Latest / Clean Power Hour / Roofing and Solar - What Facility Owners and General Contractors Need to Know | EP180

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Roofing and Solar - What Facility Owners and General Contractors Need to Know | EP180 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:50
  Peter Bonavita: The best time to put solar up is if it's a new construction or you're doing a rebuffering project. And again, if you're within five years, most manufacturers I'm telling you ask them the PG policy and state that. Again, it's not a hard stop at five years. But you know, can go up to six or seven share, but you're really pushing the limit at 10. And I think you're all with equipment.
• 1:16
  Peter Bonavita: Are you speeding the energy transition? Here at the Clean Power Hour, our hosts Tim Montague and John Weaver bring you the best in solar batteries and clean technologies every week? Want to go deeper into decarbonisation? We do too.
• 1:31
  Peter Bonavita: We're here to help you understand and command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get to it.
• 1:37
  Peter Bonavita: Together we can speed the energy transition.
• 1:44
  Tim Montague: Welcome to roofing and solar what facility owners and contractors need to know.
• 1:48
  Tim Montague: I'm Tim Montague, your host, I am the host and creator of the Clean Power Hour podcast. Check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify and please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Today on the Clean Power Hour roofing and solar what facility owners and contractors need to know. Today we have two very special and well educated guests Daniel Sammon with Douglass Colony, a major roofing and solar contractor in the Denver area.
• 2:26
  Tim Montague: And Peter Bonavita with Sika sarnafil, a leading roofing products manufacturer and the maker of solar roof, which is a roofing integrated solar racking product. I'm going to let the speakers introduce themselves.
• 2:44
  Tim Montague: And I'm just getting Daniel on deck here. But today we are trying to offer our audience of contractors and facility owners expert advice and information and getting all your questions answered about how commercial rooftop solar works for your facility. What are the pros and cons of rooftop solar? How does it benefit facility owners. And with that, I want to welcome Daniel Sammon who is going to introduce himself and then we'll let Peter Bonavita also introduce himself and then we'll get into a brief presentation from Daniel. Welcome Daniel.
• 3:28
  Daniel Sammon: Awesome. Glad to be here. Tim. Thank you for having me. Yeah, like Tim said, I'm Daniel Sammon. I work for Douglass Colony group. We're based out of Denver, however, we have a Colorado Springs in Greeley Colorado office. So we have a pretty wide spread there.
• 3:44
  Daniel Sammon: We also do the region as well.
• 3:48
  Daniel Sammon: So I've been in solar for six years now. So start out in residential switch over to commercial and 2021. So that transition was was major, you know, going from b2b or b2c to b2b. So that and that's that really is what lights me up. So glad to be here. Glad to be talking about rooftop CNI.
• 4:10
  Tim Montague: Thank you and Peter Bonavita with Sika Sarnafil. Welcome to the webinar.
• 4:15
  Peter Bonavita: Welcome, everybody. My name is Peter Bonavita. I'm the general manager of sarnafil services worked directly for seeker roofing division, subject matter expert for solar. And looking forward to our discussion here.
• 4:32
  Peter Bonavita: Looks like Daniel is going to start it and I guess I'll finish towards the end of it.
• 4:38
  Tim Montague: Awesome. All right, Daniel. Well, take it away. Tell us a little bit about Douglass Colony and your perspectives on rooftop solar.
• 4:50
  Daniel Sammon: Awesome. Well, yeah, so Douglas colony is a major subcontractor. Like I said, the Denver area. We have many scopes of work that we do.
• 4:58
  Daniel Sammon: Solar is one division. However we do frame CAD, we do waterproofing, new roofs, reroofing the whole gambit. So a couple of notable projects that we've done. We're doing Denver Botanic Gardens right now. We've done stuff at NRL, as well as the Air Force Academy. So pretty, pretty extensive portfolio there. We've been in solar for 17 years. So we'd like to like to think that we know what we're doing. So yeah, so this is a really just setting the table here, you know, really geared towards general contractors, owners, developers, and, you know, interested parties that are not unfamiliar with rooftop solar kind of how the process works. What's What's the design? Like, you know, what are the incentives, things like that? So I'll be going over most of most of those high points there. So, yeah, so one of the first questions is, you know, what is solar PV? And why is it becoming a bigger thing in commercial and industrial? So, I think to understand this question, it's, you know, it's really important to know, since the passing of the IRA in August of last year, there have been 51 companies that have committed to building factories, you know, here in the US onshoring, you know, doing all they can from, you know, soup to nuts, as far as menu manufacturing, solar.
• 6:29
  Daniel Sammon: So, this is no, this is noteworthy, because, you know, over $100 billion of investment money has gone into this. So, where it wasn't as advantageous in the past, you see this, you know, floodgate just open up because of this new money that's coming in. So, a lot more interest in this. So CNI, CNI, solar is the deployment and integration of, of all these solar systems is going to is going to explode. So going into the process itself, you know, a developer or an owner that doesn't really know anything about solar, you know, might ask, you know, what, you know, what, what does it take to go solar? What is, you know, is my roof in good enough condition?
• 7:15
  Daniel Sammon: Do I have space on my roof? Or, you know, what's the best roof for solar? Things like this? You know, what are the incentives?
• 7:23
  Daniel Sammon: And these are all very valid questions. And, you know, one, I would be very surprised if owners didn't ask, So, I definitely want to answer some of those questions for you. So, really, there's something called a 10 year rule. So if you have an existing building, it's, it's really, you know, a good rule of thumb is 10 years, if you're, if your roof is 10 years old, or younger, then it's okay to put solar on there. Really, this because of the length of how you how long solar panels can actually last, this is highly important, because actually tearing off, you install, you know, major system, you know, you have to tear it off and do a re roof, you know, 10 years later. That's, that's quite costly. So, here, Douglas colony, you know, we've we've, we do that. And we do reroofing as well. So, you know, actually integrating these two together is, it's a seamless transition.
• 8:25
  Daniel Sammon: So we deal with owners and GCS all the time that, you know, really want to, you know, double dip on that. So, that's, that's, you know, as far as like, roof condition goes, that's a good rule of thumb to use. Just just a number I do want throw out there, you know, a lot of people talking about ballasted systems and, you know, flat roof solar, it's, it's really noteworthy that, you know, five PSF is kind of the is kind of the mid range as far as weight on the, on the roof itself, you know, you're gonna have live loads, and dead loads there. So it's really important to understand the structural integrity of the roof, we always recommend having a cover board for underneath the roofing membrane. So if it's a flat roof TPO or PVC, like SICA Sarna fill, these are, these are considerations you might want to have when thinking about solar.
• 9:23
  Daniel Sammon: So it's not just about the solar itself, it's about the building as a whole. So yeah, you know, considering the roof is is a, you know, highly important part.
• 9:35
  Daniel Sammon: So really, you know, best roofs for solar, you know, they talked about Azmuth in solar, basically orientation of the panels per the latitude. So, you want to have your, your panels facing south ideally, you know, away from the parapets, there's a huge wind load that comes off the parapet so and less shading obviously, this this makes sense for for energy production here.
• 10:02
  Daniel Sammon: So this is this is quite important, you know, when when really thinking about design, you know, where where should we place the panels, but that's it's highly important that we you know, understand, okay, where are these going to actually go? Because if you've ever been on a commercial rooftop, you know that there's a Tracy's you got are to us, you got skylights, you got soiling, vents, you know, there's all you got conduit, there's all these amaze of things, and it's sort of like a puzzles, you know, so whenever you do pre construction design, it's super important to understand. Okay, where does it stand right now? Is the roof structurally sound and where can we actually place the solar such that we can offset the electric bill so This is, you know, one of the most fun part parts of my job is actually doing pre construction, solar design because it's, it is like a puzzle. It's, it's, it's a ton of fun. So and Peter Peter and I have collaborated on that a bit too. So it's, it's a ton of fun here. So yeah, I mentioned shading, you know, can the roof actually handle the weight of solar. So, there's, there's several different types of systems here. So you can have, you know, attached rooftop attached, so fully adhered, you know, penetrations, I call them features, but, you know, a lot of owners like to, you know, think about as a penetration, really, in areas where there's, you know, high wind loads, like Boulder, Colorado, it's 165. So pretty much every single rooftop solar installation is, is anchored to the roof deck itself. So it's not, you know, totally necessary, I like to do a lot of fully ballasted systems. So that that can be an option, it just depends on some of the parameters of where you are, and what applications you're using it for. So, as far as mounting goes, those are kind of typical options, you know, fully ballasted hybrid, so, you know, ballasted and attached or fully attached. So, yeah, with that, you know, I kind of wanted to, just because I know, we, you know, we have limited time here, I do want to transition and talk a bit about some of the things that you should be thinking about, you know, as an owner, as a developer, in your respective markets, where, or you know, what you need to comply with what standards are there in your city in your state that are pertinent to you in terms of actually transitioning to solar or reroofing? So here in Denver, we have something called the Green Buildings ordinance. And it's basically an ordinance that was past to prevent heat island.
• 12:57
  Daniel Sammon: And so to prevent Pete actually going off the buildings, and a few ways that the city actually is tried to get get business owners to do that is you can bind to a fund which dips into renewable renewable grid, you can put a pool on your roof, you can have a green roof, you can put on a white TPO, vapor barrier roof, you can put on PV solar, these are all options for for that ordinance. So it's, it's highly important to know, okay, well, now that that is, you know, kind of an aggressive policy or, or progressive or however you want to frame it.
• 13:36
  Daniel Sammon: But, you know, if you live in a place that, you know, there's there's that sort of legislation that's being that's being pushed forward, it's important to know these things. Another thing is the Energize Denver program, this is a program that's essentially a stair step model transitioning from, you know, like old, old heat boilers to totally electric. So they actually measure this using electric utility index. So you have to have a certain number, or certain threshold to be under, in order to to comply with that. So there might be a, you know, energized in for program in your respective market. So it's, you know, it's important that you can comply with that. So, for example, by 2027, all heat boilers have to be transitioned to electric heat pumps. So that's, I'm working on a deal right now. That's, you know, the the client has a boiler from 1964. And then they really need to switch in, you know, next few months. And so this is this is just a consideration when switching switching to solar.
• 15:43
  Tim Montague: So I do have one question, when, when you think about the EITC, we have a very generous investment tax credit on solar in the United States.
• 15:51
  Tim Montague: Now. That's 30%. And there are additional incentives for for example, low and middle income, energy communities, and for example, using Made in America products. But when you think about leveraging the ITC to its maximum, and combining the roofing and the solar project, what are your thoughts about that?
• 16:21
  Daniel Sammon: Well, the first the first part of that is certainly wrapping it all into one project. So here Douglas colony, you know, we're, we're a major roofing company. So we, you know, we would go in, actually reroof then do the solar. That's actually what we're doing at the Denver Botanic Gardens right now. So, as far as leveraging the ITC to accommodate for the roof as well as solar. And I want to get to some other incentives here in a second is, you know, the square footage, if it's a, you know, wherever the square footage of the solar goes, you know, within that new roof, if it's wrapped into one project, the square footage of where that is, the cost of that is actually going to be eligible for the ITC.
• 17:07
  Daniel Sammon: Because it's considered part of the roof. So
• 17:11
  Tim Montague: the caveat and the caveat there, I think Daniel is that the, you can't just do any old type of solar, if you want to use the ITC on the solar and the roofing, you need to do some form of attached solar or integrated solar like the like the sarnafil product that that Peter is going to be introducing us to today. But a fully attached any fully attached solar array would qualify for the ITC. The caveat here is that I am not a tax professional. Our guest today on the webinar are not tax professionals, and you have to consult with a qualified tax professional on these matters. But in any case, just know that you can combine roofing and solar into a single a single expense and take the the ITC on that we also have a question from Ian, do you tie in energy audits into commercial solar projects? Do you want to address that? Daniel?
• 18:07
  Daniel Sammon: Absolutely. So we work with a couple energy auditing groups here in Denver, and it's it's very thorough, so we do a lot of new construction, you know, multifamily things like that. And so, you know, we, we, we go to the GC hires, you know, the energy auditing company, basically doing the entire, you know, multifamily building like a 5050 unit apartment complex. You know, having having an energy audit done, knowing exactly what the loads are going to be, will allow you to whenever you go to interconnect actually maximize the size of the system.
• 18:45
  Tim Montague: And I would just comment that, it's always important to reduce the energy load of your facility before solarizing it if you can, you know, absolutely, certainly a lighting, upgrade to LED lighting, increasing the insulation, you know, so reducing the amount of load on the facility to the extent possible we call energy efficiency megawatts, it is the lowest hanging fruit generally speaking, and then high at a high level, you could reduce your electric bill, for example, 50 to 75%, with a solar array on your facility, you will never reduce your bill 100% Because your grid tied, and the solar is only producing energy during the day. So presumably, the facility will be using electricity in the off hours. And you've got to pay for that grid connection. But you can reduce your bill by up to 75% with rooftop solar, which is why it is a thing. Sunlight is free. And once you own the technology to collect that sunlight and convert it to electricity, you can greatly reduce your electric bill. And you know, in the last 12 months, electricity prices have gone up all over the United States and internationally, of course, but here in the US we've seen 10 to 25% increases in the price of electricity. And so solar is a great hedge against inflation.
• 20:10
  Daniel Sammon: Yeah, I think that does dovetails quite well into a, you know, conversation just about incentives, like you said, you know, if it's building integrated, like the roof and and the solar, it's, you know, you're obviously going to get a bigger tax credit for that. ITC is 30%. The domestic content, tax credit is 10%. So and there's parameters on the IRS website about that. accelerated depreciation, enterprise zones, you know, whatever local utility you're using, you know, they'll have their own. So, you know, whenever you own that solar asset on your rooftop, you know, how much money are you actually going to be, you know, how much revenue are you gonna be generating? And so And there's, there's other things as well.
• 20:56
  Daniel Sammon: So, you know, those energy zones that Tim was mentioning, nonprofits can even have have solar with a direct pay method.
• 21:05
  Daniel Sammon: So that's opening up, like I said, opened up the floodgates to the IRA has just opened up to so many possibilities. So and there's new things coming out.
• 21:14
  Daniel Sammon: Still. So
• 21:16
  Tim Montague: yeah, let me make a couple of comments there.
• 21:18
  Tim Montague: Daniel about about third party owned real estate historically.
• 21:24
  Tim Montague: We in the solar industry, I come from the PC side of of the solar industry, the installer side. We were looking for owner occupied facilities for the most part, but now, there are companies and platforms like energy 311 that will allow a multifamily building owner To become the utility for their tenants, or a landlord, or a warehouse owner, who has tenants that are sub metered. You know, in commercial real estate, the it is the tenants were paying the electric bill. And so there was a lack of an incentive for the facility owner to upgrade the facility with a solar array, but that is changed. So take note, if you own a commercial facility, and have non owner occupants, solar can be a thing for you. And then what Daniel was just saying to about the ITC, for nonprofits, historically, nonprofits did not benefit from the EITC, because they don't pay taxes, you have to have a tax liability in order to take the investment tax credit. Well, now, you can get something called direct pay, which is just a cash incentive from the federal government. Or you can transfer a credit. So if you're a for profit company, and because of your corporate structure cannot benefit from the tax incentive, you can transfer that, in other words, sell that incentive from your solar project to some other party, we call this transferability. So the the inflation Reduction Act of 2022 has been a game changer for the solar industry, including the roofing and solar industry.
• 23:09
  Daniel Sammon: Yeah, it's I like to say we live in a golden age of solar right now. And it's a super fun time to be in the industry. In fact, actually, the RV plus some major solar convention, that actually actually just happened, somebody told me, they're a little bit older, is that I wish I was your age whenever, you know, whenever I was, you know, got into this industry, because they were so excited about you know, where it's going. And yeah, with all these incentives, it's, it's kind of a no no brainer, if you stack all these on top of each other. Another one is, you know, if you have a rural business, or an agricultural business, you can apply for the REAP grant, R E, A P, Rural Energy agricultural program, that's 50%. So and you can set so that's a grant program, you can stack the tax credits on top of that, too. So you'd have to go on the USDA website to look at the map, if if you would qualify for that program. But another, you know, a little known thing that that is, is very helpful.
• 24:11
  Daniel Sammon: So yeah, so moving on. A lot owners really, you know, would probably want to know, okay, what's the length and cost of project development? So, you know, what all is involved? You know, from from soup to nuts, how do you how, how does this work? You know, we talked about, we talked about the technical side of the roof and an installation part of it. And we talked about incentives. But whenever an owner approaches me or a GC, and they say, Hey, we want solar on, you know, on this building, you know, what you got, basically, this is, is where the project intake form comes in. So, you know, we'll need to know things like, okay, yeah, what's the what's the quality of the roof? What's it made out of? You know, what, how old is it? How high are the parapets all the plan sets that you know, from architectural to structural to electrical, we need to know all that information so that we can build the most efficient systems possible. So that process starts out with us understanding the state of the building itself. So whether it's a barrel roof, it's a flat, you know, PVC roof, gabled roof, you know, standing seam, you know, all these all these are different types of installations and take different design considerations. So, taking that in doing a whole preconstruction analysis, kind of like a, an energy audit in a way, but just understanding where the solar is going to be deployed. So once we have that understanding, you know, we'll have engineering and actually do load calculations, based on those assumptions that we make, you have an estimate, put together and then put in, put in our proposals. So from there, you know, to actually move forward with the solar project itself, you know, some some noteworthy things as far as project development goes, you know, as far as timetable, it's commercial is a lot different than residential. So, residential, you know, they can throw up a few panels and in a day or two, with commercial, there's, there's a lot of not only are there more panels that you'd have to install, there's the length of the permitting process, interconnecting. You know, these are, these are things that, you know, really you need to consider whenever actually planning on, you know, if you're developing a multifaith family unit or something of the like, it's really important to know those sorts of timetables within your respective markets. So here in Denver, it's about four to six weeks. So for interconnection and permitting, so if you know on project timelines, which I know a lot of GCS, and they they are very, they like to have the trains run on time. So it's good to know these sorts of things, especially, you know, how many man days it's going to take for for install. So, you know, of course, if it's snowing, you can't be, you know, installing rooftop solar, if it's raining, lightning, things like that cruise just can't work. So these, these are sort of things that need to be really considered whenever you're talking about the length of, of the project and how, you know, how do you get to commissioning the project, and when it turns on. So, as far as cost goes, this is really actually pretty transparent. On ces website, they post a lot of average, price per watt, for CNI, solar, there's, you know, getting different numbers of our different different layouts can definitely change the the overall cost. So, you know, considering these things is really important, especially working with, you know, subject matter experts that know how to do know how to do it all. So from estimating to installation of the system. So okay, what about after the, the solar solar systems installed, a lot of people talk about oh, NM, or operations and monitoring. So with a lot of solar inverters out there today, most of them I would say, in the CNI space, they look for, or they have, they have a subscription service, usually. So it can be through cat five cable, or, or Wi Fi. So you can actually monitor on a module level, you know, how your system is performing. So the efficiency of the system? So this is, this is really important for bigger companies, like, for example, Google, we did the Google campus in Boulder, you know, having monitoring is is super important to their ESG goals. So, it's, you know, there's, there's different reasons for for lnM, you know, the operation side is, you know, if anything goes down, you know, we'll know about it, and you'll be able to respond appropriately. So that's, yeah, from from soup to nuts, from the infancy of the idea, hey, I might want to go solar, to you know, maintaining a sustainable asset is is vitally important to any owner, that would be doing solar. So yeah, like, like I was mentioning, you know, integrating solar with, you know, the roof is, it's done in one big package is, is a very ideal thing to do. If you have an existing structure, it's, it's, you know, a really a no brainer with all the incentives, as well as you know, what, what you can take advantage of right now. So, yeah, I really appreciate your time. There, Tim. And, yeah, from there, we'll toss it over to Peter.
• 30:07
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• 30:43
  Tim Montague: Excellent. Peter, if you would just unmute yourself.
• 30:51
  Peter Bonavita: Okay, very good.
• 30:51
  Peter Bonavita: Well, sorry about this mix up here. But just a little bit more information about Sika sarnafil Sika sarnafil is almost 65 year old PVC manufacturer in the United States, based in the Boston Massachusetts area. We've been involved in solar indirectly for probably the last 35 plus years. We had sold some bulk rolls of our membrane where a company had a proprietary process where they laminated amorphous thin film the back to the top of our membrane and that was the module at that time, so he had like a 10 foot wide by 40 foot module, believe it or not, no matter what wiring harness and and you pull the wires through through the insulation and you plug and play it and hotter well lit into the field.
• 31:50
  Peter Bonavita: So we so we've been involved for a long time. Now we developed this this SSM one. And now the reiteration of to seek a solar amount is the what SSM stands for. And we co developed this with a German company. That morphed, they had a solar, a solar EPC division, and they morphed out of a very large roofing company called Poland doc, if anybody's familiar with any roofing in Germany, so they brought we brought the project the product over here about eight years ago, the first iteration was a 15 degree fixed tilt with a polypropylene mount.
• 32:43
  Peter Bonavita: It had rails, and then the solar was mounted on top of the rails.
• 32:51
  Peter Bonavita: And I wish we can get this video up because the picture says 1000 words. So we came up with the SSN till it took us several years through testing with factory mutual, we're the only factoring mutual 4478 test standard, approved product in the United States at this time, there are a couple others going through that testing, but it's a very rigorous, rigorous test standard that tests the roofing system and the modules and, and and the racking system. And the wiring includes everything from a combustibility perspective, from a wind up flips perspective, from hail testing, and gravity load tests. And of course, all the modules epi have to meet the IEC requirements that you know that for the code for the codes throughout the United States anyway, so this product was finally came, this project finally came to fruition at the probably end, a year ago, okay. And so we're the only one that can just if for the people that don't know what factoring mutual is they're very large insurance company that has material testing labs. So they're seen as the gold standard of third party testing, or roof systems, and now solar as well. And of course, you have the Underwriters Laboratories that, that we have those UL approvals to 421 70 and seven 230. I hope I said that right.
• 34:39
  Peter Bonavita: For a while since I sit down.
• 34:39
  Peter Bonavita: And anyways, we have we have UL and factory mutual approval for our product. The major benefits of our product is, is that it is attached directly to our field membrane with the same seeming technologies that we utilize for the overlap of our membrane seams. So it's hot air welded.
• 35:08
  Peter Bonavita: And for those of you that know the roofing business, and may not know it, it's I always refer to it as a pretty large blow dryer and fuel creates heat, there's a there's a dam on the backside of it keeps the heat in the scene, you have a machine that has a roller of inch and a half, two inches wide, and you have weight on it, and it moves at a certain speed. And that fuses the your membranes together to become one monolithic shaped. So the significant linchpin here is the seek a click solace the seeker solar mount to basically has a very few components and it's easy to install. It's now a seven degree fixed tilt steel mount. It has base pads, made out of our same formulation as a roof membrane that snapping to the base, so requires no slip sheets. Those of you know solar business. All manufacturers have a PV policy and they all require you to have a slip sheet between the base of any solar components and the interface of the membrane. So let's slip sheets.
• 36:27
  Peter Bonavita: The product requires no weight at all. There are there are rails, bottom rail to top rail, they're short rails and there is two clicks per mount that snap into the base are fastened to the base. There's no penetrations through the roof system. And then the welding tab of the click is hot air welded to the roof system. Very, very easy to install, there's color, six or eight pieces, you got two bolts and two knots to help that keeps the rails on. So and then you got the mouth, then you got the clicks and you end up with like sick, they make really real components to install with this product. Other Other major benefits of it. One of them, Tim had mentioned is that, you know, it's seen as it's a product that's attached to the roof.
• 37:33
  Peter Bonavita: Again, no penetrations, however, now you have the solar array, and the roof system seen in the eyes of the IRS as an integrated solar system as one component.
• 37:47
  Peter Bonavita: And again, we are not experts in tax advice. But there are people out there, you know, working with their tax experts to monetize the roof costs. And that's that is a major benefit for, for utilizing a product like this. Other major benefits are fully loaded with the modules on top of it and all the components of the racking system, it's 3.5 pounds. So and I've seen it the max we've seen it is 2.6 pounds, so called 3.6 pounds, Max, fully loaded with the module on it per square foot. As Daniel alluded to, in the past, there are certain types of loads on the roof, bounce the racking system, which was predominantly used in the early days of the solar installation, installations, because it was relatively cost effective. However, you have lots of ballast you're putting a lot more dead load on your building. And in snow country areas, you have to be cognizant of the snow loads. And a lot of times those those but fully ballasted racking systems were deemed ineligible because the the top the roof system and a structure of that structural components could not support that weight. So Daniel also mentioned tach systems. So what happens is in the perimeter and the corners where most of your ballast is you Europe in the US probably seven plus pounds per square foot there. That's where the attachment methods came in to, so that they can lighten the load and utilize the ballast the racking system. With this product. We have no penetrations. Anytime in a roofing business, you have a penetration, you have a potential for weak.
• 39:48
  Tim Montague: Peter, I have a question. How exactly how exactly there's some form of a metal attachment that the racking is attaching to? How is that installed? Are you suggesting that that's installed in the factory? To the to the roofing material?
• 40:09
  Peter Bonavita: No, there's no there's no attachment for the the only the main component of the attachment maybe if you don't know if there's stuff right there, see that picture up top. That's the secret click that is fast and see where his knuckles are that's fastened into the base of this metal rack mount. And then you use a hot air weld to attach the roof and there are no penetrations through the roof membrane.
• 40:36
  Tim Montague: So all of this is post install. Is that right?
• 40:39
  Tim Montague: You're installing the membrane and then you're installing the racking.
• 40:43
  Peter Bonavita: Oh, yes, sir.
• 40:43
  Peter Bonavita: Yes, sir. Okay, it's all it's all attached in situ. You know, we provide a layout with that, and measurements and stuff. And basically what happens is you snap some lines, you put the mounts mounts together. Again, you follow the lines and from the row spacing perspective. And that's the hotter welder. That's the last component of the seat of the SSM to for the to complete the installation of the seeker solar mount racking system. And then on top of that, the PCs or the electricians will come in and and attach the module and of course do all the wiring.
• 41:28
  Tim Montague: Okay, so it's at the it's at the low end of the module, so to speak, that the clicking, that the click resides and then so the module racking system. It's kind of difficult to understand what what exists actly when you guys talk about cliques what that is, because that is a very generic expression. But let's just recap in general what this system is.
• 41:51
  Tim Montague: It's a seven degree south facing or, or east west, right? It's both and correct. And, but the point of attachment is,
• 42:05
  Peter Bonavita: is that click that secret click that you see in the center of the mouth.
• 42:08
  Peter Bonavita: There's one on each side of the mouth, I really apologize that we can't get this thing loaded.
• 42:16
  Peter Bonavita: But I can hopefully, get it to you. And you maybe you can put it on your website.
• 42:26
  Tim Montague: Sure, no worries.
• 42:26
  Tim Montague: And I'm just curious, Peter, what is the what is the adoption of this product? Like, I know that you've iterated a couple of different versions of the product, but what what markets and and you know, if you can speak to any quantities or numbers, yeah,
• 42:47
  Peter Bonavita: so from an up, we could, we could talk about some alternate perspective, we're can because it's been tested in factoring mutual, or the fact that you know, the product is designed for for high wind speed areas as well, the the, you know, on what, say, if you're down in Florida, you can do this, but if you're down in Florida on a 60 foot height building, and, you know, we would have to perform our calculations to make sure that the PSF of wind uplift doesn't exceed our testing of that particular. Again, the linchpin is the seek a click. So you can install this down in the Gulf area, you can install it in the interior the country, you can install it on a coastlines.
• 43:33
  Peter Bonavita: Again, if it's 60 feet, and higher than that, you know, those it may not be use useful and those particular that particular area. But if you have a 2040 foot building, for the most part, throughout the United States, which most buildings are, or at least at that height level, that you have an opportunity to install this roof system, I mean, this racking system. And one of the key another key component that I haven't really gotten to yet is the fact that the SSM two is included in our roof system warranty. No one else has any any racking system included in their roof system warranty in the United States. So it's another big major benefit.
• 44:18
  Peter Bonavita: There's none of this going on from the from an EPC perspective and render roofing guys. So it's really is innovative in that perspective. And of course, again, you know, a lot of tax people think that you can monetize your roof costs because of the use a bit as well.
• 44:44
  Tim Montague: And then we have a comment from your colleague, Alan, who says it can be attached to a membrane that's been installed in the field for five to 10 years. So if you have a remind me what is the chemistry of the of the roof,
• 44:59
  Peter Bonavita: roof membrane is PVC, PVC, right. So
• 45:02
  Tim Montague: if you have a PVC roof, you can apply this racking system to a as a retrofit.
• 45:06
  Tim Montague: Right? It only
• 45:09
  Peter Bonavita: works with Sarfo. Metal material. out like I mentioned briefly, all manufacturers have their PV policies, and most of them say that if your roof system is up to five years old, right, because you have to put a number on it right? Then it's eligible to have the product installed on it. Have can we install on a six and seven year old roof? Sure we could. We just have to have on inspection before that make sure everything's all fine and dandy because, again, you want your assets both roofing asset and solar asset to line up and long, you know from a lifecycle cost analysis perspective. So it's very important that
• 45:56
  Tim Montague: we we've got seven minutes left, we're gonna do a hard stop at the top of the hour. Well, between the three of us, Daniel, Peter and I have probably 60 years of relevant experience. And so we've dealt with all kinds of roofs. The greatest challenge I guess I would throw this out to to both of our panelists, the greatest challenge in commercial rooftop solar, is that 10 year rule, right that you're hitting a roof that is older than 10 years and can most likely therefore not be solarized right out of the gate you have to because the solar is going to be there for 20 plus years. What is what are your comments about that scenario?
• 46:44
  Tim Montague: Because that would open up if we could crack this nut so to speak, and figure out ways of solarizing, a 15 year old roof, for example, that that would be extremely helpful to the industry, I think.
• 47:02
  Peter Bonavita: Yeah, that would be very difficult. You know, again, you're the roof system is your foundation for the solar system, and you want both of those assets to line up. In the old I call them the old days, the wild wild west, when when we first got into solar 25 plus years ago, right, Tim? There, there was people putting putting solar arrays on top of like 15 year old and 20 year old roofs, and it's a very expensive endeavor to then go back and remove the solar de energize and remove the solar and then install a new roof system. So it creates a logistical nightmare.
• 47:36
  Peter Bonavita: And, and, and of course, if those people, those owners had power purchase agreements, they were still paying for power that wasn't even being generated on that roof. So a lot of lot of, I would say a couple of big box guys really learned the hard way that you know what the best time to put solar on is if it's a new construction, or you're doing a reroofing project. And again, if you're within five years, most manufacturers I'm telling you ask them to PV policy will state that, again, it's not a hard stop at five years. But you know, can you go up to six or seven? Sure, but you're really pushing the limit at 10. And I think you're over the cliff at 15.
• 48:21
  Tim Montague: Understood, Daniel, I don't know in, you know, in Colorado, in your market there where there is a very high snow load, I would just, you know, caution, our architects and, and general contractors who are working with architects that you have to account for the additional load of a solar array, which is, as Peter and Daniel pointed out, is going to add a few pounds per square foot. Not Not a lot, but you know, three to four pounds per square foot, I mean, if you do a ballasted system, it's going to be probably closer to six pounds per square foot. And that is an advantage of the SICA product is that you have a lower pounds per square foot. And that's true of both of of attack systems in general. So seek is one way to crack that nut, you can also just do a fully attached system. And there's all kinds of attachments for all different roofing types. So if you're, if you're listening to this, and you're concerned about how to solve that problem, the load problem, the mechanical load problem, going attached is the way to make a solar array lighter, so to speak. Right.
• 49:34
  Daniel Sammon: You know, one word that Peter used that actually stood out to me was innovation. And seek has been, you know, around forever. So, they've been they've done their fair share of innovating. But, you know, that's, that's also where we have synergy. We like to implement innovative technologies that, you know, can endure, you know, super high wind loads, super high snow loads, things like that, you know, we like to get creative about, you know, approaching the project and seeing if it's, or finding a way to to actually make the project go.
• 50:10
  Tim Montague: Well, in our last couple of minutes, I just want to remind our audience that you will, you will get a recording of this in your email in a couple of days. So please feel free to share that with your colleagues and customers. You know, it is still very early days in the solar industry. We, you know, I recently interviewed a gentleman named Mike Hall who started a major EPC or, or so, you know, commercial contractor in 2002. In 2002, we were doing one megawatt a year in the United States, we're now doing 30,000 megawatts, or 30 gigawatts a year. So we've had a 30,000 fold increase in the solar industry in the last 21 years. But we're just at the bottom of the S curve. And we're going vertical. The solar industry is going to double between now and 2030. And that is because of the cost adoption curve, right. The price of the technology continues to fall.
• 51:11
  Tim Montague: And, of course, society is trying to meet environmental goals. We're trying to reduce our carbon footprint. Many states over 100 cities and states have, you know, goals of reaching Net Zero. Many of these are now by 2035 2040 2045. So it's really game on in the solar industry if you have not considered solarizing your facility or becoming more adept at working with solar for contractors on whatever projects you're working on, if you're a general contractor, please work with your owners work with your architects and, and consider going solar. And as Daniel rightly pointed out, there are local incentives in addition to the federal incentives. So every jurisdiction, every city, state, and region has different incentives. We have very generous federal incentives. And then very good state incentives in a handful of states, not in every state. But in about 15 to 20. States, there are good incentives. Colorado, of course, being one of them. California, is more about storage. Now, that market is so mature, their their solar incentives are fading, and they're getting more into batteries. Illinois, where I live, has very good solar incentives. But markets like New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Arizona, I mean, there are many, many, many good markets around the country. Do you gentlemen have any closing remarks?
• 52:46
  Peter Bonavita: Yeah, well, thank you. I'm sorry, I like to say thank you for the opportunity. Really appreciate it. And I hope everybody enjoyed it. And they have any questions, I see that you have some information on how they can contact us.
• 52:59
  Daniel Sammon: Yeah, thanks for having us, Tim. Yeah, please, please connect with me on LinkedIn. You know, if you have a project in mind, and the Rocky Mountain region, Douglas colony would love to take a look at it.
• 53:07
  Daniel Sammon: Or if you just would like some more information, you know, felt, you know, type of follow up, call with me. Just reach out on LinkedIn. Connect with me.
• 53:15
  Daniel Sammon: And yeah, we'll we'll make it happen. So thank you.
• 53:19
  Tim Montague: Great. I want to thank Daniel Sammon with Douglass colony and Peter Bonavita, with Sika sarnafil.
• 53:25
  Tim Montague: For our roofing and solar webinar today, check out all of our content. At cleanpowerhour.com, you'll find all of our audio and video episodes there, I am dropping two episodes a week. I also host webinars like this one on a regular basis. I'm also a journalist for PV magazine. So check out my work in PV magazine. And with that, let's grow solar and storage on Tim Montague. Thank you all for being here.
• 53:54
  Tim Montague: Hey, listeners. This is Tim, I want to give a shout out to all of you. I do this for you twice a week. Thank you for being here. Thank you for giving us your time. I really appreciate you and what you're all about.
• 54:09
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• 55:06
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• 55:19
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• 55:24
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• 55:28
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• 56:04
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