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Missouri Wants to Ban All Solar Construction for Two Years · Clean Power Hour

• 0:53
  Tim Montague: Welcome to the Clean Power Hour live bringing you the latest and greatest clean energy news, including wind, solar and batteries. I'm joined here every other week, although sometimes every week, by none other than the commercial solar guy. John Weaver, welcome to the show.
• 1:08
  John Weaver: Hey, Tim, how you doing? Hope everything's I hope you're warm. It's cold over here, it's two degrees. We're having a real winter.
• 1:15
  Tim Montague: We're having a real winter, and that's okay. I think it keeps the Riff Raff out. John, we have a foot of snow where I live, which I think is lovely. I love snow. If it's gonna be cold, I just assume it'd be snowy.
• 1:27
  John Weaver: So we got just under two feet. I don't think we touched two feet. I saw 19 inches, and then we had another afternoon. So maybe 20 inches, 22 inches, somewhere in that range. That's good. I'm very proud of my car digging out. I just have a great spot now, so I'm not going to move my car, but I dug out so nicely, and it's beautiful. And, man, I wish I could show off pictures of my quality, high quality digging job. I can, if you're really interested, I can get
• 1:56
  Tim Montague: really that's okay. That's okay. I'm proud of you. John, yeah, it was, it
• 2:01
  John Weaver: was fulfilling. You know, as a Floridian, you don't do this. But, you know, living up north, shoveling is fun,
• 2:07
  Tim Montague: the the soul, the the snow. I love it, but it's not good for the solar and the solar panels in my neighborhood are still covered with snow. I feel badly for those people who are trying to benefit from their their lovely solar panels, but my my neighbor, my neighboring governor to our west in Missouri, apparently is trying to kill the solar industry.
• 2:30
  Tim Montague: John, what's the story, and why on earth would a governor of a big state like Missouri try to kill the solar industry?
• 2:37
  John Weaver: So technically, it's not the governor who's trying to kill it. It's a senator, and she's filed a legislation stating that she thinks a solar moratorium should be put in place, stopping all ongoing construction. So that's really key, like it could stop existing construction and any new construction until new environmental regulations are rolled out by the end of through the end of 2027 right?
• 3:08
  Tim Montague: Because clearly, clearly, solar is so threatening to the environment.
• 3:14
  John Weaver: So, so there's a project under construction right now that's 430 megawatts, so a healthy project, but it's one project, and it's projected to double the state's capacity, right? One. So it's, it's, it's, clearly, it's, you know, we need to be bribing more people, like the oil and gas people, or whatever. I mean, I I went through the politicians donations, and they're mostly self funded, actually, from their family money. They have a cement factory and other stuff.
• 3:49
  John Weaver: But I can see how they don't care about emissions because, you know, cements really tough, but I just, you know, it's just standard. Gotta hate the green stuff type of thing going on, and that's what's going on here.
• 3:59
  John Weaver: So I
• 4:02
  Tim Montague: so there's a story in E and E News, which, which, which I can put on screen. But before I do that, you wanted to give a shout out to some smart attorneys about this problem.
• 4:14
  Tim Montague: And what is that? Shout out?
• 4:14
  Tim Montague: Well, the
• 4:16
  John Weaver: question I just wanted to ask, if anybody has an interest from a legal and they want to put a quote in, because I'm writing a story for PV magazine trying to encapsulate it. But what do you think from a legal perspective, is this allowed? Can a they make a law and just statewide for two years, ban all solar. Can they just and do that? Is that legal?
• 4:40
  John Weaver: And this would be ground mount, because literally within the last three days, the Supreme Court said HOAs homeowner associations are not allowed to ban rooftop solar outright within their neighborhoods, they can say it may not be road facing or has to be esthetic or something. So. So the real question is, is this legal? So if you wouldn't mind, as a question or request, check out my LinkedIn, John Fitzgerald Weaver and and make a comment, because I'll be posting a story on this topic next week about, or maybe tomorrow. Well, today's Friday, so next week about what's going on here. I reached out to the lawyer, to the senator, to ask her what her opinions are. Told her I was a general contractor. I'm a reporter. Yeah. You know, here's some good things about it.
• 5:27
  John Weaver: What's what's going on and so, so that. So if you if your lawyer, or if you're my lawyer, because three of my lawyers are CC in that tag, in that but if you're a lawyer, give us a comment. I'd like to get some feedback. And, you know, write about it.
• 5:40
  Tim Montague: And I'm just wondering, and the governor is a man. His name is Mike Kehoe. I'm just wondering what is going on in in Mr. Kehoe's head, because when, when I think of. Out the solar industry. Okay, it's good for landowners. It gets it allows them to triple their income on a per acre basis. It's good for jobs. It creates local jobs. It's good for tax revenue.
• 6:03
  Tim Montague: It increases the tax base for rural communities who are hurting, and it cleans the air for the citizens of Missouri. So what is the bad that is there?
• 6:14
  Tim Montague: Like, where's the
• 6:19
  John Weaver: idea I have? I have one bad from a certain angle. I started thinking about it this morning, and yesterday I was writing this article. I noticed, and I'm trying to paint a path for why this person believes these things, because I assume it's not just coming from them, but, you know, maybe they just don't like solar. Great, yeah, but the majority of the donors for this person happen to be farmers related organizations, food crop people. Tim, what do you think about this? Corporate farming is against solar because it's pushing up the land lease rates. Even though it's only 1% of land, it's got enough attention that it's pushing a little bit of negotiating power to the landowners.
• 7:06
  Tim Montague: I just can't believe that it's such a trivial percentage.
• 7:10
  John Weaver: I'm trying, but yes, I I'm there with you, but it's like,
• 7:14
  Tim Montague: I think it's, I think it's probably more related to the fossil lobby, but I'm just guessing,
• 7:22
  John Weaver: Missouri, on a state level, doesn't have a very big fossil lobby. There's no domestic I reading this up, they import like 99% of their energy.
• 7:28
  John Weaver: They're like 56 57% electricity being coal, and all their gas and everything comes from elsewhere, but there definitely is some fossil
• 7:39
  Tim Montague: lobby stuff. Wait a minute, you just said that most of their electricity comes from coal.
• 7:44
  John Weaver: It's imported, though it's imported coal.
• 7:47
  John Weaver: Maybe, yeah, no, it is imported, so it's not domestic energy. But yes, you're right. Like, most of it's coal, most of it's gas from pipelines. And even Holly, one of their senators, went after the grain Express power line, which starts out in way Kansas goes across Missouri, goes across Illinois and into Indiana. And Holly's going against it, like he's attacking that power line. And he just likes to attack stuff, because, you know, including the White House on January 6, when he ran away like a punk, Molly, you punk? So, yeah. So we got to figure that out and understand why. But they're definitely attacking it, man. They're definitely attacking it. And you know what? We got our first comment on my on my LinkedIn, and it came from one of my lawyers down in Texas, Marshall Harkins, and he his terminal his term was it would invite considerable potential liability to the state, especially for extent projects in process. I want to figure out what the word extent means. Yeah, I guess that's permitted extent definition currently or existing. Okay, yeah, so projects under construction would invite liability. And, you know, we have a story on our list, actually, the very next two of them down, that are related to projects under construction that were stopped, that were turned over. So we we have some, you know, vineyard wind, it's got its last turbine that left. They want to talk about the vineyard story. Yeah, let's go to vineyard perfect, because it's a perfect dovetail.
• 9:19
  John Weaver: Yeah. Okay, so the administration, very recently stopped all construction, all leases at offshore wind. I believe there's five offshore wind facilities and and slowly, over the last month or two, the courts have been overruling the Trump regime's cancelation. And the most recent one, I think, was vineyard wind being officially given permission to start construction, like a week ago. And now this picture from Anastasia to
• 9:52
  Tim Montague: restart to rest.
• 9:52
  Tim Montague: It was nearly fully constructed, right?
• 9:57
  John Weaver: Well, this is the literal last turbine going out.
• 10:01
  John Weaver: So they were stopped with one to go, Tim one to go. They were stopped, and now the judge overruled it. And here is it going out on a boat. This is a picture from the 29th yesterday, I think, yeah. And this is one of my favorite news sources.
• 10:16
  John Weaver: This is the New Bedford light.
• 10:16
  John Weaver: So their local, local lighthouse. I think I can't remember the name right now, scroll up real quick so I can just say their name properly.
• 10:26
  John Weaver: It's New Bedford. Oh, this is Rhode Island current, I guess.
• 10:30
  John Weaver: But Anastasia lemon, she's great. So a project that's been permitted, that's undergoing, that's been legally approved, you can't just go in there and blast it. So that's, or at least it seems like,
• 10:45
  Tim Montague: well, we're talking about, in the case of vineyard wind, this has got to be 10s or hundreds of men.
• 10:50
  Tim Montague: Millions of dollars. It's a big project, absolutely. And again, I'm like, This is good for our economy. So why would you want to do anything that's really harsh on the economy, but good for the environment and good for people like, I just don't, I don't, I don't resonate. You know, our economy is not in horrible shape, but it's also not in great shape, and the cost of living is going up. And, you know, so middle class people, and much less low income people, are not feeling very good or secure about the economic situation. And this doesn't help when you step on the neck of construction work the end of the day, right? This is electricians, mechanical installers, carpenters, engineers. Oh, this is, this is a lot of good work that.
• 11:43
  John Weaver: So the boating industry, the fishing industry, has been making mad money off of doing this, like transporting ships out there, directing stuff, helping to manage the flow of product. Not the big ships moving like that, but like the tug boats and the fishing boats. There's also local money coming there. And I looked it up real quick, 4 billion plus Tim, not hundreds of millions.
• 12:02
  John Weaver: Vineyard is a 4 billion project.
• 12:06
  John Weaver: Yes, sir. Nice. So that's, that's something, man. All right, let's
• 12:09
  Tim Montague: talk about balcony solar. You and I love this topic. It's it's already come to Europe. It's coming to the US. I think we covered that. It is coming. It came first to Utah. I believe in the US, right? So, what's the what's the story? I'm putting this on screen. You wrote a story in PV magazine just day before yesterday, how to build a balcony solar kit to UL certification. And obviously this is an important question,
• 12:40
  John Weaver: yeah, so the first UL standard came out, Ul 3700 that's related to balcony solar.
• 12:46
  John Weaver: And there's also really nice white paper that I linked to in this document that goes through what the risks are that UL sees with Balcony solar. And so that's really what I really love, the technical dive in. So I think I spoke with Ken Boyce.
• 13:04
  John Weaver: Is it Boyce? Yeah, Ken Boyce, he's a VP of principal engineering, and we went over that white paper that you're highlighting right there, and we just, we talked about, and we had a bunch of questions, and I got to chat about, like, what's he feel and what does he like, and what doesn't he like? And, you know, it was really interesting to hear one of the, one of the high level things you take away from UL is that, and this is how they say it. They're like, Hey, we, we don't really care what solution wins. We just want it to be safe. Is like, you know what? That's a good talking point. It's like, build what you want. He goes, we're going to give you an outline, and then you crazy market people that figure stuff out. It's your job to come up with a great, great concept and and so that's like, at the highest level, that's what the conversation was. But some of the risks, like one risk, and if you go back to the article, you can see a nice illustration of it, if you have a circuit, and let's say that circuit has 15 amps and it's rated for it, and it's right there that image, yeah, and you have two pieces of hardware, and one pulls 15 amps, and the other pulls five, or in this case, is it six or eight, whatever it is, it goes over 20 amps, that should throw the circuit.
• 14:12
  John Weaver: However, if you have a solar module on there and it's putting out five amps, and suddenly the solar equals plus the 15 amps equals what the stuff needs, the circuit might not trigger. Now you might think, oh, that's all right. It works well. Mostly the wiring was designed for 15 amps, so technically, you're putting 20 amps through a wire that's designed specified for 15 Max.
• 14:37
  John Weaver: Yeah. Now they do build in safety factors, 120 550% 200% you're probably
• 14:47
  Tim Montague: okay, yeah. But so the breaker doesn't necessarily see that that middle part of the wiring is potentially overloaded,
• 14:56
  John Weaver: that that is the key. That's that's the key, yeah, so that's one of the risks. Is this right here, it's, how do you protect these circuits? And then another one is the fact that, you know, historically, solar gear has been made for professionals with inverters, made for professionals, not designed to be plugged in, dragged around.
• 15:14
  John Weaver: Plugged in, dragged around. So they it's called, like touch, and I believe we're getting real close. Maybe they're touch safety. There it is. So what are the new safety factors that matter? And here's a unique one.
• 15:25
  John Weaver: So you have a picture of a plug, you're like, ah, John, what's up with the plug? Well, this plug is one of the most famous plugs on earth. All the plugs are, you know, everything we plug into the wall. They're designed to protect us when they're pulling electricity, not generating. You ever grab that plug and think, Oh, I'm touching it, and I'm not going to get electrocuted, but now you could, because your solar panel could be pushing electric. City the other direction. And so this is another nuance. Ul says, Hey, this thing has never been tested for generating electricity. It's only been tested for pulling electricity. Here's a new nuance. And so one of the suggestions is, should there be a new plug? Now? How does it work in Europe? I think they just have a standard plug, and they just plug it in, and Europeans aren't killing themselves. But, you know, so it's, it's, that's, that's one of the nuances of the touch. And then the last one is, the last major overall topic was working with the gcfi ground current fault circuits. And one of the challenges, here's picture of one. One of the challenges of this, or one of the requirements, is that if you have electrical going outside and there's water involved, that circuit has to plug into a G, G c, f i, and if it doesn't plug into a G c f i, or g f c i, sorry, ground fault circuit, then you're just adding a little risk. And so there's these nuances that they're looking at, and they're trying to put come forward with a standard, and they want the market to blow up.
• 17:50
  John Weaver: And I just saw a headline this morning, 25 states Tim have now submitted balcony solar legislation. Have you ever seen legislation move across the United States so fast? I mean, that's cool starting, like a year. I mean, other than, like, some weird right wing thing attacking people, but like, energy wise, this is like 25 states motivated by Utah. That means politicians are seeing something interesting. So that was cool conversation. And if you want to build a kit now, you gotta you got some guidance, things that, if you work through them, you can, you can get in there.
• 18:27
  Tim Montague: Very cool. Yeah.
• 18:27
  Tim Montague: Well, let's continue to cover this story. Glad to hear that 25 states is Illinois on that list of 25 I don't know. Let's see that's all that really matters.
• 18:38
  Tim Montague: John, I could do balcony solar at my house, I have a sunny balcony, or sunny enough where I think it would pencil my roof.
• 18:52
  Tim Montague: It looks like,
• 18:55
  John Weaver: yeah, it looks like it's in there. I can see panel split sources. See an access
• 19:00
  Tim Montague: top five solar state. Who you kidding?
• 19:03
  John Weaver: Yeah, yeah. So at least it's floating. I can't tell explicitly as if it's like fully in there, but it's, it's definitely being discussed. I can see it right
• 19:10
  Tim Montague: here, all right.
• 19:10
  Tim Montague: Well, your CEO wrote a story in in PB magazine. It's not often that we cover stories by the CEO of PB magazine, John the CEO.
• 19:22
  John Weaver: Well, sort Oh, is this an Eckhart? Story?
• 19:25
  John Weaver: Absolutely. What are we covering? Yeah, I don't even know what's next.
• 19:30
  Tim Montague: So there's a story about Tesla, Elon Musk at WEF, at the World Economic Forum, SpaceX and Tesla to produce 100 gigawatts each of PV per year in the US this decade. Why is that?
• 19:45
  John Weaver: So it's a little flip floppy the exact details on here, because, you know, Elon Musk talks, but um, right. So he said in at Davos that either or so plus or minus 100 gigawatts, you know, amongst friends, SpaceX and x ai, so not Tesla are aiming to build 100 gigawatts each of solar to feed their data centers separately.
• 20:09
  John Weaver: On his quarterly call, which I haven't fully covered yet, he then came in and said he wants to manufacture 100 gigawatts of solar full supply chain, so silicon all the way up. And what's interesting is that the you know, tan, tan, that that collects all the solar stocks, it dropped 10 to 15% on this announcement, at least that's what Roth capital, or Roth says.
• 20:37
  John Weaver: Okay, so it's weird though, competition, because if Elon drops in 100 gigawatts of solar,
• 20:47
  Tim Montague: I mean, Tesla was producing solar panels in collaboration with, was it sharp electronics, or who
• 20:54
  John Weaver: was he? Was Panasonic up in Buffalo?
• 20:57
  Tim Montague: Yeah, right. But then they they stopped doing that, I think, didn't they?
• 21:01
  John Weaver: Yeah, I think they did. And then they started using that warehouse that factory up in Buffalo for the solar roof, which still hasn't taken off.
• 21:07
  John Weaver: So, no, it hasn't, yeah, which disappointed me. Man. I was so psyched about that product.
• 21:15
  Tim Montague: It was beautiful.
• 21:15
  Tim Montague: Still haven't seen a solar roof in the in the flesh I have. I talked to some contractors who are certified and have done some solar roof projects, and they they don't particularly care for it.
• 21:27
  John Weaver: Yeah, interesting, but
• 21:28
  Tim Montague: it is the thing.
• 21:28
  Tim Montague: It's just super expensive and it's beautiful. Yeah, it is beautiful. It is beautiful. If money is no object, why not?
• 21:37
  John Weaver: Yeah, it's not an object. It's not real. Look at the price of silver and gold to the roof. Just make up some money.
• 21:43
  Tim Montague: Yeah. So, yeah, so, so, so, okay, there's two things here we need. We need a lot of solar here on Earth, and now we need a lot of solar in space to power the AI data centers that are going to be space based. Potentially. We'll see, we'll see if this comes to fruition, there are companies that are specializing in space based data centers. Now it's a thing, yeah. How cool is that, man? And I mean, the the specific yield is very good. You get six more times radiation, you know, in space, because there's no atmosphere so that that makes it pencil faster when you have really good, specific yield, right?
• 22:26
  John Weaver: Man, yeah. And space it'd be 24/7 light, and
• 22:30
  Tim Montague: you got it, but you got to bring down the cost of the lift. And SpaceX is doing that.
• 22:35
  John Weaver: We'll see. I mean, they're, they're the ones doing it, yeah, yeah, they are the ones doing it. They're looking for space solar. They're looking for terrestrial with solar plus storage, and now they're looking to build out their own manufacturing maybe, like there you can see it near the bottom, whether it's 100 gigawatts collectively, or 100 gigawatts.
• 22:53
  John Weaver: Tesla, 100 gigawatts. SpaceX, yeah, 100 gigawatts Xi. You know, it's still he just started mouthing off. So, so we'll see 100 gigawatts.
• 23:03
  Tim Montague: Sounds like a lot, but, you know, we're consuming 50 to 60 gigawatts a year now in the US. So it's not really,
• 23:11
  John Weaver: it's not just 100 though, Tim, that's the key.
• 23:14
  John Weaver: It's 100 gigawatts for SpaceX and or x ai, and 100 gigawatts of manufacturing capacity.
• 23:20
  John Weaver: That's the key that I think is actually more interesting, sourcing 100 gigs and building these off grid data centers.
• 23:28
  John Weaver: Cool, sweet duty on. But now Ian is saying he wants. And this is what he said in his conference call after this article was published, his quarter, his q4 Tesla earnings call, is that he wants. He first off announced a new Tesla solar panel, which is a little unique and different.
• 23:46
  John Weaver: So we should probably cover that panel, maybe not today, but next, next time we get together.
• 23:49
  John Weaver: But then he said he wants to manufacture from silicon all the way up, 100 gigs. That's more than we have in the country.
• 23:57
  John Weaver: That would, that would blow some things up. That could be two corporate parks. You know, we could get, there's 50 gigawatt corporate parts that have the whole machine within it. But that's, that's the real interesting thing. What's he going to do with 100 gigs of manufacturing capacity? I want to know, I want to know about that.
• 24:18
  Tim Montague: Well, think about the, the need of data centers, right? We're building data centers that are 15 gigawatt data centers. So there goes your 100 gigs real fast. And that's just one country, right? We're just, we're just 5% of the population. We might be 20% of the AI data centers. I don't know.
• 24:44
  John Weaver: We're a big chunk of it. We are, yeah,
• 24:48
  Tim Montague: all right, so we're going to talk about zinc batteries. Apparently, yeah, I've covered zinc batteries now and again on the show. I have nothing against zinc. But do you know who the maker of said zinc battery
• 25:04
  John Weaver: is, yes, sir, I'm thinking about buying one. So they're they're in the running.
• 25:07
  John Weaver: Okay, so this is a battery from EOS. They're based out of Pittsburgh. This is the insides of one of their batteries each if you zoom in a little on that picture, you can see that one of those gray things is actually kind of a container. And each of those things have, like, a whole bunch of individual cells. And so that is the insides of their zinc battery. And if you look those trays, they kind of slide out. If you look on the right side and the left side, there's little latches where you can, you know, just weigh the tray down. Those are trays of zinc containers. The containers have a bunch of cells in it. And so this is EOS. This is an 800 kilowatt hour battery. The it's a healthy size for 800 kWh. I mean, it's two, three times the size of a lithium ion, if not a little more. Yeah, they're pretty heavy. Their pricing is strong. I don't have official pricing yet, but their domestic content and their pricing is within reason, and they're kind of longer term products. They can only run at most 5.3 hours.
• 26:16
  John Weaver: They don't have a four hour battery, technically, not at least at 800 kWh, they'd have to do some weird stuff. But so
• 26:23
  Tim Montague: in a 20 foot container, how much? How many kW how many kWh are we getting?
• 26:30
  John Weaver: So 800 kWh, it will charge at 200 KW, discharge at 150 and so that's how we get to the five and a third hour thing.
• 26:40
  John Weaver: Okay, because the discharge isn't 200 it's slow. Or slower discharge. But for my project, that doesn't matter. I have a 12 hour discharge, like, I can't even discharge it, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have 2.4 megs.
• 26:50
  John Weaver: I'm only gonna be able to discharge it 200 KW. So this is literally going to be a two, a 1224, hour battery, a solar power project for 10 days a year.
• 27:02
  Tim Montague: Like, and what is the application, though that you're considering this for
• 27:06
  John Weaver: smart program, which is oversized DC to AC ratio for my project, which means 700 KW of modules behind 200 KW grid connection. So massive, 703 and a half to one DC to AC ratio. And so that's why we need the big battery to capture the clipped electricity.
• 27:30
  John Weaver: And then, you know, I ran some numbers on June 21 2027 the sun will rise around 505. The system, you're gonna like this Tim the system will hit peak output 200 KW before 6am that means the batteries are going to
• 27:54
  be charging at 5: 50am on June 21 and they're not going to stop charging until the solar drops below 200 and
• 28:03
  Tim Montague: that would be the solar reaching such output in the morning.
• 28:08
  John Weaver: Single access tracker, oh, okay, Tracker, gotcha. And, yeah, single axis tracker, and it's 700 KW, so it's gonna
• 28:16
  Unknown: hit 200 like right away, okay,
• 28:20
  John Weaver: as long as the sun's out, you know, if it's overcast, and you know, so this battery, this is my zinc thing that I'm chasing right now. So it's, it's my project of the week. It's kind of fun.
• 28:29
  Tim Montague: Well, we should talk. Getting close, we should talk. I have some I have some intel for you, John.
• 28:35
  John Weaver: All right, I like Intel. I'm always listening.
• 28:39
  Tim Montague: All right, let's move on. We're going to talk more about batteries, though.
• 28:40
  Tim Montague: Chinese battery majors race into bigger LFP cells from 314 amp amp hour to 500 amp hour plus.
• 28:49
  Tim Montague: This is a theme that we've seen, and this is in PV magazine, energy storage. So why is this a story? Though? Do you think John, so?
• 29:02
  John Weaver: This is the next happening of the story. Last year, the story we saw, or the prior year, was going to the 314 amp hour cell. This year is being called the year of the big cell. And I have a collection of batteries. There's there's Catal. They're doing a 587 Eve, a 628 hit the AM, 587 and an 1175, for an eight hour.
• 29:24
  John Weaver: Sunwoda, 684, envision 530 everybody is now going to the next level, like over the last two years. And here's the key, we saw massive price declines moving to the 300 phase. Now we're doubling it again. We should expect to see additional price declines. Maybe not this year. Maybe we'll see it this year, but definitely next year.
• 29:51
  John Weaver: And so now we're already at 6070, bucks per kilowatt hour, all in in China. Are we going to see 50 as a regular occurrence?
• 29:58
  John Weaver: Are we going to see 40 Man? Be careful. I'm getting excited, but it's, it's now we're seeing it again. And remember last week or two or a couple shows ago, we spoke about the shortage of small cells for CNI in residential space, because nobody wants to make 100, 200 KW cells. They want to make these big ones.
• 30:17
  Tim Montague: I mean, what's interesting is that this sell price per per watt hour, or kilowatt hour is very different at the cell level versus the system level, right? Because I'm looking at Battery quotes now almost daily in the United States, in the US. So what is a good per kilowatt hour for a CNI battery? What is a good price in your mind?
• 30:47
  John Weaver: I I don't expect to pay more than $250 per kilowatt hour in the US for domestic content
• 30:54
  Tim Montague: products I've never seen, I've never seen a price that good. Yep, that's
• 30:58
  John Weaver: just a battery, though. That's pure DC block only. That doesn't include the inverters. That doesn't include,
• 31:04
  Tim Montague: oh yeah, rap, dude, you got, you got to talk full rap. Come on. I don't know, 300 for something functional. I think it's, I think it's five to 700
• 31:17
  John Weaver: No way I'm paying that. You need to. You need to put your own system together. No way not, not doing it.
• 31:23
  Tim Montague: Brother, you can do that's what I'm doing. Making it Work is is not trivial. And I've heard so many horror stories about it not working.
• 31:35
  John Weaver: I can I we have some good partners. Can show you the gear we're going to use a Dyna power. We're going to work with selectria. We're working on our ESS. Yes, I'm, I'm not a full rap pay a whole lot type of guy. I'm gonna build my thing and make it work. You know, I got engineers in house. Man, we're making it happen.
• 31:52
  Tim Montague: I love it. I love it. And I hope I don't see you in court.
• 32:02
  John Weaver: Yeah, hopefully not. Man, geez, Tim, throwing some salt on my game.
• 32:07
  Tim Montague: Wow. Yeah, no. I mean, I, I've, I've seen some projects, you know, that just underperform, and then there's finger pointing. That's the problem when you're the integrator, or even with a third party integrator, right? Is there's so many different players involved. One company makes the software, one company makes the EMS, one company makes the cells, one company's putting it all together. And then there's so many opportunities for finger pointing. Oh, it's their fault, oh, it's their fault. Oh, it's the and then you're chasing your tail, and that can be a real time and money killer. So I'm mark my word, mark my word. Go for the full wrap.
• 32:54
  John Weaver: Nope, going forward with it, doing it, knocking it out. You're gonna see it. It's gonna come on this show.
• 32:59
  Tim Montague: Everybody's gonna love it, all right. So when is that project gonna see the light of day. Do you think the battery
• 33:06
  John Weaver: we will have PTO by December 31 this year, we'll probably start construction.
• 33:09
  John Weaver: Late q2 I expect to put in a purchase order. Late q1 maybe, maybe late q1 early q2 hardware should be on site. Later. Q3 we'll have maybe q4 but we'll be turning it on December before December 31 this year.
• 33:30
  Tim Montague: Okay, right on.
• 33:30
  Tim Montague: Bloomberg, Nef finds global energy transition investment reached record 2.3 trillion in 2025 up 8% from 2024 you know you there was, there was a comment made by another podcast this week in solar. Shout out to Aaron Nichols, who's coming on the show. I just did an interview with him, but he had a headline, the world is leaving the US behind, and that's what kind of resonates with me here.
• 34:05
  Tim Montague: Is, yes, the energy transition is happening, but, but it's happening faster elsewhere than it's happening here in the US.
• 34:13
  Tim Montague: But what's this story
• 34:15
  John Weaver: is just we're spending money, and, you know, electric, so cars, so transportation, renewables and grid upgrades represent the majority of that. Interestingly, renewables are actually down 10% this year on a combo of cheaper prices for energy storage, cheaper prices for solar and wind, and then with China getting tighter. You know, China didn't detract this year. They still grew, but they are getting tighter. And the value of solar, because the module pricing is down so much, was depressed this last year, so it's still growing, and
• 35:03
  Tim Montague: the US market was up three and a half percent to 378 billion.
• 35:09
  John Weaver: But the world was up eight, which means the world was probably up 14 other than the US, or 11 other than the US, or 10,
• 35:17
  Tim Montague: the world is leaving us behind.
• 35:20
  John Weaver: Just, I mean, we're chasing it. We're chasing it, but even nuclear and hydrogen were down. But it's just, look at that. The money's just growing. And look at that big old chunk in the middle, that's transportation, that's new cars.
• 35:32
  John Weaver: Look at that big, yeah, that's the purple in the middle. And then look at that big green on the bottom, or the blue green, whatever that is. That's renewables in general, teal. And then at the top, yeah, the magenta, the reddish purple, that's, that's power grid upgrades. So we got lots of power lines coming. We've got lots of substations. We've got lots of gear, you know, solar and storage at the bottom, along with wind. So that's that bottom one. It's a combination of capacity growing and prices declining, because capacity grew on both wind and solar like massively. Last year we deployed 600 this year we got close to 706 80 ish. So solar capacity grew, energy storage grew 50% wind grew, everything grew. The total money spent still went down. I want to
• 36:17
  Tim Montague: see the breakdown of wind, solar and batteries.
• 36:20
  Tim Montague: Why don't they do
• 36:21
  John Weaver: because you got to pay $65,000 a year to get this Tim That's, that's what this work. That's what Bloomberg is, baby. I've asked, trust me, I don't make enough yet, working on it, 65,060 5g for, that's a Bloomberg terminal. That's what you're buying. Wow, yeah, you get a lot of information. Know much more than we could ever talk about on this show. Tim, like, we would just be like, Ah, so much. It'd be wonderful, though. Maybe we could crowdfund it. Let's ask our readers, hey, readers or listeners, you think we could get like, 50 G's a year from you all.
• 37:03
  Tim Montague: We'll talk about it on the show. So you got a story on blue sky about subsidies? Yes.
• 37:09
  John Weaver: So this is from a book that I'm reading. And what's the name of the book? The book, oh my gosh, give me 10 seconds, 543, it's called the West Texas power plant that saved the world by Andy Bowman, and it's about the first merchant Well, it's not really about it's about a lot more. But it's based on the first merchant solar power plant, which means the first solar plant that was built without a PPA, a big one.
• 37:41
  John Weaver: It was in West Texas. It went out of business, or it went bankrupt really soon thereafter, but, uh, but it was great. So it's starting on that. But this what I wanted to point out. If you look at incentives, people are always complaining, oh, Tim's internet's going funny, so I might have to take over here.
• 37:58
  John Weaver: So if you look at the incentives that have gone to various energy sources. Everybody's like, ah, solar and gets too much, wind gets too much. Well, you know what? A lot of research has been done, and it shows clearly that fossils and nuclear blew everybody away, but fossils blew everybody away. And, yep, it was, you know, no, no, there's, there's no there. It's all BS.
• 38:25
  John Weaver: We're like, ah, you know, who's taking the money? No, it's the oil people. They and the coal people and the gas people, by far, you know, think about fracking. Fracking was the most was a very cost, defensive cost, expensive cat, high capex investment to learn how to do it. Federal government did it.
• 38:44
  John Weaver: And now fracking runs the world, or runs the United States. And so the purpose of this, the West Texas power plant that saved the world, is to show this string, and he has other logics, a string of items that show where incentive money is coming from, or the
• 39:02
  Tim Montague: name of the book in the in the dock, so we can point to that in the show notes.
• 39:05
  Tim Montague: All right, we'll do one or two more stories. And got a story in PV magazine, European PV market faces potential 2026 price shock from China, export tax. Okay?
• 39:26
  Tim Montague: Martin, you're shocking her.
• 39:31
  John Weaver: So Tim, your internet's going funny.
• 39:34
  Tim Montague: Not for me. It's not all right. Well,
• 39:37
  John Weaver: good, maybe it's mine. So yeah, so what's occurring is that the price of solar modules have gone up from China about 20 to 30% and right now, solar panel manufacturing capacity is at a peak, and it says that The manufacturing sector is at full capacity, because, come April 1, any solar panel that's exported will go up by nine to 10% because China got rid of a tax credit. It says 20 to 30% here. Well, that's, yeah, I know that's part of the conversation. It's like, Why?
• 40:22
  John Weaver: Why is this happening? Supply and demand something, but they're only going up by 10% if you read into the article, they actually talk about that.
• 40:28
  John Weaver: They're like, Why? Why is it going up by so much? And it is so it's just the reality of what's happening. People are saying, you want it, pay for it.
• 40:36
  John Weaver: You want it before April 1 pay for it. And so, so maybe if you can be patient, you can wait.
• 40:42
  John Weaver: But without a doubt, prices solar panels from China are going up about 10% maybe 2030, and this is for all components that leave China, cells, poly, silicon, wafer, glass, everything, everything related to solar. And it could just be solar modules. Actually, I don't know that explicitly, but it's definitely solar modules. It might be further up this chain.
• 41:04
  John Weaver: It's a little different, but this is coming. And so I saw an interesting headline, headline from Roth that said five to 15% of global solar projects might be put on hold due to these price increases. That's really surprising.
• 41:28
  Tim Montague: So we also have a tariff kicking in in 2026
• 41:32
  John Weaver: so the US, potentially the 232 tariff, yes, yes,
• 41:40
  Tim Montague: that's coming. So I. What I've learned recently, though, is that domestic content solar panels, which there are a few true suppliers, Helene is my favorite, but also Imperial Star and where it's a domestic made cell and panel assembled in the US. It pencils with that 10% adder on the ITC, it pencils to use domestic content solar panels, as long as we have the adder. Now, the ITC is phasing out, and the domestic content requirements are going up over time. So that's a dynamic landscape, but I don't Yeah, I don't think that this necessarily tells installers. I mean, unless you're buying like, gigawatts of solar panels, maybe, you know, go buy your Chinese solar panels now,
• 42:39
  John Weaver: yeah, but even in the US, we're not getting solar panels from China. No, we're getting
• 42:43
  Tim Montague: him from Southeast Asia. Yeah, a lot of the manufacturing went to Southeast Asia to avoid some of the tariffs on China.
• 42:54
  John Weaver: So this will affect Europe, because Europe buys direct from China, and they have been buying at eight to nine cents. Now they're going to be buying at 12, 1314, I see. So Europe will have an effect, and outside of Europe will have outside of the US and Europe will have an effect. Okay, so Africa is going to have an effect. India, who's super price sensitive, but already has a 25% import tariff as well. So, all
• 43:21
  Tim Montague: right, let's do one more, one more, deploying 40 battery electric semis. Or history lesson of the week. It's clear to me that the marijuana industry financed the start of the solar industry.
• 43:33
  John Weaver: You know what story I want to talk about? Come on now.
• 43:36
  Tim Montague: Tim, it's true the marijuana industry does have ties to the solar industry.
• 43:48
  John Weaver: So the story is actually about a movie, and the movie is, it's in the it's in the article, but the history of the movie
• 43:59
  Tim Montague: is a documentary.
• 44:02
  John Weaver: Yes, a documentary.
• 44:02
  John Weaver: So it's called solar roots. Goes back to the middle 70s, with hippies moving off, moving out to the woods and living in the middle of nowhere. And the story by Anne, my boss, my former boss,
• 44:16
  Tim Montague: Peter, now retired. I thought she was retired, but maybe
• 44:19
  John Weaver: she is. She still got too much energy. Yeah, she's got too much energy. She needs to do. So I was talking to her the other day, she gave me great advice. Thank you, Anne. She she found, you know, talking in this story, she found that in the 70s, people had no land or had no electricity, but they were moving to these off grid places that were just cool. Yeah, and so what they would do is that they would run lighting and basic stuff off their car battery until the car battery got low. Then they jump the car drive it around for a while to recharge the battery with a giant gas engine. So we're probably talking like two bucks a kilowatt hour, something stupid. Who knows? And then they come back and park the car again and just destroy their lead acid batteries over and over. And so eventually somebody said, Hey, man, we can make some money growing pot. And then they started selling pot in the Cali and if you read through the story, one of the solar people, and here's, you know, a great picture of a solar panel from way back in the day, but one of these solar manufacturers from arco, which was the first big manufacturer in California, they came into this random little solar panel shop up in the woods trying to figure out what's going on, and they found a bunch of shoeless hippies paying for modules with cash. And he's like, Oh, now I know why people are buying our modules. And so they started saying, Hey, we're going up into northern Cali, and we're selling solar panels. And so you can argue distributed medicinal, distributed pharmaceutical manufacturing is what helped grow. Not argue, we have it. We have it here. Man, the
• 46:06
  Tim Montague: irony of it is too that it was very much solar and batteries, right? Because they needed, they needed power when they were when the sun wasn't shining, and and and then it, and then it, you know, kind of went away, the battery thing, generally speaking, and now we've come full circle, and batteries are back, and they're important and they're relatively affordable. I mean, on a good battery Project, John the the economics now, this is in Illinois, okay, where we have generous incentives. You know, a solar alone project might save$200,000 a year. A battery out of battery, it could be 4x that.
• 46:48
  Tim Montague: So I want to see this movie. Is it widely available?
• 46:55
  John Weaver: It's coming out this summer, coming out shortly.
• 46:58
  John Weaver: Yeah, you're gonna see it pop
• 46:59
  Tim Montague: up shortly. And the movie is called
• 47:02
  John Weaver: solar roots. Solar root. It's going to be released in the fall, sorry, not the summer, the fall of 26 Okay.
• 47:11
  Tim Montague: Well, thank you, Anne Fisher for bringing that to us. And check out all of our content at clean power hour.com Tell a friend about the show.
• 47:18
  Tim Montague: That's the best thing you can do to help others find this content. We're on YouTube, we're on Spotify. We're on Apple. We are everywhere. I'm headed to Boston next week for re plus northeast. I hope I will get to have a beer with you. John Weaver, and where can our listeners find you? Commercial solar
• 47:35
  John Weaver: guy, calm or LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. A whole bunch. You could also come to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in Boston, shake a hand. I'll buy you a beer, but that's the best.
• 47:46
  John Weaver: I'm also on blue sky every other day, just posting constantly, man, all the time. What about Tim? Where can they find you?
• 47:55
  Tim Montague: I mean, usually behind a screen here on Zoom or stream yard, but I am making an effort to connect with more people at trade shows. I'm going to a lot of trade shows. So I'm going to Boston next week. I'm going to San Diego, then in two weeks after that, for inner solar. I'm going to Milwaukee to NABCEP. So if you're going to NABCEP, check it out in Milwaukee. I will be there for a couple of days in March, in April, I'll be going to Dallas for Innovation Day, or gig a week, as they call it, for CPS America. And then in June, I'll be going to ACP in Houston. Lot of travel.
• 48:33
  John Weaver: That's a lot of trouble. Every time I take one trip for three days, it backs me up for two weeks.
• 48:39
  Tim Montague: It's it, yeah, it's not good for the email backlog, but it's great for shaking hands. So come shake my hand. That's your job. I want to meet, I want to meet 100 listeners this year face to face. So come visit. That'd be cool. All right, with that, I'll say, let's grow solar and storage. Thank you so much.
• 48:54
  Tim Montague: John, thanks. Tim, you.