November 4, 2025 • 50 mins
In the latest Clean Power Hour Live, Tim Montague and John Weaver discuss major developments in clean energy markets. Learn about the world's largest solar plus storage project breaking ground in Abu Dhabi, how silver prices are transforming solar panel economics, and why residential batteries are creating a feedback loop that drives more solar installations. Tim shares insights from his recent visit to the TenneSEIA market, where LightWave Solar and other installers are building community-scale projects and expanding into battery storage.
Episode Highlights:
- Silver prices exceeded $50 per ounce, making older solar panels worth $30 or more for recyclers and adding $7 to $15 in material costs to new modules (Link)
- Masdar breaks ground on 5.2GW solar with 19GWh storage in Abu Dhabi, delivering 1GW of baseload power around the clock starting in 2027 (PV Tech)
- Australia's residential battery installations tripled after new energy storage incentives launched, requiring VPP compatibility (Link)
- Tennessee Valley Authority (TenneSEIA) market shows growth in utility-scale solar through Silicon Ranch and community solar projects, with Light Wave Solar leading residential installations since 2006
- FlexGen announces hybrid OS software platform to manage both batteries and solar assets, expanding to 25GWh of battery capacity under management (PV Magazine)
- Residential battery demand creates a shortage of smaller 100Ah cells as manufacturers shift to larger utility-scale formats (PV Magazine)
The clean energy sector shows strong momentum across multiple fronts. Large-scale storage projects like Masdar's 5.2GW plant demonstrate the path to 24/7 solar baseload power. Meanwhile, residential battery incentives in markets like Australia prove how energy storage dri
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Tim Montague (00:01):
Welcome to the Clean Power Hour. Live. I'm Tim
Montague, your host. It isOctober the 31st it's Halloween.
John Weaver, my co host,commercial solar guy, welcome to
the show.
John Weaver (00:12):
Hey Tim. I hope you have a nice day. It's Halloween.
I'm not going to drive anywhere.
I'm gonna ride my bike, walkaround today, watch all the kids
running around, see if I can getsome candy. It's good day.
Tim Montague (00:24):
Yeah, it's a good day. It's a good day. I'm fresh
on the heels of visitingNashville, Tennessee, where I
attended the Tennessee annualmeeting, thanks to Gil huff and
his staff for putting on a greatevent. Tennessee is an
interesting market. It is theTVA, the Tennessee Valley
(00:45):
Authority. You know much aboutthe TVA, John,
John Weaver (00:50):
founded in the 1930s as part of the big deal.
As part of the New Deal, has awhole lot of clean energy, bunch
of hydro, bunch of nuclear. Theymight be like the cleanest
utility in the nation. I mean,amongst them, 80, 90% plus
clean. Is that true? Am I right?
Tim Montague (01:06):
I don't think so.
Oh, I think it's a I think it'smore of a spread between hydro,
coal, nuclear and they are intransition, though, it was
refreshing to hear how muchsolar is coming on in the TBA,
there's some utility scaleprojects. Silicon ranch looms
large in that market. They are adeveloper and asset owner, very
(01:31):
interesting company, becausethey own the real estate,
generally speaking, and they'revery forward about conservation,
agri solar, agrivoltaics, cattlevoltaics. So there are some,
there are some utility scalePPAs happening, and then there
are some community scale solarprojects happening. It's very
(01:54):
early days, though. What was abig surprise for me, though, and
this is, I think, typical ofsmaller markets. There's a very
robust group of OGS in themarket who've been around. I met
a company called Light Wavesolar. Shout out to light wave,
that have been doing solar since2006 and they pretty much own
(02:16):
the Tennessee market and butthey're expanding also into
other markets, like Illinois,Illinois, Southern Illinois is
not far from Tennessee. When yougo down to the bottom there,
I'll put a actually, let me puta slide on show on screen. So
here's the TVA, the dark green.
(02:42):
It encompasses all of Tennessee,but then also parts of Alabama
and Mississippi and Georgia, anda little bit into Virginia and
North Carolina, seven statestotal. But of course, most of
Tennessee and but the transitionis happening in in the TVA as
(03:08):
well. And that was, and that wasgood to good to see. And I have
this theory, though, John, thatwhen you're working in a smaller
market, like the payback periodfor solar in Tennessee is
greater than 10 years becausethey don't have specific
(03:28):
incentives and they have verycheap power. When you're working
in that kind of a market, youdevelop a knack for, you know,
really going after resiliency,for example, and and that's true
of light wave. They're, they'redoing batteries on all their
projects now. And I had this, Ihad a similar experience at Osea
(03:54):
two years ago. But, yeah, it wasa good, good trip, fun to be in
Music City. Got to hang out onBroadway a little bit, catch
some live music, and it's goodto be back. But I gave a talk
about micro grids, also, which Iwould be happy to share slides
(04:18):
with anybody if, if you justreach out to me on LinkedIn or
at Clean Power Hour Comm, I'llsend you my slides. What's new
with you, besides Halloween?
John Weaver (04:29):
John, wow, new working on a cool battery
project on an agrivoltaicfacility, moving in the winter
time and wet time withconstruction and shorter days.
Tim Montague (04:47):
Yeah, the fall is tough for construction.
John Weaver (04:50):
Yeah, an RFP, come back because the institution
decided they didn't want to moveforward with a project that.
Yeah, in their best interests.
So, don't know what that means.
Makes me feel like us, like, ohman, we were, we got good bid,
but we still weren't goodlooking something. You know, we
(05:11):
were the lowest price bid So,and we didn't get really, a real
answer. So, you know, justnormal business stuff. So, yeah,
lots going on. Just lots goingon. There's a, you know, new in
the Solar World. I can talk toyou about lots of cool stuff
there, but business wise, alwaysthings moving, yeah.
Tim Montague (05:31):
Well, let's get into the work. Let's get into
the news. We have a story aboutsilver prices. Silver went over
$50 an ounce? Yes, and thattranslates into the value of
used solar panels or new solarpanels, or both,
John Weaver (05:50):
both, both. So, so here's so if you wanted to scare
share, scare share that link. Idid a little math, put it on
blue sky, but the price perounce of silver is now over 50
bucks, or it's right around itright now, pushed a few bucks
over it. There's some I readsome neat stuff about why it
occurred, and you know, a lot ofit has to do with literally,
(06:12):
well, this time, Indian internetinfluencers saying that gold is
too expensive. So this year,instead of buying new gold by
silver, it's cheaper times, youknow what, 1/8 so 50 bucks
versus 4000 but that mashed upthe value of gold or the value
of silver, because now thelargest population on Earth is
(06:33):
just buying it casually forlooking good, and so pushed up
the price. It's also been goingup for a while because of solar,
and it's bigger demand. Solar islike 10 20% of Silver's demand.
So two things have now occurred.
One, the price, and if you havethat, that screen up, yeah. So
the price per module of how muchsilver is now eight bucks to 15
(06:57):
bucks in old timey modules, theprice to recycle a solar panel
is 10 to 20 bucks. Then theyhave all these other materials
now, because of the silver addedin there, modules, older ones
are suddenly valuable. If adecent size module is worth 30
(07:18):
bucks, and it costs 20 bucks, 15bucks to recycle it. That's 15
buck a module profit. And I knowsome people that make more than
that and have a lower cost perunit. So so at minimum, old
modules are now suddenlybankable from a professional
recyclers perspective. Soanybody throwing away a module,
(07:41):
a respectable a professionalrespite, a professional
recycler, would be very upset,because that's good module.
That's good money for them. Andthen if you look at new modules,
I tried to do the math a littlebit further south, you can see
what it might cost today to putyou can see how much it adds,
(08:03):
and it's, you know, seven bucksto $15 when we get up to the
8000 watt modules, if you scrolldown just a tiny bit, you can
see the net value per permodule. So 8000 watt module
roughly 15 bucks. But if you runthe numbers 15,
Unknown (08:24):
15,000 watt module, yeah,
John Weaver (08:27):
800 800 watt Yes, 800 watt module. That's how many
milligrams of silver. But theyends up being almost 50, over 15
bucks, so for an eight centmodule, it's now a nine cent
module, but silver is 20% silveris now the most expensive
(08:48):
component behind the silicon. Itpassed the aluminum frames. So
blue path, I mean, it's the mostthis is recycle value. But when
it comes to initial cost,because silicon is real hard to
recycle, but when it comes toinitial costs, it's now the most
expensive component. So yeah, sothat is interesting. It's going
(09:10):
to push it's going to pushrecycling of solar panels, but
it's also going to push newtechnology, like ICO. Ico is a
high efficiency modulemanufacturer. They do back
sheets only, and they have a 25%module in the field. You can't
find too many of them becausethey don't make a bunch, but
they're out there, and they usecopper on the back of their
(09:31):
modules instead of silver. Sothat, I think, is a really
interesting story from themanufacturing side, and from, I
guess, the O and M side ofsolar, your solar panels are now
worth money, and those recyclingcompanies who are starting to
catch up with things they'reprobably doing well financially
right now,
Tim Montague (09:53):
yeah, while you were talking about this, I
looked at the relative price ofsilver and gold and. They are
both spiking. Yes, I don't knowthat you can save money by
investing in one or the other,but
John Weaver (10:08):
they are both like, I have one ounce of gold. I
bought it just so I can have achunk, just because it looks
cool and, you know, just incase, uh, you know, things go
sideways, I can always, uh, skimoff a little gold and pay my way
out of a situation? Yeah.
Tim Montague (10:25):
I mean, there are people that think that gold is a
good way to be a prepper, andI'm not convinced, but I think
liquor, cigarettes, batteries,solar panels, more batteries are
probably more valuable thangold, but you got to have
(10:45):
something to exchange thingswith, and maybe gold will be a
thing. Let's talk about Masdar.
John Weaver (10:54):
Yes, so Masdar is their big Middle Eastern
developer that's associatedwith, I think the Emiratis,
Tim Montague (11:04):
oh Masdar is a community also, so I'm confused.
It says oh yeah. It saysdeveloper Masdar. So we're
talking about the, the the UAE,the United Emirates, right?
Unknown (11:22):
Yes.
John Weaver (11:24):
And which one is this? Which one is this? Is
this? Scroll down a bit where,where it's located. So this
one's going to be located in AbuDhabi. Mr. Abu Dhabi. There we
go. So, yeah, so of theEmiratis, we are in Abu Dhabi,
Tim Montague (11:39):
but the story is that they're developing or
Masdar breaks ground on world'slargest 5.2 gigawatt 19 gigawatt
hour solar plus storage project.
Yeah, now
John Weaver (11:52):
really what they should say this is the world's
first utility scale 24/7, solarpower plant, because the detail
here that's missed in thisheadline is that the grid
connection is one gigawatt. Sothey got 19 hours of batteries
(12:13):
at one gigawatt plus five gigsof solar. 19 plus five is 24
Yep, there you go, one gig ofbase load energy around the
clock. So if you think aboutthat, 19 plus 24 that's, that's,
that's what you need, andthere's going to be excess
solar. So there's gonna be solarfilling up the batteries all day
(12:35):
long. It's gonna, and this isnear the equator, they're
probably gonna have eight, ninehours of sunlight per day, and
many times and I so this is theworld's first base load solar
and storage plant, and
Unknown (12:51):
it's all gigawatt plant.
Tim Montague (12:54):
Yeah, it's, you know, here in the US, a very
large solar project would bebetween one and two gigawatts. I
don't know if we've exceeded atwo gigawatt plant yet for an
individual project, but, butyeah, I got to give it to him
for going large. And I love the19 gigawatt hour battery I see,
(13:15):
I see it's a jay solar. Was itja and ginkgo, yeah, ja and
ginkgo providing the solarpanels. What about the battery?
Does it say? I believe?
John Weaver (13:28):
Yeah, I think it's a CA, TL plant. It could be, oh,
there you go. Man, how big isthat? 20, almost 20 gigawatt
hours. There's pictures of itsomewhere, of the battery
portion starting. It's only likedigging out in the desert and
putting down rebar into the intothe sand, but, but that's the
(13:51):
start. I have seen an image ortwo floating out there.
Tim Montague (13:55):
Yeah, I couldn't find it. It's cool.
John Weaver (13:58):
And any listeners and readers and whatever is
you're gonna hear about this,one, 710, 15 more times from us,
because this is a cool plan,just neat concept.
Tim Montague (14:07):
Well, it says it's going to be turned on in 2027,
so they must be, they must bestarting construction, huh?
John Weaver (14:16):
Yes. Well, that's what this article denotes. Is
the beginning of construction.
So it's just, it's super, superearly at it.
Tim Montague (14:26):
Yeah, all right, someone tried to steal $7,000
from our residential solarcompany. Could tell from the
beginning, but it went, wentwith it cost me $15 plus time.
What? What's the story there?
Yeah,
John Weaver (14:44):
so I'm gonna write a story for PV mag, but I had an
attempt of attempted fraud on myresidential solar company, and I
want to make sure I telleverybody about it so they at
least get a chance. And this isa standard fraud, but, uh.
Somebody reached out via ourwebsite. The first person that
reached out said, Hey, I'mtrying to find a good installer
(15:06):
for my dad. I was like, Allright, that's funny, if you guys
are local and you can help uswith this address, then I'll
have him email you. And thengreat. Another person followed
up started texting with them.
They're like, Hey, we're movinginto this house shortly. We
haven't moved in yet, so we haveto give you an extra $7,000 and
it's for an authorization feewith the power company. I'm
(15:31):
like, All right, and and whenyou get that extra money and you
cash it, please forward me the7000 I was like, great, that's
what I'm gonna do and so Isigned a contract. They FedEx me
a big check dropped into myaccount.
Unknown (15:47):
You actually deposited the check? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I
wanted to see if it worked.
Tim Montague (15:53):
You're a brave man, yeah.
John Weaver (15:55):
So I then they immediately started emailing me,
Hey, man, how's the check? How'scheck? How's the check, how's
the check. You want to send methe wire. Here's the wire. Send
me the information. I said, Oh,hasn't cast yet, hasn't cleared
yet. Bank still checking it out,still going. Just kept waiting.
And then one day I logged in,boom, check returned. Took about
a week, and I just wanted tobring out to the world what
(16:20):
fraud was, how it works.
Tim Montague (16:22):
And the theory is, you cash the check, but the
money never clears your bank,but you send them money anyway.
John Weaver (16:31):
Yes, you send the money before. That's the, that's
the That's right, there is it.
They give you a check, and thenthey pester you, because you
think, oh, man, I got 30 G's.
And they say, We need sevenback. Great. Send that seven
back. And then two days later,their check bounces, and that's
what occurred. And so my firstsolar fraud on the resi company,
(16:54):
and it was fun, and there's somepictures down there of it, and
and they picked the name of afamous tennis player from Spain,
so I'm gonna call him and belike, Hey, man, what's up?
What's up with that?
Tim Montague (17:11):
Who's the tennis player?
John Weaver (17:13):
Silvio tedio, something like that. Okay, yeah,
I don't, I don't know who theperson is.
Tim Montague (17:19):
Sorry. All right, well, I'm glad you didn't
actually get defrauded.
Unknown (17:27):
Yes,
Tim Montague (17:30):
Dylan McConnell says, not news to anyone that's
paying attention, but prettyamazing figure of what is going
on with residential batteriesfrom CSIRO.
John Weaver (17:42):
Yes, so you got to share this
Tim Montague (17:44):
one. What is C S, I R O,
John Weaver (17:48):
that is, I don't know what it stands for, but
it's Australia. It's Australia.
So we're looking at theAustralian market here. Let me
see what C S, C S, I R O,Australia. It's a government
agency, but now I gotta tell youwhat it stands for,
Commonwealth, scientific,industrial research
organization. I can't see thelast letter because it's cut
(18:09):
off, okay, but what's occurringhere is that a new energy
storage incentive forresidential solar went into
place. And as you can tellTimothy, something happened. Oh,
now what's really cool, and in adifferent article, not here, is
that another thing is alsooccurring with the batteries.
(18:33):
Two things, three things. NumberOne, people getting batteries
are now adding small three kWish solar systems, it does
something interesting. It allowsthem offset more juice, or these
small batteries that are justreally cheap now it jives so
(18:53):
it's driving three KW solarinstallations at the small end,
just like couple systems, theauthor who wrote the article
gave a good name about it, thenthey're leading to the average
system size getting biggerthat's been getting installed.
(19:14):
So the number of solar smallsolar systems coming out of the
blue like never really existedbefore that tiny class didn't
exist. But now the average sizeis going up from like seven to
like 10 or nine. And the thoughtis that because of the
batteries, the economics workbetter because exported solar,
they actually pay for itsometimes, or it's worth zero.
So now the battery is making itso daytime solar is worth more.
(19:38):
And then the third one, theysaid that, so you got bigger
systems. Oh, current systems arebeing retrofitted with battery,
and they're bringing more solarto as well. So it's leading to
more solar. Systems gettinginstalled, smaller systems,
(20:01):
bigger systems, and retrofitsolar. So there's now a, you
know, we got solar, solar,solar, solar, then we got
batteries, making the existingsolar better, but now leading to
more solar. So there's a, is it?
Is it a virtuous cycle? This isa cycle. Something's happening
(20:23):
here. The solar is causing thegrid to need the batteries. The
batteries are leading to thebatteries and then, but the
batteries are now making peoplesay, Oh, the money makes sense
for more solar. And so we're nowstarting to see an Australian
virtuous cycle, solar, battery,solar loop thing happening and
and that's kind of exciting tosee. If you know, you
Tim Montague (20:44):
understand what the incentive is at
John Weaver (20:46):
all, I do. I've seen it, but so many things I
read that I forget so manyothers.
Tim Montague (20:53):
I'm just curious what they're doing. You know, I
mean, here in here in Illinois,we have a $250 per kilowatt hour
incentive. So there's a datapoint for you, if you're
listening, if you're if you'reworking on incentives for
states, for batteries, that'skind of a good data point. It's
(21:15):
a good incentive. It's, it's,you know, the people in the
industry think it could bebetter even, but it's a good
incentive.
John Weaver (21:24):
So the first so it looks like it's 30% off, and you
get 30% tax credit. So similarup, no upfront discount, there's
no tax credit, there's no what'sit called, tariffs on batteries
over there, and then it has tobe VPP enabled,
Tim Montague (21:45):
which is great.
All batteries should be VPPenabled.
John Weaver (21:50):
Now, one thing that they have a high motivation of
is that they have time of use onresidential, I believe. And so
this is really big for that typeof stuff. Yeah. So VPP, ready?
Discounts that? Yeah, there'sall kinds of neat stuff. So,
(22:10):
yeah, I don't really know it indetail, but I do know it's very
I mean, here, let me just phrasethe numbers show it. If you look
at that sheet, you see somethingoccurred, and batteries were
getting installed because theyhad expensive electricity. But
now they're just, they justdoubled, tripled in capacity,
right, right? Real fast. So, youknow, kind of neat. Good job.
(22:32):
Good job. Australia. I hopesomeone else in the world starts
to see that happen. That's agreat, great curve there. I
Tim Montague (22:37):
mean, I understand how VPPs are good for whoever
gets to own the battery andoperate it, but if, if it's a
hybrid, so to speak, where theconsumer is buying the battery
and owning it. But there's also,like a grid operator that can
access the VPP and manipulatethe battery to, you know, charge
(23:02):
and discharge at certain times.
How does the consumer benefitfrom that? Is there? Yeah, I
don't quite understand it is, isthe is the utility giving the
consumer some discount when thathappens, when they manipulate
their battery?
John Weaver (23:18):
So, there's different programs. I know of
two of I know one of them verywell, Massachusetts and Rhode
Island. We call them connectedsolution here. They also have it
in California, which they mighthave just defunded it. But in
mass you get in the connectedSolutions Program, you get paid
per event, and you get paidcapacity. So you get paid for
(23:39):
existing and then you can get upto one to 2000 bucks a year for
your battery, and they pay youper event for how many hours
they have a map of when thehours might occur, and for mass,
it's demand charge management ona grid wide level. So we're
really using batteries as off tooffset gas peaking power plants.
And our gas up here is veryexpensive because most of our
(24:00):
gas is liquefied, or at least alot of it's liquefied. That's
imported. Bunch of it's from,you know, just pipelines coming
up. But we have expensive gasso, so we're offsetting peaker
plants with our distributedbattery network and and then in
California, they have a programwhere they were paying two bucks
a kilowatt hour. And then inTexas, if you're in battery VPP
(24:22):
in the Tesla one, and I can findyou a picture real quick if you
wanted to share it. But, uh, youcan participate in the wholesale
market. But the thing is thatI've seen is that those
wholesale headlines, headlineswhere Tesla VPP, residential
people are sharing their big oldmoney, those things are going
away because the big gridbatteries are taking over, and
(24:45):
they're smoothing out the curvesin Texas. So it's getting harder
to make little pump and dump,you know, pump your battery up
and dump it in the evenings,because the competition's
getting smart and big and fast.
So it's interesting shortly.
Tim Montague (25:00):
Just, I just saw that there's been an energy bill
working its way through theIllinois State Legislature
called the omnibus energy bill,and it passed last night. It
passed and that legislation. I'mno guru on that legislation, but
it does include some VPPlanguage, so I'll have to dig
(25:22):
into that and report on that onNovember 14, when we come back.
John Weaver (25:27):
I'll be writing about it, but shortly. But
Tim Montague (25:29):
yeah, just know listeners. Listen. You know, for
our listeners, California, NewYork, Massachusetts, you said
Delaware, please. You know,there's a small handful of
states that have good VPPlegislation.
John Weaver (25:47):
Rhode Island has it. New York has some Utah. Utah
has some VPP. California, yeah,China's talking about it.
China's talking about a oneterawatt hour VPP of here, all
the, all the, all the things,one terawatt hour VPP of V to G.
Tim Montague (26:10):
Well, yeah, when you had a bunch of EVs, you
could do that,
John Weaver (26:14):
yeah. And so they have in their five year plan. I
mean, they installed 50% notinstalled, sort of installed.
They installed 50% of their newcars in the last quarter year,
whatever EVs, the volume ofcapacity of car batteries that
are being rolled out into theworld are five to 10x Grid
batteries. Those are rollingpower grid supplemental tools
(26:39):
you don't need, you don't needlong term energy duration. If
you have widespread V to G,how's that? Because I think V to
G hold so much electricity in itthat we can manage stuff in a
different way. So I will see inthe long game, but, but, yeah,
(27:02):
VPP is pretty cool.
Tim Montague (27:05):
Yeah, if you have, if you have batteries, you want
the VPP. I mean, the hard partis getting the batteries, I
think in the first place,getting incentives to get people
to install batteries. Everybodywants a battery until they see
the sticker, sticker price, youknow. All right, let's, let's
talk about your story onsoftware defined power, flex Gen
(27:30):
Z hybrid OS turns batteries andnow solar into grid thinkers.
Why did you write this story?
John Weaver (27:37):
So I interviewed flex Gen you Scott at re plus,
okay, and it was nice. Is justsmart to listen. I mean, I know,
you know, I'm still new atbattery, so I'm learning about
the different management system.
So you have BMS, which managesthe kind of the car, and then
you have your EMS, which is kindof your brain that sits on top
(27:58):
of the BMS. They both sort ofmanage the BMS. But like your
car turns on, the engine, runsitself and does all that stuff.
You also have a human being,which is your EMS, which says,
All right, now let's turn thecar and let's go faster. So flex
Gen is the human running the carsort of, kind of and just
interesting to listen to them.
(28:21):
They're, you know, they're youScotty said, though within them,
they see batteries approaching,you know, a high quality, high
tech commodity item, just likesolar panels. And now you got
your battery, but now you need aprofessional to help you
maximize the value of it. Andsolar, we didn't really have
(28:42):
that issue as much. We just putthe panels up and they blast.
Maybe we'll be creative and haveeast west solar panels or have a
tracker, which is what you knowthe standard is now, but with a
battery, you get to shape theelectricity flow, and they're a
little more complex to manage.
So this is that they have anoperating system. They call it
hybrid OS. Os. It's Linux based,and you have there, he was
(29:04):
trying to describe the differentlayers of how you would run a
battery system, as forthemselves and your and they
they'll build a virtual twin intheir laboratory, so that by the
time the battery rolls out, theyhave a comparison, so they can
understand if things are bootingup well enough, if they're
exporting enough. And then youcan just kind of see the layers
(29:27):
they you don't really havemanagement within the cells,
because you can't get gearinside of a cell, I guess, which
makes sense. But you can readwhat's happening in the cell,
but definitely within themodule, in the rack. You have
software and intelligence andhybrid OS kind of touches those
places. They don't really sitinside of them, but they could
(29:47):
put their gear inside of it andread from inside of it, but
they're not actually, you know,within the rack. So to say. But
it's just, it's just interestingto listen to. Batteries as
they're becoming moreprofessional, and you know, I
guess they always were, but nowI'm starting to see it more. So
it was just cool to listen toflex Jen and hear them talk
about battery management. Ispoke with another company,
(30:11):
battalion energy, and they'rehelping me design my smaller
system. And battalion energyalso has a an EMS, an energy
management system to help themrun the battery and and they're
helping me design my project outin my agrivoltaic battery
project, which might end upbeing, like, four hours at 400
so 1.6 megawatt hours. Yeah. Sothis is a they're kind of an
(30:37):
example dashboard of thedifferent items, you can see one
key piece of information isstate of charge, which is really
hard to understand for abattery, because you got to know
how much energy you have inthere so that you can sell it.
And if you're wrong, you canyou'll be charged for it. I've
read about the state of charge,and it's a weird thing to me
that we don't understand howmuch electricity is in a battery
(31:00):
and but it's, I get that it'shard, because you can't, like
see it, but you have differentways of inferring it. But it's
still not perfect, because yourbattery could be worn down. So
it's, it's just a cool,interesting conversation that I
had lots of questions, andreally I could, I wish I could
(31:20):
have just shared the recordingof it, because so many smart
things were
Tim Montague (31:26):
said, Cool. And is the is flex Gen tackling
strictly utility,
John Weaver (31:33):
it seems like it, yeah, seems mostly utility
scale. They might go into CNI. Ican't remember. My brain was
just, I mean, the main purposeof this announcement was to was
for them to talk about how theynow help to manage solar assets.
But I quickly just kind ofstarted talking about batteries,
but, but, yeah, but I thinktheir utility scale, to the best
(31:55):
of my knowledge, and they boughtpower, so power in a big battery
company when BK and they boughttheir assets, so they're helping
to manage the power and batteryassets now and trying to help
that over So, so this company isnow going to have like, 25
gigawatt hours of batteriesunder management. That's, that's
a that's a nice size flee.
That's cool. Yeah.
Tim Montague (32:19):
Powan was making batteries, right?
John Weaver (32:23):
Yeah, I don't think they were actually making them.
They were probably,
Tim Montague (32:26):
I mean, not making the cells, maybe, but they were
making containers, okay, um,yeah, they were, they were a
player.
John Weaver (32:37):
Yeah, they were one of the biggest. They were one of
the biggest in the US Top three.
You know, Tesla's number one, ofcourse, but I did great write up
on Tesla. Tesla had a pop hashad a good year in terms of
energy storage. Tim, I don'tknow if I put it on our list,
but we should probably talkabout how. I mean, we'll talk
about Tesla again soon, but theykeep pounding out the batteries.
Man, they're growing well, TeslaEnergy is cool. Tesla's Tesla
(32:59):
Energy profit margins are 31%whereas the rest of the company
is 16% so that's interesting tome. Yeah, do you
Tim Montague (33:16):
want to talk about this Mercedes?
John Weaver (33:19):
It's cool looking.
Man. Don't you want one? It'sreally not that cool. Okay, it's
just the the the numbers thatthey put out were kind of
aggressive and but they'retalking about a paint a spray
on. It sounds like thin films.
You spray them on. Uh,
Tim Montague (33:36):
Mercedes unveils car with 20% efficient ultra
thin solar coating. Yeah, it'sit's intriguing. They call it a
nano particle solar coating thatpowers the vehicle, even when
off, and uses modules thinnerthan human, than the human hair.
It does sound like thin film.
John Weaver (33:58):
Could be perovskites. We don't really
know. Perovskites are sprayed onas well. And I don't know if
this is a real car. It's just,you know, it's probably just a
cool thing they took a pictureof. But if you scroll down,
there's some neat stats on it,which I which I thought they
were a little aggressive with,but they still look cool. They
(34:19):
thought, Oh, let's see, 2500kilowatt hours a year, roughly
12,000 kilometers. That's like8000 miles. You know, that's
that's a lot of mileage for acar, if you can squeeze out half
of it from the sun.
Unknown (34:35):
Yeah. Well,
Tim Montague (34:37):
it's not a bad thing. Where's the number? So
the question is, the questionJohn is always, what is it going
to cost? Now, if you're buying aMercedes sports car, maybe money
is not an object. So
John Weaver (34:50):
Tim, Tim, Tim, amongst our friends, we don't
ask these types of rudequestions. Come down. Come down.
Talk to your. Uh, talk to yourtrust fund manager, and let's go
get a pair for the weekend. So,so yeah, I just, I want to see
(35:10):
some solar powered EDS. Man,come on. Yeah.
Tim Montague (35:14):
I mean, the statistic that sticks in my mind
is like, if you had a model Yand you covered it with solar
panels, you could get about 15miles of range per day. So this
sounds like it's more than that,but,
John Weaver (35:29):
yeah, this is definitely a little more, but
not huge amount more.
Tim Montague (35:33):
What's 15 times 365, that's 5475 miles.
John Weaver (35:39):
Yeah, this. This was covering the whole body in
Germany, it was saying 8000 inBeijing, it was over 10,000 it
was, you know, 13, 14,000 inArizona, it's probably 100%
solar car. Man, right, gocruising in your solar powered
Mercedes.
Tim Montague (35:58):
Dude, I mean, it will eventually happen, just a
question of when, you know. Allright, so we got one or two more
stories. What do?
John Weaver (36:14):
Uh, yeah, we'll do a real quick project of the week
that's behind my head. There yougo. So this is a, this is a,
what's it called? The foundationthat we're building at our, our
one of our projects, 1073, it'sa carport. And here you can see
us constructing the foundation.
The wood that's the forms. Sothe forms help us shake shape it
(36:35):
the the white thing that's asauna tube. That's just a real
thick cardboard, like about aninch thick slide that down, that
fills up with concrete, and itholds it in there, so it can be
a nice vertical shape. You cansee a bunch of wood on top of it
with little pieces of metalsticking out. I wish I could
zoom in here. I could probablygo find a picture, but those are
(36:57):
the bolts that the legs willattach to when you sit the unit.
On top of that. And we have,right now, probably five rows of
these, ranging from 11 to 15 perrow. So I think we got 55 of
these that we're building in asection of a of our show, so of
(37:18):
our project, which is kind offun,
Tim Montague (37:23):
and the project is a, how many kW carport,
John Weaver (37:29):
about three megs of carport, 600 KW of rooftop.
Tim Montague (37:35):
That's a big carport, yes, with some
batteries too. And who's thehost?
John Weaver (37:44):
The host is somebody's parking lot. It's
actually old. It's a warehouse.
It's leased. It's not ourproject. We're just EPC, okay,
well, EP and, yeah, some someengineering, some
Tim Montague (37:57):
procurement. But is it front of the meter or
behind the meter?
John Weaver (38:01):
Stand alone in front of the meter. 20 year
agreement with the utilityselling 100% in the SMART
program. That's what we havehere in Massachusetts.
Tim Montague (38:10):
Wow, yeah, to get a carport to pencil for
community it's sounds likecommunity solar, right?
John Weaver (38:17):
Well, community solar is an adder. You don't
actually need community solarand mass you can just sell it
100% to the utility if you wantto do community solar to get,
like,
Unknown (38:27):
an extra but for three megawatts, it's chunky. Yeah,
chunky Boy, oh, I mean, that'snice, nice.
John Weaver (38:38):
And then the state pays an extra five cents, a
kilowatt hour for carports, fiveor six, like
Tim Montague (38:43):
a 10 acre parking lot, huh?
John Weaver (38:46):
It's helped? Yes, yes, it's a chunk.
Tim Montague (38:52):
I want to see that parking lot. You got another
project here you want to show?
Should we put this onconstruction on going at
Warwick, Rhode Island.
Unknown (39:03):
Yeah.
John Weaver (39:07):
Share a couple of quick pictures there. I think we
should talk about something realquick afterwards. This one,
though, one last one. Okay, sothis is just a few pictures of
what's happening in Warwick. Wehave a 272 kW rooftop behind the
meter. We're using KB racking, QCell solar modules and SMA
(39:31):
inverters, and this is just thestart of it, the very beginning.
Us putting down the racking,putting down some bricks to hold
down the racking, laying it out.
If you look at the first twopictures, you can see some
damage from FedEx. That wasreally just a you can see the
hole in the box. And then if youput your head in the hole, you
can see that the plastic gratingon the inverter was busted. So
we had new one FedEx to us fromSMA. Thank you very much, SMA,
(39:54):
that was very fast of you. AndCharlie from Guide. Light
distributors. He's the one thatturned it around really quick
for us and got it replaced. Sothank you, sir. And then then,
if you go to the next image,next set of pictures that are
associated with that are on theon the document, you see a
couple more images of the sitemoving along pretty nicely.
(40:15):
We'll actually be done on theroof. And there's another link
on the dock, yeah, yeah. Rightbelow it. Right below this link,
there's four more pictures, andthese are from this past week.
And, okay, yeah. And so here'sthe racking from above. I just
thought it looked nice andclean. You can start to see that
we got some cabling being run.
(40:37):
There is the number of bricksthat we got to put at the corner
the leading edge. Gotta get fourbig old bricks sitting at the
edge, holding that thing down.
You see our nice, heavy safetyrail. This is being installed by
the union electric team, the 90IBW 99 and they're under Newport
renewables, because we're not aunion shop. But this customer
wanted union labor. And thenhere's the, you know, we're
(41:00):
starting to pull cable, startingto, there's a lot of modules
down now. So you can see it inthis image, of course, but we
got the inverters out startingto pull cable. And, you know, I
just thought it was funny, like,there's a comment. I put it
there at the bottom, but solarpanels are borderline, some of
the most space age cooltechnology we have on Earth, and
we hold them down with bricks.
Tim Montague (41:27):
Yeah, it is kind of ironic.
John Weaver (41:30):
Like, you know, what was the first tool we ever
learned about Tim? You know, wegot rocks and fire, and we're
still sort of working with rocksand fires, except now we're
using engineered bricks, andwe're turning the giant fireball
in the sky into electricity. Soit was just a moment of that's
kind of cool. All right, superfast. I'll talk fast. Tim,
Tim Montague (41:53):
super fast. What's this? Small batteries in heavy
demand.
John Weaver (41:58):
Small batteries are selling out. So apparently,
residential size battery cells,there are 100 KW battery cells,
probably about this big as theutility scale market has grown
develop. Manufacturers havestopped making these smaller 100
amp hour cells, because 300 5001000 amps, 2000 amps are
(42:22):
becoming the new thing, justlike how modules had this
explosion in size to find thisnew optimal spacing. Battery
cells on the utility scale aredoing it, but what they're doing
is leaving behind small cellswhich are more viable for
residential and smallerprojects. Yeah, and I thought to
(42:44):
share this for two reasons. One,inside the article, they talk
about how battery manufacturersare expanding massively, like
they talk about C, A, T, L, byD, both building big facilities.
But they also mentioned, andmore importantly is how, how
these big manufacturers areleaving behind small battery
cells. And it just makes mehappy to hear battery people
(43:07):
selling out and having a reasonto build more capacity. Because,
you know, solar right now isfunky with its capacity. It's
really oversized for a littlewhile. Can take a couple years
to catch up. But right now,batteries are ahead, and so
maybe that'll lead to somebattery price increases, maybe
some better profits, but atwhich motivates manufacturing
(43:28):
and and we're in the early scurve of batteries, and just
like that screen we saw withAustralia, batteries are you
know, solar Now means the gridmeans batteries, and now we're
jacking up batteries, which isleading to more solar. And
what's that going to mean? Arewe getting that? Then we have
Masdar. You know, we keep havingthis dance back and forth, more
(43:51):
batteries, more solar, morebatteries, more solar. Those
Middle Eastern folks are like,all right, all the batteries,
all the solar. Bam, done. OnePower Plant. None of this dance
up and down the power grid. Soit's, there's a thing happening
right now, and batteries are ournext thing. You got, you got to
make your brain work like fixedflex Gen. Got a flex Gen brain,
(44:13):
and become the brain that runsbatteries.
Tim Montague (44:17):
I do say, I do like to say that, you know,
creating the value stack forbatteries is rocket science,
which is why there's very fewcompanies that do it. But, yeah,
it's good to it's good to seestorage coming on. It's good for
the grid. It's good forconsumers, business owners. It's
(44:38):
good for everyone. All right.
Well, we'll be back I in twoweeks, on the 14th of November,
and you can find all our contentat cleanpowerhour.com. Hit me up
on LinkedIn. I love hearing frommy listeners. Where can our
listeners find you?
John Weaver (44:54):
John, commercial, solar, guy, calm, it's best
place. Um. Contact us for him.
You can also come to Cambridge.
I'll buy you a beer.
Tim Montague (45:03):
There you go. All right, I want to say thanks to
all our listeners for being hereand tell your friends about the
show. With that, I'll say, let'sgrow solar and storage. Thanks.
John Weaver,
Unknown (45:15):
see everybody you.
Welcome to the Clean Power Hour. Live. I'm Tim
Montague, your host. It isOctober the 31st it's Halloween.
John Weaver, my co host,commercial solar guy, welcome to
the show.
John Weaver (00:12):
Hey Tim. I hope you have a nice day. It's Halloween.
I'm not going to drive anywhere.
I'm gonna ride my bike, walkaround today, watch all the kids
running around, see if I can getsome candy. It's good day.
Tim Montague (00:24):
Yeah, it's a good day. It's a good day. I'm fresh
on the heels of visitingNashville, Tennessee, where I
attended the Tennessee annualmeeting, thanks to Gil huff and
his staff for putting on a greatevent. Tennessee is an
interesting market. It is theTVA, the Tennessee Valley
(00:45):
Authority. You know much aboutthe TVA, John,
John Weaver (00:50):
founded in the 1930s as part of the big deal.
As part of the New Deal, has awhole lot of clean energy, bunch
of hydro, bunch of nuclear. Theymight be like the cleanest
utility in the nation. I mean,amongst them, 80, 90% plus
clean. Is that true? Am I right?
Tim Montague (01:06):
I don't think so.
Oh, I think it's a I think it'smore of a spread between hydro,
coal, nuclear and they are intransition, though, it was
refreshing to hear how muchsolar is coming on in the TBA,
there's some utility scaleprojects. Silicon ranch looms
large in that market. They are adeveloper and asset owner, very
(01:31):
interesting company, becausethey own the real estate,
generally speaking, and they'revery forward about conservation,
agri solar, agrivoltaics, cattlevoltaics. So there are some,
there are some utility scalePPAs happening, and then there
are some community scale solarprojects happening. It's very
(01:54):
early days, though. What was abig surprise for me, though, and
this is, I think, typical ofsmaller markets. There's a very
robust group of OGS in themarket who've been around. I met
a company called Light Wavesolar. Shout out to light wave,
that have been doing solar since2006 and they pretty much own
(02:16):
the Tennessee market and butthey're expanding also into
other markets, like Illinois,Illinois, Southern Illinois is
not far from Tennessee. When yougo down to the bottom there,
I'll put a actually, let me puta slide on show on screen. So
here's the TVA, the dark green.
(02:42):
It encompasses all of Tennessee,but then also parts of Alabama
and Mississippi and Georgia, anda little bit into Virginia and
North Carolina, seven statestotal. But of course, most of
Tennessee and but the transitionis happening in in the TVA as
(03:08):
well. And that was, and that wasgood to good to see. And I have
this theory, though, John, thatwhen you're working in a smaller
market, like the payback periodfor solar in Tennessee is
greater than 10 years becausethey don't have specific
(03:28):
incentives and they have verycheap power. When you're working
in that kind of a market, youdevelop a knack for, you know,
really going after resiliency,for example, and and that's true
of light wave. They're, they'redoing batteries on all their
projects now. And I had this, Ihad a similar experience at Osea
(03:54):
two years ago. But, yeah, it wasa good, good trip, fun to be in
Music City. Got to hang out onBroadway a little bit, catch
some live music, and it's goodto be back. But I gave a talk
about micro grids, also, which Iwould be happy to share slides
(04:18):
with anybody if, if you justreach out to me on LinkedIn or
at Clean Power Hour Comm, I'llsend you my slides. What's new
with you, besides Halloween?
John Weaver (04:29):
John, wow, new working on a cool battery
project on an agrivoltaicfacility, moving in the winter
time and wet time withconstruction and shorter days.
Tim Montague (04:47):
Yeah, the fall is tough for construction.
John Weaver (04:50):
Yeah, an RFP, come back because the institution
decided they didn't want to moveforward with a project that.
Yeah, in their best interests.
So, don't know what that means.
Makes me feel like us, like, ohman, we were, we got good bid,
but we still weren't goodlooking something. You know, we
(05:11):
were the lowest price bid So,and we didn't get really, a real
answer. So, you know, justnormal business stuff. So, yeah,
lots going on. Just lots goingon. There's a, you know, new in
the Solar World. I can talk toyou about lots of cool stuff
there, but business wise, alwaysthings moving, yeah.
Tim Montague (05:31):
Well, let's get into the work. Let's get into
the news. We have a story aboutsilver prices. Silver went over
$50 an ounce? Yes, and thattranslates into the value of
used solar panels or new solarpanels, or both,
John Weaver (05:50):
both, both. So, so here's so if you wanted to scare
share, scare share that link. Idid a little math, put it on
blue sky, but the price perounce of silver is now over 50
bucks, or it's right around itright now, pushed a few bucks
over it. There's some I readsome neat stuff about why it
occurred, and you know, a lot ofit has to do with literally,
(06:12):
well, this time, Indian internetinfluencers saying that gold is
too expensive. So this year,instead of buying new gold by
silver, it's cheaper times, youknow what, 1/8 so 50 bucks
versus 4000 but that mashed upthe value of gold or the value
of silver, because now thelargest population on Earth is
(06:33):
just buying it casually forlooking good, and so pushed up
the price. It's also been goingup for a while because of solar,
and it's bigger demand. Solar islike 10 20% of Silver's demand.
So two things have now occurred.
One, the price, and if you havethat, that screen up, yeah. So
the price per module of how muchsilver is now eight bucks to 15
(06:57):
bucks in old timey modules, theprice to recycle a solar panel
is 10 to 20 bucks. Then theyhave all these other materials
now, because of the silver addedin there, modules, older ones
are suddenly valuable. If adecent size module is worth 30
(07:18):
bucks, and it costs 20 bucks, 15bucks to recycle it. That's 15
buck a module profit. And I knowsome people that make more than
that and have a lower cost perunit. So so at minimum, old
modules are now suddenlybankable from a professional
recyclers perspective. Soanybody throwing away a module,
(07:41):
a respectable a professionalrespite, a professional
recycler, would be very upset,because that's good module.
That's good money for them. Andthen if you look at new modules,
I tried to do the math a littlebit further south, you can see
what it might cost today to putyou can see how much it adds,
(08:03):
and it's, you know, seven bucksto $15 when we get up to the
8000 watt modules, if you scrolldown just a tiny bit, you can
see the net value per permodule. So 8000 watt module
roughly 15 bucks. But if you runthe numbers 15,
Unknown (08:24):
15,000 watt module, yeah,
John Weaver (08:27):
800 800 watt Yes, 800 watt module. That's how many
milligrams of silver. But theyends up being almost 50, over 15
bucks, so for an eight centmodule, it's now a nine cent
module, but silver is 20% silveris now the most expensive
(08:48):
component behind the silicon. Itpassed the aluminum frames. So
blue path, I mean, it's the mostthis is recycle value. But when
it comes to initial cost,because silicon is real hard to
recycle, but when it comes toinitial costs, it's now the most
expensive component. So yeah, sothat is interesting. It's going
(09:10):
to push it's going to pushrecycling of solar panels, but
it's also going to push newtechnology, like ICO. Ico is a
high efficiency modulemanufacturer. They do back
sheets only, and they have a 25%module in the field. You can't
find too many of them becausethey don't make a bunch, but
they're out there, and they usecopper on the back of their
(09:31):
modules instead of silver. Sothat, I think, is a really
interesting story from themanufacturing side, and from, I
guess, the O and M side ofsolar, your solar panels are now
worth money, and those recyclingcompanies who are starting to
catch up with things they'reprobably doing well financially
right now,
Tim Montague (09:53):
yeah, while you were talking about this, I
looked at the relative price ofsilver and gold and. They are
both spiking. Yes, I don't knowthat you can save money by
investing in one or the other,but
John Weaver (10:08):
they are both like, I have one ounce of gold. I
bought it just so I can have achunk, just because it looks
cool and, you know, just incase, uh, you know, things go
sideways, I can always, uh, skimoff a little gold and pay my way
out of a situation? Yeah.
Tim Montague (10:25):
I mean, there are people that think that gold is a
good way to be a prepper, andI'm not convinced, but I think
liquor, cigarettes, batteries,solar panels, more batteries are
probably more valuable thangold, but you got to have
(10:45):
something to exchange thingswith, and maybe gold will be a
thing. Let's talk about Masdar.
John Weaver (10:54):
Yes, so Masdar is their big Middle Eastern
developer that's associatedwith, I think the Emiratis,
Tim Montague (11:04):
oh Masdar is a community also, so I'm confused.
It says oh yeah. It saysdeveloper Masdar. So we're
talking about the, the the UAE,the United Emirates, right?
Unknown (11:22):
Yes.
John Weaver (11:24):
And which one is this? Which one is this? Is
this? Scroll down a bit where,where it's located. So this
one's going to be located in AbuDhabi. Mr. Abu Dhabi. There we
go. So, yeah, so of theEmiratis, we are in Abu Dhabi,
Tim Montague (11:39):
but the story is that they're developing or
Masdar breaks ground on world'slargest 5.2 gigawatt 19 gigawatt
hour solar plus storage project.
Yeah, now
John Weaver (11:52):
really what they should say this is the world's
first utility scale 24/7, solarpower plant, because the detail
here that's missed in thisheadline is that the grid
connection is one gigawatt. Sothey got 19 hours of batteries
(12:13):
at one gigawatt plus five gigsof solar. 19 plus five is 24
Yep, there you go, one gig ofbase load energy around the
clock. So if you think aboutthat, 19 plus 24 that's, that's,
that's what you need, andthere's going to be excess
solar. So there's gonna be solarfilling up the batteries all day
(12:35):
long. It's gonna, and this isnear the equator, they're
probably gonna have eight, ninehours of sunlight per day, and
many times and I so this is theworld's first base load solar
and storage plant, and
Unknown (12:51):
it's all gigawatt plant.
Tim Montague (12:54):
Yeah, it's, you know, here in the US, a very
large solar project would bebetween one and two gigawatts. I
don't know if we've exceeded atwo gigawatt plant yet for an
individual project, but, butyeah, I got to give it to him
for going large. And I love the19 gigawatt hour battery I see,
(13:15):
I see it's a jay solar. Was itja and ginkgo, yeah, ja and
ginkgo providing the solarpanels. What about the battery?
Does it say? I believe?
John Weaver (13:28):
Yeah, I think it's a CA, TL plant. It could be, oh,
there you go. Man, how big isthat? 20, almost 20 gigawatt
hours. There's pictures of itsomewhere, of the battery
portion starting. It's only likedigging out in the desert and
putting down rebar into the intothe sand, but, but that's the
(13:51):
start. I have seen an image ortwo floating out there.
Tim Montague (13:55):
Yeah, I couldn't find it. It's cool.
John Weaver (13:58):
And any listeners and readers and whatever is
you're gonna hear about this,one, 710, 15 more times from us,
because this is a cool plan,just neat concept.
Tim Montague (14:07):
Well, it says it's going to be turned on in 2027,
so they must be, they must bestarting construction, huh?
John Weaver (14:16):
Yes. Well, that's what this article denotes. Is
the beginning of construction.
So it's just, it's super, superearly at it.
Tim Montague (14:26):
Yeah, all right, someone tried to steal $7,000
from our residential solarcompany. Could tell from the
beginning, but it went, wentwith it cost me $15 plus time.
What? What's the story there?
Yeah,
John Weaver (14:44):
so I'm gonna write a story for PV mag, but I had an
attempt of attempted fraud on myresidential solar company, and I
want to make sure I telleverybody about it so they at
least get a chance. And this isa standard fraud, but, uh.
Somebody reached out via ourwebsite. The first person that
reached out said, Hey, I'mtrying to find a good installer
(15:06):
for my dad. I was like, Allright, that's funny, if you guys
are local and you can help uswith this address, then I'll
have him email you. And thengreat. Another person followed
up started texting with them.
They're like, Hey, we're movinginto this house shortly. We
haven't moved in yet, so we haveto give you an extra $7,000 and
it's for an authorization feewith the power company. I'm
(15:31):
like, All right, and and whenyou get that extra money and you
cash it, please forward me the7000 I was like, great, that's
what I'm gonna do and so Isigned a contract. They FedEx me
a big check dropped into myaccount.
Unknown (15:47):
You actually deposited the check? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I
wanted to see if it worked.
Tim Montague (15:53):
You're a brave man, yeah.
John Weaver (15:55):
So I then they immediately started emailing me,
Hey, man, how's the check? How'scheck? How's the check, how's
the check. You want to send methe wire. Here's the wire. Send
me the information. I said, Oh,hasn't cast yet, hasn't cleared
yet. Bank still checking it out,still going. Just kept waiting.
And then one day I logged in,boom, check returned. Took about
a week, and I just wanted tobring out to the world what
(16:20):
fraud was, how it works.
Tim Montague (16:22):
And the theory is, you cash the check, but the
money never clears your bank,but you send them money anyway.
John Weaver (16:31):
Yes, you send the money before. That's the, that's
the That's right, there is it.
They give you a check, and thenthey pester you, because you
think, oh, man, I got 30 G's.
And they say, We need sevenback. Great. Send that seven
back. And then two days later,their check bounces, and that's
what occurred. And so my firstsolar fraud on the resi company,
(16:54):
and it was fun, and there's somepictures down there of it, and
and they picked the name of afamous tennis player from Spain,
so I'm gonna call him and belike, Hey, man, what's up?
What's up with that?
Tim Montague (17:11):
Who's the tennis player?
John Weaver (17:13):
Silvio tedio, something like that. Okay, yeah,
I don't, I don't know who theperson is.
Tim Montague (17:19):
Sorry. All right, well, I'm glad you didn't
actually get defrauded.
Unknown (17:27):
Yes,
Tim Montague (17:30):
Dylan McConnell says, not news to anyone that's
paying attention, but prettyamazing figure of what is going
on with residential batteriesfrom CSIRO.
John Weaver (17:42):
Yes, so you got to share this
Tim Montague (17:44):
one. What is C S, I R O,
John Weaver (17:48):
that is, I don't know what it stands for, but
it's Australia. It's Australia.
So we're looking at theAustralian market here. Let me
see what C S, C S, I R O,Australia. It's a government
agency, but now I gotta tell youwhat it stands for,
Commonwealth, scientific,industrial research
organization. I can't see thelast letter because it's cut
(18:09):
off, okay, but what's occurringhere is that a new energy
storage incentive forresidential solar went into
place. And as you can tellTimothy, something happened. Oh,
now what's really cool, and in adifferent article, not here, is
that another thing is alsooccurring with the batteries.
(18:33):
Two things, three things. NumberOne, people getting batteries
are now adding small three kWish solar systems, it does
something interesting. It allowsthem offset more juice, or these
small batteries that are justreally cheap now it jives so
(18:53):
it's driving three KW solarinstallations at the small end,
just like couple systems, theauthor who wrote the article
gave a good name about it, thenthey're leading to the average
system size getting biggerthat's been getting installed.
(19:14):
So the number of solar smallsolar systems coming out of the
blue like never really existedbefore that tiny class didn't
exist. But now the average sizeis going up from like seven to
like 10 or nine. And the thoughtis that because of the
batteries, the economics workbetter because exported solar,
they actually pay for itsometimes, or it's worth zero.
So now the battery is making itso daytime solar is worth more.
(19:38):
And then the third one, theysaid that, so you got bigger
systems. Oh, current systems arebeing retrofitted with battery,
and they're bringing more solarto as well. So it's leading to
more solar. Systems gettinginstalled, smaller systems,
(20:01):
bigger systems, and retrofitsolar. So there's now a, you
know, we got solar, solar,solar, solar, then we got
batteries, making the existingsolar better, but now leading to
more solar. So there's a, is it?
Is it a virtuous cycle? This isa cycle. Something's happening
(20:23):
here. The solar is causing thegrid to need the batteries. The
batteries are leading to thebatteries and then, but the
batteries are now making peoplesay, Oh, the money makes sense
for more solar. And so we're nowstarting to see an Australian
virtuous cycle, solar, battery,solar loop thing happening and
and that's kind of exciting tosee. If you know, you
Tim Montague (20:44):
understand what the incentive is at
John Weaver (20:46):
all, I do. I've seen it, but so many things I
read that I forget so manyothers.
Tim Montague (20:53):
I'm just curious what they're doing. You know, I
mean, here in here in Illinois,we have a $250 per kilowatt hour
incentive. So there's a datapoint for you, if you're
listening, if you're if you'reworking on incentives for
states, for batteries, that'skind of a good data point. It's
(21:15):
a good incentive. It's, it's,you know, the people in the
industry think it could bebetter even, but it's a good
incentive.
John Weaver (21:24):
So the first so it looks like it's 30% off, and you
get 30% tax credit. So similarup, no upfront discount, there's
no tax credit, there's no what'sit called, tariffs on batteries
over there, and then it has tobe VPP enabled,
Tim Montague (21:45):
which is great.
All batteries should be VPPenabled.
John Weaver (21:50):
Now, one thing that they have a high motivation of
is that they have time of use onresidential, I believe. And so
this is really big for that typeof stuff. Yeah. So VPP, ready?
Discounts that? Yeah, there'sall kinds of neat stuff. So,
(22:10):
yeah, I don't really know it indetail, but I do know it's very
I mean, here, let me just phrasethe numbers show it. If you look
at that sheet, you see somethingoccurred, and batteries were
getting installed because theyhad expensive electricity. But
now they're just, they justdoubled, tripled in capacity,
right, right? Real fast. So, youknow, kind of neat. Good job.
(22:32):
Good job. Australia. I hopesomeone else in the world starts
to see that happen. That's agreat, great curve there. I
Tim Montague (22:37):
mean, I understand how VPPs are good for whoever
gets to own the battery andoperate it, but if, if it's a
hybrid, so to speak, where theconsumer is buying the battery
and owning it. But there's also,like a grid operator that can
access the VPP and manipulatethe battery to, you know, charge
(23:02):
and discharge at certain times.
How does the consumer benefitfrom that? Is there? Yeah, I
don't quite understand it is, isthe is the utility giving the
consumer some discount when thathappens, when they manipulate
their battery?
John Weaver (23:18):
So, there's different programs. I know of
two of I know one of them verywell, Massachusetts and Rhode
Island. We call them connectedsolution here. They also have it
in California, which they mighthave just defunded it. But in
mass you get in the connectedSolutions Program, you get paid
per event, and you get paidcapacity. So you get paid for
(23:39):
existing and then you can get upto one to 2000 bucks a year for
your battery, and they pay youper event for how many hours
they have a map of when thehours might occur, and for mass,
it's demand charge management ona grid wide level. So we're
really using batteries as off tooffset gas peaking power plants.
And our gas up here is veryexpensive because most of our
(24:00):
gas is liquefied, or at least alot of it's liquefied. That's
imported. Bunch of it's from,you know, just pipelines coming
up. But we have expensive gasso, so we're offsetting peaker
plants with our distributedbattery network and and then in
California, they have a programwhere they were paying two bucks
a kilowatt hour. And then inTexas, if you're in battery VPP
(24:22):
in the Tesla one, and I can findyou a picture real quick if you
wanted to share it. But, uh, youcan participate in the wholesale
market. But the thing is thatI've seen is that those
wholesale headlines, headlineswhere Tesla VPP, residential
people are sharing their big oldmoney, those things are going
away because the big gridbatteries are taking over, and
(24:45):
they're smoothing out the curvesin Texas. So it's getting harder
to make little pump and dump,you know, pump your battery up
and dump it in the evenings,because the competition's
getting smart and big and fast.
So it's interesting shortly.
Tim Montague (25:00):
Just, I just saw that there's been an energy bill
working its way through theIllinois State Legislature
called the omnibus energy bill,and it passed last night. It
passed and that legislation. I'mno guru on that legislation, but
it does include some VPPlanguage, so I'll have to dig
(25:22):
into that and report on that onNovember 14, when we come back.
John Weaver (25:27):
I'll be writing about it, but shortly. But
Tim Montague (25:29):
yeah, just know listeners. Listen. You know, for
our listeners, California, NewYork, Massachusetts, you said
Delaware, please. You know,there's a small handful of
states that have good VPPlegislation.
John Weaver (25:47):
Rhode Island has it. New York has some Utah. Utah
has some VPP. California, yeah,China's talking about it.
China's talking about a oneterawatt hour VPP of here, all
the, all the, all the things,one terawatt hour VPP of V to G.
Tim Montague (26:10):
Well, yeah, when you had a bunch of EVs, you
could do that,
John Weaver (26:14):
yeah. And so they have in their five year plan. I
mean, they installed 50% notinstalled, sort of installed.
They installed 50% of their newcars in the last quarter year,
whatever EVs, the volume ofcapacity of car batteries that
are being rolled out into theworld are five to 10x Grid
batteries. Those are rollingpower grid supplemental tools
(26:39):
you don't need, you don't needlong term energy duration. If
you have widespread V to G,how's that? Because I think V to
G hold so much electricity in itthat we can manage stuff in a
different way. So I will see inthe long game, but, but, yeah,
(27:02):
VPP is pretty cool.
Tim Montague (27:05):
Yeah, if you have, if you have batteries, you want
the VPP. I mean, the hard partis getting the batteries, I
think in the first place,getting incentives to get people
to install batteries. Everybodywants a battery until they see
the sticker, sticker price, youknow. All right, let's, let's
talk about your story onsoftware defined power, flex Gen
(27:30):
Z hybrid OS turns batteries andnow solar into grid thinkers.
Why did you write this story?
John Weaver (27:37):
So I interviewed flex Gen you Scott at re plus,
okay, and it was nice. Is justsmart to listen. I mean, I know,
you know, I'm still new atbattery, so I'm learning about
the different management system.
So you have BMS, which managesthe kind of the car, and then
you have your EMS, which is kindof your brain that sits on top
(27:58):
of the BMS. They both sort ofmanage the BMS. But like your
car turns on, the engine, runsitself and does all that stuff.
You also have a human being,which is your EMS, which says,
All right, now let's turn thecar and let's go faster. So flex
Gen is the human running the carsort of, kind of and just
interesting to listen to them.
(28:21):
They're, you know, they're youScotty said, though within them,
they see batteries approaching,you know, a high quality, high
tech commodity item, just likesolar panels. And now you got
your battery, but now you need aprofessional to help you
maximize the value of it. Andsolar, we didn't really have
(28:42):
that issue as much. We just putthe panels up and they blast.
Maybe we'll be creative and haveeast west solar panels or have a
tracker, which is what you knowthe standard is now, but with a
battery, you get to shape theelectricity flow, and they're a
little more complex to manage.
So this is that they have anoperating system. They call it
hybrid OS. Os. It's Linux based,and you have there, he was
(29:04):
trying to describe the differentlayers of how you would run a
battery system, as forthemselves and your and they
they'll build a virtual twin intheir laboratory, so that by the
time the battery rolls out, theyhave a comparison, so they can
understand if things are bootingup well enough, if they're
exporting enough. And then youcan just kind of see the layers
(29:27):
they you don't really havemanagement within the cells,
because you can't get gearinside of a cell, I guess, which
makes sense. But you can readwhat's happening in the cell,
but definitely within themodule, in the rack. You have
software and intelligence andhybrid OS kind of touches those
places. They don't really sitinside of them, but they could
(29:47):
put their gear inside of it andread from inside of it, but
they're not actually, you know,within the rack. So to say. But
it's just, it's just interestingto listen to. Batteries as
they're becoming moreprofessional, and you know, I
guess they always were, but nowI'm starting to see it more. So
it was just cool to listen toflex Jen and hear them talk
about battery management. Ispoke with another company,
(30:11):
battalion energy, and they'rehelping me design my smaller
system. And battalion energyalso has a an EMS, an energy
management system to help themrun the battery and and they're
helping me design my project outin my agrivoltaic battery
project, which might end upbeing, like, four hours at 400
so 1.6 megawatt hours. Yeah. Sothis is a they're kind of an
(30:37):
example dashboard of thedifferent items, you can see one
key piece of information isstate of charge, which is really
hard to understand for abattery, because you got to know
how much energy you have inthere so that you can sell it.
And if you're wrong, you canyou'll be charged for it. I've
read about the state of charge,and it's a weird thing to me
that we don't understand howmuch electricity is in a battery
(31:00):
and but it's, I get that it'shard, because you can't, like
see it, but you have differentways of inferring it. But it's
still not perfect, because yourbattery could be worn down. So
it's, it's just a cool,interesting conversation that I
had lots of questions, andreally I could, I wish I could
(31:20):
have just shared the recordingof it, because so many smart
things were
Tim Montague (31:26):
said, Cool. And is the is flex Gen tackling
strictly utility,
John Weaver (31:33):
it seems like it, yeah, seems mostly utility
scale. They might go into CNI. Ican't remember. My brain was
just, I mean, the main purposeof this announcement was to was
for them to talk about how theynow help to manage solar assets.
But I quickly just kind ofstarted talking about batteries,
but, but, yeah, but I thinktheir utility scale, to the best
(31:55):
of my knowledge, and they boughtpower, so power in a big battery
company when BK and they boughttheir assets, so they're helping
to manage the power and batteryassets now and trying to help
that over So, so this company isnow going to have like, 25
gigawatt hours of batteriesunder management. That's, that's
a that's a nice size flee.
That's cool. Yeah.
Tim Montague (32:19):
Powan was making batteries, right?
John Weaver (32:23):
Yeah, I don't think they were actually making them.
They were probably,
Tim Montague (32:26):
I mean, not making the cells, maybe, but they were
making containers, okay, um,yeah, they were, they were a
player.
John Weaver (32:37):
Yeah, they were one of the biggest. They were one of
the biggest in the US Top three.
You know, Tesla's number one, ofcourse, but I did great write up
on Tesla. Tesla had a pop hashad a good year in terms of
energy storage. Tim, I don'tknow if I put it on our list,
but we should probably talkabout how. I mean, we'll talk
about Tesla again soon, but theykeep pounding out the batteries.
Man, they're growing well, TeslaEnergy is cool. Tesla's Tesla
(32:59):
Energy profit margins are 31%whereas the rest of the company
is 16% so that's interesting tome. Yeah, do you
Tim Montague (33:16):
want to talk about this Mercedes?
John Weaver (33:19):
It's cool looking.
Man. Don't you want one? It'sreally not that cool. Okay, it's
just the the the numbers thatthey put out were kind of
aggressive and but they'retalking about a paint a spray
on. It sounds like thin films.
You spray them on. Uh,
Tim Montague (33:36):
Mercedes unveils car with 20% efficient ultra
thin solar coating. Yeah, it'sit's intriguing. They call it a
nano particle solar coating thatpowers the vehicle, even when
off, and uses modules thinnerthan human, than the human hair.
It does sound like thin film.
John Weaver (33:58):
Could be perovskites. We don't really
know. Perovskites are sprayed onas well. And I don't know if
this is a real car. It's just,you know, it's probably just a
cool thing they took a pictureof. But if you scroll down,
there's some neat stats on it,which I which I thought they
were a little aggressive with,but they still look cool. They
(34:19):
thought, Oh, let's see, 2500kilowatt hours a year, roughly
12,000 kilometers. That's like8000 miles. You know, that's
that's a lot of mileage for acar, if you can squeeze out half
of it from the sun.
Unknown (34:35):
Yeah. Well,
Tim Montague (34:37):
it's not a bad thing. Where's the number? So
the question is, the questionJohn is always, what is it going
to cost? Now, if you're buying aMercedes sports car, maybe money
is not an object. So
John Weaver (34:50):
Tim, Tim, Tim, amongst our friends, we don't
ask these types of rudequestions. Come down. Come down.
Talk to your. Uh, talk to yourtrust fund manager, and let's go
get a pair for the weekend. So,so yeah, I just, I want to see
(35:10):
some solar powered EDS. Man,come on. Yeah.
Tim Montague (35:14):
I mean, the statistic that sticks in my mind
is like, if you had a model Yand you covered it with solar
panels, you could get about 15miles of range per day. So this
sounds like it's more than that,but,
John Weaver (35:29):
yeah, this is definitely a little more, but
not huge amount more.
Tim Montague (35:33):
What's 15 times 365, that's 5475 miles.
John Weaver (35:39):
Yeah, this. This was covering the whole body in
Germany, it was saying 8000 inBeijing, it was over 10,000 it
was, you know, 13, 14,000 inArizona, it's probably 100%
solar car. Man, right, gocruising in your solar powered
Mercedes.
Tim Montague (35:58):
Dude, I mean, it will eventually happen, just a
question of when, you know. Allright, so we got one or two more
stories. What do?
John Weaver (36:14):
Uh, yeah, we'll do a real quick project of the week
that's behind my head. There yougo. So this is a, this is a,
what's it called? The foundationthat we're building at our, our
one of our projects, 1073, it'sa carport. And here you can see
us constructing the foundation.
The wood that's the forms. Sothe forms help us shake shape it
(36:35):
the the white thing that's asauna tube. That's just a real
thick cardboard, like about aninch thick slide that down, that
fills up with concrete, and itholds it in there, so it can be
a nice vertical shape. You cansee a bunch of wood on top of it
with little pieces of metalsticking out. I wish I could
zoom in here. I could probablygo find a picture, but those are
(36:57):
the bolts that the legs willattach to when you sit the unit.
On top of that. And we have,right now, probably five rows of
these, ranging from 11 to 15 perrow. So I think we got 55 of
these that we're building in asection of a of our show, so of
(37:18):
our project, which is kind offun,
Tim Montague (37:23):
and the project is a, how many kW carport,
John Weaver (37:29):
about three megs of carport, 600 KW of rooftop.
Tim Montague (37:35):
That's a big carport, yes, with some
batteries too. And who's thehost?
John Weaver (37:44):
The host is somebody's parking lot. It's
actually old. It's a warehouse.
It's leased. It's not ourproject. We're just EPC, okay,
well, EP and, yeah, some someengineering, some
Tim Montague (37:57):
procurement. But is it front of the meter or
behind the meter?
John Weaver (38:01):
Stand alone in front of the meter. 20 year
agreement with the utilityselling 100% in the SMART
program. That's what we havehere in Massachusetts.
Tim Montague (38:10):
Wow, yeah, to get a carport to pencil for
community it's sounds likecommunity solar, right?
John Weaver (38:17):
Well, community solar is an adder. You don't
actually need community solarand mass you can just sell it
100% to the utility if you wantto do community solar to get,
like,
Unknown (38:27):
an extra but for three megawatts, it's chunky. Yeah,
chunky Boy, oh, I mean, that'snice, nice.
John Weaver (38:38):
And then the state pays an extra five cents, a
kilowatt hour for carports, fiveor six, like
Tim Montague (38:43):
a 10 acre parking lot, huh?
John Weaver (38:46):
It's helped? Yes, yes, it's a chunk.
Tim Montague (38:52):
I want to see that parking lot. You got another
project here you want to show?
Should we put this onconstruction on going at
Warwick, Rhode Island.
Unknown (39:03):
Yeah.
John Weaver (39:07):
Share a couple of quick pictures there. I think we
should talk about something realquick afterwards. This one,
though, one last one. Okay, sothis is just a few pictures of
what's happening in Warwick. Wehave a 272 kW rooftop behind the
meter. We're using KB racking, QCell solar modules and SMA
(39:31):
inverters, and this is just thestart of it, the very beginning.
Us putting down the racking,putting down some bricks to hold
down the racking, laying it out.
If you look at the first twopictures, you can see some
damage from FedEx. That wasreally just a you can see the
hole in the box. And then if youput your head in the hole, you
can see that the plastic gratingon the inverter was busted. So
we had new one FedEx to us fromSMA. Thank you very much, SMA,
(39:54):
that was very fast of you. AndCharlie from Guide. Light
distributors. He's the one thatturned it around really quick
for us and got it replaced. Sothank you, sir. And then then,
if you go to the next image,next set of pictures that are
associated with that are on theon the document, you see a
couple more images of the sitemoving along pretty nicely.
(40:15):
We'll actually be done on theroof. And there's another link
on the dock, yeah, yeah. Rightbelow it. Right below this link,
there's four more pictures, andthese are from this past week.
And, okay, yeah. And so here'sthe racking from above. I just
thought it looked nice andclean. You can start to see that
we got some cabling being run.
(40:37):
There is the number of bricksthat we got to put at the corner
the leading edge. Gotta get fourbig old bricks sitting at the
edge, holding that thing down.
You see our nice, heavy safetyrail. This is being installed by
the union electric team, the 90IBW 99 and they're under Newport
renewables, because we're not aunion shop. But this customer
wanted union labor. And thenhere's the, you know, we're
(41:00):
starting to pull cable, startingto, there's a lot of modules
down now. So you can see it inthis image, of course, but we
got the inverters out startingto pull cable. And, you know, I
just thought it was funny, like,there's a comment. I put it
there at the bottom, but solarpanels are borderline, some of
the most space age cooltechnology we have on Earth, and
we hold them down with bricks.
Tim Montague (41:27):
Yeah, it is kind of ironic.
John Weaver (41:30):
Like, you know, what was the first tool we ever
learned about Tim? You know, wegot rocks and fire, and we're
still sort of working with rocksand fires, except now we're
using engineered bricks, andwe're turning the giant fireball
in the sky into electricity. Soit was just a moment of that's
kind of cool. All right, superfast. I'll talk fast. Tim,
Tim Montague (41:53):
super fast. What's this? Small batteries in heavy
demand.
John Weaver (41:58):
Small batteries are selling out. So apparently,
residential size battery cells,there are 100 KW battery cells,
probably about this big as theutility scale market has grown
develop. Manufacturers havestopped making these smaller 100
amp hour cells, because 300 5001000 amps, 2000 amps are
(42:22):
becoming the new thing, justlike how modules had this
explosion in size to find thisnew optimal spacing. Battery
cells on the utility scale aredoing it, but what they're doing
is leaving behind small cellswhich are more viable for
residential and smallerprojects. Yeah, and I thought to
(42:44):
share this for two reasons. One,inside the article, they talk
about how battery manufacturersare expanding massively, like
they talk about C, A, T, L, byD, both building big facilities.
But they also mentioned, andmore importantly is how, how
these big manufacturers areleaving behind small battery
cells. And it just makes mehappy to hear battery people
(43:07):
selling out and having a reasonto build more capacity. Because,
you know, solar right now isfunky with its capacity. It's
really oversized for a littlewhile. Can take a couple years
to catch up. But right now,batteries are ahead, and so
maybe that'll lead to somebattery price increases, maybe
some better profits, but atwhich motivates manufacturing
(43:28):
and and we're in the early scurve of batteries, and just
like that screen we saw withAustralia, batteries are you
know, solar Now means the gridmeans batteries, and now we're
jacking up batteries, which isleading to more solar. And
what's that going to mean? Arewe getting that? Then we have
Masdar. You know, we keep havingthis dance back and forth, more
(43:51):
batteries, more solar, morebatteries, more solar. Those
Middle Eastern folks are like,all right, all the batteries,
all the solar. Bam, done. OnePower Plant. None of this dance
up and down the power grid. Soit's, there's a thing happening
right now, and batteries are ournext thing. You got, you got to
make your brain work like fixedflex Gen. Got a flex Gen brain,
(44:13):
and become the brain that runsbatteries.
Tim Montague (44:17):
I do say, I do like to say that, you know,
creating the value stack forbatteries is rocket science,
which is why there's very fewcompanies that do it. But, yeah,
it's good to it's good to seestorage coming on. It's good for
the grid. It's good forconsumers, business owners. It's
(44:38):
good for everyone. All right.
Well, we'll be back I in twoweeks, on the 14th of November,
and you can find all our contentat cleanpowerhour.com. Hit me up
on LinkedIn. I love hearing frommy listeners. Where can our
listeners find you?
John Weaver (44:54):
John, commercial, solar, guy, calm, it's best
place. Um. Contact us for him.
You can also come to Cambridge.
I'll buy you a beer.
Tim Montague (45:03):
There you go. All right, I want to say thanks to
all our listeners for being hereand tell your friends about the
show. With that, I'll say, let'sgrow solar and storage. Thanks.
John Weaver,
Unknown (45:15):
see everybody you.
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