Latest / Clean Power Hour / Will the IRA Survive? LIVE Solar Industry News on Policy, Tech Breakthroughs & Market Trends

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Will the IRA Survive? LIVE Solar Industry News on Policy, Tech Breakthroughs & Market Trends · Clean Power Hour

• 0:51
  Tim Montague: Welcome to the Clean Power Hour live. I'm Tim Montague, your co host, bringing you solar, battery and wind energy news on a bi weekly basis now with my co host, John Weaver, welcome to the show, commercial solar guy.
• 1:04
  John Weaver: Hello, Timothy.
• 1:04
  John Weaver: Thank you for bringing me back yet again. Hope you're having a nice day.
• 1:10
  Tim Montague: Life is good.
• 1:10
  Tim Montague: Spring is sprung here in central Illinois. It's very blustery, but warm, and I am just happy it's warm.
• 1:21
  John Weaver: Good, good starts.
• 1:21
  John Weaver: I'm wearing short sleeves rolled up with no jacket, no hat, no nothing. Yeah, I gotta wear my hat because it's sunny again, and you know that type of thing.
• 1:30
  John Weaver: So I'm enjoying it. It's the start. It's the start of the season.
• 1:36
  Tim Montague: Well, let's jump right into it. You got a story on blue sky, a wholesale repeal or the termination of certain individual credits would create uncertainty, jeopardizing capital allocation, long term project planning and job creation in the energy sector.
• 1:52
  Tim Montague: What a concept. Yeah, repealing the IRA is really not a good thing for the US economy. But what did the senators have to say?
• 2:08
  John Weaver: So there were four senators and 21 representatives, and this is, you know, slightly aged news, you know, a couple weeks months for the representatives, maybe two months and but essentially, 21 House of Representatives Republicans came out and said they didn't want to repeal the IRA. And then four senators came out and said the same, I believe, based on those numbers, if those people were to hold hard and say, No, we don't want to do that, that would be enough to protect the IRA as a whole, as well sia the solar energy Manufacturers Association. I think I always mix up the last number, letter or two, yeah,
• 2:58
  Tim Montague: Industries Association, technically, but yeah, it's, it's an industry association.
• 3:04
  John Weaver: So sia sent out an email which kind of suggested that it looked like we might be okay, and we need to reach out to our senators and say, Thank you. Um, in fact, the apparently the reconciliation bills, which is where it was thought the IRA might get attacked. I think based on my reading, these reconciliation bills have been completed, or at least started to be moved with but in, within the Senate and within the house, and a version, a high level version, has been approved. I don't know the dynamics. I'm not a politician yet, but it just it feels like, at least, I mean, it feels like we're definitely not going to see a wholesale just canceling of it. We still might see some refinement. It might be shortened. We might see we might see it slow down faster. You know, there just, there might be a few other things. But again, it just, it doesn't feel right now we're going to see a major repeal, and it doesn't feel like we're going to see the whole thing get hacked, hacked up. Um, there's a senator from Nevada who was interviewed recently saying he's not going. He said it's a red line for for him to see the lithium production credits and the EV incentives from going away, yeah, and this guy in this article from Nevada, he was talking about how the like finding gold back in the day, all the money ended up going across. He called the hill, which I think means the Rocky Mountains, but, or something, some mountain range between Nevada and San Francisco. And it's not the Rockies, it's uh, maybe the Sierra Nevadas, but um. And he said, I don't want to see that happen again. I want to see the lithium wealth stay here. We have we have the resources. We have this, we have that. So in my opinion, biggest thing I've seen come out over the last week was that letter from sia saying, hey, reach out to your people.
• 5:21
  John Weaver: We're in the home run, or we're in the the final run of it. We feel, I don't know it just it had a, it wasn't a, like a super rah, rah email, but it was one that had a, I would say, a positive ish feeling in it. So for that, you know, that's a good emotion, yeah,
• 5:40
  Tim Montague: you know, I ran into Costa Nicolaou at InterSolar in February in San Diego and coast. Is a long time CEO. Board member. He's the also the CEO of panel claw, the number one flat roof racking company in the United States. If you don't know about panel claw, you know many installers, John coming from resi and light commercial into flat roof large commercial. Just don't know about some of these companies.
• 6:07
  Tim Montague: But panel claw is a major, major manufacturer. Anyway, Coast has been on the show three times, something like that, and we did a quick interview about this phenomenon. And to some extent, it's Clash of the Titans now, because on the one side, we have oil and gas trying to keep a lid on renewables, because they see the writing on the wall that solar and wind are eating their lunch. Yep. And, and now we're a sizable industry creating lots of jobs on shoring manufacturing of batteries, EVs, wind turbines, solar panels, and someday inverters, not very many inverters yet, being made in the US, but it's coming and and so these are major economic forces.
• 6:53
  Tim Montague: And I just say, look, oil and gas, you know, you you've got plenty of subsidies already. You don't need to beat us up. You don't need to continue to try to squash us. You can't, truly, you can't squash renewable energy.
• 7:14
  Tim Montague: It's too big. And this is good for the US economy. It's good for national security. John like that's what concerns me, is that China is going hard after the energy transition. Yeah, they're building nuclear. Yeah, they're building coal plants, but they're also building batteries, EVs and solar, and their EV technology has surpassed ours.
• 7:36
  Tim Montague: If you scour the web for people that have actually visited China recently and sat in some of these Chinese cars that Huawei is making now, for example, their minds are getting blown.
• 7:51
  Tim Montague: And I'm just like, great, we're getting left in the dust. The the future is AI, robotics, renewable energy, electrification of everything, and we're stuck on, well, let's just pump up oil and gas. I just don't see that serving the future of America. And,
• 8:11
  John Weaver: you know, China sees renewables two ways, one way, and they've explicitly said it is as literally an economic tool, like not just a tool for the purpose of building it, but as it's so big now that for them it's like the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates, or the green New Deal. It's a program whose purpose is to pump the economy. So it's beyond just energy security, which is really interesting. That's what the IRA was as well. It was more than just a tool for energy it's also a tool for jobs. It's a tool for pushing things and and political tool now. So, so renewables are going beyond just energy, beyond cleaning energy. And then, of course, China sees it. I'm certain, from a second perspective, a nation state, geopolitical one, if China is no longer dependent on importing fuel oil gas, then if they need to go into a complex military situation, for instance, when they choose to reintegrate Taiwan, um, they're no longer going to be susceptible to external forces cutting off resource supplies, because all they got to do is wake up next morning and there will be more electricity. All they got to do is wait for the next breeze to come by. There's going to be more electricity. And if their vehicles are electric, if their weapons are electric, you know, that starts to, starts to tilt the world in a certain way, where, where energy, energy warfare, will change. And so we should be conscious on multiple levels. I mean, we really should be just caring about climate change, but we should be conscious, and that's why Biden made solar panels part of the very specific military purpose, and nobody really acted on it to make use of it, but what it allowed the federal government to invest in it as if it were a wartime investment, and that was specifically solar panel module factories. And now, uh, Trump has removed that designation, but it says tell you that some people are looking at it and thinking about it that way, very much. So, so, yeah, you know, our job is just to build, keep going. Every panel I put in the ground, I'm like, that's 30 years of energy. That's how.
• 10:49
  John Weaver: Makes me feel and, you know, and even if the world goes mad max, it'd be really great to know that there are billions of solar panels distributed that can be repurposed. And I know that sounds a little, you know, chaotic, but you know, we're not necessarily a smart species always. So one day maybe that's,
• 12:03
  Tim Montague: well, yeah, I mean, if you are, if you truly are a prepper, preparing for the end of days, whatever that means you're into solar and batteries like that doesn't need a external fuel source, right?
• 12:15
  Tim Montague: It's got a fuel source from the sky. And if that fuel source is gone, then we have bigger problems. So let's talk about Oxford. PV. That name will not be due to our listeners, but they've been kind of quiet for the last couple of years, so I'm glad to see that they're back in the news, and they have struck a deal with Trina. I'll get this on screen. But why don't you tell us what the story is? This is in PV tech, Oxford PV, Trina Solar enter perovskite silicon tandem patent licensing agreement.
• 12:55
  John Weaver: So Oxford PV, which is an Oxford, UK based company, has been talking about perovskites for a lot of years.
• 13:08
  John Weaver: I've interviewed them at least in 2020 and they said they were going to deploy modules that year. They didn't, but it seems like they deployed a small volume into Texas. I don't know if that's actually occurred, but what's really coming into view, though, is that Oxford PV is probably just going to be a patent company, and now they're trying to leverage that patent strength. I've heard from other folks, when I've asked questions, what what their goal is, and but whatever they're, if they're the company that has the patents that somebody wants, great Trina one of the world's largest, if not the world's largest, solar panel manufacturer. Maybe it's jinko.
• 13:49
  John Weaver: I always mix up jinko Trina Longy. They're all in the top.
• 13:54
  John Weaver: But Trina has signed what seems like an agreement of some sorts for perovskites in China, specifically. And Trina also put out an 808 watt module recently that was perovskites. It's the first time I've seen a full large module tested and approved by one of the testing agencies.
• 14:17
  John Weaver: I believe it was TV in Germany, in Europe. And so I'm starting to get a little more, you know, little happier. I saw some respectable organizations saying large scale perovskite module manufacturing should come in 27 that's the closest I've seen somebody say it prior. It's always been five years. So it just it seems like stuff is coming more more and more every day there's manufacturing lines being built across China for perovskite tandem perovskite, silicon tandem modules, GCL poly. Last summer, when I was in InterSolar in Munich, Germany, I interviewed them on theirs and their unit, they were very happy with it. Still had a lot of testing, but they were moving with it, and just like yesterday or your last three days long, G put out a new press release saying their silicon, or perovskite silicon tandem cell hit 34.8 something percent, oh, inches away from 35% solar cell.
• 15:27
  John Weaver: Tim, so it's just, it's coming, and it's going to be here, and it's probable, it's probable that it's not going to come to the United States for a little while, but they're going to hit the field, they're going to hit the world, and it's going to expand, and we're going to have modules that are 33% within I don't know, maybe by 2030 we might see a module at 30% plus is my is my hope, and that would be really massive, because it'll lower the cost of install and and it sets a path toward A 45% solar cell and a 43% module, which would just be awesome, and it might come close to cutting the cost of solar electricity, maybe not in half, but like 35 40% because every time you go up 1% you drop the LCOE, the levelized cost of electricity coming out of a module by you know, if you go up 1% from 20% that's a 5% and it's 4.8 4.7 4.6 so by the time you get to like 42 you're at like 45% off the levelized cost of electricity, when solar is at a 20% efficient module. And. If and if the price of electricity is three cents per kilowatt hour at that number, without incentives. That means we're talking penny and a half without incentives for a perovskite silicon module. And that's just cool. That means, like in the Middle East, we'll see the cost well under a penny, because their cost, you know, Saudi Arabia, because their numbers don't include things in the US. If we have an IRA attached to it, we'll probably see a power purchase agreement approach a penny is, is what my little dreams are. So it's, it's, it's, we're just, we're moving on stuff. And it makes me happy. It makes me happy to see it.
• 17:24
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I I got to talk to Matt Campbell at Terra base when I was in San Diego, and dropped an interview with him recently. I think it was last week that penny a watt, Penny a kWh really is the holy grail for unlocking green hydrogen, but I agree. I'm excited to see these tandem cells coming to market. And you know, in that story, the efficiencies mentioned were 25 to 27% so they're nipping at 30% and my only question is, what is the durability of the perovskite? That's one of the challenges with perovskites, is those materials tend to break down faster than traditional PV technology, and that's why they've been slow to come to market. But they're solving that problem. I don't know how they're solving that problem, but presumably they're solving that problem. You can't have your solar panels degrading in the sun, yeah,
• 18:29
  John Weaver: so, so a couple things on that. First, solar panels do degrade in the sun, half
• 18:35
  Tim Montague: a percent per year is, is kind of the rule of thumb. I mean, a higher quality panel is as low as a quarter of a percent, right? Or glass
• 18:43
  John Weaver: glass. Some people have suggested borderline zero half with 1000 hour accelerated testing. But so but what's I have seen GCL poly say, their solar their perovskite panel passes silicon degradation tests in the way silicon would degrade and had a rate that was similar to silicon. However, the person at the booth was very explicit.
• 19:11
  John Weaver: He said, listen, just because we can pass these tests doesn't mean we can pass those other tests, because we don't even know what the other tests are.
• 19:23
  John Weaver: We don't know how perovskites could potentially fail, because it's a new thing. We've been messing with silicon since like, 2055 or, sorry, 1955 right? 2055 so, 75 oh, yeah, yeah. So it's, you know, but yes, it seems like people believe it, because there's perovskite solar panels in the field today being used.
• 19:48
  John Weaver: And, you know, one megawatt here, one megawatt there, probably less than 100 megawatts total, but they're out there and they're being tested and they're being looked at. And I feel hopeful. I feel hopeful, you know, I am always hopeful, because I love the new tech, but I just I feel good about it so cool. It's cool. Let's go perovskites. Let's
• 20:10
  Tim Montague: talk about solar supplied over 10% of global electricity consumption in 2024 story and PB magazine by Ryan Kennedy, cumulative solar installations climbed 37% from 1.6 terawatts to 2.2 terawatts.
• 20:24
  Tim Montague: Last year, said the IEA
• 20:32
  John Weaver: and 10% is just a nice, cool, chunky number. Um, it's just, you know, the the joke is the first million is the hardest. When you go from zero to one, that's the biggest number, because you grow infinitely. And now we're at 10% and that's pretty cool, and we're still in a time where we're now growing by massive volumes of capacity. And I just, I saw the 10% number. I was like, oh, man, that's, that's just cool. And I don't know, I just, I'm happy to see it. It's, it's really just a headline number. I don't have any in depth discussion on this one.
• 21:15
  John Weaver: It's just like, hey, hey everybody. We're there. We hit this thing and, and it's a beautiful number, and let's be let's pat ourselves on the back a little. Let's be happy. And I don't know, it's just cool. It's cool to see it there. We're there, so close, and we're moving. We're all working, man, we're all working hard. And it's just, it's nice to see it. So I.
• 21:39
  John Weaver: So I'm just, I just thought it was cool seeing a big, pretty number. And there it is,
• 21:47
  Tim Montague: and it's a good reminder that we here in the US, yeah, we've reached, as this article says, 8% of total electricity with solar in 2024 so we're average, right? We're at the global average now and but look at China. John, China is generating as much solar electricity as the rest of the world combined. Almost Fun fact, China produces 10 times more STEM graduates than the United States and more graduates in STEM science, technology, engineering and mathematics, right? More more graduates than the rest of the world combined.
• 22:35
  Tim Montague: So we have to be careful about going to war with China. It might sound good in a sound bite, we're going to be tough on China, but we have to recognize that they are such a powerhouse.
• 22:50
  Tim Montague: Now this is not the China of the 80s. You know, we like to pick on China for being a copycat, but now China is truly a technology powerhouse and innovator of their own. And this graph demonstrates that, to be honest.
• 23:11
  John Weaver: Yeah, I, you know, I saw a neat little chart.
• 23:14
  John Weaver: Actually, China and the US have a similar percentage of electricity from wind and solar, and it was almost the same chart, like somebody laid over the two and it showed it going seasonally. And they also had a similar curve. You know, China uses about two or three times more electricity than us, and they have two or three more times of solar. But that was just a really neat curve to see.
• 23:43
  John Weaver: Yeah, and it was, I was just surprised. I was, I don't know, my brain wasn't going that way.
• 23:50
  John Weaver: It wasn't thinking, Oh, China and the US have the same but percentage wise, it was almost the same two lines. One was green, one was blue, and they just kind of wiggled up words to the right. And I was like, cool, and that's kind of nice, because China and the US are the two largest users of electricity in the world. If those two groups can hold together and do some good work, man, that's that'll just help us as a species. So go us. Go China, keep building.
• 24:17
  John Weaver: Yeah,
• 24:19
  Tim Montague: I think it's a both. And this should be the age of collaboration, right? We filled the earth with our stuff.
• 24:28
  Tim Montague: We won. Humans won the battle against nature. And if we continue to be tribal and pick on each other and create conflict with one another, that's just gonna expose us to so many pitfalls, and it's going to hold us back from the next potential age of prosperity for our children's children like we have a lot of cool things ahead of us if we're careful. And right now, we're not being very careful, we're being very boneheaded and tribal, and we're picking on one another and spending a lot of energy doing that, right? And it's just us.
• 25:09
  Tim Montague: It's just a suck on our economies. Yeah, okay, it's economic growth to build weapons of mass destruction, you could make that argument. And so if we weren't in conflict with one another or some kind of arms race, maybe there wouldn't be as much innovation, but there would be different kinds of innovation. Think about innovation in healthcare, right, and providing for less fortunate and and truly creating a wonderful future for everyone.
• 25:35
  Tim Montague: We have the resources to do that. It's a choice. Choice, choice
• 25:44
  John Weaver: without doubt. Oh, that's just cool. 10% man, first 10% is hardest. First 1% artist, first everything's the hardest, but we're doing them, and it's just neat. Good job solar. Good job everybody who's installing it around the whole world.
• 26:00
  John Weaver: Awesome.
• 26:03
  Tim Montague: Yeah, it is. It is a feel good industry to work in.
• 26:06
  Tim Montague: I'm very happy to work in the solar industry. I'm very happy that my soon to be 23 year old son works in solar. He's having a birthday in May, and I tell him he has 30 years of pure happiness ahead of him, if he plays his cards, right? So we have another story in PV magazine, this one by Emiliano Bellini, average silver price up 21% in 2024 says silver Institute. So the PV industry happens to have an affinity for silver. It sounds. Like
• 26:43
  John Weaver: so I did a little math. Solar used 17% of all solar mind in 2027 I thought that was kind of a neat number.
• 26:55
  John Weaver: I calculated it from here. Did a little work. What was really interesting, though, and I don't know fully how to parse this yet, because I don't think our technology has advanced that fast. But maybe really interesting is that solar grew 33% we went from 450 Meg gigs to 600 gigs. So we added 150 gigs, which is 1/3 of 450 to get to 600 so we grew by 33% but our silver use grew by one half of 1% and I don't even know I that number is so astounding, my default is that there's something wrong somewhere. So I redid the math in a spreadsheet instead of just using a calculator, so I can't mess up and and that. And so first off, 17% I had no idea we were using 17% I knew that solar silver was really used a lot by solar, but I just didn't know it was 17% as big number. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Um, and then if you do the math on it, uh, roughly silver at 30 bucks an ounce, and right now it's about 28 bucks an ounce, but at 30 bucks an ounce, it's about one cent per watt.
• 28:18
  John Weaver: And if you think about the price of a solar panel these days, 10 cents, 11 cents, 12 cents, that's 10% of the cost of a solar panel. Is the silver which is kind of interesting. I happen to see also another article at the same like this morning, Fraunhofer, the Research Institute in Germany, solar research institute, they put out a press release saying that they got hetero junction solar cells in a model down to two milligrams of silver per watt.
• 28:56
  John Weaver: If I do the math on 2024 it looks like currently there's 10 milligrams of silver per watt, and so Fraunhofer sees a path to drop silver usage by 80% now within that, and I didn't get too deep into the research paper, but Within that, they also talked about blending solar with or silver with copper, and then doing pure copper. So there's places where they can believe in copper, can getting stuff done. But it's just kind of neat to see the advancement and what's happening with um silver and how it's in in hardware. And it represents our constant evolution in our industry. So you There are modules out there, very high efficiency with silver, but generally silver, or, sorry, with copper. Generally silver is better because, I guess it's more conductive and easier to work with, and it can be spray painted, sort of kind of thinner and so you don't block the sunlight copper, though, if you have a back contact solar cell, you don't block the sunlight on the front. And so I think it's Ico Ika. They have the 25% module that's out they have a back contact silver or copper module. No silver in it at all.
• 30:24
  John Weaver: So it's out there, and there's a Australian company pushing Copper instead of silver. So either way, it's a penny per watt right now, cost of silver in your modules, it might drop to a quarter of a penny per watt in the future. So, so silver, Silver's Cool, man, solar people should start buying silver, just to, you know, represent, but not too much, because you don't want to drive up the price.
• 30:47
  Tim Montague: It's a really good conductor, which is why it's used in solar panels. It's interesting, John, that precious metals, including copper, like humans historically, have made a lot of jewelry and things that we think makes make us sexy right out of copper, gold, silver, titanium, but gold, silver and copper, those three metals are also amazing conductors, but also just attractive to humans. It's interesting that there is that it's completely coincidental, I think. But who knows? Well,
• 31:29
  John Weaver: gold, I mean, I've read about gold and why it is the most important metal, and it's, you know, there's like, it doesn't go bad and it doesn't
• 31:38
  Tim Montague: tarnish and it doesn't oxidize, you. Oxidized,
• 31:43
  John Weaver: yeah. And so there's a reason it's people like gold. I've only read that about gold once, because everybody's like, Why gold? Why gold? And somebody went down this list, and he looked at every element this author, and they said, well, we can't do this one. We can't do this one.
• 31:56
  John Weaver: Can't do this one. You know, gold is like, almost the only one that aligns with this long list of traits that people are like, Yeah, this makes it a pressure, the precious metal, and that was interesting.
• 32:11
  Tim Montague: So I can, I can list a few, but maybe you could list a few more. It's it's rare.
• 32:14
  Tim Montague: It doesn't oxidize, it's shiny, it's pretty it's easy to work with. It has a low melting temperature. What else is it that makes it gold so attractive? Well,
• 32:29
  John Weaver: let's see, gold is perceived millennia jewelry.
• 32:34
  John Weaver: Individual is rare. It's malleable. It's useful inside of people. It's durable, non coronavisive, magnetic. This one. I'm just doing the Google fast to see, to see of all the 118 periodic okay. Oh, here it is. So well this. This person started with the here. I'll just post it in the room chat, in case anybody's super interested.
• 32:56
  John Weaver: But like this article, you see him start going down. He says, like, all right, in the alkalines, we can't use those, because if they get wet, they blow up. So, you know, gold doesn't blow up when you get it wet. That's a good one. Thorium, uranium, plutonium, those kill you. Rare earths can't really find them, not easily, at least.
• 33:19
  John Weaver: And then we get to the 49 elements that he said considers realistic iron, aluminum, copper, lead. So iron terrible, because there's so much of it, it goes down in price. Copper, same thing. Lead, same thing.
• 33:32
  John Weaver: Now we're getting to the noble elements. Oh, they're gasses. So that's, you know, platinum. You can't work with platinum because it's melting is 17 168 degrees Celsius. Now at least two silver and gold. You know, I flipped, I skipped a couple, but, uh, gold ends up being it, and gold inertness is one of the things that it has. And, you know, he's just got this neat little list where he just breaks down, you know, and that article kind of goes through it, and I've seen it more in depth, but, uh, you know, it doesn't catch on fire.
• 34:13
  John Weaver: It's naturally that's kind of a nice thing.
• 34:17
  Tim Montague: Yeah, it's a bummer about lithium. Um, yeah, okay. Well, you have an unhappy story to share. I'm really sad to see this actually. Is this your project? John, yes,
• 34:28
  John Weaver: sir, it's been fixed. Just been fixed. But yes, wow.
• 34:32
  Tim Montague: So, yeah, just, just a couple of news cycles ago, we were showing photos of this project under construction, yeah, and that that was like a hole in the ground, and they were pouring the concrete, and now they're having to dig it up, apparently.
• 34:47
  John Weaver: Yeah. Well, this was only four of the foundations out of about 60, but four of them were delivered with the wrong with the wrong bolt. And you can see the bolts kind of sticking out of the top of the concrete on that image. Yeah, but those bolts are one inch diameter, and they were supposed to be one and one quarter inch diameter, and that means you can't, can't go forward with that. So so that, and we fixed it. It was, we had nice conversation between us and the manufacturer to decide who is going to be at fault. We decided to split it because they sent us the wrong product. Yeah, we didn't check it. Is how the argument went. And so, yeah, so that's how it works. So, yeah.
• 35:31
  John Weaver: So there you can see us tearing up some stuff. There's a lot of CO two in that pile of garbage, which is, you know, breaks your heart, but now we're putting modules on those car ports at this time, really, yeah, yeah, oh, yeah. We're done with that.
• 35:48
  John Weaver: We're moving on to the next we have a new project where we're pouring new foundations different city. And so this project, all the car ports are constructed fully, all assembled, and we're moving on to installing modules at this point, and that's pretty nice.
• 36:05
  John Weaver: So we've got our first, I don't know, 150 modules done so far on this project. So moving along, I would remove that. Whenever some weird plug in pops up on my browser. Tim, it is immediately deleted.
• 36:24
  Tim Montague: Yeah, no, that's there on purpose. I want to try that tool, but not right now.
• 36:32
  John Weaver: We can show everybody you know, if there were people in our chat room, they could tell us whether they want to see you work on that tool. So if you want to tell Tim to use a tool during the middle of the clean power. Hour, you need to log in and say, what's up.
• 36:48
  Tim Montague: So we have another PV magazine story. Where's the John Weaver PV magazine stories?
• 36:51
  Tim Montague: John, I don't know you've been slacking.
• 36:56
  John Weaver: I'm writing, you know, I could tell you about what I'm writing, but these are the ones that were more interesting to me. You know, I could, we could talk about so, no, I have two things for PV mag. We'll do them real quick.
• 37:07
  John Weaver: Um, one. So Nova is auctioning off $17 million worth of hardware, mostly Generac energy storage stuff. So if you want to get a deal a bunch of gear, you can go to, down to Houston, Texas. There's a big old warehouse with 198,000 individual components, most of them, in terms of value, are going to be Generac energy storage type hardware. So, so that's one article I wrote. And then another one is, you know, the headlines, where Trump so right now, well, we'll talk about the terrorists, you know what? Let's talk about the other stuff. Another article I wrote about tariffs. We'll do that.
• 37:46
  John Weaver: We'll do that. After the Spanish theft, we get to talk about real fast.
• 37:51
  Tim Montague: What's the title of the story you want to talk about? Oh, the 145 No, no, let's
• 37:56
  John Weaver: go to the Spain arrest 23 people first. We'll do that one next.
• 38:01
  Tim Montague: Yeah, Spain.
• 38:01
  Tim Montague: Arrest, 23 people in copper theft. In copper theft ring targeting solar plants, okay?
• 38:08
  Tim Montague: From Pilar Sanchez Molina,
• 38:12
  John Weaver: from not just stealing copper from a site, but stealing copper from a collection of sites and making it a career. Um, it's really, you know, they, they, when you read the article a little bit, you can see that there's a process. There's a group of people who only steal the copper. There's a group of people who only transport it.
• 38:35
  John Weaver: There's a group of people who buy it. And it's just, it's an organization of stealing copper.
• 38:39
  John Weaver: And when I saw this, it made me call my our master electrician and say, Hey, that warehouse where we have our copper, what kind of security do we have in place? He goes, Well, first off, it's licensed, it's bonded, so it's protected. But here's a camera, and He zoomed in on the copper. And I was like, great.
• 38:58
  John Weaver: I'm glad we still see the copper, because, you know, it's, it's a lot of money we got, you know, we gotta buy a lot of copper. And, you know, just as we were talking, silver is number one in the solar industry in terms of cost per ounce as a metal, but copper and aluminum not that far behind. So, yeah,
• 39:17
  Tim Montague: this doesn't just happen in Spain, right? I mean, solar farms get hit in the US as well, where they will come and take all the copper wiring that's accessible, and it's a real bummer, because it destroys the solar farm.
• 39:34
  John Weaver: Hey, Chris ledmon here, what's up? Just how you doing? Chris, nice to see you in the room. Chat. So one time back in 2015 ish, when I worked for a big EPC, we had a shipping container whose lock was cut off, and all the copper was stolen from one of, one of, not my project, but a project I was supporting. And so I've, I've dealt with it, and then, on a regular basis, people are cutting the copper. Hey, there goes Chris. Uh, people are cutting the charging cables off of EV chargers, because it's a big fat chunk of copper at one time. Ran the numbers though, it's like a $50 piece of metal, and if there's 10 EV chargers, Are you really willing to go to jail over 500 bucks? I guess yes. We know that people still packs a gum, but yeah, I would not want to put a piece of metal on a EV charger with 800 amps coming through it. You know, if you're going to steal copper, steal it like on a roll that's on the ground. Don't cut an electronic piece of hardware.
• 40:46
  John Weaver: That's a great way to be turned into a rice krispie real fast.
• 40:51
  Tim Montague: Well, yeah, I think they, they tend to hit these solar projects at night when that's less of a concern.
• 40:58
  Tim Montague: Yes, I guess you have to hope that there's not batteries on site, yeah. Oh, man, are we going to do another story? Or what's the story?
• 41:13
  John Weaver: Well, let's do one piece of bad news, and then we can do that in in Wyoming, a young man fell off a wind turbine while he was working, wow. Um, 19 or Yeah, I don't know any details. He must not have been wearing a harness, or maybe it busted, I don't know, but it just made me, I don't know, just, you know, first off, it's a human being who hurt himself. Um. And you've not hurt himself, who's no longer with us. So it sucks, and then it makes me think about my people that we're climbing on roofs. I mean, even a 10 foot, single story roof is enough to change somebody's life or end somebody's life. So for sure, where I would end this one is just to say, Hey everybody, if you're working on a roof, if you're working on a site, if you're on a freaking wind turbine, be safe. You know, take an extra moment. I know you're getting pressure from cost installation people and and your general contractor and your project manager, tell them to go stick it. You gotta. You gotta take care of yourself. It's just, uh, just something, you know, yeah,
• 42:25
  Tim Montague: we have the expression safety first, for a reason. That is the most important thing. Let's be safe out there. I do want to encourage our listeners to check out Chris letman interview on the Clean Power Hour. We had Chris on the show that dropped, I believe, yesterday. And the topic is understanding domestic manufacturing, domestic solar manufacturing. Chris is the Director of Sales for Imperial Star Solar. They have a solar factory in Houston, Texas that uses domestically made solar cells from Suniva, so you can get domestically content, viable solar panels from Chris letman.
• 43:11
  Tim Montague: You heard it here, John, when are we going to see you again?
• 43:17
  John Weaver: That minimum of being Vegas at re plus we're
• 43:20
  Tim Montague: see you may 2 right here on the Clean Power going to Hour, live in two weeks. We're doing the show every two weeks we do it. We have been transmitting live on LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook. We may change that up. I need to talk to you off Mike about that. But in terms of the platform we use, we may go to zoom, but I want to talk to you about that. But anyway, check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com that's the that's the place cleanpowerhour.com you can also find us on YouTube, but there's a link to the YouTube on cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and review. Follow us on YouTube, reach out to me on LinkedIn. Love hearing from our listeners and John, how on earth can our listeners find you?
• 44:09
  John Weaver: Well, first, you could call Chris letman and ask him about that two gigawatts of manufacturing capacity they have down there in Texas. Then you could ask him for my phone number, because he's definitely got it. But commercialsolarguy.com. Is our best place to find us. I'm also on LinkedIn. John Fitzgerald Weaver, I'm the only one and commercial solar guy there as well. So those are really the best places. We got nice contact form. And we're located mostly in the northeast, focused in New England, Massachusetts, Rhode Island. We love to build construction. We love to build solar projects. That's our favorite thing to do. So if you got a big roof, big field, got a house, we also own a residential company. It's called whaling city solar, and that's that's the best for us. Timothy, when can we go play pickleball with you?
• 45:01
  Tim Montague: 24/7, but not until October. That's when the CU PC, as we call it, the CU pickleball club, is going to open here in Champaign, Illinois, but, but, yeah, wherever, wherever I'm traveling to, like I'm going to Dallas next week, I'll be at re plus in Vegas, of course, in September, I'll be in Chicago, of course, at Midwest solar Expo in June, solar farm summit in August.
• 45:25
  Tim Montague: Wow. So many, so many good Chicago events need to go nowhere else than Illinois.
• 45:33
  Tim Montague: John, I think
• 45:34
  John Weaver: I'm going to go to a Chicago event pretty soon. I got to thank my lawyer for doing great work for us. And Chicago is such a beautiful city downtown. Man, so I just don't want to go for a walk again. I'm gonna go in the water. Well, I don't know if I want to go in the water. It's probably cold, but it looks pretty. And all those buildings downtown, they're nice, man,
• 45:53
  Tim Montague: are you gonna go to the solar farm Summit?
• 45:56
  John Weaver: I should go to something. Maybe the solar farm summit would be it, because I re plus, is already plus, but I've never been to the solar farm Summit, so maybe that's what I should say. That's in August.
• 46:05
  Tim Montague: That's in August, and that is, I think that is downtown. Well,
• 46:08
  John Weaver: that'd be cool. So maybe, maybe you just invited me there. Tim, right on now, you got to buy me a beer. Oh, for
• 46:16
  Tim Montague: sure. I'll buy you five beers. Great.
• 46:21
  John Weaver: I'm kind of a lightweight, but I'll take it all
• 46:25
  Tim Montague: right. Well, thanks everybody for listening, and have a great weekend, and we'll see you on May 2. See you next. I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage. You.