April 11, 2025 • 48 mins
In this episode of Clean Power Hour, hosts Tim Montague and John Weaver dive into the latest developments in the solar and storage industry.
Episode Highlights:
- Perovskite Breakthrough: Analysis of Trina's new commercial-sized perovskite solar panel exceeding 800 watts with 26% efficiency, marking a significant advancement in solar panel technology.
- Battery Storage Revolution: Examination of China's six gigawatt-hour battery tender at just $65/kWh, less than half the cost of U.S. installations, signaling dramatic cost reductions in energy storage.
- Global Supply Chain: Discussion of how the Myanmar earthquake is disrupting solar wafer production, potentially affecting the global supply chain.
- EV Charging Expansion: Update on Hyundai and Kia vehicles now being able to use Tesla's Supercharger network with adapters.
Link: https://www.hyundainews.com/en-us/releases/4406
- Electric Construction Equipment: Introduction of a new 25-ton electric excavator with a 422kWh battery pack, providing 6-8 hours of operation time with significant fuel savings.
Connect with Tim
Clean Power Hour
Clean Power Hour on YouTube
Tim on Twitter
Tim on LinkedIn
Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com
Review Clean Power Hour on Apple Podcasts
The Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com
Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/
The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America’s number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Tim Montague (00:00):
Welcome to the Clean Power Hour live. I'm Tim
Montague, your co host. We aredoing our bi weekly solar and
storage news with none otherthan the commercial solar guy.
John Weaver, welcome to theshow, John.
John Weaver (00:14):
Hey Tim. It is very nice. It's overcast and cloudy
here. I was gonna say, how anice, wonderful, sunny day, but
we had that yesterday, and I hadwonderful site visits at solar
projects that make me happy. SoI hope you're doing okay,
Timothy, I'm
Tim Montague (00:29):
in Dallas, Texas, actually in Richardson, which is
a suburb of Texas, at InnovationDay, with the team at Chin power
systems and several 100 cleanenergy professionals. It's such
an awesome thing. This is daytwo, and there's training
sessions going on. Sorry,
John Weaver (00:50):
what kind of show?
What's it about? Oh, this is,this is
Tim Montague (00:53):
their annual conference that chin power
systems, the three phase stringinverter and battery storage
company, makes or puts on fortheir customers and their
partners. I am a partner. I'm amedia partner. They're a major
sponsor of my show, of course,and I do a lot of content
creation with their staff andtheir customers. If you're a
(01:14):
Chint customer, reach out to me,because I want to tell your
story, whether we talk aboutChint or not. But yeah, it's a
wonderful event. I'm this. I'vebeen here. This is my third
year, and it keeps growing.
There's about probably all said300 people here this year, and
next year, they want to get 1000people, so we'll see. But yeah,
it's a very niche, very denseconference, a lot of
(01:42):
electricians, engineers andsolar geeks like me and you. So
yeah, you should check it outsometime. But it only happens
once a year in April. It will bein April next year. They don't
know the date. It'll either bethe first, first or last week in
April, has a big facility here.
(02:05):
Sounds like
John Weaver (02:05):
a good conference.
Technical focused on inverterlayout. You can ask questions.
You can exchange ideas withother designers. I listen to our
electrical engineer talking withpeople, and every conversation,
I always hear something andlike, Oh, that's interesting.
Most of it floats away because Idon't get to use it on a day to
(02:25):
day basis. But design, you know,doing getting better at design
is something I'd love for us tobe, you know, just be more
experienced, learn our invertersbetter. What the strings can do.
You know, being in thenortheast, we have at low angles
on our roofs. We can push ourstreams a little more, but it'd
(02:46):
be great to know how, so that wecan size things well, not waste
and not risk our inverters.
Tim Montague (02:53):
So here's a geeky topic that came up last night. I
was talking with Dr Z, who's thehead of their storage division,
but, but he's also a powerelectronics geek, and we were
talking about what I call noninjection, or what others might
call Zero. What's the expressionzero where you're not feeding
(03:21):
solar onto the grid, right,right? I call it non injection.
What
John Weaver (03:28):
do you call it non export?
Tim Montague (03:30):
Non export, or zero export? Yeah. So
apparently, you know, if you'rein California or Hawaii or
Arizona, you know, well aboutthis, because this is an
important thing in thosemarkets.
John Weaver (03:45):
In Massachusetts, occasionally, yes,
Tim Montague (03:48):
and in Illinois, occasionally, the circumstances
in Illinois that it becomesimportant is if you have an
interconnection problem wherethe utility says, well, we'd
love to interconnect your solarproject, but we're going to
charge you $3 million for aninfrastructure upgrade, and a
certain installer I work withhas a situation like this on
their hands. And of course, thatis for for a scene I project.
(04:11):
That's a deal killer, right? Butthe way around that is to say,
Well, Mr. Utility, we would loveto do this magic called non
injection, where the inverterwill just automatically see that
it is about to feed onto thegrid, and it'll turn itself off
(04:34):
or reduce. It
John Weaver (04:35):
will it will adjust the nppt arrangement on the
modules. I believe, I believeit'll actually throw the modules
out of efficiency so that they,instead of producing
electricity, will won't produceit. I think technically, might
be how it happens differentplaces. Do it different ways.
Tim Montague (04:54):
Yeah. But so my question for you is, have you
been involved directly in aproject? Where you had to
engineer non injection,
John Weaver (05:03):
yeah, yeah. We've had a couple non export
projects. I'm thinking of oneright now at the IMCA in
Wareham. And the way we did itthere, though, was that we had a
battery, and it was all behindthe meter, and it's all getting
used on site. I've also hadlarger projects where
technically it was a noninjection, and so we are non
(05:26):
export and in that case, but thereality was that the demand on
site was just massively largerthan the solar projects the roof
that they had space. But whileit was a non non Export System,
and that help forinterconnection just got through
a little faster. The reality wasthat it was always going to be a
(05:46):
non Export System, because thebuilding was always going to
absorb all the juice. But whenit comes to interconnection and
impact stays, it's great,because now we no longer there's
a lot of risks that the utilityhas to calculate when you do an
export system, and in placeswhere the substations are full
and power lines overlookedalready, this is great. So, so
(06:08):
yeah, not injection security. Sohow does chin How does CPS work
with it differently? Or what dothey do? Well, they just talking
Tim Montague (06:15):
about it, what it turns out. So historically, when
I was at continental in Chicago,we solved this problem using a
device called a Switzer relay,which I don't know very much
about, but it turns out thatmany inverters have native
capabilities now to do this noninjection. Chint, it turns out,
(06:39):
has had that technology builtinto their inverters, but they
haven't turned it on yet, butit's coming now in the United
States, and so they're going tostart doing some pilot projects
with their installers, on a on acase by case, in different parts
of the country, but some oftheir some of their competitors,
(07:00):
you know, SMA, I think, andsolar etch have had this rolled
out already. So anyway, sochange is playing a little bit
of catch up, but they actuallyhave the secret sauce already
built in. It's, it's mostly asoftware thing, but it's a
combination of software andhardware. And then you also have
to have a smart meter, an extraSmart Meter. I didn't quite
(07:23):
understand where on the grid.
But anyway, good thing for ussolar professionals to know
about right, as the as theindustry matures and attachment
rates, sorry, not attachmentrates, but penetration rates go
up. Yeah. So we better get intothe news, though, John, this is
a good topic, but we couldprobably talk all day about non
(07:44):
injection.
John Weaver (07:46):
Yeah, inverter.
Conversations are borderline anddefinite. They are the they are
the fun of our industry.
Tim Montague (07:54):
Did you really not know about Innovation Day?
John Weaver (07:58):
No, there's so many conferences out there that I
don't know anything about. Ionly go to one or two per year.
I'm so busy
Tim Montague (08:03):
and well, a lot of them are very expensive, but
this is an virtually an allexpenses paid thing, like all
you have to do is get yourselfhere, and then they pay for your
hotel and all your meals, whichis amazing. And you get to
network with a group of supercool solar professionals, and
you get to geek out with realtechnical geeks at CPS to boot.
(08:28):
So it's like a super win, win.
It's my, it's my, it's myfavorite Energy Conference now,
so put it on your calendar. Allright. Is this the first
commercial sized perovskitesolar panel for a large
manufacturer. It also happens tobe greater than 800 watts with
an efficiency of just over 26%yes, I want to know is Calex
(08:51):
involved in some way? No, well,I don't know who
John Weaver (08:58):
that is. This is Trina. I mean, I know that name,
but I don't know who they arerelative to this. You know,
there's lots of names out there.
Well,
Tim Montague (09:05):
they make perovskite coatings for solar
panel makers to add to theirsolar solar panels. So maybe it
does, I don't know. Well,
John Weaver (09:14):
I doubt it's here, but we don't know, because this
is a Trina module that theyintroduced, and it's a tandem
cell versus a coated glassproduct, it seems, however,
there's limited data on it. I'veonly seen this one press release
and nothing else, and this pressrelease has been shared around
(09:35):
the world and that, but it'sthe, to my best knowledge, from
a large manufacturer, maybe thefirst certified large scale
product that's been out there,and it's a 3.1 meter utility
scale module. So it's like oneof the biggest modules you can
buy, but it's also the highestwattage module I've seen. Yeah.
(10:00):
Within that form factor, and Idid my rough math. And if so, if
you design divide 800 by 3.1 itcomes out to be about 26%
efficient solar panel, whichwould be amongst the highest
efficiency solar panels you canfind.
Tim Montague (10:20):
Yeah, and that's the whole point, right? With the
tandem is you're taking the PVand then you're sandwiching on
top some perovskite, which givesyou extra juice, yes, right?
You're catching more photons,basically, right?
John Weaver (10:35):
Catching more?
Yeah, I guess you're catchingmore, yeah, because you have two
layers that are you're actuallycatching different
Tim Montague (10:41):
photons. Yeah, I think you're catching the
process.
John Weaver (10:46):
Yeah, they have these cool curves that show the
wavelength of light, of light,wavelengths of lies, Tim, all
lies coming from the sun, butthey show these curves of of
light. And so, like, you haveone chunk that gets one type of
silicon and then another chunkof light that gets the
perovskites. And these arecalled the band gaps, right and
(11:10):
so. So the perovskite, though,from what I've been reading, is
actually being used as the mainsolar panel because it's harder
to use, whereas the silicon isbeing used as the secondary
panel because we're really goodat working with it and managing
it. So for instance, GCL, theyhave a perovskite module, and
(11:32):
their perovskite module is about19 to 20% efficient. Their
silicon module is only eight 9%efficient. We think, Oh, we can
do a 20, 25% silicon module.
Yeah, you can. We can't combineit with perovskite in that
setting, at least not yet. Soit's interesting to watch, and I
was just excited to see thisheadline. The model doesn't
(11:55):
exist yet. There's no nobody cantouch it. There's probably 10 of
them in the world, maybe 100 Idon't know, but we're now seeing
a full sized perovskite moduleat 26% and it's not from Oxford
PV, who I'm not emotionally 100%on. Yet, I think they might try
to play the patent game andlimit the rest of the world.
(12:18):
They've been saying they'regoing to launch a module for
years, and there's, I've onlyheard of a module once coming
out of them, so it's just coolto see someone else. Now, I will
say I also worry that it won'tcome to the United States for a
while, because, well, tariffstuff is another conversation,
but more importantly, it has todo with these patents. For
(12:39):
instance, I'm hearing that topcon modules aren't coming to the
United States as much. Perk isgoing to hold longer here
because of patent arguments.
Whereas I just read an articlein Europe, they're like, perk is
gone Topcon. Is it because ofthe higher efficiency, the cost
(13:00):
structures that come frompowerful modules, you know, with
a balance of system. And, youknow, that's is a little dance.
It's a little change. So, sowe'll see. But it's cool seeing
it hit the world. And if wereally do get modules up to 34%
for it's just going to be great.
I mean, I've done some mathbefore, roughly every 1% drop or
1% increase in efficiency isabout 5% drop in levelized cost
(13:26):
of electricity. As you movefrom, say, 20% 22% to 34% so
really drop roughly. It's acurve, though, like at 20%
moving up 1% is 5% up, 1% is 5%at 25 moving up, 1% is 4% curve,
and it drops a tiny bit all theway up, but by the time you get
(13:49):
to like a 34% module, I thinkyour effective levelized cost of
Electricity will drop like 40%30% 50% some really nice, big,
chunky number. And so justlooking forward to, looking
forward to new tech. I was like,new tech, yeah,
Tim Montague (14:11):
yeah. I had Scott Graybill on the show, I think
last year or year before last,company called klux, C, A, E, l,
u, x, they're making aperovskite coating in LA they're
in Pasadena, California. Theyhave a 50 megawatt plant, so
it's, you know, small potatoes.
It's basically pilot scale. Andthey're not announcing publicly
(14:31):
any partnerships, but they'reworking with a variety of panel
makers to do what Trina hasalready done. Yeah, so it's good
stuff. We should probably moveon. You found a story about
batteries in China.
John Weaver (14:51):
Yeah, I wanted to start high level the battery
article that we're sharing here.
It's simply the next large wave.
Air in a massive capacity bid,six gigawatt hours, and the
price of it is 65 bucks perkilowatt hour fully deployed.
Tim Montague (15:12):
And so that's very low,
John Weaver (15:15):
yes, sir. Like right now, if you're buying
batteries in the US at the best,you're getting 150 bucks per
kilowatt hour installed, butyou're probably spending 250 to
300 still. It's just the realityof pricing as of now. But I hear
some people. I've heard a guysay 175 is what he's pricing his
batteries at, fully installed.
So that's pretty cool number,but this is 65 and I just wanted
(15:36):
to chat a little bit about why,one of the reasons why this is
happening, just to bring it toour reader's attention and
yours, and you probably alreadyknow, but battery cell sizes are
massively expanding. And batterycells used to be 123, 100 amps,
now they're getting up to 500700 even somewhere. I don't know
(16:03):
if I've seen 1000 amp I mighthave, but they're getting really
big. And these large batterycells, they like physically,
like, you know, this big size ofa Coke can, or bigger,
Tim Montague (16:17):
yeah, because
John Weaver (16:19):
of that larger size, I guess they're able to
pack more density into thebattery packs, and then more
battery packs into thecontainers. You know now we have
shipping containers that are upover eight megawatt hours. And
so when you have bigger cells,they have fewer connections,
they have simpler machines. Whenyou have more density within the
(16:42):
same supporting package, it'slike putting more Watts within
the same aluminum frame. Thealuminum frame still costs a
buck, so to say, but the priceper watt keeps falling because
you get more Watts within it.
That's what's happening withbattery cells and battery packs
and battery kits, and it's beenhappening for about a year or
two at least, and last re plus,I got to talk to a few folks who
(17:07):
said the next revolution inbatteries is ongoing, and it's
just us scaling these cellsizes. I saw a headline, or I
was reading something BYD saysthat last year, their batteries
dropped 20 25% this year theyexpect another 15 to 20% so Wow,
batteries are gonna keep goingdown. And I've just, I've been
(17:32):
wanting to bring this up on theshow for the last few weeks,
last few shows. And then thissecond bid came out, the first
bid from this group, becausethis is the second one in this
size. The first bid had BYDwinning it at $60 per kilowatt
hour. And that was the firsttime, this is back in October,
November, December. That was thefirst time that these crazy,
(17:55):
cheap numbers came out to theworld. We were already seeing
systems at 100 bucks in theheadlines, sneaking around, but
then 65 just kind of took asledgehammer to it all and said,
All right, next generation,we're here. Let's do it. So for
Tim Montague (18:13):
our listeners, not on YouTube, this is a story
called China's Hua Deonannounces winners in six
gigawatt hour best tender withaverage bid at $65 per kWh. The
story is in PV magazine energystorage, which is a separate
website now, ESS hyphen news.comso kudos to PV magazine for
(18:38):
branching out and creating astorage website. I think that's
a good thing and interestingstory. So thank you, John for
bringing us that story aboutcheap batteries, which we're
going to see a lot of if we ifwe get to see the future at all,
we're going to see really cheapstorage.
John Weaver (19:00):
Tim, what are you talking about?
Tim Montague (19:04):
Yeah, I know, bro, it's tough. It's tough that we
have to ask that question. Butit is question.
John Weaver (19:12):
This is where we are.
Tim Montague (19:15):
So are we going to stick to a 30 minute program
today? We
John Weaver (19:19):
never stick to 30 minute programs, but we'll find
out. Let's, let's hit it hard.
So let's see if we can do it.
Okay,
Tim Montague (19:26):
so you brought the butterfly back, bro, you're on
blue sky again. Man, absolutely.
I don't know if I can handlethis
John Weaver (19:36):
guy every day that's getting shared. What's
Tim Montague (19:39):
the story? While I bring the blue sky story up,
it's
John Weaver (19:43):
just my project of the week. This is downtown in
New Bedford, and I wanted toshow off some little finer
things that we have to deal withthe this is a interconnect. Kind
of story post, but we just gotfinal interconnection approved
(20:04):
on this project. It's 666 kW DC,about 552 kilowatts AC, and one
to talk about some of the just acouple neat little nuances of
it. So it's, it's, 666, KWC.
It's spread across 14 roofs, andthere's five unique
(20:25):
interconnections. Theinteresting like, the
interesting thing about this,and I wanted to show it off, is
Tim Montague (20:32):
that rendering properly. Now, let's see.
John Weaver (20:36):
Yeah, that looks nice. Okay, so this is like a
map from the utility, one oftheir drawings, and you can see,
like, where they have thesedifferent buildings and those
ends, those are differentinterconnection points. So we
have five of them, and there'sfive unique projects behind
this. You know, thisneighborhood of housing. And if
(20:58):
you go one of the images to theleft,
Tim Montague (21:03):
to the left, yes.
John Weaver (21:06):
So this document, you can't fully see it because
it's, you know, it's kind ofsmallish writing. But what this
is, it's a breakdown of the costestimates that we have to pay to
upgrade the power grid, whichincludes two 300 kilovolt
transformers and several andabout about 100,000 bucks of
(21:29):
upgrades to the substation forwhat's called Three vo
protection. Now, if you look atthis document was really
interesting. There's actually$542,000 of upgrades that were
spent on the utility. We got acost share portion of it, plus
some of our own upgrades. And itwas just really interesting to
(21:50):
look at the different labor, howthey break it up, the different
work components, and the costshare even. And cost sharing is
a new thing that I've had now ina couple of projects in the
Northeast, where the state triesto figure out how to pay for
substation upgrades withoutputting all the financial
(22:11):
pressure on one party, and so Idon't know exactly how that like
that. Yeah, so in mass, we justhad a substation upgrade, and
the substation upgrade was fordown on the Cape, the cape off
of Massachusetts. And I don'tknow the exact price of it, but
(22:31):
I do know for every kW that youconnect to that substation, you
now pay an upgrade fee of about$319 so it's not cheap, you
know, point three cents a lot,point 30 cents a lot, something
like that. And that's for thehistorical upgrade that
occurred. And so now we costshare, and that's what's
(22:53):
occurring here. And so for thisdocument, you actually see all
the other projects that are onthe substation, 11.4 megawatts
worth. You can see our newproject at the top of that
image. If you're looking at thison YouTube, you can see the 553,
kW. And you can just kind of geta picture of what's happening
here. And so I just thought itwas a neat little insight into
(23:17):
the development process ofinterpreting grid upgrades and
how they're shared and that typeof stuff.
Tim Montague (23:23):
So what is, how long does it take to get an
interconnection agreement withthis utility?
John Weaver (23:30):
This is Rhode Island energy, and this one we
started submitting and lateOctober, so we're now in April,
and so we're talking six monthsof a lot of back and forth
Tim Montague (23:42):
that's not bad.
No,
John Weaver (23:44):
no, it's not
Tim Montague (23:45):
bad. In Illinois, in Illinois, we have a really
troublesome situation inNorthern Illinois, it's not bad,
okay? In comet territory or PJM,it's not bad. The for DG
interconnection, it might be sixmonths in central and southern
Illinois, in Ameren territory,it's three years. Is what the
(24:07):
utility will tell you, if youneed to go to a level four. So
if you're if you're stressingthis the grid in any way with
your solar project, right, itcould take, they say, 24 to 36
months, and as a result,community solar developers are
avoiding Ameren territoryaltogether. Now they just said,
(24:29):
it's not worth it. It's too longa wait, and I'm just going John.
It's not rocket science like whycan't the utility figure out a
faster way to clear this queue.
And of course, the developersand the installers are up in
arms, and they're and they'regriping as they should, to the
IPA and the the ICC, the intern,the Illinois Commerce
(24:53):
Commission, is the organization.
Ultimately, I. Yeah, that is ourPUC. You maybe you call it a PUC
in Massachusetts, I don't know.
John Weaver (25:06):
Yeah, public utility, yeah, yeah. Three
years, that's very debilitating.
It's
Tim Montague (25:14):
debilitating. And they know this, they know this,
and this is just their way offighting back. I think, right,
they're just going, Hey guys, welove you, but we're gonna screw
you anyway.
John Weaver (25:26):
That's rough.
That's rough. Yeah, it sucks.
Tim Montague (25:29):
Yeah, stressful. I mean, I have, I was, I was, I'm
an owner's rep on a project.
It's a small project, 300 KW,that's at an RV park. It's a
great, lovely project for theowner and but it's a single
phase infrastructure. And so the300 KW is is a stressor, and now
they're gonna have, they'regonna have to scale the project
(25:53):
back to 100 KW, which willoffset maybe 30% of their load
instead of 80% of their load, ifthey want to get a timely
interconnection, meaning a leveltwo instead of a level four. So
it's TBD. What's going to happenwith that project? But it's
really no bueno for anybodyinvolved, including the
installer, who's worked veryhard to, you know, do some
(26:14):
preliminary engineering and filea preliminary interconnection
application sour apples, becauseupgrading they'll serve is to
upgrade the infrastructure tothree phase. But that's also
costly, probably on the order of$100,000 Have you ever had to do
that upgrade from single phaseto three phase? I'm
John Weaver (26:39):
actually doing it on a project right now. The site
visit I did yesterday is we'rebuilding a 200 kilowatt AC, 600
DC, what's in batteries at theend of a long road which is on
private property, and thatprivate property takes a single
phase line off of the mainstreet, and it's about half a
(27:01):
mile down that private road, andwe're in the process of dealing
with that, of upgrading it fromsingle. Do
Tim Montague (27:08):
you have a cost estimate? Not yet, not yet, but
what we're actually
John Weaver (27:12):
going to do is trench for the majority of it,
because it's, uh, we don'texpect there to be rock, because
we prefer to trench than to havethe utility pay for Poles and
their work, and there's also abunch of trees and there's a
road. So there's some dynamicswhere we think trenching will
end up being more costeffective.
Tim Montague (27:32):
Why not boring?
John Weaver (27:36):
I don't know. I'll talk with my guy,
Tim Montague (27:39):
but I love doing that. Comparison. Is it cheaper
to call to trench or bore andinteresting? And it's, I just
like boring because it's, Idon't know, you don't have to
dig a hole in the ground, butyeah, it's always a question.
(28:01):
All right, let's talk aboutMyanmar. Let's be grateful that
we don't live in Myanmar, John,they're in the aftermath of a
major earthquake. It's horrible.
Many people have died. This ison screen now. Myanmar
earthquake disrupts solar waferproduction global supply chain.
So not only is it a catastrophefor Myanmar and the people, it's
(28:25):
also somewhat of a catastrophe,apparently, for the solar
industry. What's the story?
John Weaver (28:33):
Yeah. So the you know that area is nearby China,
Myanmar, China's share of order.
There's also solar manufacturingin country, and it's just and
apparently it's affecting solarfactories, and it could affect
solar wafer factories formonths, is what a large
manufacturer has said. And soit's just just a perspective for
(28:56):
us in the industry, that ourfield can be affected by
earthquakes and and thingsaround the world. Because, you
know, making solar cellsinvolves robots that are very,
very explicit in how they movein the space and how they put
together. And, you know, youstart throwing them around and
(29:18):
bouncing them against eachother, or you mess up a
building, or you mess up theelectricity, and very sensitive
hardware gets limited, and so Ijust, I'm wondering what's kind
of effect is going to occur onthe global market? I have a
feeling it's going to be muted,because we already have a lot of
excess solar wafer capacity. Somaybe it won't have a big
(29:44):
effect, maybe it won't have anyeffect. Maybe it'll have a small
effect, I don't know, but at aminimum, it's just insight that
man earthquake hits and couldaffect us somewhere. So just
thought it was interesting, andI. Yeah, well, not
Tim Montague (30:01):
to mention the tariffs that the tariffs that
Trump announced yesterday onvirtually every country on
earth, he just has it out foreveryone, including,
unfortunately, Thailand, where alot of inverters, for example,
are made, but also solarmodules, it's just going to make
(30:24):
everything expensive. I don't,don't, I don't see how that's
going to help our economy. Thetheory is that it's going to
drive manufacturing back to theUS, but that takes so long. We
do see it happening because ofthe IRA, not because of the
Trump tariffs, but tariffs todaycould mean factory in five
(30:46):
years. But then, of course,Trump won't be in office any
longer, unless he has his wayand gets to run for a third
term. But yeah, it's a globaleconomy. I'm a fan of globalism.
I think it's just a it's anemergent property of us becoming
(31:13):
a massive civilization, right?
We have colonized the entireEarth now and brought
industrialization to the entireglobe, basically, and so we're
interdependent. I want China andAmerica to be friends. I read a
story in The New York Timesabout Huawei is innovation
(31:35):
campus in China. They said itwas like Disneyland for
technology. And the journalistwas frankly blown away at how
advanced the technology is whenit comes to things like humanoid
robots. China is building a lotof humanoid robots. Always been
banned in the United States,right? You can't buy Huawei
(31:59):
equipment. But guess what? Theyare a powerhouse, and they are
innovating their way out of theband. They've launched a cell
phone operating system tocompete with Android and iOS,
which apparently is quite good.
I used to have a Huawei laptop,which was excellent. I now have
(32:21):
a Dell laptop, which is good,but I liked my Huawei better.
Interesting. Shout out to Chrisleppman. He's here. He's he's
one of our faithful listeners.
Thank you, Chris. I will bedropping an interview with Chris
leppman about the solar panelindustry and Imperial Star Solar
(32:41):
who make really good solarpanels right here in Texas, in
Houston, Texas. Imperial Star isnot a household name yet, but I
think they are going to be. Soif you're looking for solar
panels, talk to Chris leppman.
You can find him on LinkedIn.
He's very easy to find. Allright, what's next?
John Weaver (33:08):
Something cool has started to happen, and I'm going
to share my screen. And I thinkthis might be the first time it
started to happen. So can yousee my screen? What's being
shared? There? Tim,
Tim Montague (33:19):
no. All right, let me, oh, I have to do. I have to
click another button here,there,
John Weaver (33:26):
ah, there. Now, sharing. All right, let me mouse
over very specific things. Sofirst off, everybody, I'll say,
I'll describe this. This is theEIA. It's called the hourly
electric grid monitor. So youcan find it at
eia.gov/electricity/grid,monitor. And this roughly shows
(33:48):
roughly for the lower 48 states,all electricity generation from
all the sources and all kinds ofneat little ways. You can look
at batteries, wind, solar. Youcan look at it regionally, lots
of neat things, and it hashistorical data and historical
data for very tiny things. WhatI want to look at right now, and
(34:09):
something has started to happenfor the first time, to the best
of my knowledge, and I'm justgoing to point out one of the
days, but I think for the firsttime in March, Thor generation
is sometimes the second largestelectricity source in the United
States. And that's interestingbecause, at minimum it's really
(34:32):
interesting because if we thinkabout solar, it's still only
678, percent, 678, percent ofall electricity, like for
January, is 5% for May, which isthe peak month, it may cross 10%
but here on March 25 at 2pm withthis particular model, we see
(34:55):
that solar was generating over91 terawatts of. Generation out
of maybe a total of 400 so solarwas peaking over 20, 25% of all
energy at this particularmoment. And it was number two
behind gas, and it passednuclear, which is roughly a
(35:16):
solid 80 terawatts, 24/7 aroundthe US. And this is just cool.
And I have a feeling sometime inApril we're going to see solar
peak on a Sunday or a Saturdayas the number one source in
electricity in the US, if itdoesn't get too hot, too fast. I
(35:37):
also have a feeling that inApril we're going to see 50% of
our energy come from clean, nonemission sources for the whole
month. So that's my hope for themonth
Tim Montague (35:47):
of April. Yeah, yeah. So there's more solar than
almost any other source exceptfor natural gas, right? Yes,
yes, sir, yes, sir. More solarthan nuclear, more solar than
coal, more solar than wind by along shot. Of course, wind
(36:07):
fluctuates a lot, yes,
John Weaver (36:08):
yeah, yeah. And if you like, for instance, if you
scroll to the right, you can seethat green loop right here where
that's wind peaking at 91,000and it's takes over the number
two source. But what's reallycool, you can go somewhere like
here, which is, if you look atthis day, you see this is
(36:31):
alright. So I'm fitting movingaround on this screen here,
trying to get my mouse in theright place. And we're looking
at 318 so March 18. We can seethat the number one source was
natural gas at 106 number twowas nuclear, 85 with wind and
solar right behind it at 80 andessentially 88 so the three
(36:54):
largest clean sources, nuclear,wind and solar, are over 240
terawatts of output, where coaland gas, we're only at 150 so we
add 66% of our energy at thatmoment, something like that is
coming from clean, non emissionsources. Actually, if we add in
hydro at 25 we're now talking262, 70 out of 400 so maybe 70%
(37:22):
of our energy was coming fromemission free sources at that
moment. So it's just kind ofneat to see it pop through in
these charts, like the highlevel of clean stuff. So it's
just not kind of nice. So thereyou go. There's some positive
news.
Tim Montague (37:39):
I do like the EIA Data. I don't like everything
about the EIA, but I like theirdata. So should we talk about
Hyundai? Or probably not goingto get to all these stories. But
what else should we talk abouttoday? Well,
John Weaver (37:54):
we talk about Hyundai real fast, so
officially, as of a couple ofdays ago, you can now charge
officially, your Hyundai andyour Kia at the Tesla
Supercharger network, using yourown adapter prior your Hyundai
or other vehicles could chargewith what's called the Super
(38:15):
dock. No, the magic dock, butthat wasn't at all locations,
and so you had to kind of pokearound. But now all of the Tesla
network is available for Hyundaicars, and I have a Hyundai and I
have an adapter, and I tested itthis weekend, and it worked
great. And I'm very happy. So Ijust it really opens up the
(38:35):
network of where you can chargeyour car and where you can drive
your car, and because the TeslaSupercharger network is the
number one way to charge peoplein the United States, and so I
was just really happy to seethat finally hit and you
Tim Montague (38:51):
are a Hyundai electric vehicle owner, right?
John Weaver (38:55):
Hyundai, Hyundai on ionic files, 2022. Is what I
have. We actually just leased asecond one for my company, a 24
so one of my, one of my coworkers, is driving around in
the newer version of my car, andthey actually had a better trim
too, because they didn't havethe cheap trim when I showed up.
So, so that's kind of cool. Ohyeah, I do like the car. I think
(39:20):
it's a solid, solid vehicle. AndI'm very happy with this
adapter, and that's roughly thesame adapter that I have that I
use to charge the Teslapositions,
Tim Montague (39:30):
yeah, when are we going to unify on a single port
style?
John Weaver (39:39):
Well, I mean, I don't, I don't really like the
concept of everybody only doingone port, because it's, it's we
need to learn. We need to getbetter. I mean, maybe we can
unify. But you know what? TheTesla charger is a better
charger so far. I mean, there'sless gear, less hardware doesn't
fail as often. They're muchcheaper. They click in fast. I
(40:01):
don't know. I like peoplearguing over technology and
competing, but you do have agood point if we, I mean,
imagine if there were differentgas stations. Well, I guess
there are. You got these onlygot gas but,
Tim Montague (40:16):
yeah, I just don't I think we want one kind of
plug. Probably we want it to bemainstream. We want it to be
easy. I'm thrilled that Tesla'sopening up the network. They
definitely have the most robustnetwork. Kudos to Elon Musk for
thinking of that and skating towhere the puck is going to be.
That's probably the last goodthing he did.
John Weaver (40:39):
Well, yeah, I could never, no one go on that topic,
not today, but, but there's sortof, there's sort of a focus now,
though, in the United States, atleast, on the Tesla charger,
which I think is called theNACS, North American charging
standard, is what they call it.
And the 2025, version of my carcomes with an NACS standard plug
(41:05):
with so you don't need anadapter anymore.
Tim Montague (41:10):
Yeah, for that.
Love it. So, so maybe
John Weaver (41:14):
that's it. Maybe it's already happened. So it's
moving moving along. Do you
Tim Montague (41:21):
want to talk about the excavator?
John Weaver (41:23):
Let's do one last thing and then let you get back
to work, because you got that.
Sounds good.
Tim Montague (41:29):
We'll talk about your electric 422 kilowatt hour
battery. Yeah, any electricexcavator,
John Weaver (41:37):
420 something dude, that could power your house for
like, a month and a half withoutsolar. I mean, it's just, you
know, it's just an excavator,but it's for, first off, it's a
giant battery. Its size is whatthey said, specifically so the
unit can work for six to eighthours a day, which is very
(42:00):
logical. Your you're the robot.
People goodness, their luminous,luminous, their their upgrade
for their robot for solar panelstacking, was specifically to
get them to the point where theycould offer their robot for six
to eight hour work day. I'mstarting to like when I hear
(42:22):
manufacturers say that, it makesme feel warm and fuzzy, because
this isn't a cool, neat machineyou're building. This is a work
creature that they're comingtogether with, and that means
it's serious, get on site, dosome work, labor type of
hardware. And I like that, andbecause it's, you know, it's a
real piece of gear now. And it
Tim Montague (42:45):
turns out the drivers, the drivers were
operators, as they would becalled in construction of these
machines, really appreciate theEV models, because there's a lot
less vibration and there's a lotless fumes. They're sitting in
that cabin. Yeah, it's sealed,but they're breathing fumes, and
they don't like that. It's notgood for their health. So this
(43:07):
is a win, win, right? You canmake clean electricity with
solar or wind, and now juiceyour construction site. It's
clean. It's good for everybody.
I love it, yeah. They say howmuch it cost, you
John Weaver (43:25):
know, I don't think I noticed that in the article.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, the onlything I noticed in cost was that
they, they did estimate that theD annual diesel cost for the
unit would be about $76,000 ayear, whereas the annual
electricity cost looks like it'sgoing to be about $45,000 a
(43:49):
year. So in terms of pure energysavings, that's it, 30, geez,
which is, that's cool. That'spretty nice. Yeah,
Tim Montague (43:58):
that'll help pay for the vehicle, which is
probably not cheap. I
John Weaver (44:05):
mean, it does these things,
Tim Montague (44:06):
probably cost, like, half a million dollars.
It's a big machine,
John Weaver (44:12):
real fast. So what's the model number here?
Well, you got to get running, soshortly, it's a 25 ton
excavator. About that cost,
Tim Montague (44:23):
25 Imperial times,
John Weaver (44:26):
25 times. Pretty neat.
Tim Montague (44:30):
Well, I can see that's how you measure that's
how you measure excavators intons.
John Weaver (44:36):
Maybe that's what they can lift and move, but, but
I don't truly know. So I'mseeing here that the unit, a
comparable unit that's not theelectric version, costs about
160 grand, 100 between 155 grandfor a used one up to 220 but
(44:56):
that's a half a million dollarmachine brand new. You.
Somewhere around there, maybemore. Yeah, pretty neat piece of
gear.
Tim Montague (45:05):
Cool. Well, thanks for all the news, John, yeah,
you should probably check outour website. Clean Power
hour.com, go to the events tab.
If you haven't looked at ourevents tab, we try to track many
of the conferences happeningacross the US, all the RE
plusses. Just in Chicago, wehave three great events, Midwest
(45:25):
Expo happening in June, check itout, I'll be there. Then the
solar farm summit in August.
Check it out, I'll be there.
That's a agrivoltaicsconference. And then October, we
have Ari plus Midwest, so checkout the Events tab. How can our
listeners find you? John?
John Weaver (45:48):
Easiest, best way is commercial. Solar guy.com,
that's my website. We stick toit. Also on blue sky and
LinkedIn as well if you want toget good information. So that's
where I try to share blue skies,number one, for sharing for now
LinkedIn number two, and ourwebsite number three. So
(46:10):
commercial, solar guy.com that'sus all right.
Tim Montague (46:14):
Well, we'll see you again in two weeks, on a
Friday. Next time, probably nota Thursday. We had to do
Thursday today because I'mflying tomorrow back home to
Illinois, hopefully, if there'snot tornadoes, and with that,
we'll say, let's grow silver andstorage. Take care John. See ya.
Welcome to the Clean Power Hour live. I'm Tim
Montague, your co host. We aredoing our bi weekly solar and
storage news with none otherthan the commercial solar guy.
John Weaver, welcome to theshow, John.
John Weaver (00:14):
Hey Tim. It is very nice. It's overcast and cloudy
here. I was gonna say, how anice, wonderful, sunny day, but
we had that yesterday, and I hadwonderful site visits at solar
projects that make me happy. SoI hope you're doing okay,
Timothy, I'm
Tim Montague (00:29):
in Dallas, Texas, actually in Richardson, which is
a suburb of Texas, at InnovationDay, with the team at Chin power
systems and several 100 cleanenergy professionals. It's such
an awesome thing. This is daytwo, and there's training
sessions going on. Sorry,
John Weaver (00:50):
what kind of show?
What's it about? Oh, this is,this is
Tim Montague (00:53):
their annual conference that chin power
systems, the three phase stringinverter and battery storage
company, makes or puts on fortheir customers and their
partners. I am a partner. I'm amedia partner. They're a major
sponsor of my show, of course,and I do a lot of content
creation with their staff andtheir customers. If you're a
(01:14):
Chint customer, reach out to me,because I want to tell your
story, whether we talk aboutChint or not. But yeah, it's a
wonderful event. I'm this. I'vebeen here. This is my third
year, and it keeps growing.
There's about probably all said300 people here this year, and
next year, they want to get 1000people, so we'll see. But yeah,
it's a very niche, very denseconference, a lot of
(01:42):
electricians, engineers andsolar geeks like me and you. So
yeah, you should check it outsometime. But it only happens
once a year in April. It will bein April next year. They don't
know the date. It'll either bethe first, first or last week in
April, has a big facility here.
(02:05):
Sounds like
John Weaver (02:05):
a good conference.
Technical focused on inverterlayout. You can ask questions.
You can exchange ideas withother designers. I listen to our
electrical engineer talking withpeople, and every conversation,
I always hear something andlike, Oh, that's interesting.
Most of it floats away because Idon't get to use it on a day to
(02:25):
day basis. But design, you know,doing getting better at design
is something I'd love for us tobe, you know, just be more
experienced, learn our invertersbetter. What the strings can do.
You know, being in thenortheast, we have at low angles
on our roofs. We can push ourstreams a little more, but it'd
(02:46):
be great to know how, so that wecan size things well, not waste
and not risk our inverters.
Tim Montague (02:53):
So here's a geeky topic that came up last night. I
was talking with Dr Z, who's thehead of their storage division,
but, but he's also a powerelectronics geek, and we were
talking about what I call noninjection, or what others might
call Zero. What's the expressionzero where you're not feeding
(03:21):
solar onto the grid, right,right? I call it non injection.
What
John Weaver (03:28):
do you call it non export?
Tim Montague (03:30):
Non export, or zero export? Yeah. So
apparently, you know, if you'rein California or Hawaii or
Arizona, you know, well aboutthis, because this is an
important thing in thosemarkets.
John Weaver (03:45):
In Massachusetts, occasionally, yes,
Tim Montague (03:48):
and in Illinois, occasionally, the circumstances
in Illinois that it becomesimportant is if you have an
interconnection problem wherethe utility says, well, we'd
love to interconnect your solarproject, but we're going to
charge you $3 million for aninfrastructure upgrade, and a
certain installer I work withhas a situation like this on
their hands. And of course, thatis for for a scene I project.
(04:11):
That's a deal killer, right? Butthe way around that is to say,
Well, Mr. Utility, we would loveto do this magic called non
injection, where the inverterwill just automatically see that
it is about to feed onto thegrid, and it'll turn itself off
(04:34):
or reduce. It
John Weaver (04:35):
will it will adjust the nppt arrangement on the
modules. I believe, I believeit'll actually throw the modules
out of efficiency so that they,instead of producing
electricity, will won't produceit. I think technically, might
be how it happens differentplaces. Do it different ways.
Tim Montague (04:54):
Yeah. But so my question for you is, have you
been involved directly in aproject? Where you had to
engineer non injection,
John Weaver (05:03):
yeah, yeah. We've had a couple non export
projects. I'm thinking of oneright now at the IMCA in
Wareham. And the way we did itthere, though, was that we had a
battery, and it was all behindthe meter, and it's all getting
used on site. I've also hadlarger projects where
technically it was a noninjection, and so we are non
(05:26):
export and in that case, but thereality was that the demand on
site was just massively largerthan the solar projects the roof
that they had space. But whileit was a non non Export System,
and that help forinterconnection just got through
a little faster. The reality wasthat it was always going to be a
(05:46):
non Export System, because thebuilding was always going to
absorb all the juice. But whenit comes to interconnection and
impact stays, it's great,because now we no longer there's
a lot of risks that the utilityhas to calculate when you do an
export system, and in placeswhere the substations are full
and power lines overlookedalready, this is great. So, so
(06:08):
yeah, not injection security. Sohow does chin How does CPS work
with it differently? Or what dothey do? Well, they just talking
Tim Montague (06:15):
about it, what it turns out. So historically, when
I was at continental in Chicago,we solved this problem using a
device called a Switzer relay,which I don't know very much
about, but it turns out thatmany inverters have native
capabilities now to do this noninjection. Chint, it turns out,
(06:39):
has had that technology builtinto their inverters, but they
haven't turned it on yet, butit's coming now in the United
States, and so they're going tostart doing some pilot projects
with their installers, on a on acase by case, in different parts
of the country, but some oftheir some of their competitors,
(07:00):
you know, SMA, I think, andsolar etch have had this rolled
out already. So anyway, sochange is playing a little bit
of catch up, but they actuallyhave the secret sauce already
built in. It's, it's mostly asoftware thing, but it's a
combination of software andhardware. And then you also have
to have a smart meter, an extraSmart Meter. I didn't quite
(07:23):
understand where on the grid.
But anyway, good thing for ussolar professionals to know
about right, as the as theindustry matures and attachment
rates, sorry, not attachmentrates, but penetration rates go
up. Yeah. So we better get intothe news, though, John, this is
a good topic, but we couldprobably talk all day about non
(07:44):
injection.
John Weaver (07:46):
Yeah, inverter.
Conversations are borderline anddefinite. They are the they are
the fun of our industry.
Tim Montague (07:54):
Did you really not know about Innovation Day?
John Weaver (07:58):
No, there's so many conferences out there that I
don't know anything about. Ionly go to one or two per year.
I'm so busy
Tim Montague (08:03):
and well, a lot of them are very expensive, but
this is an virtually an allexpenses paid thing, like all
you have to do is get yourselfhere, and then they pay for your
hotel and all your meals, whichis amazing. And you get to
network with a group of supercool solar professionals, and
you get to geek out with realtechnical geeks at CPS to boot.
(08:28):
So it's like a super win, win.
It's my, it's my, it's myfavorite Energy Conference now,
so put it on your calendar. Allright. Is this the first
commercial sized perovskitesolar panel for a large
manufacturer. It also happens tobe greater than 800 watts with
an efficiency of just over 26%yes, I want to know is Calex
(08:51):
involved in some way? No, well,I don't know who
John Weaver (08:58):
that is. This is Trina. I mean, I know that name,
but I don't know who they arerelative to this. You know,
there's lots of names out there.
Well,
Tim Montague (09:05):
they make perovskite coatings for solar
panel makers to add to theirsolar solar panels. So maybe it
does, I don't know. Well,
John Weaver (09:14):
I doubt it's here, but we don't know, because this
is a Trina module that theyintroduced, and it's a tandem
cell versus a coated glassproduct, it seems, however,
there's limited data on it. I'veonly seen this one press release
and nothing else, and this pressrelease has been shared around
(09:35):
the world and that, but it'sthe, to my best knowledge, from
a large manufacturer, maybe thefirst certified large scale
product that's been out there,and it's a 3.1 meter utility
scale module. So it's like oneof the biggest modules you can
buy, but it's also the highestwattage module I've seen. Yeah.
(10:00):
Within that form factor, and Idid my rough math. And if so, if
you design divide 800 by 3.1 itcomes out to be about 26%
efficient solar panel, whichwould be amongst the highest
efficiency solar panels you canfind.
Tim Montague (10:20):
Yeah, and that's the whole point, right? With the
tandem is you're taking the PVand then you're sandwiching on
top some perovskite, which givesyou extra juice, yes, right?
You're catching more photons,basically, right?
John Weaver (10:35):
Catching more?
Yeah, I guess you're catchingmore, yeah, because you have two
layers that are you're actuallycatching different
Tim Montague (10:41):
photons. Yeah, I think you're catching the
process.
John Weaver (10:46):
Yeah, they have these cool curves that show the
wavelength of light, of light,wavelengths of lies, Tim, all
lies coming from the sun, butthey show these curves of of
light. And so, like, you haveone chunk that gets one type of
silicon and then another chunkof light that gets the
perovskites. And these arecalled the band gaps, right and
(11:10):
so. So the perovskite, though,from what I've been reading, is
actually being used as the mainsolar panel because it's harder
to use, whereas the silicon isbeing used as the secondary
panel because we're really goodat working with it and managing
it. So for instance, GCL, theyhave a perovskite module, and
(11:32):
their perovskite module is about19 to 20% efficient. Their
silicon module is only eight 9%efficient. We think, Oh, we can
do a 20, 25% silicon module.
Yeah, you can. We can't combineit with perovskite in that
setting, at least not yet. Soit's interesting to watch, and I
was just excited to see thisheadline. The model doesn't
(11:55):
exist yet. There's no nobody cantouch it. There's probably 10 of
them in the world, maybe 100 Idon't know, but we're now seeing
a full sized perovskite moduleat 26% and it's not from Oxford
PV, who I'm not emotionally 100%on. Yet, I think they might try
to play the patent game andlimit the rest of the world.
(12:18):
They've been saying they'regoing to launch a module for
years, and there's, I've onlyheard of a module once coming
out of them, so it's just coolto see someone else. Now, I will
say I also worry that it won'tcome to the United States for a
while, because, well, tariffstuff is another conversation,
but more importantly, it has todo with these patents. For
(12:39):
instance, I'm hearing that topcon modules aren't coming to the
United States as much. Perk isgoing to hold longer here
because of patent arguments.
Whereas I just read an articlein Europe, they're like, perk is
gone Topcon. Is it because ofthe higher efficiency, the cost
(13:00):
structures that come frompowerful modules, you know, with
a balance of system. And, youknow, that's is a little dance.
It's a little change. So, sowe'll see. But it's cool seeing
it hit the world. And if wereally do get modules up to 34%
for it's just going to be great.
I mean, I've done some mathbefore, roughly every 1% drop or
1% increase in efficiency isabout 5% drop in levelized cost
(13:26):
of electricity. As you movefrom, say, 20% 22% to 34% so
really drop roughly. It's acurve, though, like at 20%
moving up 1% is 5% up, 1% is 5%at 25 moving up, 1% is 4% curve,
and it drops a tiny bit all theway up, but by the time you get
(13:49):
to like a 34% module, I thinkyour effective levelized cost of
Electricity will drop like 40%30% 50% some really nice, big,
chunky number. And so justlooking forward to, looking
forward to new tech. I was like,new tech, yeah,
Tim Montague (14:11):
yeah. I had Scott Graybill on the show, I think
last year or year before last,company called klux, C, A, E, l,
u, x, they're making aperovskite coating in LA they're
in Pasadena, California. Theyhave a 50 megawatt plant, so
it's, you know, small potatoes.
It's basically pilot scale. Andthey're not announcing publicly
(14:31):
any partnerships, but they'reworking with a variety of panel
makers to do what Trina hasalready done. Yeah, so it's good
stuff. We should probably moveon. You found a story about
batteries in China.
John Weaver (14:51):
Yeah, I wanted to start high level the battery
article that we're sharing here.
It's simply the next large wave.
Air in a massive capacity bid,six gigawatt hours, and the
price of it is 65 bucks perkilowatt hour fully deployed.
Tim Montague (15:12):
And so that's very low,
John Weaver (15:15):
yes, sir. Like right now, if you're buying
batteries in the US at the best,you're getting 150 bucks per
kilowatt hour installed, butyou're probably spending 250 to
300 still. It's just the realityof pricing as of now. But I hear
some people. I've heard a guysay 175 is what he's pricing his
batteries at, fully installed.
So that's pretty cool number,but this is 65 and I just wanted
(15:36):
to chat a little bit about why,one of the reasons why this is
happening, just to bring it toour reader's attention and
yours, and you probably alreadyknow, but battery cell sizes are
massively expanding. And batterycells used to be 123, 100 amps,
now they're getting up to 500700 even somewhere. I don't know
(16:03):
if I've seen 1000 amp I mighthave, but they're getting really
big. And these large batterycells, they like physically,
like, you know, this big size ofa Coke can, or bigger,
Tim Montague (16:17):
yeah, because
John Weaver (16:19):
of that larger size, I guess they're able to
pack more density into thebattery packs, and then more
battery packs into thecontainers. You know now we have
shipping containers that are upover eight megawatt hours. And
so when you have bigger cells,they have fewer connections,
they have simpler machines. Whenyou have more density within the
(16:42):
same supporting package, it'slike putting more Watts within
the same aluminum frame. Thealuminum frame still costs a
buck, so to say, but the priceper watt keeps falling because
you get more Watts within it.
That's what's happening withbattery cells and battery packs
and battery kits, and it's beenhappening for about a year or
two at least, and last re plus,I got to talk to a few folks who
(17:07):
said the next revolution inbatteries is ongoing, and it's
just us scaling these cellsizes. I saw a headline, or I
was reading something BYD saysthat last year, their batteries
dropped 20 25% this year theyexpect another 15 to 20% so Wow,
batteries are gonna keep goingdown. And I've just, I've been
(17:32):
wanting to bring this up on theshow for the last few weeks,
last few shows. And then thissecond bid came out, the first
bid from this group, becausethis is the second one in this
size. The first bid had BYDwinning it at $60 per kilowatt
hour. And that was the firsttime, this is back in October,
November, December. That was thefirst time that these crazy,
(17:55):
cheap numbers came out to theworld. We were already seeing
systems at 100 bucks in theheadlines, sneaking around, but
then 65 just kind of took asledgehammer to it all and said,
All right, next generation,we're here. Let's do it. So for
Tim Montague (18:13):
our listeners, not on YouTube, this is a story
called China's Hua Deonannounces winners in six
gigawatt hour best tender withaverage bid at $65 per kWh. The
story is in PV magazine energystorage, which is a separate
website now, ESS hyphen news.comso kudos to PV magazine for
(18:38):
branching out and creating astorage website. I think that's
a good thing and interestingstory. So thank you, John for
bringing us that story aboutcheap batteries, which we're
going to see a lot of if we ifwe get to see the future at all,
we're going to see really cheapstorage.
John Weaver (19:00):
Tim, what are you talking about?
Tim Montague (19:04):
Yeah, I know, bro, it's tough. It's tough that we
have to ask that question. Butit is question.
John Weaver (19:12):
This is where we are.
Tim Montague (19:15):
So are we going to stick to a 30 minute program
today? We
John Weaver (19:19):
never stick to 30 minute programs, but we'll find
out. Let's, let's hit it hard.
So let's see if we can do it.
Okay,
Tim Montague (19:26):
so you brought the butterfly back, bro, you're on
blue sky again. Man, absolutely.
I don't know if I can handlethis
John Weaver (19:36):
guy every day that's getting shared. What's
Tim Montague (19:39):
the story? While I bring the blue sky story up,
it's
John Weaver (19:43):
just my project of the week. This is downtown in
New Bedford, and I wanted toshow off some little finer
things that we have to deal withthe this is a interconnect. Kind
of story post, but we just gotfinal interconnection approved
(20:04):
on this project. It's 666 kW DC,about 552 kilowatts AC, and one
to talk about some of the just acouple neat little nuances of
it. So it's, it's, 666, KWC.
It's spread across 14 roofs, andthere's five unique
(20:25):
interconnections. Theinteresting like, the
interesting thing about this,and I wanted to show it off, is
Tim Montague (20:32):
that rendering properly. Now, let's see.
John Weaver (20:36):
Yeah, that looks nice. Okay, so this is like a
map from the utility, one oftheir drawings, and you can see,
like, where they have thesedifferent buildings and those
ends, those are differentinterconnection points. So we
have five of them, and there'sfive unique projects behind
this. You know, thisneighborhood of housing. And if
(20:58):
you go one of the images to theleft,
Tim Montague (21:03):
to the left, yes.
John Weaver (21:06):
So this document, you can't fully see it because
it's, you know, it's kind ofsmallish writing. But what this
is, it's a breakdown of the costestimates that we have to pay to
upgrade the power grid, whichincludes two 300 kilovolt
transformers and several andabout about 100,000 bucks of
(21:29):
upgrades to the substation forwhat's called Three vo
protection. Now, if you look atthis document was really
interesting. There's actually$542,000 of upgrades that were
spent on the utility. We got acost share portion of it, plus
some of our own upgrades. And itwas just really interesting to
(21:50):
look at the different labor, howthey break it up, the different
work components, and the costshare even. And cost sharing is
a new thing that I've had now ina couple of projects in the
Northeast, where the state triesto figure out how to pay for
substation upgrades withoutputting all the financial
(22:11):
pressure on one party, and so Idon't know exactly how that like
that. Yeah, so in mass, we justhad a substation upgrade, and
the substation upgrade was fordown on the Cape, the cape off
of Massachusetts. And I don'tknow the exact price of it, but
(22:31):
I do know for every kW that youconnect to that substation, you
now pay an upgrade fee of about$319 so it's not cheap, you
know, point three cents a lot,point 30 cents a lot, something
like that. And that's for thehistorical upgrade that
occurred. And so now we costshare, and that's what's
(22:53):
occurring here. And so for thisdocument, you actually see all
the other projects that are onthe substation, 11.4 megawatts
worth. You can see our newproject at the top of that
image. If you're looking at thison YouTube, you can see the 553,
kW. And you can just kind of geta picture of what's happening
here. And so I just thought itwas a neat little insight into
(23:17):
the development process ofinterpreting grid upgrades and
how they're shared and that typeof stuff.
Tim Montague (23:23):
So what is, how long does it take to get an
interconnection agreement withthis utility?
John Weaver (23:30):
This is Rhode Island energy, and this one we
started submitting and lateOctober, so we're now in April,
and so we're talking six monthsof a lot of back and forth
Tim Montague (23:42):
that's not bad.
No,
John Weaver (23:44):
no, it's not
Tim Montague (23:45):
bad. In Illinois, in Illinois, we have a really
troublesome situation inNorthern Illinois, it's not bad,
okay? In comet territory or PJM,it's not bad. The for DG
interconnection, it might be sixmonths in central and southern
Illinois, in Ameren territory,it's three years. Is what the
(24:07):
utility will tell you, if youneed to go to a level four. So
if you're if you're stressingthis the grid in any way with
your solar project, right, itcould take, they say, 24 to 36
months, and as a result,community solar developers are
avoiding Ameren territoryaltogether. Now they just said,
(24:29):
it's not worth it. It's too longa wait, and I'm just going John.
It's not rocket science like whycan't the utility figure out a
faster way to clear this queue.
And of course, the developersand the installers are up in
arms, and they're and they'regriping as they should, to the
IPA and the the ICC, the intern,the Illinois Commerce
(24:53):
Commission, is the organization.
Ultimately, I. Yeah, that is ourPUC. You maybe you call it a PUC
in Massachusetts, I don't know.
John Weaver (25:06):
Yeah, public utility, yeah, yeah. Three
years, that's very debilitating.
It's
Tim Montague (25:14):
debilitating. And they know this, they know this,
and this is just their way offighting back. I think, right,
they're just going, Hey guys, welove you, but we're gonna screw
you anyway.
John Weaver (25:26):
That's rough.
That's rough. Yeah, it sucks.
Tim Montague (25:29):
Yeah, stressful. I mean, I have, I was, I was, I'm
an owner's rep on a project.
It's a small project, 300 KW,that's at an RV park. It's a
great, lovely project for theowner and but it's a single
phase infrastructure. And so the300 KW is is a stressor, and now
they're gonna have, they'regonna have to scale the project
(25:53):
back to 100 KW, which willoffset maybe 30% of their load
instead of 80% of their load, ifthey want to get a timely
interconnection, meaning a leveltwo instead of a level four. So
it's TBD. What's going to happenwith that project? But it's
really no bueno for anybodyinvolved, including the
installer, who's worked veryhard to, you know, do some
(26:14):
preliminary engineering and filea preliminary interconnection
application sour apples, becauseupgrading they'll serve is to
upgrade the infrastructure tothree phase. But that's also
costly, probably on the order of$100,000 Have you ever had to do
that upgrade from single phaseto three phase? I'm
John Weaver (26:39):
actually doing it on a project right now. The site
visit I did yesterday is we'rebuilding a 200 kilowatt AC, 600
DC, what's in batteries at theend of a long road which is on
private property, and thatprivate property takes a single
phase line off of the mainstreet, and it's about half a
(27:01):
mile down that private road, andwe're in the process of dealing
with that, of upgrading it fromsingle. Do
Tim Montague (27:08):
you have a cost estimate? Not yet, not yet, but
what we're actually
John Weaver (27:12):
going to do is trench for the majority of it,
because it's, uh, we don'texpect there to be rock, because
we prefer to trench than to havethe utility pay for Poles and
their work, and there's also abunch of trees and there's a
road. So there's some dynamicswhere we think trenching will
end up being more costeffective.
Tim Montague (27:32):
Why not boring?
John Weaver (27:36):
I don't know. I'll talk with my guy,
Tim Montague (27:39):
but I love doing that. Comparison. Is it cheaper
to call to trench or bore andinteresting? And it's, I just
like boring because it's, Idon't know, you don't have to
dig a hole in the ground, butyeah, it's always a question.
(28:01):
All right, let's talk aboutMyanmar. Let's be grateful that
we don't live in Myanmar, John,they're in the aftermath of a
major earthquake. It's horrible.
Many people have died. This ison screen now. Myanmar
earthquake disrupts solar waferproduction global supply chain.
So not only is it a catastrophefor Myanmar and the people, it's
(28:25):
also somewhat of a catastrophe,apparently, for the solar
industry. What's the story?
John Weaver (28:33):
Yeah. So the you know that area is nearby China,
Myanmar, China's share of order.
There's also solar manufacturingin country, and it's just and
apparently it's affecting solarfactories, and it could affect
solar wafer factories formonths, is what a large
manufacturer has said. And soit's just just a perspective for
(28:56):
us in the industry, that ourfield can be affected by
earthquakes and and thingsaround the world. Because, you
know, making solar cellsinvolves robots that are very,
very explicit in how they movein the space and how they put
together. And, you know, youstart throwing them around and
(29:18):
bouncing them against eachother, or you mess up a
building, or you mess up theelectricity, and very sensitive
hardware gets limited, and so Ijust, I'm wondering what's kind
of effect is going to occur onthe global market? I have a
feeling it's going to be muted,because we already have a lot of
excess solar wafer capacity. Somaybe it won't have a big
(29:44):
effect, maybe it won't have anyeffect. Maybe it'll have a small
effect, I don't know, but at aminimum, it's just insight that
man earthquake hits and couldaffect us somewhere. So just
thought it was interesting, andI. Yeah, well, not
Tim Montague (30:01):
to mention the tariffs that the tariffs that
Trump announced yesterday onvirtually every country on
earth, he just has it out foreveryone, including,
unfortunately, Thailand, where alot of inverters, for example,
are made, but also solarmodules, it's just going to make
(30:24):
everything expensive. I don't,don't, I don't see how that's
going to help our economy. Thetheory is that it's going to
drive manufacturing back to theUS, but that takes so long. We
do see it happening because ofthe IRA, not because of the
Trump tariffs, but tariffs todaycould mean factory in five
(30:46):
years. But then, of course,Trump won't be in office any
longer, unless he has his wayand gets to run for a third
term. But yeah, it's a globaleconomy. I'm a fan of globalism.
I think it's just a it's anemergent property of us becoming
(31:13):
a massive civilization, right?
We have colonized the entireEarth now and brought
industrialization to the entireglobe, basically, and so we're
interdependent. I want China andAmerica to be friends. I read a
story in The New York Timesabout Huawei is innovation
(31:35):
campus in China. They said itwas like Disneyland for
technology. And the journalistwas frankly blown away at how
advanced the technology is whenit comes to things like humanoid
robots. China is building a lotof humanoid robots. Always been
banned in the United States,right? You can't buy Huawei
(31:59):
equipment. But guess what? Theyare a powerhouse, and they are
innovating their way out of theband. They've launched a cell
phone operating system tocompete with Android and iOS,
which apparently is quite good.
I used to have a Huawei laptop,which was excellent. I now have
(32:21):
a Dell laptop, which is good,but I liked my Huawei better.
Interesting. Shout out to Chrisleppman. He's here. He's he's
one of our faithful listeners.
Thank you, Chris. I will bedropping an interview with Chris
leppman about the solar panelindustry and Imperial Star Solar
(32:41):
who make really good solarpanels right here in Texas, in
Houston, Texas. Imperial Star isnot a household name yet, but I
think they are going to be. Soif you're looking for solar
panels, talk to Chris leppman.
You can find him on LinkedIn.
He's very easy to find. Allright, what's next?
John Weaver (33:08):
Something cool has started to happen, and I'm going
to share my screen. And I thinkthis might be the first time it
started to happen. So can yousee my screen? What's being
shared? There? Tim,
Tim Montague (33:19):
no. All right, let me, oh, I have to do. I have to
click another button here,there,
John Weaver (33:26):
ah, there. Now, sharing. All right, let me mouse
over very specific things. Sofirst off, everybody, I'll say,
I'll describe this. This is theEIA. It's called the hourly
electric grid monitor. So youcan find it at
eia.gov/electricity/grid,monitor. And this roughly shows
(33:48):
roughly for the lower 48 states,all electricity generation from
all the sources and all kinds ofneat little ways. You can look
at batteries, wind, solar. Youcan look at it regionally, lots
of neat things, and it hashistorical data and historical
data for very tiny things. WhatI want to look at right now, and
(34:09):
something has started to happenfor the first time, to the best
of my knowledge, and I'm justgoing to point out one of the
days, but I think for the firsttime in March, Thor generation
is sometimes the second largestelectricity source in the United
States. And that's interestingbecause, at minimum it's really
(34:32):
interesting because if we thinkabout solar, it's still only
678, percent, 678, percent ofall electricity, like for
January, is 5% for May, which isthe peak month, it may cross 10%
but here on March 25 at 2pm withthis particular model, we see
(34:55):
that solar was generating over91 terawatts of. Generation out
of maybe a total of 400 so solarwas peaking over 20, 25% of all
energy at this particularmoment. And it was number two
behind gas, and it passednuclear, which is roughly a
(35:16):
solid 80 terawatts, 24/7 aroundthe US. And this is just cool.
And I have a feeling sometime inApril we're going to see solar
peak on a Sunday or a Saturdayas the number one source in
electricity in the US, if itdoesn't get too hot, too fast. I
(35:37):
also have a feeling that inApril we're going to see 50% of
our energy come from clean, nonemission sources for the whole
month. So that's my hope for themonth
Tim Montague (35:47):
of April. Yeah, yeah. So there's more solar than
almost any other source exceptfor natural gas, right? Yes,
yes, sir, yes, sir. More solarthan nuclear, more solar than
coal, more solar than wind by along shot. Of course, wind
(36:07):
fluctuates a lot, yes,
John Weaver (36:08):
yeah, yeah. And if you like, for instance, if you
scroll to the right, you can seethat green loop right here where
that's wind peaking at 91,000and it's takes over the number
two source. But what's reallycool, you can go somewhere like
here, which is, if you look atthis day, you see this is
(36:31):
alright. So I'm fitting movingaround on this screen here,
trying to get my mouse in theright place. And we're looking
at 318 so March 18. We can seethat the number one source was
natural gas at 106 number twowas nuclear, 85 with wind and
solar right behind it at 80 andessentially 88 so the three
(36:54):
largest clean sources, nuclear,wind and solar, are over 240
terawatts of output, where coaland gas, we're only at 150 so we
add 66% of our energy at thatmoment, something like that is
coming from clean, non emissionsources. Actually, if we add in
hydro at 25 we're now talking262, 70 out of 400 so maybe 70%
(37:22):
of our energy was coming fromemission free sources at that
moment. So it's just kind ofneat to see it pop through in
these charts, like the highlevel of clean stuff. So it's
just not kind of nice. So thereyou go. There's some positive
news.
Tim Montague (37:39):
I do like the EIA Data. I don't like everything
about the EIA, but I like theirdata. So should we talk about
Hyundai? Or probably not goingto get to all these stories. But
what else should we talk abouttoday? Well,
John Weaver (37:54):
we talk about Hyundai real fast, so
officially, as of a couple ofdays ago, you can now charge
officially, your Hyundai andyour Kia at the Tesla
Supercharger network, using yourown adapter prior your Hyundai
or other vehicles could chargewith what's called the Super
(38:15):
dock. No, the magic dock, butthat wasn't at all locations,
and so you had to kind of pokearound. But now all of the Tesla
network is available for Hyundaicars, and I have a Hyundai and I
have an adapter, and I tested itthis weekend, and it worked
great. And I'm very happy. So Ijust it really opens up the
(38:35):
network of where you can chargeyour car and where you can drive
your car, and because the TeslaSupercharger network is the
number one way to charge peoplein the United States, and so I
was just really happy to seethat finally hit and you
Tim Montague (38:51):
are a Hyundai electric vehicle owner, right?
John Weaver (38:55):
Hyundai, Hyundai on ionic files, 2022. Is what I
have. We actually just leased asecond one for my company, a 24
so one of my, one of my coworkers, is driving around in
the newer version of my car, andthey actually had a better trim
too, because they didn't havethe cheap trim when I showed up.
So, so that's kind of cool. Ohyeah, I do like the car. I think
(39:20):
it's a solid, solid vehicle. AndI'm very happy with this
adapter, and that's roughly thesame adapter that I have that I
use to charge the Teslapositions,
Tim Montague (39:30):
yeah, when are we going to unify on a single port
style?
John Weaver (39:39):
Well, I mean, I don't, I don't really like the
concept of everybody only doingone port, because it's, it's we
need to learn. We need to getbetter. I mean, maybe we can
unify. But you know what? TheTesla charger is a better
charger so far. I mean, there'sless gear, less hardware doesn't
fail as often. They're muchcheaper. They click in fast. I
(40:01):
don't know. I like peoplearguing over technology and
competing, but you do have agood point if we, I mean,
imagine if there were differentgas stations. Well, I guess
there are. You got these onlygot gas but,
Tim Montague (40:16):
yeah, I just don't I think we want one kind of
plug. Probably we want it to bemainstream. We want it to be
easy. I'm thrilled that Tesla'sopening up the network. They
definitely have the most robustnetwork. Kudos to Elon Musk for
thinking of that and skating towhere the puck is going to be.
That's probably the last goodthing he did.
John Weaver (40:39):
Well, yeah, I could never, no one go on that topic,
not today, but, but there's sortof, there's sort of a focus now,
though, in the United States, atleast, on the Tesla charger,
which I think is called theNACS, North American charging
standard, is what they call it.
And the 2025, version of my carcomes with an NACS standard plug
(41:05):
with so you don't need anadapter anymore.
Tim Montague (41:10):
Yeah, for that.
Love it. So, so maybe
John Weaver (41:14):
that's it. Maybe it's already happened. So it's
moving moving along. Do you
Tim Montague (41:21):
want to talk about the excavator?
John Weaver (41:23):
Let's do one last thing and then let you get back
to work, because you got that.
Sounds good.
Tim Montague (41:29):
We'll talk about your electric 422 kilowatt hour
battery. Yeah, any electricexcavator,
John Weaver (41:37):
420 something dude, that could power your house for
like, a month and a half withoutsolar. I mean, it's just, you
know, it's just an excavator,but it's for, first off, it's a
giant battery. Its size is whatthey said, specifically so the
unit can work for six to eighthours a day, which is very
(42:00):
logical. Your you're the robot.
People goodness, their luminous,luminous, their their upgrade
for their robot for solar panelstacking, was specifically to
get them to the point where theycould offer their robot for six
to eight hour work day. I'mstarting to like when I hear
(42:22):
manufacturers say that, it makesme feel warm and fuzzy, because
this isn't a cool, neat machineyou're building. This is a work
creature that they're comingtogether with, and that means
it's serious, get on site, dosome work, labor type of
hardware. And I like that, andbecause it's, you know, it's a
real piece of gear now. And it
Tim Montague (42:45):
turns out the drivers, the drivers were
operators, as they would becalled in construction of these
machines, really appreciate theEV models, because there's a lot
less vibration and there's a lotless fumes. They're sitting in
that cabin. Yeah, it's sealed,but they're breathing fumes, and
they don't like that. It's notgood for their health. So this
(43:07):
is a win, win, right? You canmake clean electricity with
solar or wind, and now juiceyour construction site. It's
clean. It's good for everybody.
I love it, yeah. They say howmuch it cost, you
John Weaver (43:25):
know, I don't think I noticed that in the article.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, the onlything I noticed in cost was that
they, they did estimate that theD annual diesel cost for the
unit would be about $76,000 ayear, whereas the annual
electricity cost looks like it'sgoing to be about $45,000 a
(43:49):
year. So in terms of pure energysavings, that's it, 30, geez,
which is, that's cool. That'spretty nice. Yeah,
Tim Montague (43:58):
that'll help pay for the vehicle, which is
probably not cheap. I
John Weaver (44:05):
mean, it does these things,
Tim Montague (44:06):
probably cost, like, half a million dollars.
It's a big machine,
John Weaver (44:12):
real fast. So what's the model number here?
Well, you got to get running, soshortly, it's a 25 ton
excavator. About that cost,
Tim Montague (44:23):
25 Imperial times,
John Weaver (44:26):
25 times. Pretty neat.
Tim Montague (44:30):
Well, I can see that's how you measure that's
how you measure excavators intons.
John Weaver (44:36):
Maybe that's what they can lift and move, but, but
I don't truly know. So I'mseeing here that the unit, a
comparable unit that's not theelectric version, costs about
160 grand, 100 between 155 grandfor a used one up to 220 but
(44:56):
that's a half a million dollarmachine brand new. You.
Somewhere around there, maybemore. Yeah, pretty neat piece of
gear.
Tim Montague (45:05):
Cool. Well, thanks for all the news, John, yeah,
you should probably check outour website. Clean Power
hour.com, go to the events tab.
If you haven't looked at ourevents tab, we try to track many
of the conferences happeningacross the US, all the RE
plusses. Just in Chicago, wehave three great events, Midwest
(45:25):
Expo happening in June, check itout, I'll be there. Then the
solar farm summit in August.
Check it out, I'll be there.
That's a agrivoltaicsconference. And then October, we
have Ari plus Midwest, so checkout the Events tab. How can our
listeners find you? John?
John Weaver (45:48):
Easiest, best way is commercial. Solar guy.com,
that's my website. We stick toit. Also on blue sky and
LinkedIn as well if you want toget good information. So that's
where I try to share blue skies,number one, for sharing for now
LinkedIn number two, and ourwebsite number three. So
(46:10):
commercial, solar guy.com that'sus all right.
Tim Montague (46:14):
Well, we'll see you again in two weeks, on a
Friday. Next time, probably nota Thursday. We had to do
Thursday today because I'mflying tomorrow back home to
Illinois, hopefully, if there'snot tornadoes, and with that,
we'll say, let's grow silver andstorage. Take care John. See ya.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!