies. Then we have this live Thursday show that we do and but now the network okay clean power dot media is the beta website for this which is on screen now. Clean Power Media Network is a family of shows including shows by Shaun White, the the well known NAB set Master Trainer PKD Peter Kelly, that Wyler's show called Power knowledge demystified solar data and sons by Ken Sanger. That's a show that I'm going to co create with Ken build repeat with James MC Walter, who is a tech executive founder of a company called paces which is a real estate platform for solar developers. Beyond lithium, Nate Kirche offer. Nate has a company called bios and batteries. So he is a energy storage expert and scientist himself. And then I'm very pleased to be bringing the the show called energise Wisconsin, which is the podcast for Wisconsin conservative energy forum. And the energy the Wisconsin conservative energy form is is one of many of these conservative energy network projects around the country. So hopefully, that will be bringing a family of podcast from that network. And then of course, the Clean Power Hour. So you can see a feed here that we've propped up with Sean White's show.
• 6:42
  Tim Montague: That's Shawn white, solar and energy storage podcast. PKD Peter Kelly Detweiler, a well known clean grid expert, and author of The Energy Switch, and BKD was on the show, as well, maybe two years ago. Here's the build repeat podcast by James Buckwalter that I mentioned his company's called paces, which is a growing platform for energy developers. And then here's Nick Kerr chopper show beyond lithium all about energy storage. And he was also a guest on the show I'll these people have been guests on the Clean Power Hour, of course, with the exception of Ryan hoops, who's the executive director of Scottson conservative energy forum and their show, energise Wisconsin, so super pumped John to be bringing this additional Clean Energy Transition content to our listeners and and we're just getting started. So today, there
• 7:52
  John Weaver: are seven shows ish Friday,
• 7:54
  Tim Montague: we have shows six, okay, six shows, and tomorrow we'll have 25 shows. And we are get busy. We are actively looking for corporate sponsors for the network and for the Clean Power Hour. So reach out to me, Tim at clean power hour.com The email or at clean power hour.com My main website.
• 8:15
  Tim Montague: So let's get into the news.
• 8:15
  Tim Montague: John. We've we've we've been away from the news for a few weeks. One of the things that happened was there was a heatwave in Texas. Last week happen. It's still happening.
• 8:27
  Tim Montague: still happening. Yes. And surprisingly, we've had a very mild summer here in the Midwest, but not the case in the south.
• 8:36
  Tim Montague: And so I found an article about that heatwave in Scientific American. And, you know, some people like to beat up on wind and solar for being intermittent. But they are also a tremendous grid service, at times, like a heatwave when there are good resources like the sun, which happens to rise every day, in case you had noticed, John, and it's it's intermittent, but it's very consistent. And especially in the southwest, where it's just Sunny. A lot of the time here in the Midwest can be cloudy sometimes. But down in Texas, not so much. So So solar has actually helped the grid during this heatwave. And the story is called solar power bails out Texas grid during major heatwave. You know, I love I love it how people try to put a stick in in the clean energy I?
• 9:38
  Tim Montague: Well, today, it's about Gotcha.
• 9:43
  Tim Montague: Because what happens when there's, you know, capacity days, a couple of things happen, energy prices go up, right when the grid is is humming at full capacity. The grid operators fire up their peaker plants, for example, which are very expensive to run. And so the cost of energy goes up. And it's a supply demand marketplace, right. And so when the demand for the commodity kWh is very high prices also just naturally go up and they can get very, very high. And capacity charges, for example, can be 30 or 40% of a customer's bill. And and so anyway, you know the grid in Texas is now operating on something like 16 to 20% solar power. Solar is the largest segment of energy on the grid.
• 10:35
  Tim Montague: Besides natural gas right now.
• 10:40
  John Weaver: Know which wind is still. Wind is still number two.
• 10:44
  John Weaver: It's gas and wind.
• 10:46
  Tim Montague: And so this tab here is an amazing resource that was pointed out in this article.
• 10:52
  Tim Montague: And this is a tool called Grid status.io. And all the the ISOs are here on the left. So here we're looking at ERCOT. And wind is blue and I stand corrected.
• 11:07
  Tim Montague: You're right wind is 26.6%.
• 11:07
  Tim Montague: Solar is 16.5%. And this is I think, real time. So really cool tool. And then you see natural gas there at 36%. Nuclear at 7%.
• 11:18
  Tim Montague: Coal and lignite at 13 a meagre 13%. So solar has passed coal in the great state of Texas. And it's going to soon be nipping at the heels of wind power, I predict. And then you see this, this daily graph that how cool is that? Right? You see the solar waking up at, you know, around eight o'clock in the morning, right? And just becoming full steam ahead. And, you know, some people say that, well, this, these, the solar on the grid stuff makes it very difficult for the grid operator to predict what's going to happen. And I say, I don't I don't agree, I think the computer knows when the sun is waking up. And when it's going to bed. And when the sun goes to bed, that's when you you know, crank up the batteries and, and other resources. What do you think about this, this grid, I mean, this this heatwave in Texas, though, John,
• 12:27
  John Weaver: I mean, heat and sunlight are correlated, obviously, solar generation is correlated cause aidid. Heat is cause ated. And solar. So you know, it used to be back in the day, that mid time to 2pm.
• 12:42
  John Weaver: Electricity was the most expensive, and it was always the most expensive in the summer.
• 12:52
  John Weaver: And it used to be that companies power companies would cover their bills and cover their costs with, you know, their normal everyday service is very competitive. And then they would make their money, their annual profit on these three, four or 510 days a year, where they were peeking prices from, you know, 12, noon to 2pm. And they would have only one power plant running. Or they would have like this power plant run only for four hours for two hours. And that'd be where all the profit came because they charge nine bucks a kilowatt hour, which we'll see later in the show other articles I've shown. And so now we're seeing solar. And, you know, maybe we should do the story next, but we're also seeing residential Tesla Powerwall customers, offsetting the super high prices of Texas that occur at peaking moments.
• 13:41
  John Weaver: The thing that people should recognise the most is that it was always that daytime electricity was the most expensive. It was always at nighttime and evenings were cheaper. But now solar has flipped the industry entirely.
• 13:57
  John Weaver: And people need to, and people have already made it normal.
• 14:02
  John Weaver: It's so obvious that daytime electricity should be cheap, that people are all like, yeah, they don't even question that anymore. It's like yeah, of course, solar is electricity cheap in the daytime, because you have solar. That wasn't the case in the year 2000. You know, the year 2000 was the future.
• 14:17
  John Weaver: But we were still mostly burning coal for our electricity in the year 2000 at high noon. Now, it's just different. And people have already internalised this fundamental change in the way the power grid works. And, you know, let me go to our document, put the next story up. But there was a person in Texas, a residential homeowner, who was getting paid over five bucks of kilowatt hour for his electricity, because of this Texas storm. And because of how he's working with I just added the story. It's the next one.
• 14:57
  John Weaver: And it's, you know, then we have another story where I wanted to share and I guess maybe I'm talking too much now on this topic, but in the New England ISO market, behind the metre solar, which dominates our market, whereas in Texas, it's standalone big grid solar. But behind the metre solar is now shutting down a gas plant. But look this this one that you you share, I don't know if you get a chance to share that tweet. The peak pricing that that residential customer was getting from their battery. This is from their house from their battery, because they have a an energy contract with Tesla Energy.
• 15:39
  Tim Montague: Yeah, so what are we looking at here though?
• 15:41
  John Weaver: That is the price that this individual is selling electricity via their Tesla app.
• 15:45
  John Weaver: So this is a test a screenshot from a AE energy stores, I think if you click on it, you might see a fuller image, it could even say Tesla's logo on it. But this is from somebody's iPhone app. And they're analysed that this is them selling electricity from their phone, or from their computer, or sorry, from their battery, via the Tesla Energy VPP. And right now, I don't believe Tesla is making money off of it, they're just managing it so they can figure out how to make money eventually. But this dude, I mean, you can see it peaked at over 5500 500 cents per kilowatt hour. I was I was astounded by saying 50 cents, I meant 500 cents per kilowatt hour. Now, in a later tweet, the gentleman says they ran, he ran out for over an hour above four bucks, a kilowatt hour. So what we're seeing now is that the power grid, the monopoly of centralised fossil, and gas generators, is now being broken by one local distributed energy and to daytime solar. And this is just hacking into those profits. And this right here, this, what's on our screen is the number one thing that I yell about when I say distributed energy is much more valuable than people allow to be talked about. You know, the large solar companies like NextEra, who seek to have utility scale, are the ones that attack distributed energy. And they don't want to deal with this, because it's not in their business plan of putting out a million power walls, but Tesla will, and plenty of others will, Sunrun will. And we need Sunrun and others to give more value to distributed, because, you know, they're interested parties, we need homeowners to start knocking on politician doors, because this, this person selling their electricity to the grid from their house, at over five bucks a kilowatt hour from their home battery represents 10s of millions of future Americans, maybe even hundreds of millions of future Americans and how they're going to deal with the power grid. And, and, you know, sunlight equals solar power equals heat wave equals solar electricity equals offsetting that AC, that's just the way the future is going to be.
• 18:14
  Tim Montague: And, you know, as that article pointed out, you know, we've, we're in the one degree zone, it's gonna go to three degrees. And, and so, you know, these, these heat waves are going to get more intense and more frequent. There's just no buts about it. So, if you don't have solar and storage, yet, you want to be thinking about and figuring out a way to get solar and storage, and to prevent, you know, just a financial decision. Now, John, you don't have to care about sustainability, or the future of humanity, which I do, and I am a mission driven entrepreneur, to speed, the energy transition, and help create a safer, healthier future for humanity.
• 19:01
  Tim Montague: That's, you know, climate change is one of the numerous existential threats that we have created for ourselves here on Earth, but batteries are super valuable. Love solar, but love solar and storage way, way more.
• 19:16
  Tim Montague: And, and you don't have to buy it, you can lease it from a Sunrun or Tesla will lease it, I'm sure or any any handful of these large national companies.
• 19:32
  Tim Montague: And there's local companies to Texas has an amazing ecosystem of solar companies. I'm I'm just every day i i learned about new companies. And it's just it's an awesome ecosystem, kind of like a California in and of itself.
• 20:39
  Tim Montague: Obviously, there are a lot of analogies it is becoming a tech hub and a real player in the clean energy space. Right. It's the largest solar market now in the US on an annual installation bases, right. No more California at the at the top of that list.
• 20:59
  Tim Montague: All right. Well, thank you for that story about the homeowner using their battery to make money basically.
• 21:12
  John Weaver: Yeah. Yeah.
• 21:16
  Tim Montague: You want to talk about ISO New England, huh?
• 21:20
  John Weaver: Yeah, well, it's kind of a continuation of this solar peak. Well, everything we talked about as a solar continuation conversation. But this the ISO New England one kind of complements what's happening in Texas right now.
• 21:36
  John Weaver: There's there's a lot of pushback in the northeast to not instal gas in for structure, there have been a couple of nuclear power plants that have been shut down pilgrim and Yankee. And there's, I think there's only one coal facility in all of New England that doesn't even really run. And so all of this, you know, there's a complex market of how the grid runs up here. And, you know, we're in New England, we're not in Texas, so we don't have year round sunlight. It's just a different market, we have snow.
• 22:08
  John Weaver: Well, New England ISO, who has aggressively annually always said, Hey, we have risk of crashing in a super cold event, or a super hot event if we don't have enough capacity available.
• 22:24
  John Weaver: And they said, Hey, we need more more gas power lines. You know, now, they're turning around, and they're specifically stating, behind the metre, rooftop solar is big enough that it's shutting down power plants. And there's the mystic power plant, the mystic Generation Station is a generation station is the is a one just over one gigawatt facility. It's shutting down next summer. And New England is so specifically said, it's because a rooftop behind the metre solar. And for me, a person who has contributed to rooftop behind the metre solar installations, many megawatts in the region. This makes me feel so warm and fuzzy. It's like, oh, I had a part in shutting down this fossil facility. And that's just great. You know, I, you know, I love shutting down natural gas plants, I guess. And just made me feel wonderful to see this headline today
• 23:37
  Tim Montague: says this mystic plant is one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters in the region. So this is this is a real impact on our carbon footprint of the grid. Set 17 million tonnes of carbon pollution between 2013 and 2022.
• 23:57
  Tim Montague: So far in that 10 year period.
• 23:57
  Tim Montague: It's so ironic, John, that, you know, this, this thing we call the sky is seemingly untouched, you look up it looks normal, except, I should say, we have not been in normal the last week because of the smoke from the Canadian fires. It's very got this weird yellow haze we've been dramatically impacted here in Illinois by the fires, I'm sure you have to. And but anyway, on a normal day, when there's not Canada burning, you look up and the sky is blue, it just looks so pristine. But there's 800 gigatons of co2 pollution sitting there warming the earth, and it just invisibly, doing its job day in and day out. And we have to remember that that that pollution is there. It's real.
• 24:54
  Tim Montague: It's been accumulating for 200 years. And we have to netzero the economy. So that to stop that accumulation. And then of course, figure out ways to remove those 800 gigatons but what's next on the roster? And Hello, Chris Levin, good to see you here. We'd love to get you back on the show, Chris, and talk about solar modules and all things solar. So I think about that. We will be doing a show next week. I believe I have plans to be here. Post Fourth of July. But
• 25:34
  John Weaver: Chris is doing lots of good stuff in the Solar World. So
• 25:37
  Tim Montague: we're talking about this general study right.
• 25:40
  John Weaver: 26 point 8 million privately accessible level one and level two charging stations, primarily at single family homes. That's what NRL in this report has is their big number 26 point 8 million level one and level two chargers. That's a big number. Yeah.
• 25:59
  Tim Montague: Yeah. And this is this is really important. The NFL, the National Renewable Renewable Energy Laboratory whose tagline is transforming energy. I think that might be new. I like that. wrote this report, the 2030 National charging network. So what do we have to do with light duty vehicle charging to green are to electrify transportation, right?
• 26:24
  Tim Montague: It's a big unknown. And now they're putting some numbers on it. And it's, it's big, big numbers. Like you said 26 point 8 million privately accessible level one and level two charging ports
• 26:41
  John Weaver: and this is what by 2030. So by 2050, the numbers will expand and evolve as we have more and, you know, so but this is by 2030
• 26:52
  Tim Montague: and 182,000, publicly accessible, fast charging ports on highway corridors. I wonder what the Tesla network is today? Or a big Yeah, I do, and maybe the next biggest charging network. So I'm just curious, like, what percentage of the way have we made progress towards this goal of Level Two plus chargers?
• 27:12
  Tim Montague: Well, sorry, level three, fast charging is level three or four?
• 27:18
  Tim Montague: Right? Level three? Yeah. Is there a level four? I think there is not that
• 27:26
  John Weaver: I know of no.
• 27:26
  John Weaver: Tesla. Tesla has roughly 17,000 superchargers in the United States, over 45,000. In globally, and I think they're closer to 20,000 in the USA nowadays. And then the number two super DC fast chargers by manufacturer the number two is E is a electric America. And they're like, 1/10 115 Oh, really? of them? Yeah, they're nowhere near they're like, way off. And so it's just, you know, it's 98% of fast chargers. 90% of fast chargers are Tesla, then 5% is Electrify America, then Evie, go and charge point all around there.
• 28:19
  Tim Montague: So we're about 20%. The Tesla network is about 10% of this goal for publicly accessible, fast charging. Yeah.
• 28:27
  Tim Montague: So it's not horrible. Right, we have made some progress towards this, but we have a long way to go. Yeah. And And luckily, the the IRA legislation, the IRA, does incentivize charging infrastructure. And it says continued investments are necessary accumulative national capital investment of 53 to $127 billion in charging infrastructures needed by 2030.
• 28:57
  Tim Montague: And
• 28:59
  John Weaver: that's gonna double and triple before we finish out, because, you know, as you note right there, it's it's 33 million plug in electric vehicles. And it's, you know, that number is going to be over 100 million, 200 million, 300 million, eventually, I did like that they suggested 1 million level two chargers distributed around town in strategic places, and at work. Because, you know, if you have an hour at a level two charger, that's anywhere from 20 to 40 miles of range, if you could sneak in one to two hours of Level Two charging per day, somewhere around town, that would cover the driving of probably 85% of cars on a daily basis, because people aren't, you know, for me, the majority of my daily driving is under 20 miles. And then I have one day a week where I drive like 200 250, every Wednesday, most homeowners are like 40 miles a day, for all their days, and then they have one day that's longer. So you know, if you can't charge at home, like someone like me, who doesn't have an apartment charger, having access to a level two here or there having access to a single level three, once a week, that's that's all that's necessary. So I'm, I'm interested in the around town chargers, like supermarkets, restaurants, just parking lots where you know, we're going to integrate a whole bunch of things. And so it's, it's interesting to watch that level two around town charger, one evolve. I'm interested in that one a lot.
• 30:32
  Tim Montague: I like this schematic, they have a they for anyone just on audio, they have a schematic of a tree, the branches and leaves are the public destination charging That's the million publicly accessible level two chargers, so called public destination charging, then there's the trunk, which is public fast charging. And then there's the routes which is private charging, which is level one and level two chargers and we're going to need 26 point 7 million private charging now you know it's meaningless to plug into a 110 In my opinion, you really have to instal a level two charger to get any significant mileage on your on your Eevee speaking from experience, but so if I'm an electrician, and I'm not installing EVs EB chargers today, I definitely will be tomorrow and should bone up on that it's not a hard thing to instal luckily, but might have to upgrade a paddleboard. If you're also doing solar if that's the only, you know, significant upgrade, so to speak.
• 31:43
  John Weaver: I think if you if electricians got real good and installing electric, electric panel upgrades, Evie chargers and heat pumps, those three things. I think you could make a career doing very, very well for yourself. So I said sets of Yeah, so I think those three, you know, I'm trying to get my company into doing heat pumps plus solar, because it's a thing that happens a lot. And people are talking about upgrading their panel and their Evie charger along with it. And then there's battery backup. So I mean, this there's this little collection of home skills, Evie, charger, battery, backup, heat pump, solar, those four are kind of the core. If I think of residential solar company and maybe even commercial, you got to have those for heat pump, Evie, charger, solar panel upgrade. It's just like, they're just, they're just tied together in such logic. And, you know, I remember reading back in the day that anybody who had broadband, their probability of getting solar was much higher than if they didn't have broadband. And so now, broadband people buy EVs broadband people buy this and you know, these are like, cutting edge ideas and broadband is not cutting edge anymore. We got it on our cell phones from space. But these things line up.
• 33:10
  John Weaver: And so, man, I want our residential company to get into EVs chargers, Evie chargers, panel upgrades, heat pumps, solar, solar backup, you know, those that that little family of items, it just makes such such big sense.
• 33:31
  Tim Montague: Yep. Totally agree. If you're a solar installer today, your solar battery, Evie, charger, and heat pump installer tomorrow. And then throw in the panel upgrade as well. The only hard part with the panel upgrade is getting permission and keeping the cost down. But so if that's a process with the utility, need to streamline that need to lean in, let's talk about your story and PV magazine. John.
• 34:04
  John Weaver: I've worked a lot of stories over the last couple of weeks manned and busy had to had to play some catch up. One story I wrote in PV mag, you will projections. Yes, we covered Denna watts, and I liked it. I like to read about it and learn about it more about what they're doing there. And it was just you know, it's just a little better Deep Dive. And everybody if you're really wondering what Danna Watts is, we did a show here a couple of weeks ago, we interviewed watts.
• 34:31
  John Weaver: Dino watts, I call it dental sorry, because it's D.
• 34:35
  Tim Montague: There's the dino watts, the dino they call it
• 34:38
  John Weaver: the dino. But we covered we met with the owner a couple weeks ago, we interviewed him got some really great knowledge, I referenced the interview in this article. But really, this is a piece of hardware. And one of the best features, I mean, the two main features of it that I liked, because we're small fry that jives with what we need number one, that you can instal the unit, right after you've installed your solar system. And you can run this unit next to your solar system. And because the units tuned, it can then predict what your solar system should be doing in the situation of the weather. So you might be thinking, Oh, is the sun down?
• 35:20
  John Weaver: And so my solar isn't producing.
• 35:20
  John Weaver: But it might be your solar system isn't wired well. And the system isn't producing the sun is great. And the dean and the Dinobots unit will tell you the sun, Dena watts, whatever. The beautiful piece of hardware that does a great job.
• 35:40
  Tim Montague: On that one,
• 35:41
  John Weaver: good, good. It will tell you, this is what it should be running at. Yeah. And it's a simple piece of hardware, a couple of pieces of things to connect, and then the key over the long term. And I have a you know, you got customers every spring. They're like, Hey, man, what's happening to my solar over the winter. I'm like, well, it's wintertime in New England.
• 36:03
  John Weaver: But if you have a piece of hardware out there, or if you have a network of solar projects, you can say, Listen, all 10 of these solar projects are producing at the same ratio of view, including our standalone grid analyzer or whatever term you want to come up with for the heart for the Drina watts, Denna watts. And I just, it just drives it's a good piece of gear, and they got approved by DNV for their processes to say yeah, this job well, they got
• 36:35
  Tim Montague: a technical review by DNB. It's a service that DNV provides. And, but they were they were very be rigorous. And it was it was not an easy process for them to get to that.
• 36:47
  Tim Montague: So kudos to Dan, Larry for driving that forward. And Dan, Larry, the founder of Dena wants is an OG in the industry. He was co founder a panel claw. The number one rooftop racking company for commercial rooftops.
• 36:59
  Tim Montague: Right. And what's the other company next amp? Excel, which is a well known community solar developer out of Boston. But now working nationwide in those markets where there's community solar, so cool stuff. Yeah, that the digital twin benchmarking is one of the things that sets Dino Watts apart, they've got a model of your solar array embedded in the in the gateway. And, and so the sensor out there is a digital weather station, collecting what's going on in real time and then saying, you know, then the dino wants his basically doing this calculus, okay? How is reality? How is the array producing compared to how it should produce, and then you get a signal good, bad, ugly, and ugly means need to roll a truck and figure some something out, right, something seriously wrong with your solar array?
• 37:55
  John Weaver: Yeah. And that that's worth a lot. You know, sending two people out to a project, the vehicle and the hours alone, to get there and get back. And that doesn't include the work. That's 500 bucks. And if you can help a customer understand and believe that their system is fine, it's just a cloudy day. That's worth both time and money as well.
• 38:20
  John Weaver: Mental health. Because, you know, customers get stressed, they put a lot of money into this thing. They want to know what works. And if you can help them believe Oh, it is working.
• 38:30
  John Weaver: That's just, that's just good.
• 38:30
  John Weaver: Good for everybody. It's really positive. So I think it's cool little piece of gear. We're gonna
• 38:36
  Tim Montague: get better about reading these titles, though, for our audio listeners. So that story is called better solar projections mean, better models and higher project valuations by John Weaver, June 22. All right, let's move on. We got a lot of news to cover, and not much time. So what does
• 38:55
  John Weaver: talk about? We're gonna talk about how, how the big world DNV says that solar is going to be in an unassailable position as the cheapest source of electricity on earth we set we sort of already know this, Tim, but it's going to happen more and more, and it's going to, you know, I don't know, we might have 100 terawatts of solar deployed, because it's so cheap. That's, that's what's gonna happen.
• 39:25
  Tim Montague: Yeah, this is a story in PV magazine, also, by Ryan Kennedy, this time, and you read the title solar will be unassailable, in an unassailable position as cheapest source of electricity. Solar is already in many parts of the world, this cheapest source of grid power.
• 39:39
  Tim Montague: So that's what's driving the rapid adoption of solar now on a global basis. And is it is it the only question is Is the adoption fast enough? Right. But
• 40:01
  John Weaver: I think I think it's at the edge of being useful, and of helping, we're still gonna have challenges. I mean, right now, people are dying in Mexico and Texas, because of this heat dome. It's not a joke. It's, it's something for us to really deal with. It's going to go faster. You know, the, I don't know about that big old bio energy thing there at the bottom. We'll see.
• 40:31
  Tim Montague: Yeah, what is that? That wood chips are what?
• 40:35
  Tim Montague: Yeah, that's kind of scary. But what I love about this is, you know, look, here we are in the early 2020s. And how little that solar sliver is, right. And then you look forward. And this is, I think, fairly conservative, I think we may actually go to a 50% solar grid, this says 15%.
• 40:52
  Tim Montague: And this is from the IEA. But But anyway, we have massive growth ahead of us 22 fold.
• 41:10
  John Weaver: Yeah, that's, I, you know, the key is, and DNV is kind of a conservative analysis and the IEA is kind of conservative, but the key is getting below 30 books by mid century. With, you know, they some some projects under 20 It's going to even be more than that, because we will end up with solar modules that are 35% efficient when we do perovskites and if we're talking 2050, we're going to have products over 40% efficient them, the CEO of Longy recently said, for every percent the efficiency gained in a solar panel, the LC OE of the project, it's associated with falls 5%.
• 41:54
  John Weaver: And yesterday, I was doing a little math with somebody. And we, we did a calculation to go from 22% efficient solar panels, which is kind of cutting edge for utility scale up to 35. And then we said, you know, we roughly calculated, you know, three, four or five cents per kilowatt hour, by going up 13%, at 5% of drop, you lose your price of electricity drops 50%.
• 42:24
  John Weaver: So, from solar panel efficiency gains, only, this is not due to scaling. This is not due to better glass, aluminium, this that, but just from the efficiency getting higher, we're gonna see the price of solar panels drop, or the price of electricity from solar drop by 50%. So, you know, we're at five cents per kilowatt hour now, we're gonna go well, past 20 cents, two and a half cents per kilowatt hour, we're gonna be we're gonna have solar projects that are pushing one cent per kilowatt hour and the best places on earth under a penny.
• 43:01
  John Weaver: Well, under a penny. I mean, we just had a bid. It's hard to accept some of the bids in the Middle East because the rules are different from finance, for instance, no interest. labour costs are almost zero. Different rules. But they're already under two sets.
• 43:18
  Tim Montague: Yeah. So and Matt Campbell at Terra bass, who I've had on the show a couple of times, and Tara bass is going after automation of solar construction, they do. They have software for large scale solar development. He thinks the Holy Grail is one penny per kWh solar power. And what that unlocks is affordable green hydrogen, for example. So that's, I agree, that is a nice Holy Grail. But meanwhile, I mean, these statistics are just incredible.
• 43:48
  Tim Montague: They highlight the DNV highlighted the impressive growth ramp of solar globally, which was one gigawatt, per year, you know, for 10 gigawatts in 2010. And 100 gigawatts in 2019. So 100x, right, from Oh, four to 19. That's 15 years.
• 44:05
  Tim Montague: That's, that's, that's just mind boggling. So that's the good news is we can actually ramp really fast when the circumstances are ripe. And it's a combination of the cost adoption curve. Right, just building those Giga factories and bringing the price down. And these other forces, like the fact that, you know, natural gas plants are expensive to run. And the utilities are like we want to get out we want to get into wind and solar and batteries, because it's just more affordable. Good for a bottom line. Cool story. Really cool story. Thank you for finding that.
• 44:57
  John Weaver: Technically, you found that.
• 45:00
  Tim Montague: Oh, I did. You're right. Yeah, yes.
• 45:03
  John Weaver: That's why we keep you around here Tim, you something. Totally, totally.
• 45:06
  John Weaver: Alright, I got a tweet. I got a tweet for you. And the picture doesn't look real. You have to share the picture of the weird looking solar panels him and just put it big and let people look at it. So yeah, it's not it's not normal to him. I don't think it's from earth to be honest. I think it's
• 45:29
  Tim Montague: do you think it was it was generated by AI?
• 45:32
  John Weaver: Maybe get keep going? There's two other See, look at that. Look at that nice solar facade. Ooh, beautiful.
• 45:36
  John Weaver: Now look at this thing. Where is that more click? That's in Israel. I think it's Tel Aviv.
• 45:42
  Tim Montague: Okay, so But But hold on, what are we looking at here? So we're looking at the facade of a looks like a office building or a hotel? I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. One more. The panels are white. And there's glass and
• 45:59
  John Weaver: that's the solar panel right there. Tim right.
• 46:02
  John Weaver: How weird looking is that? That thing almost looks like some sort of portal into a altered dimension that if you run and jump into it you would make funny sounds like from the matrix and you'll pop out somewhere that's a solar panel man.
• 46:18
  Tim Montague: And his honest the maker of the solar panels.
• 46:20
  John Weaver: Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
• 46:20
  John Weaver: Onyx, solar, they, they make these cool glass facade products that they integrate in the construction. They say the payback for these are under four years because they replaced standard glass and they're part of new construction. It's I just thought it was the coolest looking thing.
• 46:40
  Tim Montague: I'm gonna put the we've put this website up periodically. Here's the Onyx.
• 46:42
  Tim Montague: It's Onyx solar.com. Oh NY X.
• 46:49
  Tim Montague: And they've got this very strange, futuristic building.
• 46:54
  Tim Montague: Landing Page, but
• 46:56
  John Weaver: it's where I'm gonna live one day to my alien, my alien home.
• 47:01
  Tim Montague: That really is an alien looking structure. But I liked those hexagonal roof tiles,
• 47:08
  John Weaver: solar panels.
• 47:08
  John Weaver: Timothy's your panel?
• 47:10
  Tim Montague: Yes, yes, yes. So Onyx. Yeah, they're a player in the VIP. I want to have a show dedicated to be IP v on the network, John. So we need to find out we need to find a host for a VIP show. Who would that be?
• 47:28
  John Weaver: Oh, that's great question. I don't know any VIP PV specific experts. I do know of one gentleman who has created a VIP V forum on LinkedIn. And I don't know if he's open to do a weekly show. Okay. I don't know who I would call him. Well,
• 47:44
  Tim Montague: put him in touch with me. We'll do and but you see here they these guys that Onyx. They're into many things, skylights, curtain walls, canopies. spandrels. I don't know what a spandrel is. Sounds like a dance photovoltaic floors, parking lots, roof tiles, you name it. Speaking of roof tiles, we had a GA F energy on the show great interview with with ghf. And you know the VP of product and a installer. I think it's called Smart roofing company in the southeast. So check that out at Clean Power hour.com. And give us a rating and review on Apple and Spotify while you're at it. That would be very helpful. All right. We got time for a couple more stories here. Thanks for that the white solar panel
• 48:48
  John Weaver: like Yeah, man. I people were people. I when I tried to do sometimes when I'm looking for articles. So you know, I think Allah, this is the coolest, but I also pick out articles that get the most attention on Twitter. And that one was the most popular tweet for a while just simply saying this is a solar panel. And people were like, No, that's not right. Because you know, that's not normal. But it's people really interested in these building integrated product. The only negative The only issue with building integrated is of course, you know, we upgrade such a small percentage of our structures. And we build such a small percentage of new structures 99% 98% already built. So. So it's a slower volume, a slower market
• 49:33
  Tim Montague: is Do you know, offhand on when you when you have this colour to the solar panel? What kind of efficiency are you able to get? Because presumably, that's reflecting more light and blocking sunlight, right? So
• 49:50
  John Weaver: yeah, I do. So as part of that tweet series, I remember that there's a group in Switzerland, who makes a series of modules where they spray a layer, and their standard 20 19% perk, so not cutting edge product, but like right behind it, and they fall to anywhere to 15 to 17%. So they lose two to three percentage points 10 to 20% of their efficiency, when they spray this layer, I've seen some of the layerings lower, like 10%, but it depends on the colour and the material and the whatever makes up the sprays and the paints. But so so I 1617 18% for coloured solar panels, onyx notes that their panel is almost 16%, roughly equivalent, I think it was this white panel, that they noted that 16% efficiency, but I can't exactly remember because it wasn't 100% clear, but so about 16%, probably down from a 20% Here's
• 50:57
  Tim Montague: it, here's a good exercise to do for somebody, not me, but somebody go into Helia scope or your favourite design tool and take a high rise and do a rooftop array on that high rise, which generally is going to be trivial, right? Because you just there's not that much roof space relative to the volume of the building. And then design your vertical solar walls. And you know, you've got a south facing wall, you've got an East facing wall and a west facing wall. All three of those walls are going to get a lot of sunlight, right? If the building is perfectly oriented, let's just assume that and then do a side by side right and you get They, okay, we're gonna get 10% of our building power from a rooftop array. But we could probably get 50% or more, right by covering the facade and these albeit less efficient panels, but lots more of them. And then you can just institute this right and say, You can't build a building anymore in your just jurisdiction that doesn't integrate PV into the structure, right? I mean, the day is calm.
• 52:15
  John Weaver: Yeah, I was about to say like, in California, commercial structures required residential structures require it. And I am speaking with a politician who's going to be resubmitting this law in Rhode Island. There's a couple of cities in mass already. And pretty soon the there's a new building code that's being developed in mass statewide, that might make it where you can't build residential that doesn't have on site generation.
• 52:41
  John Weaver: And that's just going to be reality. And it might be that new commercial has a legal requirement for off site PPA, like you will, as a commercial entity be required to procure solar. So it's, they're figuring it out, it's going to happen that way. I mean, and you know, maybe Sure, you can build a building without solar, but nobody's gonna rent it, and nobody's gonna buy it, because it's going to be really expensive, because Who the heck is gonna pay 50 cents per kilowatt hour? $1 per kilowatt hour when you can get it for free, stuck to the side of your building? So I don't know. It's common. Yep.
• 53:24
  Tim Montague: Well, let's go to the green car Congress.
• 53:29
  John Weaver: So the original place where I found this article was in Chinese the original published article, yeah, Chinese letters. Yeah, yes. So, so I had to find a source that had this because I wanted people to be able to read it. But greencard congress.com, covered a new lithium ion pouch battery, that has a greater than 700 Watt hours per kilogramme, kilogramme? Energy density. Yep.
• 53:58
  John Weaver: And that what
• 54:02
  Tim Montague: is your what is your? What is your Eevee? You have a Hyundai? What is your Eevee have in terms of density?
• 54:08
  Tim Montague: And in that battery? I think?
• 54:10
  John Weaver: No idea. I don't pay you 100 kind of stuff.
• 54:12
  John Weaver: Three, yeah, probably, it's got to be comparable to a Tesla, which means it's in the 200 to 225 range. So this, now, that's a cell pack level, this is on a cell level, so the cells probably a little higher 250 300, whatever, this is more than double or triple A Tesla.
• 54:29
  John Weaver: density. And I was once told that around 400 Watt hours per kilogramme, flying becomes viable. Yeah, if we have a 700 in our potential, and we have potential for even more, you know, we're just we're so in the beginning of this battery revolution, dude, if we really have these types of technological breakthroughs that can occur later on in the in the machine, like, so many of us think, Okay, this is the technology we got, let's get on with it. This is life. But the reality is, there's a whole huge, gigantic economy whose goal is to make things better.
• 55:16
  John Weaver: And we as salespeople, Tim, you build things, I build things, we have to buy the thing that's available, get stuck thinking, Oh, this is what the tech is, but no, one day that solar panel will be 1000 Watts, one day that battery will be 1000 Watt hours per kilogramme. And it's just neat. Sometimes it's like it's when we get a chance to talk about SpaceX putting things into the moon. While soon putting things to the moon. It's when we get to talk about those things.
• 55:44
  John Weaver: It's really exciting. And speaking about batteries like this and perovskite modules like this, it's got the same kind of excitement. To me for futurology. It's just this is you're gonna have 1000 mile range car battery. That's come.
• 56:07
  Tim Montague: Yeah. agreed and the vehicles are a million mile plus vehicles. They last much longer because they have many fewer moving parts. Let's talk about this scooter. You found a solar electric scooter. Never needs to be recharged. That's a misnomer. But anyway. It just it can be recharged from the solar panel on the front of the scooter I guess right? Yes, yes.
• 56:36
  Tim Montague: Story and electric. And we love electric This slick looking solar powered electric scooter never needs to be recharged by Mike atoll. Nice little photo there looking. It's not the most streamlined front end, right?
• 56:54
  Tim Montague: It's a little fat, but I get it.
• 56:58
  Tim Montague: It's kind of it's kind of a cool concept. How many miles have charged? Does it get out of the solar panel every day? Does it say?
• 57:06
  John Weaver: It does actually has a nice little breakdown? The
• 57:10
  Tim Montague: wow, I actually have prototypes?
• 57:13
  John Weaver: Oh, yeah. Is that a conference touched them? They exist. They're real.
• 57:18
  Tim Montague: That's awesome.
• 57:18
  Tim Montague: Yep. And solar panel where you stand also.
• 57:25
  John Weaver: Yeah, so they have the solar panels are 35 to 70 watts. So I guess each panel is about 35 watts on board is a 468 watt hour battery. And seven to 14 hours of direct sunlight can completely recharge it. So if you have one day of seven hours, you can get about 11 miles of range on pure solar,
• 57:51
  Tim Montague: how do you keep somebody from from putting it in their pickup truck, though just running off with it? While it's out there in the sun charging.
• 57:59
  John Weaver: Same way you do anything else in the world, you
• 58:01
  Tim Montague: got to lock it down. Hope for the best. Lock it to a tree Well, you don't want to lock into a tree because that's going to shade the solar panel. Like it this
• 58:15
  John Weaver: neat little unit.
• 58:15
  John Weaver: It looks very smooth ish. I'm sure that it can break and standing on a panel makes me worried. But hey, you know, don't jump any sweet jumps on that thing, because you're gonna crack it. But seems like a pretty, pretty cool little thing. I like it. I just thought as little as 1400 bucks. So I'm not going to think I'm not going to buy a $1,400 scooter. I like my $40 Craigslist bike. But it's a solar powered scooter. I mean, how neat is that? Oh, I gotta cheer version two.
• 58:56
  Tim Montague: Good stuff.
• 58:58
  John Weaver: Christmas gifts for the kids.
• 59:00
  Tim Montague: Yeah, for sure.
• 59:00
  Tim Montague: All right, we have time for zero more stories. We're gonna just wrap it up. Thank you for that.
• 59:10
  Tim Montague: And let's talk about the commercial solar guys website.
• 59:14
  Tim Montague: How can our listeners find you, John?
• 59:18
  John Weaver: We got Contact Us page. Two of them. And you can also give us a call. commercial solar guy. We're contract contractor and mass and Rhode Island. We do residential. In Massachusetts, we build in New York, Pennsylvania, and New England. Consulting development, trying to build stuff. So if you're in the northeast, give us a ring we can help if you need to talk to somebody try to call after 430. Because otherwise, might have to focus on solar.
• 59:47
  John Weaver: But if you just want to talk politics or something new or interesting or something weird about solar, you can call us to do it later in the day. So I get the good work done.
• 59:57
  Tim Montague: Son in your phone number. Yes, we do. All right.
• 1:00:04
  Tim Montague: Well, and and John Weaver can be found on Twitter, and LinkedIn as well. I don't know if you're still on Mastodon, but
• 1:00:15
  John Weaver: not really. It's hard to keep up. Keep up with too many. Yeah.
• 1:00:21
  Tim Montague: And you can find us here at the Clean Power Hour at Clean Power hour.com. Give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify. There's a Reviews tab right there, right? Rate us on Apple or Spotify, that's the best place and then tell a friend about the show. Please tell a colleague, tell a friend tell a family member. We really want that word of mouth. That's the most powerful way to get people to try us out. And you know, people will listen to five or six different shows. And so we have to capture 20% of their listening mindshare, and that's not easy. So, a personal recommendation is greatly appreciated. You can connect with me on LinkedIn, Tim Montague, that's the best place or our contact form on clean power hour.com. With that, I want to say let's go solar and storage. I'm Tim Montague.
• 1:01:23
  Tim Montague: Thanks so much, John.