Latest / Clean Power Hour / Clean Power Hour LIVE December 15, 2022

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Clean Power Hour LIVE December 15, 2022 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:55
  Tim Montague: Welcome to the Clean Power Hour live. I'm Tim Montague, your co hosts Today is December 15 2022. We're wrapping up the new year, the old year.
• 1:02
  Tim Montague: And check out all of our content and clean power hour.com Give us a rating and review on Apple and Spotify that helps others find this content because we are speeding the energy transition.
• 1:16
  Tim Montague: And we need 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of more people to get interested and engaged. So welcome to the show. My co host John Weaver, commercial solar guy,
• 1:28
  John Weaver: Timothy, I hope everything's going all right. I like your holiday sweater there.
• 1:31
  John Weaver: I went in the same commercial solar guy shirt I wear every single day. But the holiday sweater thing that's kind of cool. Like I have some
• 1:43
  Tim Montague: I need some branded, I need to get a clean power hour hat. That's what I really want.
• 1:50
  John Weaver: I bought myself a commercial solar guy hat and it got destroyed after one summer because I bought a cheap Pat in the sun and the switch is wrecked. And I was like, alright, don't cheap out. If you buy a cool hat and you spend time outside. That's my that's my swag. You got very limited.
• 2:09
  Tim Montague: Lessons from John Weaver. Yeah. So, you know, we're still, we're still digesting the IRA, the inflation Reduction Act, and we're still dealing with some ups and downs in the tariff world. But you know, in general, the clean energy transition is happening.
• 2:31
  Tim Montague: What I like to point out to even people in the industry is that we're 50 years really into the energy transition, even though solar really didn't take off until 2010. We've been working on clean energy for 50 years, globally. And of course, the Europeans and the Japanese and the Chinese grabbed on to it a little faster than we did here.
• 2:58
  Tim Montague: Because we're I don't know I, I'm not sure what's wrong with us, John, but we have very cheap fossil energy. That's one thing for sure. And I'm happy to have that fossil energy. I want to save it for a rainy day. I don't want to just guzzle it. But what's on your mind, John, and then we'll get into the news?
• 3:20
  Tim Montague: Well,
• 3:21
  John Weaver: you know, it's complex. You know, last week, let me double check our news.
• 3:23
  John Weaver: But last week, I think I wrote about a tariff story saying we had tariffs. Actually, you know, maybe we should cover the tariff story. But I
• 3:34
  Tim Montague: just thought about that last week. I mean, is there is there a luminary news? Okay.
• 3:37
  Tim Montague: It was it was basically it's not a horrible situation? Yes, it could be a lot worse.
• 3:50
  John Weaver: Correct. It could have been a lot worse. The tariff situation wasn't bad. But what I saw is that in q2, and q3, the United States has seen a slowdown, and solar being deployed because of this tariff stuff. And maybe now people are slowing down a tiny bit, because they want to slow down deploying their project for 2023 to get a new incentive or something. But, you know, we have had some challenges with these tariffs.
• 4:17
  John Weaver: Even though the rulings aren't terrible against us, they're still slowing stuff down, slowing down business slowing down contiguity and it has an effect. And so volume is still moving residential assent and records man, and I you know, I actually put a screenshot in our document list, showing how the price of electricity in Massachusetts has gone up a whole bunch. And, but it's, you know, the IRA is going to be huge, and it's already starting, you know, my, my list of projects that we can potentially build are starting to grow and people are happy with the extension of the incentives.
• 4:57
  John Weaver: They're, they're conscious of it. So the IRA is gonna do a lot and, you know, we got another solar panel manufacturing, or solar wafer this time article that just hit the news this morning. And that's another effect of the IRA, you know, manufacturing is coming back.
• 5:11
  John Weaver: And so that's pretty sweet. A lot of neat stuff happening in phases building factories, SMA, this new wafer company, so it's there's there's a lot to chew on. It's just It's complex. It's a big world and, you know, nothing's there's no candy falling from the sky, Timothy, as we all know. So it's, that's my reflection on the
• 5:34
  Tim Montague: Franklin mierlo is in the news. I love this story about cubic PV, we interviewed Frank who's the CEO of cubic back in August of 2021. You can check that out on the continental Energy Solutions YouTube channel, and so good Have our listeners a little background on cubic and then I'll put this story. It's a big story. If this is real, this is a big story, I think. But what is unique about cubic they have a very unique approach to solar wafer technology. Right?
• 6:07
  John Weaver: Yeah. So cubic. So cubic was 1366. And then they, they were bought or combined with a company named hunt. And I think hunt, hunting cubic are trying to make a tandem solar cell, a perovskite, silicon tandem solar cell. And even 1366 weren't at some point. They were trying to do a thing called purposeless wafers, where they were like, building them up from nothing. That was 13. Additive Manufacturing, right. Yeah, I think that was way back in the day, what 1366 was trying, and, you know, I don't know if they're still doing it. I don't know what the status is. So, you know, I'm not certain I can't talk much about how their back end stuff is going. But, you know, this, it's so it's so it's challenged, you know, nobody has delivered perovskites In fact, I just, we have a profs guide announcement on the document.
• 7:03
  John Weaver: But nobody's delivered profs guides yet and you know, my, my initial favorite profs guide company, who was called Oxford PV, they've just kind of disappeared. You know, they broke up with Meyer burger. And then they just floated away. And it's like, oh, man, because I was all hot and bothered. And I was like, oh, man, you guys are gonna be awesome. You got machines, you're gonna have some panels out and six months, nine months. And, man, that's awesome. And boom, disappeared.
• 7:33
  John Weaver: So now you can see this mono thing. So this is what the Kubik article is about. Their they say that they're about to open a 10 gigawatt wafer facility. Now, in it, they say mono crystalline.
• 7:50
  John Weaver: So I'm wondering if this model is the standard equipment, the standard solar model, manufacturing, or if it's related in any way to their prior 1366 technology, where they were able to do some sort of curve plus, I think it's this is the direct manufacturer direct wafer, that's this thing they're talking about. So I'm assuming from basic looking at that article, the way you just scroll through that this is going to be standard mono wafers. Maybe they'll turn into something else cooler, though. I don't know that answer. I don't want to talk it up yet. Because it's way too soon. Yeah, we
• 8:29
  Tim Montague: might look at the cubic website, which I just did you see that? They have four sections? Yes. Start with mono.
• 8:38
  Tim Montague: And they go tandem, they mentioned perovskites. And so ultimately, I think they are planning to do a sandwich. I call it a sandwich, right? It's like peanut butter, jelly, bread, peanut butter, jelly bread. And thereby achieving greater efficiency overall, right? But it sounds like maybe this is a baby steps thing. And they're going to just go for it with monocrystalline. And that makes sense in my mind, right?
• 9:09
  Tim Montague: We there's there's definitely a market for the mono technology.
• 9:15
  Tim Montague: And 10 gigawatts is nothing to sneeze at. That's, that's and we
• 9:21
  John Weaver: don't have wafers, we don't have a lot of wafers in the United States. So. So this weird little
• 9:28
  Tim Montague: wafers, if any.
• 9:28
  Tim Montague: For PV, right, what like what they're so
• 9:34
  John Weaver: I don't think, I don't think we have any wafers.
• 9:37
  John Weaver: But when I brought up that this might be the first wafer announcement. Kelly, the Kelly's from solar power world, gave me an link to another company that announced a wafer, but we don't have any solar wafers being manufactured in the United States to the best of my knowledge for standard PV. So this, and that prior announcement, could hypothetically, you know, would be amongst the first you know, who's to sell you cells factory that they were thinking about in Texas, the fully vertical one full, that one would have wafers as well. But, you know, this would be the beginnings of it.
• 10:16
  John Weaver: So this is cool. We've seen a bunch of module assembly facilities, we've seen a few or one cell facility, so a solar cell. That's NL, the European group, and this would be the second wafer. Now, neither of these wafer companies have deployed a factory ever. And this company has been taking in a lot of money from investment people for a long time. They've probably got a lot of talent, but they've never actually delivered a product to the market. So you do have to grain assaulted a tiny bit and the timing on this You know, press release might be a touch weird.
• 10:51
  John Weaver: May because they say they're about to announce a location in q1. Maybe they're putting this out there to, you know, get their, their city to give them a little more incentive, some more tax credits some better land benefits, I'm not certain. But uh, but it is cool. You know, 10 gigs is a big number dude. I mean, it's not biggest in China course, China's got 50 Gig facilities, but this would be the biggest wafer facility in the United States. You know, from a gigawatt standpoint, it would be the biggest of a single item. So, so it's cool.
• 11:29
  Tim Montague: Yeah. I love the quote from Frank in that story.
• 11:32
  Tim Montague: The Ira represents a titanic shift in the global solar landscape, and the US is poised to become the world's most competitive location to manufacture solar. It is no accident, right? That these factories are coming. I just did an interview yesterday with a company called American battery factory. And they are now building a giga factory in Tucson, Arizona, to build lithium iron phosphate, battery cells. This interview will drop sometime in January. But again, it's no accident. It's all about this IRA. And onshoring manufacturing is so vital. It's probably the worst thing that America ever did. To offshore, its manufacturing to Mexico, and Asia. It it destroyed Michigan.
• 12:26
  Tim Montague: Like what, what a what a wasteland, Michigan has become in the Detroit area. And it's just a shame, right? So anyway, the Rust Belt is soon to be the solar PV belt. And that's a good thing. And it's a win win. I mean, that's the thing that most consumers don't realize, John is that when we make the clean energy transition, it's good for their pocketbooks. In the long run, consumers are going to save something like $900 to $1,000 a year by electrifying their homes, electrifying their transportation, putting solar on their roof, solar and battery.
• 13:11
  Tim Montague: It's it is good for consumers in the long run. And of course, that means a lot of manufacturing, a lot of infrastructure, a lot of construction jobs. We we want this economy to crank. And you know, it's funny, there's a lot of hype about the fusion energy announcement that was made this last week, and I was just listening to The Wall Street Journal podcast. They have a little daily tech Roundup. And it's really, I shrug my shoulders. It's like an as Elon says, Sure, technically, humans will solve fusion. And it is clean. And I love it that there's no radioactive waste from fusion. But, man, is it expensive, and it's still far, far away. And so I say Yeah, put some eggs in that basket. But let's build some damn solar wind and storage because we have the technology and we know that it works. Let's move on John. Great salaries. Thank you for for finding that and thank you to Kelly picker led solar power world we we really appreciate solar power world.
• 14:23
  John Weaver: Wait, wait, did you see Billy, you responded to him on Twitter?
• 14:28
  Tim Montague: Yeah, the only slapdown didn't need
• 14:33
  John Weaver: you and I can take them at the same time. But tall guys are really hard, because they got long reach. So you gotta be careful. I'm only I'm like just barely under six feet.
• 14:42
  John Weaver: But I got like a big head going for me, but it makes for a big target. So I may or may not be your best fighting partner for Billy.
• 14:48
  Tim Montague: Well, and as I as I responded, Billy, Billy said, Hey, yo, dude, I'm six, seven, you got nothing on me. I'm only six four. Well, technically six, four and a quarter. I don't want to be six, seven. Like it's not enough being six four. It's hard enough to find clothes that fit you and I stand out in the crowd but I don't want to I don't want to be ahead of the crowd. But
• 15:15
  John Weaver: pack in jeans, packing jeans into overhead container packages must be really hard for you when you fly places that's probably why you drive everywhere because your your clothing is so big.
• 15:28
  Tim Montague: That's funny.
• 15:29
  John Weaver: I strategically dress when I get on to airplanes. I make sure I wear my big clothing so I have more packing space. Right. So you know this next one that clicking on you know I've been watching the price of solar panels via PV Infolink Well, Infolink group they've adjusted their name And over the last few weeks, maybe a couple months, we've been seeing the price, teeter teeter totter.
• 15:56
  John Weaver: And then I think this might be the first big week where we had double digit subcomponent price drops. And so, you know, 10%, for some of the pricing in the components that make up a solar panel, which tells me that pretty soon, we're gonna have some cheaper panels. So the wafers, if you look at this document, the wafers for most larger products fell, you know, a few cents per watt. And, and that's pretty helpful. And that probably speaks of what's coming. Because if we, you know, if we see the wafers coming now, and the biggest volumes haven't come on line yet, in China, we might see a little more, or we might see a decent amount more price drop, in terms of solar panels and different gear. And this is the spot market. So this isn't long term contracts that these companies assigned. But this is, you know, what's happening right now. So, so the sole purpose of this is to say, guys, next year, we will have some cheaper modules available.
• 17:07
  John Weaver: And you should already start to see if you'd like the biggest customers, you're already seeing it, because the price of shipping is down from, you know, 10,000 15,000 bucks a container down to now 2000 bucks, that container, so that in and of itself is worth a couple of cents per watt. Now the actual modules are going to start to come down. And it started with wafers. And you know, a couple of weeks ago was poly silicon a little bit, but now it's moving the wafers, it'll come to cells next, after sales, we'll have panels. And so, you know, I just thought that was cool. I tried to look out for this report every Wednesday, when it pops up. It's like 678 am on Wednesday.
• 17:49
  Tim Montague: It says here, and this is, as you said, info link.
• 17:54
  Tim Montague: The title of the story is wafer price war begins amid intensifying upstream negotiations. Right here sell prices plunged by six to 8% this week. Yeah. That's, that's awesome. So anyway, we yeah, we like cheaper solar modules. In general, it makes projects pencil better. Yeah. So what's not to like about that, and I don't know anything else about this.
• 18:24
  John Weaver: Um, not a whole lot on it. It's just, uh, you know, that's the spot price page. And you can see the numbers more exact down below there. But, uh, it's just, I just want to talk about pricing, you know, we can talk about the huge volumes that are coming next. But that could be a later story, but the price is going to come down, we're gonna see big time volume. These poly silicon companies, they made a lot of money over the last year or two. Because from what I've learned, it was more demand driving the price up, versus some fundamental price increase the price of polysilicon did it double or triple because of electricity.
• 19:02
  John Weaver: It doubled or tripled, because everybody wanted to buy it. And they were able to get a little more money from it. So. So it's just, you know, pricing should tight pregnancy type pricing should soften. And that'll be nice.
• 19:17
  Tim Montague: Yep.
• 19:20
  John Weaver: So we can talk about how people who are big into conspiracies also happen to dislike wind power a lot. Did you know that?
• 19:37
  Tim Montague: I did not know that. I am cautious about people who are big into conspiracies.
• 19:42
  Tim Montague: But what's the conspiracy?
• 19:47
  John Weaver: Well, the conspiracy is that wind has all kinds of issues that like it keeps you up late at night. So this is a story. And it's sorry, I jumped in front of you talking about the California Solar carport, we'll do that next. But the story right above, it's just a research thing. And it aligns conspiracy people have lots of conspiracies about wind farms, just in general wind farms, can cause cancer can make you brain tired. Can you know there's tons and tons of little things out there. Even Donald Trump who said dumb stuff about it. So there's lots of conspiracy about wind farms. Then secondly, we the researchers found that lots of people that believe in conspiracies in general also dislike wind farms. And so the higher the probability of you being a conspiracy person, the more you probably dislike wind farms. And, and the more you probably believe in these weird conspiracy theories about wind farms. So I don't know. I can understand disliking being the neighbor of a wind farm if you're not getting paid any money, I totally get it.
• 21:00
  John Weaver: However, it's really, it's really funny when I hear some of the things people say, and so, so I don't know, if you if you see somebody talking crap about a wind farm, Tim, take a moment.
• 21:15
  John Weaver: Think about it. Do you think they're crazy? Is there a little bit
• 21:24
  Tim Montague: I do know one crazy person in my community who dislikes wind farms because he bought some land that was slated for wind farm development, and then the wind farm got developed. And he didn't like the sound and the flicker. And I can appreciate that I don't want to live right next to a wind farm myself. But then he has gone on to try to fight solar using the same the same mantra, which is that solar farms make noise. And yeah, solar farms do make noise during the day when the inverters are humming. But guess what? That noise is less than the background noise of dogs and sirens and everything else going on the wind. So, yeah, that that particular conspiracy holds no water and, and, and solar doesn't make any noise at night, of course, because the sun isn't shining in the solar farm is completely silent. But anyway, it is interesting, I guess that there's a correlation. Thank you nature energy for publishing this story, interesting social science going on here in the energy field. And I'm just glad that I'm a solar developer, not a wind developer, honestly, uh, we need we need both, we already have a lot of wind. But, but I'm sure it's harder to get permission to cite a wind farm than it is a solar farm. Yeah, as as I was just talking with Joe to sound of encore. You know, he came from developing cell towers to the solar industry. And you can largely hide a solar farm with just some, you know, evergreen trees, you know, these are low, growing, pointy, and you make a fence row out of these trees and solar farm gone. Not so much with a wind farm.
• 23:22
  John Weaver: But these are big trees.
• 23:24
  Tim Montague: Let's talk about the price of energy. You know, energy prices are going up all over the United States and all over the world. And you know, we have been spoiled here in the Midwest with very cheap energy.
• 23:36
  Tim Montague: I myself pay four and a half cents. That's going to double or triple here in 2023. But you've got some spikes going on in Massachusetts, what's the stories?
• 23:52
  John Weaver: Yeah, so I just saw this little ad that was floating around on Twitter that was pitching me and saying, hey, you know, look what's happening. And they quantified it. And I knew that the price was going up this fall, because, you know, I just know, and there was a really great story by WBUR. And I think they're an NPR, I give them money every month. But they did a really great story where they broke down how the increases are happening across the state. And so if you look at this document, though, the screen shot that I share on Twitter, this is from you know, solar company who was advertising but they were breaking down the numbers and it really surprised me, like National Grid, the price of electricity is more than doubling. And this is just a pure electricity price. So to over 33 cents, that means people are gonna be paying over 40 cents per kilowatt hour when you add in distribution and transmission if I'm reading this, right, and really got to double check these numbers, but, you know, these are big rates, and, you know, this is a big cost. So, I my comment when I put this image out there was that pretty soon in mass, maybe already, you won't really need an incentive $1 incentive to motivate installs from a price you know, from an investment standpoint, you just might need some policy you know, a strong net metering program for residential systems which is what's in place these days. And and because it's rough, you know, electricity this expensive is going to drive a lot of people to do some behind the meter, residential solar. And I just, I just saw these numbers I was like, Oh, my goodness, and I'm glad I don't use a lot of electricity but even the price of gas is going up. So you know, my heating bill on my apartments all gas so I'm gonna have to deal with it. But, but this is you It's a number that was big.
• 25:50
  John Weaver: And I was like, oh, it just kind of hurt when I saw that number.
• 25:53
  John Weaver: So I just want to expensive,
• 25:56
  Tim Montague: more expensive energy is good for energy professionals because more people are going to get into wind. Well, solar and storage.
• 26:02
  Tim Montague: And but it is it you know, the real pain point for society is low and middle income people.
• 26:16
  Tim Montague: Inflation is just very hard on them, right, their paycheck is not increasing, and their bills are going up, everything is getting more expensive gasoline, electricity, food. And so it's it is tough times. And I feel for those folks, and that's why we have to have carve outs for low and middle income when we develop solar legislation, which, you know, you have in Massachusetts, you have this in New York, you have it in Illinois and California. So that's why we need government to look out for the less advantaged of our population otherwise.
• 27:00
  Tim Montague: It's winner take all and, and we will have lots more losers. So should we talk about carports?
• 27:09
  John Weaver: I like carports.
• 27:11
  Tim Montague: I love carports.
• 27:11
  Tim Montague: They are the sexiest thing on earth, in my opinion. And parking lots are but ugly, let's face it. They're ugly. They're They're huge heat islands, right? They're just this black surface. They take up a huge amount of space, they take up 30% of urban areas. And you've done some calcs you have a nice story in PV magazine this week about some wonky legislation incentivizing carports. But what did you learn? And what's the story in California? And oh, my God, that's a beautiful picture from Vermont, isn't it?
• 27:47
  John Weaver: Yes, it is. Yeah, son common. Just said somebody who I connected with on Twitter, I was asking for carport pictures, and what a wonderful little setup they have there. So in California, it's just a very early piece of legislation.
• 28:04
  John Weaver: There's nothing attached to it, it simply says it is the intent to provide incentives for solar canopies over parking lots via tax credit. And the goal is to make these parking lots in downtown areas, so that we can minimize land use in rural areas and the transmission so that we can keep farming, farming and make better use of our land and, and the senator, they he put out a press release, Senator Becker, he said in his press release, he said that pavement makes 35 to 50% of the total surface areas in cities and 40% of that pavement is parking lots. That's DICOM. That's disgusting. So it's like 20%, of the city of LA is parking lots. And, and below that, he says that he goes LA County has 101 square miles of parking lots. So that's that's the motivation is to you know, he's pushing on a tax credit.
• 29:08
  John Weaver: And, and again, there was a very limited amount of data, like literally in the in the article, there's one sentence, and that's what the whole of the legislation is, as of yet. So it's very early, it's to be discussed. But I just you know, if California does a tax credit, and the world follows California, that's great.
• 29:25
  John Weaver: Because, you know, the I did some rough math at the top, and I've seen this map out there, so I was just repeating it. But if a single parking spot is 144 square feet, you can fit 2.5 to three kW, you can generate almost 50% of the United States is electricity with 25% of its parking spots. So just parking lots. Now let's let's be extreme, this is not a real
• 29:59
  Tim Montague: thing at all. If we solarized every parking spot we could completely green the grid just with parking lot solar, right.
• 30:06
  John Weaver: I was just gonna say that and say I didn't want to get too fantastical because you know, but yes, we could do half of the parking lots and be at like 90% is really what it's saying this parking lots that doesn't include rooftops.
• 31:12
  John Weaver: doesn't include wind. This is just solar parking lots. Yeah, we could do 90%. And remember,
• 31:22
  Tim Montague: the reason we haven't done this is because carports are relatively expensive. Yes, I love them. But they are expensive and everyone wants a carport until they get the pricing on it. And so that's where roof or traditional ground mount solar is still more competitive. But oh The other thing I should say is the the aesthetics, I think they're wonderful, they provide shade for the car, so your car doesn't get baking hot in the summer.
• 31:49
  Tim Montague: And then you can see that you're actually Greening the Grid, too.
• 31:53
  Tim Montague: I love it, you know, rooftop solar for industrial solar, you don't see it, it's 30 feet in the air on a flat roof, you don't even know it's there. But what were you gonna say?
• 32:07
  John Weaver: I don't know, I don't know, carpets are expensive, you know, the steel costs a lot of money, the labor costs are higher. And then there's generally some expensive trenching, as well, the legislation can be challenging, because, you know, of carport, a lot of times, you just have open parking lots that aren't even associated with the building and the carport in the parking lot in the building are separate.
• 32:33
  John Weaver: And then, and I don't know this, because I'm not in the car in the parking lot business. But I assume that a lot of parking lot people believe that they have a real estate investment that could turn into a structure. And if you build a 2535 year carport, you're suddenly limiting what you can do with your piece of land. And I assume, I don't know, I just assumed that that was part of the equation that might slow down carport installations. But they're hard to do. They're hard. They're heavy. There's a lot of steel, a lot of labor, you know, extra 75 cents extra dollar with the price of steel these days. It's rough. But I like carports. Massachusetts offers six cents per kilowatt hour for 20 years, if you do a carport on top of whatever incentive they have. So that's not bad. That's good. And that covers costs of carport over the years. As long as it's a big enough system
• 33:27
  Tim Montague: to 50 generous incentive. Yes, incentives. Yep.
• 33:33
  Tim Montague: So carports can build special incentive for carports. Yet in Illinois, I look forward to that day. And but this is why we need carve outs for carports. It's a huge wasted resource today. And honestly, when when the robo taxi does come, then we're going to need a lot fewer cars, and you just got this huge wasted space. And so putting batteries and solar arrays almost carp on those parking lots is going to be is going to be a great thing.
• 34:04
  Tim Montague: And we can actually power huge amounts of our infrastructure with without real estate, we won't have to repurpose into something totally different.
• 34:11
  Tim Montague: Just put some solar and batteries on it. And I mean, you could do, you could have a dual use then, right? You could have some other activity going on underneath. But there's not going to be cars, we're gonna have a lot fewer cars. It's going to take a while. And Elon has got to truly get the robo going. Stop Stop fussing with Twitter Elon and get the robo going. Okay, come on. Oh, yeah, he's such a slacker.
• 34:45
  John Weaver: Yeah, let's focus, buddy, focus, build us build some weird things. That's what the world needs from you. That's what the world needs. All right.
• 34:53
  John Weaver: We're talking about next. All kinds of stuff out there, Tim, every single day by Meyer burger, our favorite
• 35:06
  Tim Montague: favorite solar company, doubt. Meyer burger a partnership to develop perovskite tandem technology targeting industries industrial scale. You know, I'm so curious about perovskites. I've, I've heard that one of the challenges is making them more durable, right? Yes, the stuff wants to fall apart more easily than crystallin PV. I don't understand that material science. That's one of the problems. It also is classically dependent on lead, which I'm not crazy about because lead is toxic. And I don't want a lot of lead floating around in the environment. I don't know. You know if they're if they're transcending this, but it is interesting that Meyer burger is going after perovskites that tells me that there's something there there is a there there.
• 36:00
  John Weaver: So Meyer burger was a partner with the other group Oxford PV and Oxford PV.
• 36:08
  Tim Montague: Seriously disappearing solar company Oxford PV.
• 36:11
  John Weaver: Yeah. And I was huge. I was all hot and bothered. They were awesome.
• 36:14
  John Weaver: They were as twice I've said that this show, but they were like it's all about perovskites you can see the technology that makes me go sweet. But uh, they just disappeared. And somebody hinted online, that when they backed out of the deal with Meyer burger, that limited their ability to get finance, and so now they're having challenges getting financed going forward.
• 36:38
  John Weaver: And so I get it I get why that happens. They drop Meyer burger who's really smart company, but I'm really happy to see. So this Helmholtz Zentrum, Berlin group HCB they are right now the leaders, I think, in putting out the most efficient perovskites silicon tandem cell, and they're on the top of the Enroll list.
• 37:00
  John Weaver: So they're like, well over, not well over, they're like, 31%. So they're over 30% from their cell. And, you know, they're, they're working on it. And so I'm just, I'm just happy to see the specific companies have come together. Because it's just, it's just neat. It's, it's, we're hoping to see, you know, the next technology, because this can take modules over 30%.
• 37:29
  John Weaver: And again, it's far in the future, and everything you said is correct. perovskites in general, right now break down a lot. However, I have seen research suggesting that we're working through those challenges, as well. I do think perovskites have led in them.
• 37:48
  John Weaver: But we do mostly seal our solar panels really well. And so that led just like, you know, the other wood
• 37:57
  Tim Montague: gets repurposed, though, right? It's gonna get ground up and dust is gonna fly around. And anyway,
• 38:05
  John Weaver: yeah, so it's, it's something that has to be accounted for. You know, if the lead amounts are small enough, I don't know exactly how it works, though. You know, how much lead and whether it's a lead that can get into the environment, because there's some structuring of materials where everything is locked and bound together. So it's like, for instance, one time I read that, if a first solar solar panel was hit by a tornado, it would not damage the panel to the point where the cadmium would get into the, into the market, and they literally were hit by a tornado. And so that's how I have this data.
• 38:45
  John Weaver: They had a tornado roll over one of their power plants in the desert, and, you know, just destroyed a bunch of crap. Got all fixed. But yeah, cause some issues.
• 38:54
  Tim Montague: And then these hzb guys have a sense of humor. They have a consortium called the pepperoni Consortium. CO funded by the EU under horizon, Europe, and its long term funding program for our and I, and the Swiss Secretary of Education, blah, blah, blah, we should look at what meets Q sells as part of the deal, obviously, major solar panel maker from South Korea, and they are making panels in the US in Georgia, expanding that facility. And they're also a developer. I'm so curious about this, how solar panel technology companies, they vertically integrate like first solar did they become developers and asset owners, and then they d integrate, not disintegrate, but D integrate and they spin off. So first solar's back to just being a solar panel company. Meanwhile, q cells is now a full cycle. Everything including asset ownership, I think I get it from a like a money making perspective. I just don't know if that works as a business when you have so many different business lines. But anyway, good stuff T
• 40:15
  John Weaver: cell T cell is owned by Harnois. Harnois is a global conglomerate that owns a million different companies. So so when you when we talk about QC, I think we even may have chatted about it last week or an article I covered but you sell
• 40:33
  Tim Montague: yourselves a lot.
• 40:33
  Tim Montague: They make really nice solar panels for one day.
• 40:37
  John Weaver: Well, they they have a project that they were owning, I believe, and we discovered the project was owned by one seven for energy and energy was a subsidiary a 174 was a subsidiary of something else. And then the next one was a subsidiary of the cue cell Energy Group and ACU cell Energy Group was owned by the Han walk conglomerate. So it's, it's just, you know, for cue cell, they have 1000 different businesses that they in their family are in and so I think it's a you know, they're gonna do a lot in solar and batteries, solar control systems. They're just, they're just all over it.
• 41:17
  John Weaver: And hopefully they build this nine gigawatt fully vertically integrated facility that could be somewhere in the United States. We talked about it on the show, but they are looking at Texas, Georgia, Alabama, you know, different regions in the south southeast for for a big facility. You're talking about q cells, cheese Oh, yeah. Yep.
• 41:38
  John Weaver: kept up. Yeah, there They have, they have a facility in Georgia, that's like 1.8 gigawatts of panel assembly. And I think they're expanding it to maybe over two. Maybe it's a new site, maybe it's the same site. And then they have a totally separate site that they are exploring and trying to put together. And that's the Texas facility that was nine gigs, vertically integrated one. That could also be other places. It could be in other states in the southeast from what I read. So lots of people were chasing Q cell for that facility. It's a lot of jobs. Yep. All right, let's
• 42:18
  Tim Montague: talk about hydrogen. We haven't talked about hydrogen lately. So glad you found a story and power technology, Air Products and as to build $4 billion hydrogen facility in Texas. projects includes project includes 1.4 gigawatts of wind and solar power capacity. I am a fan of hydrogen. As long as it's green, all the other colors I really could give a rat's butt about
• 42:51
  John Weaver: what about the pink? The pink hydrogen comes from nuclear?
• 42:54
  Tim Montague: Yeah, nuclear is okay. You know, if it's an existing facility, fine. But anyway, wind and solar is the way to go, right? Take water, wind and solar and Bada, bing, bada, boom, oxygen and hydrogen out the back end. And then you can fuel many aspects of industry that you want, right?
• 43:15
  Tim Montague: You could make steel, you can do any kind of heating process that you really want to hydrogen burns hotter than methane, or natural gas. So lots of possibilities with hydrogen.
• 43:29
  Tim Montague: It's hard to transport, you have to have special pipes for it.
• 43:34
  Tim Montague: Because it's such a small molecule. It likes to get into the nooks and crannies and make your pipes brutal. And it leaks.
• 43:42
  Tim Montague: So anyway, but it's it's, it's going to be a thing. It's already a thing like that's the thing is we don't even realize it. But there is a hydrogen economy. It's just in select places. And unless you're into applications that require hydrogen, which I am not familiar with, what are all the applications, but there already is. So we already have a brown, a black and gray and blue hydrogen economy. Now we just need a green hydrogen economy, right? But what's this? What's going on in Texas?
• 44:14
  John Weaver: It's what I mean, what you said at the beginning, it's company who is going to build 1.4 gigs of wind and solar, and they're gonna make 200? Is it 200 tons a day? Or is it these 200 tonnes a day of hydrogen? Yeah, and it's going to have 115 permanent jobs, which I thought was neat. I'm wondering, because for the solar, you know, maybe it's like 10 people, but the hydrogen, you know, maybe it's another 100, I'm interested in learning the numbers, and starting to see these relationships. The hydrogen, they're going to sell it in a long term contract to, to the other company. So as so under the 30 year agreement, Air Products will act as the air products will purchase the hydrogen and market it somewhere. And as is just going to be the developer of the solar and the hydrogen project. And what's cool is that all this gear will get 30% 40% tax credits, probably at least 40, because Texas is full of energy communities, and then they're gonna get tax credits for the hydrogen being green. So they're gonna get to tax credits, they're gonna get tax credit, I believe, for the electrolysis hardware, I believe they'll get a tax credit for the, well, I know, they'll get it from the solar and the wind, and then they'll get a certain amount, up to three bucks a kilogram for the hydrogen, that's Greek. And so they're gonna have a whole bunch I'm, I'm really, you know, I think that hydrogen has a strong chance. I'm wondering if I'm being manipulated by the big world because there's so much marketing out there. And I know so little about hydrogen and I know that the fossils are pushing hydrogen hard, because they want to make use of their in French infrastructure. They want to use gas as a bridge fuel.
• 46:09
  Tim Montague: Methane, right?
• 46:09
  Tim Montague: It's carbon and for hydrogen atoms, right? So there's a lot of hydrogen in methane. And you can just add energy to that and break that apart. And, and that's what the fossil fuel companies want to do because they're in the in the methane business. And that's a problem because it it fuels the fossil fuel industry, basically. And we need to just put that industry on ice, calm down, keep the stuff in the ground if you get out of the ground. You're gonna use it. And, and methane leaking is a huge problem, right? Most people are completely ignorant of how big a problem methane leaks are, it's a much more potent greenhouse gas than co2, I think by a factor of 1000, or something crazy, it's a much more potent greenhouse gas. And I think number Yeah. And so while methane is very useful, we want to just keep it in the ground and move to green hydrogen. And we don't need as much gas period, we can use just electricity for a lot of processes. As Rando energy is demonstrating. Checkout Rando energy. I've had a slew of thermal energy companies on the on the show, but I really like Rhonda, they're just making hot breaks. So it's a heartbreak battery, making the heat with electric resistance, like what you have in your toaster. It's very tried and true. It's very old, established, efficient technology. But green hydrogen coming to Texas, it's good stuff. It's good stuff. 1000 What did it say? 1500 jobs. 1300 construction jobs. It's a big project 1.4 gigawatts of solar and wind. And any yes knows how to do that. So it seems like a good I've never heard of this air company, though. Were they
• 48:11
  John Weaver: was new one for me to Air Products.
• 48:20
  Tim Montague: Air Products and chemical. And chemicals Inc is a provider of industrial gases.
• 48:24
  Tim Montague: Okay. They're into all kinds of industrial gases. Makes sense?
• 48:29
  Tim Montague: Got another handle gas, if you're going to handle hydrogen.
• 48:35
  Tim Montague: That's,
• 48:37
  John Weaver: you know, I, I feel like my company should at least try some hydrogen to gain some knowledge and not be left behind. But I haven't like, where do you start? I mean, how do you manage getting the liquid fuel away from your facility?
• 48:53
  John Weaver: How do you store it during the daytime? And you know, it's just an interesting, it's a whole new set of world to learn about that. Absolutely. overwhelms me with everything else going on.
• 49:05
  John Weaver: But sounds like 1000 people are going to do it and make boatloads of money off of it. So making use of these incentives, some people are gonna get some amazing, amazing project returns on investment that are just goofy. And good for them. Yep.
• 49:23
  John Weaver: So, so hydrogen, hydrogen is common in a big way. This is a big, big volume. You know, I hope it gets built. And good luck. Good luck. All you folks.
• 49:31
  John Weaver: Do some hydrogen,
• 49:35
  Tim Montague: you've got a story about charging infrastructure.
• 49:38
  Tim Montague: Let's talk about that. You know, the things that I've learned recently, I had mentioned American battery factory. Paul Charles, and that interview is going to drop in in FET in January, but we need six terawatts of storage by his calculations, and that is a lot of batteries. But what what is this? It's an infographic. Yep.
• 50:03
  Tim Montague: From ATR I charging ATI American Transportation Research Institute. Okay, ATR. I've never heard
• 50:14
  John Weaver: of them. I like the picture on the second page. And there's other good information, the map the map, yes. And the map breaks down the percentage of electricity from that state that will be necessary to fully electrify transportation. It also breaks out the two different types. So it says 26.3% of electricity to pass to power passenger cars and trucks 14% for all freight trucks, including 10.6% for long haul.
• 50:51
  John Weaver: So I just, that's first time I saw it broken out that way. 26 of the residential
• 50:56
  Tim Montague: use percentages are 2% of the grid power needed to electrify transportation.
• 51:02
  John Weaver: Just pure kWh is and it varies.
• 51:06
  Tim Montague: It looks like it varies between 30% and 60%.
• 51:09
  Tim Montague: Basically, it's much higher in California for some reason. 57% in California, or 60% in Maine, yeah, no. Why? Why would it be so high in some states? I mean, it varies by drivers
• 51:20
  John Weaver: to their driving a lot. You know, people in Maine drive long distances. People in California drive all the time.
• 51:27
  John Weaver: It's just what they do. So that's that's my assumption.
• 51:32
  Tim Montague: Just what they do, yeah, California
• 51:35
  John Weaver: and California car culture man that's like that's they love cars in Cali. So that's what I assume. I mean, You know, I'm no expert, of course, well, a little bit expert. But that's I assume it's because you know, California has just a lot of cars and people like to drive and they drive huge distances. And from the country into the city, it's a bit much. Yeah, I ran a
• 51:59
  Tim Montague: bike. So this is this is this is why we need to double the grid that right 40% overall of of our electricity is going to go to electrification overall. And so that's electricity that's not being consumed today. Right. It's being driven by fossil fuels.
• 52:17
  Tim Montague: And right. And the good news is, is we have plenty of wind and solar. And soon batteries, we have to make a lot more batteries. And American battery factory building Gigafactory in Tucson, Arizona, to to compete with Tesla basically, right, Tesla's awesome. Probably the the biggest in collaboration with Panasonic.
• 52:46
  John Weaver: And, and that chart, when you look at it, it's it's specifically focused on specifically focused on transportation, it doesn't include heating. If we electrify heating up in the north, we need to like double and triple the grid, something's gonna have we're gonna have to learn some serious stuff to electrify heating in the northeast, it's going to be more in the north just north in general, expensive challenge.
• 53:15
  Tim Montague: I mean, heat pumps and resistant heat. That combination does work. Your audio got funky there, John. I don't know what happened. But maybe your
• 53:30
  John Weaver: maybe you're but now you're muted. Oh, yeah, my speakers suddenly stopped working. And I couldn't hear you, Tim. Sorry about that. The computer told me so.
• 53:44
  Tim Montague: You're cool. That sounds better. Now. While we're wrapping up the show, truck charging availability will be the truck parking crisis. 2.0.
• 53:51
  Tim Montague: It says here using Sadie's trucking charging requirements, more charges will be needed than there are parking spaces. Yeah, I can see that. Right. When you go to a truck stop. The trucks are all parked right next to each other right in these rows.
• 54:07
  Tim Montague: And, and you're gonna need to add a lot of space there to put these mega chargers. So it's a thing. Luckily, we have lots of real estate. We're swimming in real estate, we just we just got to integrate soldiers and batteries.
• 54:27
  John Weaver: I saw an interesting post on LinkedIn.
• 54:31
  John Weaver: And it was from a truck company and electric truck company. And I think I just found that tweet.
• 54:36
  John Weaver: And so what they did so the group is called forum mobility.
• 54:39
  John Weaver: And they did a ribbon cutting with what they said was their first customer. And it's a deal to provide five classy, bladder electric trucks, I think classy is the biggest size for chargers, no fast chargers and the electricity. And they're specifically using it for drainage drainage. And I think what dry edge is, is where you move the shipping containers from the port to local storage before they go on the long trip.
• 55:11
  John Weaver: And so they're doing they're this company, they do drives, they moved the product from the port to the local factories, and they just bought five class eight battery trucks. And the key is they got the chargers and the electricity in the deal. And that's what I thought was interesting. They didn't just do a truck. They didn't say okay, here's your truck, needed a truck, let's chargers and the electricity. So there was a deeper game that was going on that somebody said, This is how we have to do this to make the transaction work. And I don't really know. That's interesting.
• 55:45
  John Weaver: Interesting to see. So I, you know, I hope Tesla does really well with their truck. And I hope every other big trucking company fights to keep their money and does really well with their trucks. I saw so many complaining about the Tesla truck and some of the nuances of it. And talking about Yeah, and then he was talking about how all these other trucks were great. And I'm like, You know what? Wonderful. We have truck building competition. And he was pointing out Evie trucks and I'm like, You know what, this is great. Everybody's arguing I love it. So you guys keep fighting Yeah, I'll I'll make sure we review the negative feedback on the structure the Tesla truck so we can get some maybe you know, some trucking people who have a big Evie truck. And we can talk about that. So that would be cool.
• 56:35
  Tim Montague: Yeah, that's the electric semis are coming. Volvo is making one week we talked about this, either last week or the week before. or there's there's a handful of makers.
• 56:43
  Tim Montague: Tesla wasn't the first to market. But let's wrap up, let's talk about your project. I think this is your project in rural Massachusetts, if I remember correctly, right?
• 56:55
  John Weaver: Yep, yep. Yep. I wouldn't call it rural. It's Dartmouth, which is South coasts. So we're not rural.
• 57:00
  John Weaver: It's, we do have some space down here, some farmland, and it's a little less, it's not the city, definitely not the city. But this is a nice project, we're just we're about to close it up.
• 57:09
  John Weaver: We were having some challenges getting key components to him, if you want to help me this week, you can help me get some disconnects. And so this is country gravel here. And we're deploying that, you know, just finishing up our road. But we got our fence mostly up, I think the fence is done by now we have a guy got through another inspection. And it was just nice to get that road in. Because, you know, you got to have something there. The site, we can't do anything on the ground.
• 57:38
  John Weaver: So we're just gonna have to like hack at the hack at the plants, but we can't do anything on the ground to the spring because it's a little too cold to plant stuff. And we didn't get a good chance to do anything on the soil but but it's just nice to finish up the road. I think if you do one of the pictures, you can see the matte we put down the black material. Yeah, we were doing some edging. Yeah. So that's so first you put down some goes down before the gravel. Yeah. Yeah. So I believe the orders at first you put down soil, you compact the soil, then you put down the fabric, then you put down the gravel. I think that's the order of the different layers. But I'm not on the field and Benji, he's our civil engineer, he actually knows Benji actually builds railroads, railroads, versus just gravel roads. So he knows he knows a lot about it.
• 58:27
  Tim Montague: Is the tilt Do you know is this a 25 degree or 30 degree tilt? It looks like 25 to me, but I'm just
• 58:33
  John Weaver: it's definitely not 30 It's definitely not 30 But it's probably closer to 2025.
• 58:37
  Tim Montague: Yeah, the advantage of 25 is you get you can put more rows right less row space. And you get a little less production in the winter of course but what it's it's there's there's little nuances like this when you're designing this is about a half a mag right
• 58:59
  John Weaver: 216 Kw DC so a quarter of a Magnum mag? Yes yes.
• 59:04
  Tim Montague: And and it was a front of the meter if I recall right.
• 59:07
  John Weaver: This is a standalone that has a 20 year fixed contract to sell its electricity to the
• 59:11
  Tim Montague: utility so to do alright
• 59:19
  John Weaver: this is a common installation type in Massachusetts because of our legislation structure so it's a nice little install to school like it's almost done really having an issue with our disconnect him oh they were delayed two or three times and then now our component is on the no date list. So that's really bad you know disconnect we should have a lot sooner so I don't know I gotta figure out how to find some disconnects so that's that's where my help is needed today Timothy
• 59:56
  Tim Montague: yeah supply chain issues I have a saying to Joe to sound I've never said that word so much that expression supply chain supply chain supply chain but so mr. Weaver How can our listeners find you I'm gonna put your website on screen other way
• 1:00:18
  John Weaver: Marshall comm or commercial solar guy.com commercial solar guy.com. That is our that is our place. We contact us page. Got a little goofy video of me there from five years ago. Now. It's been out there for
• 1:00:38
  Tim Montague: a while. You need to update that video.
• 1:00:41
  John Weaver: Yeah, but it's a funny video. And at the end of the video, I say I like big roofs and I cannot lie. And everybody laughs so I kind of like but yeah, I should update is
• 1:00:50
  Tim Montague: true. I like big roofs Do I like big roofs with big loads. Excellent. Well, you can also find John on Twitter or mastodon. Have you have you decided if you'd like mastodon?
• 1:01:02
  John Weaver: I haven't really tested it. I don't have the energy right now to add a new social media thing to my existence. So
• 1:01:08
  Tim Montague: who has time for another? Yet another platform?
• 1:01:11
  Tim Montague: Yeah, we'll see Christine Roseland jump ship. I saw that.
• 1:01:15
  Tim Montague: So that was that was interesting, but who knows?
• 1:01:18
  Tim Montague: Well, you can find me at Clean Power hour.com. You can find all our interviews and all of our news roundups here right you see my interview here with Ching town from Tygo. They make power electronics for rapid shutdown.
• 1:01:30
  Tim Montague: We post our lives that we record here every week, every Thursday coming to you live at noon Eastern 11 Central All 10 Mountain and nine Pacific. But just so many topics like increasing equity, diversity and justice with Sheila Morissette from the USDA, oe, behind the meter wind really enjoyed talking to Jeremy Kent at one energy. And every week we're bringing you one of these CEO interviews with clean energy companies. And this news roundup. So check it out, give us a rating and review on Apple and Spotify. Subscribe to the YouTube channel and reach out to us. We love to hear from our listeners, we need your input on what topics you want to hear from and what companies do you think we should cover? Because it's a big world, and there's a lot going on. So with that, I'll say thank you, John. Have a great day and let's grow solar and storage. I'm Tim Montague.