Solar Hits $500/kW - 27 Years Early (Full Breakdown) - Clean Power Hour

Episode Transcript
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Tim Montague (00:02):
Tim, welcome to the Clean Power Hour live. I'm
Tim Montague, your host, welcometo our bi weekly roundup of the
latest solar, wind and batteryNews. Today we are going to geek
out on Re. Plus, we were just inre in Vegas, and I want to
welcome to the show. My co hostJohn Weaver, welcome.

John Weaver (00:21):
Hey everybody, Vegas was cool. It was very
exhausting being an east coasterwho wakes up really early and
then you're three hours to thewest, and now you're waking up
at 2am and you're trying yourbest to socialize, because, you
know that's what you do atconference. Means that you sleep
like two to three hours a nightfor two or three nights, and
that's just a Oh, exhausting. Ithink,

I think I remember you texting me at like 6am

Tim, I don't know what you're talking about.
Getting home. I don't know whatyou're talking about. I did have
one night, so that didcontribute to the broader
problem. Let's admit to that,but, uh, but still, it's rough.
He tried to go to bed.

I don't, I don't want to know what you were doing
all night, Long John, but it wasfun. I got to lose to John and
darts like really badly. So thatwas a lot of fun.

That was fun. So all the people from next
tracker, yes, that was nice.

And we'd like to welcome a new guest to the live
he's not a new guest to theClean Power Hour, but welcome
Evan Upshur from chin powersystems.

Evan Upshur (01:22):
Yeah. Good afternoon to the east coasters,
and morning to everyone else.

We got to we got to hang out quite a bit you and
me, Evan in the Chint booth, Aribut and I got to hang out a
little bit with John too. Sothat was great. It's always
great to see people that youdon't see, you know, but a
couple times a year, that's oneof my favorite things. And then,
of course, meeting a lot of newpeople, which I did lots of, and

(01:50):
geeking out on all thetechnology. I didn't get to do
enough of that, but I would loveit if, if we'll start with you,
Evan, give us a high leveltakeaway from the show. And I
know that you went to one of thebig parties also, I think in the
stadium, right?

Yeah, yeah, I made my way around just to, you know,
continue networking andeverything high level for me
was, you know, just, just greatto see a powerhouse of, you
know, an industry congregatelike they always do. You know,
it's no no mystery. We've hadour ups and downs this year,

(02:28):
just in terms of of policy. Andyou could say, you know,
uncertainty, but didn't slowanyone down. Always great to see
everyone there.

Yeah, a lot of good energy. How about you,
John, what were what were yourtakeaways.

You know, the residential people, they have
some complexities going on withwhat's going you know, what's
going to happen at the end ofthe year, certain markets are
going to be a little different,you know, like in the Northeast,
where we have high retail costs,maybe solar will hold on a lot
stronger. Probably will. There'sgoing to be a hump, because
we're going to pull a lot ofdemand forward to the end of the

(03:03):
year. So next year, we'll seewhat happens for us in the CNI
space. It's just kind of not adifference other than maybe a
little more intense, because weknow we have two years to finish
most of our projects, and thenour world is going to change all
the big folks, you know, they'retalking things like fioc, safe,
harboring things like that. It'sa little bit outside of my

(03:24):
wheelhouse in terms of nine tofive work. You know, I'm writing
about it, talking about it withpeople, with PV, mag and stuff.
But, you know, I'm not reallyfeeling it. But, you know, I
guess similar though, the energygenerally is broad. People are
positive, lots of just it'sgetting bigger, you know, it's
getting harder to walk thefloor. Now it's really

(03:46):
impossible to walk the wholefloor and have casual,
consistent conversations. Ithink you officially have to,
like, fully vet your time ifyou're going to spend two and a
half days on the floor, meetingrandom plus interviewing. I'm
saying myself as a PV magazineguy who has, like, an obligation
to shake hands and know people,and I didn't get through all the

(04:06):
I usually walk every aisle. Idid not do it this show.

And that's, I don't think it's possible. It

might not be anymore. We may, yeah, we may
have crossed that precipice. Soit's so be it. But that's,
that's cool, that's good andbad. Good and bad.

Yeah, I would agree. I think, I think for
anyone who hasn't gone to thatshow, it's, it's good advice to
to maybe map out your objective,because the scale that that show
is at now. I mean, not only isit multiple buildings and floors
and everything like that, butthe those buildings and floors
are so huge. I mean, you have togo there with a game plan and

(04:43):
and nail it down, or elseyou're, you're gonna, you know,
leave, you're gonna leave and belike, Oh, I missed, I missed a
few things. Yeah, I

didn't get to hang out on the forum very much. I
spent one afternoon there for afew hours, mostly in the
Venetian It was great seeingsome. Some people that I hadn't
met face to face. Shout out tothe team at celesco, who John
and I talked about last week orlast last episode. Power field,

(05:10):
a unique racking product, whichwe've had drew their CEO on the
show. It's it's flat to groundor not flat to ground, but the
racking sits on the ground. It'sa tub that you fill with gravel
as ballast. So it's very simple.
And anyway, that was cool to getto meet the team and see the
tech. And I spent hours andhours in the Chint booth talking

(05:31):
to Chint customers and Chintstaff, of course, but those
customer conversations for meare a favorite, getting to hear
them talk about other, you know,power electronics versus Chint,
pros and cons. And you know, ifyou're if you work for Chint,
this is my message to the Chintteam. If you work for Chint,

(05:53):
don't freak out about fioc,because you guys have a
significant advantage in termsof product quality, the team and
the service. It's, it's the thattripartite, that is your secret
sauce. So Go Team Chint. That'smy plug for Chint today,

though. I mean, you know, a lot of folks you know
nowadays are really, you know,focused on, like, you know,
where are things made and, youknow, what's the ownership of
the company? But you know, theone thing that stayed tried and
true with us is just ourAmerican workforce. I mean, we
have so many people in theservice and field that I don't
know, I don't think it's matchedby anyone. I mean, that that's a

(06:39):
lot of American jobs, though,that are, you know, actual boots
on the ground. So it feels goodto have that support, right? I
mean, you could, you couldmanufacture in the states all
day long, but if there's nosupport out in the field, it's,
you know, not really a winningpackage

customer service, period, like the full wrap. You
guys have a very good culture ofservice. So keep stick to your
guns. So what else? What? Whatunique technologies Did either
of you see that you, you know,were surprised by or excited

about, I would say the fact that I'm considering
three micro inverters on a threephase 40 volt roof top from en
face. There might be sometechnical reasons for it. I'm
working my way through it. Couldend up with some string
inverters. I looked at a coupleof agrivoltaic racking systems.

(07:34):
These are needs that I have forprojects coming up. And so solar
geek was one of them. I'vespoken with him before. There's
so many new there's new modulemakers that are coming. I
stopped by the cleaning Tim.
Tim, I can't remember his lastname right now, start the letter
L, and he's got a solid set ofcleaning hardware. And robotics

(07:57):
are now expanding. There'sthere's robotic grass cutters,
there's module placers andmodule movers, so to get them
out to the field, and then wehave the pile drivers. So I
definitely seeing roboticsexpanding big time. Yeah, your
what's your team? Your gentlemanthat you work with, Tim, that I

(08:17):
met in Boston, he was, yeah,

luminous, you met, you meant you met Jay.

Jay doesn't Jay have a big project. He's
actually doing in Australia.

Like, yeah, he's working on like, a 300 or 350
megawatt project in Australia.
They want a grant from theequivalent of NREL in Australia.
I don't, I don't know theacronym, but so they have
several robots deployed on onsite, on utility solar projects
in Australia, which is kind ofcool. One of the cool things for
that company is that now theyhave technical staff in both the

(08:52):
US and Australia, and so theycan they do what's called a 16
hour cycle. So they have anextended work day because of the
team in multiple disparategeographic areas. And that's
accelerating their product theirproduct development, actually.
So that's really cool, but theyweren't exhibiting,

(09:13):
unfortunately. But I just thinkthat the time is ripe for
robotics. We see this really,like, take off, happening now
there's, there was probably halfa dozen robotics companies
exhibiting at least, and that'sbrand new. Like, if you went to
inner solar, there was, therewas two or three, and now
there's half a dozen. And youknow, next year there'll be a

(09:36):
dozen. They're coming

robotics, lots of modules, just lots of, Oh, and,
of course, I mean, it's stillhappening. This is I really saw
big happening in Munich, maybelast year. But batteries,
batteries are just growing andgrowing and growing and that.
And it's just not stopping. Sobatteries, batteries in the new
solar.

Yeah, yeah. I think, I think it's a, you know,
a trend that we're, we're usedto expecting happen, which is
just everything getting morepower dense. You know, not, not
only just the batteries that youmentioned, but, you know,
modules, everything's gainingefficiency. We unveiled our
largest 1000 volt stringinverter to to date. It's 100

(10:24):
kilowatts. So it's in additionto our 50 and 60 that were, I
mean, uber successful, I mean,deployed pretty much everywhere,
and that came out in 2016though. So this new 100 kilowatt
is the first inverter largerthan it since then. So for a
company, you know, CPS, when wewere number one market share,

(10:44):
it's a big deal, you know, it's,it's hopefully, an inverter that
will kind of throttle us intothe future. And felt good to
unveil it at a show like that.
It's pretty, pretty exciting.

And there was a lot of energy around the Gonzo,
your CNI battery. I think thisis a, what is it? 262, kilowatt
hour, or something like that.
The CNI battery space, I feellike is, is really heating up.
No pun intended, but the themoniker to remember around
batteries, the value ofbatteries, is, earn, save,
protect. So just learn thosethree words, earn, save,

(11:17):
protect, if you're drinking froma fire hose on batteries, geek
out on earn, say, protect. It's,it's a thing. We learned this
from intelligent generation. I'mabout to have Jay marhoefer drop
on the show. I've already donethe interview. He's the founder
of intelligent generation. He'sa real thought leader in
storage. He got into storage inthe early 2000s before anybody

(11:38):
was doing batteries here in theUS. So what else?

Yeah, storage.
Storage was huge. You know,John, John mentioned that too.
But man, storage is, iseverywhere. I mean, it's the
it's the key. I mean, every yearwe get more pushback from the
utilities and batteries andstorage is kind of like the
opposite effect of that tocombat it. So it's good to see,
you know, it's giving theconsumer more freedoms and
options to becoming, you know,energy independent, rather than

(12:10):
just being subject to whateverthese utilities want to do.

Yeah, I think hearing people talk about, well,
lots of people are talking aboutthe loss of incentives and
dealing with it, but there'salso people looking at the price
of electricity going up, andthat kind of jives with me,
because that's what I keepthinking about. So I'm when I
hear somebody confirm my priorheld beliefs, it makes me feel
slightly less insane. And so Iheard a few people mention that,

(12:38):
and I was like, I you know, Ifeel bad about it for everybody
else, but we need it. We need alittle more expensive
electricity. But I see in thenews that, you know, price oil
is, you know, potentially goingto slip into 50 bucks per barrel
next year. Price of gas mightfall because China is importing
less. You know, it's, it'sinteresting to watch and listen
to people. Listen people thinkabout what's going to happen the

(13:01):
next few years as we evolve. Aswe evolve again in our industry,
as we keep evolving. So that'sjust big floor. I sat down with
SIA. I'm gonna have a storyabout with the boss. I sat down
with a neat little round tableof 12346, ish journalists. I got
to meet Billy from solar powerworld online. He's really tall.

(13:22):
He's like, 646565,

Unknown (13:25):
he's taller than me.
Tall guy. Tall

guy. It's cool to see him, because I read his
stuff. I read everybody at solarpower world every day. Got to
see Julia, Julian Specter, twoguys from s and p5 100. It just
people, solar builder. You know,just, it was just cool little
table, like six people who donothing but write about solar. I
read all of you people everyother day. So it's just kind of

(13:49):
neat to see them as well, whichis different than seeing gear.
It's, you know, journalistpeople. So it's kind of fun.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's cool. You mentioned, you
know, just the the walk of life,you see, you know, there's new
companies like Abbott that aremaking waves and, you know,
battery recycling. I saw someTesla shirts there. I mean,
every corner of the industry. Imean, you might not know who
you're talking to, but it's,it's amazing the level of

(14:18):
personnel that's there. Feltlike

I saw quite a few Tesla people there. I don't know
if they were exhibiting. They'refamous for not exhibiting, but
they were definitely there. Theyexhibit at a big booth and a big
booth. Okay, was that aboutstorage primarily, or

one half of it was Mega Pack shirts, the other half
was residential. That's atleast. That's how I saw the
people labeled when I went inthere to ask questions, because
I had questions on both sides,yeah, and there were a bunch of
people with Omega pack and powerwall. No, it didn't have power
wall. It said residential.
That's the way the shirts werelabeled. So it wasn't, it wasn't
Tesla Energy Storage. It wasjust a Tesla booth. They didn't

(14:56):
have a car this year oranything. They just. Had Mega
Pack on the right side. That'sif you're facing the booth, Mega
Pack was on the right and resisolar was on the left side.

I noticed that Honda had a booth. It was kind
of lame. I have nothing againstHonda, but their booth was lame,
and they didn't even have a pureEV in the booth. It was a hybrid
ice battery car. I'm like, Thisis so yesterday, I don't know.
Anyway, should we get into thenews?

Sure we like the news. We do that sometimes.

All right, so we got a cool project of the week.
Turlock Irrigation Districtcelebrates State's first solar
over canals pilot project.

Look at that thing.
Look how big it is.

Let me get this on screen. Is this in California?

Yes, yes, yes, yes.
So California started a solarcanal program. And this is
amazing, first unit. Yeah,there's a few pictures you can
zoom around it, so, you know,check out the picture on the
side. But look how just big andchunky it is. And I don't know,
I just saw it and thought itlooked cool. I mean, they think
it could save, you know, if theycover their many millions of

(16:12):
miles of canals, not millions ofmiles. I don't know what I'm
talking about, but they couldsave like, a half a percent of
their water. It sounds a lot,but it's really a small amount,
but still half a percent, savingit from irrigation. Probably
useful. Yeah, it was just neatlooking at the size of this
thing. I mean, it was just likethis big, big, solid chunk of
gear, and it just kind of lookscool. It's different than the

(16:36):
ones I've seen in India, wherethey sit flat over their
systems, and they hadinfrastructure underneath this
one looks like you could put aboat down underneath it, so I
guess they had differenttechnical requirements or
something. But just say, Coolspan. Yeah, so clear span. I
don't know what clear span is,but sure.

I mean, where there's no there's no like,
there's no legs sticking downinto the into the canal.

Oh, sure, sure.
Alright. Yeah, interesting. Imean, yeah, they must have some
type of technical requirementthat that doesn't allow them to
do, like a floating I think thefloating would probably be
better from like a buildperspective, but then you can't
transport anything. But if it'sjust for irrigation, it'd be
interesting to see what theiruse cases for that.

I'm pretty certain a bunch of that water is going
to LA just to because they're ina, you know, they're in the
middle of a desert.

Yeah, yeah. Unique project. I've never seen
anything like that. Though, it'sa good pick.

It's first one in the United States. So unless
you've been to India, they haveit. That's the only other place
I know of Canal solar. I'm sureChina does it casually, but
India has a big push on it. So,yep,

all right, mushrooms, plus solar power.

Agrivoltaics is my continuing enjoying of
agrivoltaic innovation stuff. Sosolar on top of food. And this
one just showed a guy pickingthe mushrooms. But he has a cool
YouTube slash LinkedIn pagewhere he goes to all the work.
But this one, I just thoughtlooked neat because of the
volume of mushrooms that hepulled off, like, I don't know,

(18:27):
not a lot of logs that he hadthere. So it seemed pretty,
pretty cool the volume of foodhe got out of there.

Yeah, it's neat.
You know? I feel like you knowwhat we just looked at for the
the canal project andagrivoltaguex. I mean, they kind
of have something in common,right? The water is used for,
you know, agriculture, right?
And, and then, on the otherhand, you have, you know, solar
being integrated, you know, intoa landscape for agriculture.

(19:00):
It's interesting how thoseworlds meet. I mean, would you
consider, would you consider,like DC water pumps,
agrivoltaics? Or is that kind ofits own thing?

Now, I mean, that's interesting thing. It's a
farming use without a doubt,right? But I would not call it
agrivoltague in my limiteddefinition, because in my world,
I look at grid electricity plusfood, but that seems partial,
you know, yes, this is if it'spumping water up from the

(19:32):
ground, that's super important,too. So yeah, I

yeah, I would say this is agrivoltaics For sure.
Oh, this, yeah, yeah, yeah, on acrop. Sorry. It took me a little
while to get that on screen.

Sometimes, that's me. So he's growing those just
right underneath the solarpanels, because they they thrive
in a shading environment.

I guess they like the shade. I.

Yeah, I once saw a mushroom system in Japan that
was much more complex looking,and it had an inside of a metal
structure. And it looked costly.
It looked like its own gearyou'd have to deal with but, but
this one, it's just throwingdown some logs. And he knew what
logs to place, of course, andmaybe he seated them. But it's
just for sure, pretty cool,pretty cool to

watch. Yeah, it's definitely interesting. I think
agrivoltaics is something thatyou know needs to be talked
about. I think there's probablya lot of people don't even know
what agrivoltaics is. But, Imean, I think, you know, growing
up in more of a rural area, youknow, you're, you're affiliated
with, you know, and aware of,you know, the farmers and

(20:43):
there's a natural, you know,push and pull with, you know,
using farmland for solar.
Farmers kind of like it because,you know, it's an additional
income stream, you know. Butthen, you know, some other folks
think, you know, it's tying upland for too long. And a lot of
people don't really realize thatthere is a world where, you
know, agriculture and solar cankind of work on the same field
together, which is prettyinteresting.

So it looks like we've got another agrivoltague
project here with a commercialsolar guy project, huh?

Yeah, this is much earlier. I wasn't really talking
about the agrivoltague as much,but where we are in our
interconnection process and howwe're moving. And so we just got
our interconnection agreementyesterday after applying, like,
three years ago, Timothy andEvan, and is even after we
shrunk down our AC connection,because we we're going to do

(21:35):
some batteries, we're going tohave a 200 KW AC, but we got
about 117 grand and in inutility cost. We're probably
going to spend a quarter of amillion bucks easy on grid
upgrades, which is kind ofdisheartening, but

it's a very high DC to AC ratio. What is that
about? Yeah.

So this is a in the SMART program of Massachusetts,
where they pay you about threeto five cents per kilowatt hour
for their for using batteries.
So any extra capacity that comesout of our system will get paid
an extra four to five cents. Andso we have in order to maximize
the revenue per kilowatt hour,we stayed under 250 kW AC,

(22:15):
because that's the way theprogram is structured, but
really we had to go under 200because we knew what the local
grid issues were, and we stillhad to wait for substation
upgrades, but we snuck inwithout any extra, extra costs.
And so now we have a three toone DC to AC AC ratio coming,
and we plan on having anestimated up to 180 or 1.8

(22:37):
megawatt hour battery. Andthat's because if we had three
to one, we clip 50% 60% of ourelectricity, you know, we'll,
we'll hit the max output at like
45am, 9am I don't know what itis, nice and early.

Well, your generation curve is very square,
right? Yeah, it's rounded.

Yeah, it's not going to be rounded, at least
relative to the AC output. Butif you look into the bigger
output that includes thebattery, our generation curve is
still going to be the same.
We're going to have singleaccess trackers, so that will
help a little bit, but sort ofsquare it off a tiny bit, but
with the batteries. But really,we're going to be outputting
until midnight come thesummertime, you know, we're

(23:22):
gonna have six hours of outputafter this system finishes,

like the the direct current coming from the battery
once the sun sets.

Yeah, that's what's driving that. Yes, is that the
batteries are going to be fullduring the day, because there's
no complexity with the output onthis system. It's, uh, just
general, pure output wheneveryou have excess. And so we so
it's just scheduled for the kWhto go out. Now we may get into
another program, connectedsolutions, or something else
with our battery, and so thatmay adjust how we output. But

(23:54):
we're figuring that out. We'llfigure that out. Tell us about
the battery. So we haven'tchosen any battery yet, where do

you know, like the basic specs? Is it kWh or 500

kWh or so? It's going to be about 300 KW which
is one half of the DC sizing,and then about six hours, five
to six hours, this is going tobe, this is driven by the
incentive structure. So theSMART program first that's one
incentive. So you look at yourDC, and then your battery

(24:27):
inverter relative to that is onevariable, and then the second
variable is your number ofhours. And so the curve goes up
strong until, like four hours ofbattery. Then it slows down a
little bit in terms ofincreasing rate, but we need six
hours if we're going to reallymaximize this site and make up

(24:47):
for all this interconnectioncosts that we have to pay for.
So hopefully the extra revenuebalances out when we start
getting into this ROI stuff.

So it's on the order of 1500 kWh, right? It

an annual 1.8 right now. So 1.5 to 1.8 Yeah, 1500 to
1800 somewhere in that range iscurrent projection, so that we
got to find the right inverterso I can have the proper DC to
AC ratio.

I know somebody help you with that.

I know CPS does have some high DC thumbgirl has,
I've seen it in the past.
Selectria has. So we're gettingcloser. We are going to be
aiming for domestic content,though. So we have to really try
and tune our hardware,everything. It's going to be
hard to make it domesticcontent, but we really gotta. We
really want to,

and I totally appreciate that. And so it's,
it's the thing that you okay, ifyou're a developer, asset owner,
you have to think about CapExversus OpEx. And yes, if you can
hammer on the domestic content,you can drive down the capex,
but careful, because there'ssome gotchas potentially there

(26:03):
on the back end, on the OPEX, sojust be careful, right?

Yeah, looks like an awesome project. Seems like
maybe a future candidate forproject of the month, right?

Yeah, absolutely.
Well, it's been on this documentalready once or twice, so yeah,
that's really cool. Yeah,whenever I need, whenever one of
our projects have a coolmilestone that they meet, I get
a little excited. I gotta tellTim, yeah,

alright, and you've got a story in PV
magazine. John solar pricepasses pessimism quantified.
What's the story from September11?

Yeah, so this was just covering a research paper.
You know, I covered four or fivearticles over the last couple
weeks, but I was just covering aresearch paper, and I, you know,
let's go to the first graph. Ithink that's really going to be
the best one to show it. Sohere's, here's this graph. Zoom
in on it a little bit, if youcan, and the portion around that
500 number, because this isreally the crux of it. So if you

(27:06):
see that solid black line that'sin that graph, it starts just
over 2000 and it goes down to,yeah, you got it right there,
Tim, and it goes down to, like,that's the year 2023, and you
can see the price per watt fall,the price per kilowatt fall. And
that's the real number that theysee happening now. All these

(27:26):
other lines, and you can seethem all on the right side.
Those are all different pricefuture projections starting, you
know, 2015 2000 what? And theysay, Okay, this is what we see
is going to happen in thefuture. And you look at all
these curves going out to thefar right. If you look at that,
that's 2050 and look at wherethose prices are, some of those
prices are $1 per watt, and allthe way down to like, I don't

(27:49):
know that little green one atthe bottom, maybe it's 25 cents.
But if you look at half of them,roughly half of them are higher.
They're 2050 projections, thentoday's price, today's 2025,

gentlemen, don't know what is today's Real Price
about

for this document, global, 50 cents per watt. 50
cents per watt installed is kindof the number that they look at.
Yeah.

What? Are these colors represent the 500 $500

per kilowatt. I think it's kW AC, but yes, okay,
and the different colors arejust different models, like from
NREL, from scientists, peoplepredicting the future. These are
projections, cost projections,going forward. And the
interesting thing is, if youlook at that $500 go all the way

(28:46):
to the right again, this is a2023 price. So the pricing of 23
was 27 years ahead of the pacethat a bunch of these people
projected. And that's why thisis solar price projections
quantified, or solar pricepessimism quantified. Yeah, like

(29:09):
people just are still, I mean,the smartest people on Earth,
and some of them are enroll ourbest friends, the best solar
people in the whole UnitedStates, everybody that works at
NREL, I will buy you a beer. Allyou gotta do is show me a little
tag, or you can even lie to me,just if you know the word NREL,
I'll buy you a beer. I once sawsomebody with a laptop sticker
with NREL and and then an NREL tshirt. I just felt so happy

(29:32):
seeing that. But you know, evenNREL is behind because of the
change that has occurred withour industry. And so the purpose
of this paper was just to belike, holy crap. Look at that.
These numbers are just, I mean,we knew it, but now here's
seeing it all. These people needto adjust their numbers and
figure out why they were wrong.
And the same thing in batteries.

(29:52):
Look, go to the next chart, verylast one. You can see it
happening with batteries rightthere. No, no. Pop up right
there. You can see that theseprojections, but you see that
little, tiny red dot underneatheverything,

actual, 2025, $58,

it's, what are the Evan and Tim, you and I need to
go into the projection business,because we can just throw stuff
at the wall and then be like,here's our thing. Give us some
give us a paper with our name onit, so I can show it to a pretty
lady and be like, Hey, I'mpublished. Because that's
because this is like, Oh mygosh. So batteries are below

(30:36):
projected cost of 2050 Yeah,that's incredible. Our pace, our
movement, our acceleration, isjust, yeah.

So it's interesting, too. I mean, you
know, we're, we're operating inan industry that's, you know,
parallel with the car industry,which, you know, has a huge
demand for energy storage rightnow. And you wonder, I mean,
back around, like 2020, when,when the EV, I would call it EV,
boom, was really happening.
It's, it's interesting to seehow things can really accelerate
potentially. You know, I have afeeling that that some of that

(31:10):
technology and just the overallsupply chain has to accelerate
some metrics like that red dotthere. It's pretty incredible.

Absolutely. I like whenever I see our new text
coming on, like hydrogen,batteries, perovskites,
particularly whenever there's aparallel industry to ours, I'm
like, I feel more optimisticbecause there's more scientists,
more research, moreserendipitous views of what's

(31:39):
happening and and if you thinkabout batteries, what made our
battery industry happen, ourlaptops and our phones, these
are the things that set themarket so that once Tesla and
BYD said, Oh, look at thisexisting tech. They had a
massive base of batterymanufacturing. They had
scientists research, peopletrying their best. And so

(32:02):
batteries, our batteries for ourgrid, are being developed at a
nine to one ratio. So carbatteries are like 80 to 90% of
the batteries that aremanufactured globally. Grid is
10. So we are massivelybenefiting from the parallel
industry that we get topiggyback on and and that's
great. So anyway, pricequantified. That was, that was

(32:26):
my, one of my happy stories ofthe week.

Well, this is not a happy story. And Evan, if you
need to leave, you're fine toleave, but if you want to hang,
hang out, we're all good. It'stotally up to you.

Certainly, we got three more links to cover 10
minutes. Max, yeah,

we'll go for another 10 or so. Here, we got a
story about Meyer burger, whichis near and dear to me and
John's heart. Meyer burgerunlikely to survive under
provisional debt moratorium. Ihave some ideas about this
company, but John, what is thebasic story here?

They made a push to grow and they're just they're
probably going out of business.
They're in BK, they shut downtheir solar cell factory, and in
Germany, they really only havetwo collections of people
working right now. They have twobusinesses, and they're

give our listeners some background. This is a
company that made solar panelmanufacturing equipment,
originally, right? And then theygot into solar panel
manufacturing, brought that tothe US. But there were some
false starts, never fullyopened. I mean, this is a
picture of a plant in Arizona.
Looks like, right?

Yeah. So first they were a watch glass maker, right
to the earliest that I knowabout company, yes. And then at
some point, one technology thatthey got into was the they made
diamond wire saws, I guess, thatcut the watch faces the glass,
and that ended up beingintegrated into solar panel,

(34:00):
solar cell and solar wafercutting. And then at some point,
they kept moving up the supplychain, making cells, making
wafers. And then over the lastfew years, they tried to make a
push into the US, assemblingmodules. Now they were making
modules in Germany and and theywere a few 100 megawatts that
they started pushing into, yeah.

And it was a premium panel. It was a very
nice product, right, yeah. Butit's a question of, how
competitive can you be, right?
Making panels in Northern Europe

and and only making a few 100 megawatts. And, yeah,
you know. So they just, they,you know, they made the push
into the US, and it just, itjust didn't come through. And
this is their they had twofacilities they were doing. They
had the Arizona Goodyearfacility, and I guess that's
what this one is. And then theyhad a facility for cells that
they were working on inColorado, and I think Colorado

(34:54):
city. And so both of thosefacilities have gone and it
looks like the US. Thesefacilities. Michael, to worry,
which is cool. That's an Indianmanufacturer. They're pretty
big. If they're going to makeuse of those factories, awesome.
It's at least, at least it'sgoing to get taken care of so or
get made use of. But it justbreaks my heart, just because I

(35:14):
just was. I just like theirglass, glass technology. I like
their clean, their clean polysilicon sourcing. It was good to
have global competition. Youknow, the Chinese are really
awesome making solar panels. ButI'm really happy seeing India
and China now competing becauseand the US and Europe as they

(35:36):
can go, because it's just goodto have different sets of eyes.
It's just like the batterystuff. You want learning curves.
You want different people,different visions. And literally
vision sometimes just saying,Oh, I see this differently. So
yeah.

So I have another theory, and that is that they
were out competed by Chinabecause guys like Dean Solon at
create, who's building a solarmodule factory in Tennessee will
say publicly, the best equipmentfor making solar panels comes
from China. Yeah, he's waitingfor equipment from China. Meyer

(36:14):
Berger stopped selling theirequipment because the Chinese
were copying their equipment andstealing their IP But China's no
longer just copying otherstechnologies. They're truly a
powerhouse of R and D andinvention themselves, right?
Things have changed. So anyway,I don't have any validation of

(36:36):
this theory. That's just mytheory that the world has
changed, and they didn't changefast enough with it, but we'll
be sad. It'll be sad to see themgo. If they go, uh, hopefully
they'll find an investor.

Oh, I don't know. I don't think they are. Yeah, not
gonna stick to it anymore.

Yeah. Certainly come a long way. It'd be great
to great to see a dive andcatch, if you will,

dive and catch all. Right, there's a story
about Vermont. This is our laststory, I think, isn't it? Sure?
Oh, yeah, Vermont lawmakers planto consider balcony solar next
session.

That's it. Nothing magical. They're just
considering allowing you to plugin some solar. They got a little
bit of volume, uh, the KWnumber, I saw it earlier.

I mean, we've covered a couple, a couple of
states are rolling out balconysolar laws, right?

Well, so far, the only place where I've seen a law
explicitly was Utah, yeah, yes,yeah. And so these people are
looking similar. It's also 1.2kW, and has very similar details
as the Utah language. So I justthought it was neat to see a
second state going balcony solarand and I also think it's smart

(37:51):
for a northern state to do it,because most balcony solar is at
a more aggressive angle, andVermont is, you know, we're way
north. They're Canadians, andso, you know, having balcony
solar up there, smart,

lot of trees up there, though, absolutely.

Is this something you guys see, like, like,
actually being, like,implemented a lot? Is this
something that a lot of folkswant to do? Yeah, I

wouldn't say implemented a lot in the US yet
we're just at the early edges ofit. Yeah, you guys need to get
yourself a 1.2 kW inverter withrapid shutdown that's UL
certified to isolate the solarsystem in case the grid goes
down and somehow it's got tohave smarts reading on the
circuit so that it can tellwhat's happening on the circuit

(38:40):
and not overpower this circuit.
Because, you know, you can havesolar coming in at 20. This is
the hypothesis of the challenge.
Sure you have the grid coming inat 20, you have the solar coming
in at 20. Now, generally, thatwouldn't the way electricity
works if you were plugged incorrectly, and you're talking
about 20 amps. Yeah. 20 amps.
Okay, yeah, sorry, sorry, if youonly had 120 amp item plugged

(39:03):
into the wall properly, then thesolar would make it so that the
wall wouldn't draw and soeverything's cool because you
have a 20 amp circuit, 20 ampwires, but the hypothesis is you
have consumers who are going toplug in 220 amp things to the
same circuit, and now you havethe solar coming in at 20,
offsetting it, and the gridpulling another 20. So

(39:26):
hypothetically, there's 40 ampshappening within the circuits.
But I don't know how that reallyworks, but they're really
talking about that how to manageit. So that seems like the magic
little nuance of keeping thesecheap, if we can figure out how
to get that circuit protectedwithout having to upgrade the
electric panel and bring in anelectrician where you can just
plug it in, that seems like thecool way to do it. So yes, yes,

(39:49):
Evan, it's it's not implementeda lot, though it's not worth the
money today.

Well, I say yes. I said yes to that because it is a
thing more in Europe, innorthern Europe. Balcony solar
is a thing, and you know, thisis something that can be
implemented by renters, right?
Or people that don't want to putit on the roof, or have a shady
roof, like my house, I have abig tree in my backyard, but I
could put balcony solar on myback deck, coming off the rail,

(40:16):
if I could do something simple,like plug it into the outlet,
and

so anyway, yeah, it's a cool topic, you know,
it's, it's, it's littlesolutions like that that I feel
like breed other similarsolutions, you know, I feel like
with something like that, youknow, it's, it's not huge, but
that also means it's probably alittle bit more accessible. And,
you know, I think that's goingto be the true breakthrough of

(40:45):
this industry, when people areable to, you know, buy these
things, you know. I mean, solaris still expensive, you know. I
mean, relatively speaking, so iselectricity. You know, that's
kind of been the classicargument. But hopefully we'll
see something like balconysolar, transition into something
like, you know, porch solar andpersonal carport solar,

backyard solar, yeah, I covered a, I can't
remember the name now, but Icovered a carport that's made to
be portable, like it comes withwheels, so you could roll it
into your garage if there was astorm.

Yeah, I saw, you know, kind of maybe tying back
the whole conversation too. Iremember, you know what? I think
it was, re plus Chicago, Tim, Iwas walking the floor, and I
came across a small littlecompany. I don't know their
name, we could plug them here,but they make a small little
inverter enough for one or twosolar panels, and it actually

(41:47):
ties directly into a waterheater. And it's just kind of a
sort of piggybacks off thatsimple way to, like, figure out
a way to integrate solar, butthere wasn't any interconnection
needed because it wasn't goingto back feed at all. And so I
don't know. It's an interestingtype of field that I think we'll
see happen, you know, maybedevelop a little bit more over

(42:09):
the next few years.

I found the episode. It's episode 100 gizmo.
Power is the name of thecompany. Check out my interview
with Antonia Ginsburg clemt.
Very interesting young woman, Ithink she's in grad school now
out west, but very cool.
Product, Gizmo, power, awesome.
All right, Tim, I think weshould wrap it up. I know you

(42:32):
had one more story on thedocket, but

always new stories.
Tim, always something to talkabout. Yeah, well, we'll

see if it stands the test of time. We're coming
back on the 26th so I want tothank Evan Upshur from CPS
America for joining us today.
And as always, the commercialsolar guy, check out all of our
content at clean power hour.comGive us a rating and a review,
but more importantly, tell afriend about the show. There are
many people that don't knowabout the Clean Power Hour, so
tell a friend and connect withme on LinkedIn. I love hearing

(43:04):
from my listeners. John, how canour listeners find you?

Best place is just commercial solar guy.com, my
website and and that's reallyit. Commercial solar guy.com,
I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on bluesky. But if you really want to
see some of the stuff we buildand what's going on commercial
solar guy com, we have a contactpage and all kinds of stuff.

And how about you?
Evan up, sure,

yeah, usually making it around to the local
trade shows and conferencesrepresenting chin power systems.
And of course, I'm on LinkedIn,so happy to connect with any
listeners there? Fantastic.

I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage.
Thanks so much, guys, awesome.
Thank you. You.

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Solar Hits $500/kW - 27 Years Early (Full Breakdown)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Solar Hits $500/kW - 27 Years Early (Full Breakdown)