August 26, 2025 • 44 mins
In this episode of the Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague and John Weaver unpack the latest developments shaping the clean energy landscape. From federal treasury guidance on safe harbor rules to Africa’s record solar imports, Indonesia’s massive microgrid project, EV tax credit updates, prefab solar carports, and lessons learned from hurricane-tested solar arrays, the conversation explores how solar, wind, and storage are transforming global energy markets.
Episode Highlights
- New federal treasury guidance on safe harbor shifts rules for large-scale projects, moving from a 5% spend requirement to continuous construction (PV Magazine).
- Installers must diversify, with batteries, EV infrastructure, and heat pumps becoming essential parts of the business model.
- EV buyers can lock in the $7,500 tax credit through 2026 with a down payment and contract today (IRS).
- Africa set a record with 1.6 GW of Chinese solar panel imports in May 2024, with countries like Chad leapfrogging traditional infrastructure (Wired Magazine).
- Indonesia is launching one of the world’s largest distributed energy projects, targeting 80,000 villages with 1 MW solar and 4 MWh battery microgrids. (PV Magazine)
- A 250 kW prefab solar carport was installed overnight in Australia, demonstrating 3x faster productivity than traditional methods (PV Magazine Australia)
- US developers report that nearly half of new electric generating capacity this year comes from solar, with record installations nearing 70 GW (US EIA).
- Hurricane-tested solar arrays show that through-bolting and stronger module frames are key to survival in high-wind regions (PV Magazine, RMI report).
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Tim Montague (00:01):
John, welcome to the Clean Power Hour live
bringing you the latest insolar, wind and battery news
every other Friday with my cohost. John Weaver, welcome to
the show, John. Hey Tim.
John Weaver (00:13):
The the world is still turning and burning, and
we're still here, still working.
So nice to see you. I hopeeverything's all right,
Tim Montague (00:24):
and life is good.
I'm glad that the heat of thesummer has passed. We had a very
hot summer here in centralIllinois, and now it's cooled
off a little bit, and hopefullythat'll stay that way. I'm not a
fan of 90 plus degree hot andhumid, but anyway, that's really
my only major gripe, is it'sbeen hot.
John Weaver (00:45):
That's not too bad.
No,
Tim Montague (00:48):
there are worse things. There are worse things.
Yeah. I mean, well,
John Weaver (00:52):
it depends how hot, because that's part of our
career purpose, that too hot isgoing to be bad. But yeah, yeah.
So yeah, it's actually justhitting the cool, perfect
weather here around I'm tryingto figure out whether wear
shirts or long sleeves. Windowsare open. AC is a non it's
wonderful. I'm sure the duckcurve is in hardcore work today
in New England, because theweather is just perfect. So,
(01:15):
but, but, and it's goodconstruction weather, which is
wonderful. So solar is gettingbuilt this summer.
Tim Montague (01:20):
Yeah, it is interesting that there tends to
be a pulse of construction in q3q4 especially q4 which gets
tricky because the weather getsnasty in q4 in November,
December. But it's just the wayof the world. Things come
together later in the year, andit's messy, so we're going to
(01:47):
talk about the tax
John Weaver (01:52):
credits. No, technically not tax credits.
This is federal treasuryguidance on safe harboring.
Tim Montague (02:00):
Safe Harbor, yeah, yes, yes, yes. Sorry.
John Weaver (02:04):
Well, yeah, it's, it's start of construction
related to tax credits. Sothat's my my headline there was
written badly for you because Ijust went with the PV magazine,
but some of the key items hereis that the Treasury was nicer
to us, and many thought, butthere's some nuance and some
creative stuff. I actually had agreat interview yesterday with a
law firm based out of Dallas.
I'll, I'll remember their momentname in a moment. But looking at
(02:26):
some of the Treasury guidance,what has to be done, it's, it's
something interesting and andwhat came out was helpful, like
so for people like me, thatprojects that are under 1.5
megawatt AC, no rules reallychanged. We have this 5% safe
harbor. If you purchase stuff,you're safe you're moving
(02:46):
forward. For the bigger folks,the 5% rule is gone. Now they
have to have something calledcontinuous construction. And
obviously it could mean thatyou're on site building things
that's the cleanest and easiestway, however, continuous
construction can occur off site.
(03:07):
So if you start purchasinghardware today, and your
transformer takes three monthsto make, well, you need a second
component that startsconstruction before the three
months of the transformerfinishes. So you need to have
hardware lined up so that youalways have something being
assembled somewhere. And that'skind of the fundamental for the
(03:29):
big folks that they have to nowstart figuring out how to do, is
how to show and prove that theyare having continuous
construction starting liketoday. You know it's going to
be, it's tight now, I thinkthere's a cut off at September
3, fourth, September 2. Yeah,you can see it right there. So
there's this, there's there'srules, there's dates and but I
(03:53):
guess the biggest thing out ofhere is this transition from
being able to spend 5% of theprojects cost on modules and
gear and just toss it in awarehouse to now having to be
smart enough to makeconstruction start little
building blocks somewhere faraway from the site. So you can
show true work occurringcontinually.
Tim Montague (04:14):
But the real point, you know, I think my our
core audience here is the DG,installer, developer, financier,
service provider or prosumer,
John Weaver (04:30):
and some big players on this actually, Tim.
People walk up to me and say,John, I listen to you and Tim.
And it's like, holy crap. Youguys spent a lot of money. You
should give us a call stuff likethat randomly.
Tim Montague (04:40):
And it's like, nice. You're talking about
utility developers, orabsolutely
John Weaver (04:44):
lots of people listen to us who are across the
spectrum, size project, sizewise, you would be surprised
people that walk up to me,
Tim Montague (04:51):
Well, I certainly try to bring content to a wide
audience in the clean energytransition. But anyway, so
there's. There's these twoworlds, right? The sub multi
megawatt world of DG, and if youjust procure 5% of the equipment
(05:13):
a safe harbor, then you're good,until what is that? Cut off now
when, like, four years. Okay,
John Weaver (05:21):
if you Yeah, if you safe harbor, you have, like,
three or four years. It's somereally long number. Absolutely,
Tim Montague (05:27):
yeah. So it was good news. People were expecting
this to be perhaps worse. I'mnot going to kid anybody the OB
B, B, the O, triple B is tough,and it is forcing a lot of
companies to reinvent theirfuture. You can no longer be
(05:48):
just a solar installer. You haveto be a solar battery and maybe
something else. Solar battery,EV infrastructure, maybe heat
pumps. I love heat pumps.
Electrification of HVAC is athing. If you can install
batteries, you can install heatpumps. It's a little more
complicated. There's plumbinginvolved, but it's doable. But
I'm curious. You know, in yourconversations about this, John,
(06:13):
how people are you know,reconsidering their lives and
their and their futures becauseof the O, triple B. That's
that's the clear signal for me,is batteries and micro grids.
But what is it? What is yourtakeaway?
John Weaver (06:34):
Well, I can tell you what we in house are doing.
We're going to double down ourfocus and solar distributed in
New England, specifically massin Rhode Island, because they
have strong incentives,expensive electricity. But the
second thing, and I've mentionedthis in prior weeks, we're
moving forward on a battery EPCarrangement, where we partner
with a pretty we're hoping asmart integrator, pretty soon we
(06:58):
might be able to talk about it,and they're going to bring in
the hardware, the design, themodeling, the pricing, you know,
get around, manage fioc andeverything else, and make sure
we bring in good hardware andwe're going to build it. And
that's part of my game, is we'regoing to have to learn how to
build batteries. So that'sexplicit right there. When it
(07:19):
goes to residential. Man, I hada call with a guy who works for
Sun run. He's been there for awhile. He's got a family. They
were paying pretty well. Theystarted chopping back heavily on
incentives, on commissions. AndI told him to go look for a
small local shop, yeah, andfigure out what their red line
(07:39):
is, and tell them, Listen, guys,you got to get down to two bucks
a watt. And let me sell a 260something like that. People are
still looking, but it's about tohit. You know, a bunch of resi
people are going to lose some
Tim Montague (07:52):
work, yeah. And one of the, one of the things
about batteries is this VPPphenomenon. Some states have
incentives for E, P, P, S,California, Massachusetts, and
imagine I just did a interviewwith AJ Perkins that'll be
(08:13):
dropping in the next couple ofweeks here. But he's a he's
known as the micro grid mentor,and he works in Hawaii, in
California, he's done some workin Alaska also, but he's
involved with these large, largeresidential projects where
they're putting a battery inevery home, and sometimes a
bigger battery, like a 40kilowatt hour battery, for for
(08:37):
two purposes, resiliencylocally, for the home, but also
then the community functions asa VPP, and you know, you take a
bunch of 40 kWh batteries andall of a sudden you've got 20
megawatt hours of batteries, andthat's really good for the grid
operator. And I think this is anopportunity for installers and
(08:58):
developers who can narrow in onthese types of opportunities. So
you need to work with developersthat these are real estate
developers that are buildingtranches of homes or
retrofitting tranches of homesand and then, you know, there
are financiers that will financethese capex projects where a
(09:20):
third party owns the batteries,provides it as a service to the
consumer, so the consumerdoesn't have a big out of
pocket, but it's still aconstruction project for you.
Mr. EPC, I think that's alsosomething to really just have in
your awareness. As a solarcompany,
John Weaver (09:42):
the agree with it at all. Yep, it's going to be
work. It's going to be hard toget through this stuff. You
know, my residential company,we're essentially just going to
run it the back end with thecommercial group, and we're
going to be really light on thefront end. And that's going. Be
key to having low cost install.
We're going to do small amountsof outbound marketing based only
(10:04):
on installations that we'vedone. We're not going to have a
massive door knocking campaignpaying, you know, dollar per
watt incentives. It's it's gottabe reasonable, it's gotta be
fair if it's going to work,because at least that's my
initial model. You know, not allof us are Sun run who figured
out somehow to get theirresidential projects to have
(10:25):
like a four year Safe Harborlike so they probably just
bought 30 gigs of modules, putthem in a warehouse, and now all
their resi projects, they havethree to four year window. Think
about that. Normally, a resiproject can't use safe harbor
effectively because it takes twoweeks to build it. No, let me
(10:45):
rephrase that, two days to buildit, one day to build it. But Sun
run with the legal ease and themagic is going to be able to
still keep doing distributedsolar, residential solar, well
after 2027 so they're going todo something special and
different. They're going to makethe resi market still exist
somehow, to some degree, butit's going to be third party in
(11:06):
their model, and they integrateVPPs, and they integrate
batteries and and they integratethe Ford, what's it called, the
lightning. And now they'reworking with Tesla. So I think
we're going to maybe, you know,if you know, if you want to buy
some solar stock, buy some sunrun, it's probably risky, but,
you know, they had the crap beatout of them already. I mean, I
know everything go lower, but
Tim Montague (11:28):
that sounds very risky to me. I can't recommend
that. But, I mean, I love thiswork in the angles. Okay, you
got to work the angles. I lovethat. What concerns me about
companies like sun run is in myown neighborhood, I see homes
where they're putting solar onthe north facing slope of homes
in central Illinois where it'sfine. In the summer, you will
(11:51):
get, you know, photons toelectrons off that north north
face. But in the winter, nobueno, right? You're going to
get zero off the north face inthe winter, and what that means
is the ROI is less, but they'reall about the capex and the ITC,
and they're and they're juicingthat, and that's interesting.
(12:14):
But is it sustainable? I don'tknow. That makes me nervous.
Unknown (12:18):
We'll find out. We will. Well, let's
Tim Montague (12:21):
talk about EV infrastructure, or EVs. Okay,
you found a story on blue sky.
Huge news out of the IRS today.
What's the story?
John Weaver (12:31):
Essentially, you can do a down payment and sign a
contract on your EV today andtake delivery through the end of
2026 so a year and a quarteraway, and still get the $7,500
tax credit so that.
Tim Montague (12:54):
So if you were going to buy an EV, you already
own an EV. John, in case youhadn't noticed, but if you were
gonna buy an Eevee today, whatEV would you buy?
John Weaver (13:05):
I'd buy another Hyundai IONIQ five for my
company. Or, if it's not for acompany, it's for somebody wants
a little finer living TeslaModel Y, yeah, for for middle
class home. That's my brotherjust bought he just got to use
Tesla Model y for under 20k withlike, 32,000 miles, needed new
(13:26):
rims in the back. They had alittle wobble, but he's got four
kids. They all fit in the car.
Tim, four kids and his wife allfit in the car. My goodness. So
that's pretty cool. He got theback row, so he got the third I
guess there's three rows, frontrow, middle row, background, and
it's two little ones fit in theback. So Ionic five is what I
bought for my company. It's whatI own personally, and what I
(13:47):
pushed my brother toward was aTesla Model
Tim Montague (13:50):
y I heard that Ford, Ford has launched a
$30,000 electric truck. Now Idon't know if it's for sale yet,
but they've announced it, right?
So it's basically an electricversion of their Ford Maverick
truck, all right? And I don'tknow what the range is, but
that's interesting to me. I wasa big fan of my model. Why I was
sad to see it go when I wentback to the ice because of my
(14:13):
camping trailer and now my boat.
I sold the trailer, my campingtrailer for my boat, and I tow
it around the Midwest and andI've heard horror stories John
of the range that you get whenyou're towing a trailer with an
EV but that aside, I'm a hugefan of EVs. It is the future,
(14:35):
and this isn't this is greatnews, because it was painful to
lose the $7,500
John Weaver (14:41):
it's the current Tim, not the future. It's the
current, yeah.
Tim Montague (14:48):
Well, 20% of new cars in new cars are in Cala are
sorry, 20% of new cars are EVsin California. Yeah, in the US,
in China, in the US writ large,it's 2% so we have a long way to
go, but you gotta, gotta startsomewhere.
John Weaver (15:12):
Gotta start with a $7,500 rebate. It affected my
solar or my lease payment somuch. When I bought one for the
company, I got 2500 bucks inmass. No, 3500 in mass. 7500
federal applied directly to thelease payment. Wonderful, cool.
Tim Montague (15:31):
So you found a story in Wired magazine. I used
to read Wired Magazine, nolonger. But anyway, might need
me to share it? No, I have it onscreen here. I'll share it in a
sec. It says Africa is buying arecord number of Chinese solar
panels. Yes, the whole world isbuying a record number of
(15:52):
Chinese solar panels, not justAfrica. But what's the story
with Africa?
John Weaver (15:57):
Well, Africa's growth is happening now. Is what
the story is. You know, lastyear it was Pakistan that blew
everybody out and surprisedeverybody this year. Well, end
of last year, we started to seeit in Africa, q3, q4, and then
this year it's starting to pop.
They set a new record for themonth of May, 1.6 gigawatts for
the continent. There was thisparticular line. Let's read this
(16:23):
line less developed countriessuch as Chad, so these are
countries that don't have asmassive an infrastructure have
imported enough solar panels toreplace their country's entire
power generation capacity. This.
You know that leapfroggingphrase they used to talk about
(16:44):
what cell phones are like, ah,Africa is going to skip
landlines and go straight tomobiles. And they did, yeah, and
then, ah, rural society might gostraight to Starlink and skip a
lot of infrastructure forwideband. That's maybe happening
right now. Maybe we'll see if,if that can happen. Well, it
just happened with solar inthese countries. We just saw
(17:04):
LeapFrog. Everybody kept saying,oh, let's get some SMRs. Let's
get them some gas. You know,none of them delivered. Nobody
delivered to Africa. You know,who's delivering solar, solar
from China. And there's anotherarticle. I didn't include it,
but one of the massive batterycompanies are now moving into
Pakistan to complement theirsolar because now they have the
(17:25):
marketplace to put the batteriesin to capture the excess. Yeah,
that's happening in Africa next.
And this is a billion people inAfrica, dude, and they have zero
infrastructure. They're justthey're not going to have any of
the stupid interconnectionissues we have. They're going to
build their grid around solar,solar and batteries, and they
have a grid. You know, Nigeriais one of the most biggest
(17:46):
countries. What
Tim Montague (17:48):
is it? But though, what is it that has happened in
Africa that is causing this? Doyou think this tipping solar,
John Weaver (17:53):
solar panels at six cents a watt?
Tim Montague (17:57):
Yeah. I mean, I in the back of my mind, I go, Well,
yeah, it seems like China isreally trying to embed itself
into Africa in terms ofinfrastructure. They're building
ports.
John Weaver (18:10):
And that's not what's driving this. This is
price. This is the masspopulation. Think so it's
pushing though. This is softpower attempts. Yes, that's, you
know, but what's occurring nowis called secular market. So the
politics, push, push, push, butnow the demand is starting to
pull it's going to yank it up.
That's what's happening. You canonly push so far with soft
(18:33):
politics, soft power with, youknow, subsidies, but there's a
tipping point that's occurringUnited States, our modules are
40 cents, so it can'tfundamentally occur with us.
It's almost occurring at theutility scale if solar is beaten
stuff. But so
Tim Montague (18:49):
if we didn't have tariffs, we could get solar
panels for six cents. Well,
John Weaver (18:53):
we wouldn't want the ones at six because those
are from the cheaper Chinesecompanies with the crap
warranties. We'd want the onesat like 14 that's just finance,
dude. My people won't buy thosepanels. I'd put them on my
house.
Tim Montague (19:06):
Do you think? Do you think the six cent panels
are truly, what's going intothis story?
John Weaver (19:12):
Absolutely, absolutely. I've read, I've read
about some of the companies andwho's getting products there.
There's some nice product goingthere too. In the bigger
projects, you know, long G Tong,Wei, Ginko, the big companies, I
have micro grid stuff talk aboutfor those areas.
Tim Montague (19:26):
And if you buy, if you buy a six cent solar module
or solar technology, how do you,how do you tamper your or temper
your expectations? What is that?
Is it going to degrade faster?
Is it going to stop working?
What's going to happen?
John Weaver (19:45):
I mean, it should work fine. Maybe it'll be a 20
year panel with cheaper backsheets instead of a 35 year
panel, yeah, because that's whatyou get with those cheaper
panels. You got it. You got sometrade offs, you got some thinner
glass. You got some heavier youknow. Your rail isn't as strong,
maybe your back sheet isthinner. You don't have a
warranty. You can't guaranteethat Chinese company is going to
(20:08):
exist, because those middle andlower size Chinese companies
fight and they're fightingGinko, and they're fighting long
G and the biggest, mostchallenging market on Earth. So
you just gotta recognize it'scomplex and just be happy with
having electricity for 30 bucks.
Tim Montague (20:27):
Yeah. Okay, so you want to move on to Indonesia.
John Weaver (20:32):
Well, this is kind of the opposite of that
Indonesia is doing. Youmentioned micro grids a minute
ago. So they have 80,000villages that they want to give
a one megawatt solar fourmegawatt hour microgrid to wow.
That's like the biggestprocurement ever, first off 80
(20:54):
gigawatts of solar, and then a320 gigawatt hour battery
project to distribute littletiny power plants. This is the
future right here, dude, likelittle tiny power plants across
their country, one and this isagain, another example. Where's
all the SMRs? Everybody kepttelling me, everybody's going to
(21:17):
get a two megawatt 24/7 Nuke,small modular reactor. I don't
see one on Earth, except insubmarines underneath the
Arctic. Yep, you know. So rightnow I got my SMR. This is a
modular fusion fusion reactor.
It's coming from this, straightfrom space. This is the SMR,
yes, sir, right here. Andthere's gonna be 80,000 of them
(21:38):
deployed in Indonesia, and we'regoing to gain some beautiful
expertise. The species willlearning how to do this. So and
then they have another casual 20gigawatts of centralized solar,
awesome. But the what I wasreally psyched about was 80,001
megawatt micro grids spreadacross the country. That is
(21:59):
something, that is something.
Tim Montague (22:04):
Do you know the backstory here? How did, how did
somebody convince Indonesia todo this? This is very cool. I
have to say. Coal
John Weaver (22:13):
is expensive, and they're trying. Indonesia is
like the third, third largestcountry on Earth, like 700
million people. Wait, no,Indonesia population 280, 3
million. That's like fourth. Ithink that puts, you know, we
got India, we got China, we gotthe US, we got Indonesia. Tons
(22:35):
of coal. But, you know, coal isexpensive nowadays, solar is
cheaper getting he can't build acoal power plant in the middle
of the woods, in the middle ofthe jungle. They got a million
islands down there. Man, youcan't build power lines across
that. Not when cyclones and, youknow, ships have to move those
very populated, very, verycomplex areas to move stuff
(22:58):
through infrastructure. So thisis like the ultimate for a
massive island nation. Yeah,they have energy goals, so I
don't know who pushed them, butI think China being a strong
partner and just the way theworld is going is my favorite
story of the week, to be honest,maybe favorite of two weeks.
Tim Montague (23:18):
Yeah, it's a good story. I'd like to learn more
about it, so thank you forbringing that to our attention.
Good story. All right, we'removing on install of the week,
prefab carport, 250 kWprefabricated solar racking
carport, done overnight,
John Weaver (23:38):
overnight. The racking the foundation was
already in place. So let's,let's vet that one. Let's say
that real quick. But they camein with some cranes, and they
dropped 250 kW of prefab modulesinto place, strapped them in
overnight, and the pictures lookcool. That's what I liked about
it,
Tim Montague (23:59):
too. Oh, this is in Australia. Okay,
John Weaver (24:01):
yes, sir, yes, sir.
Yeah. I felt some self esteemchallenges here, Tim, because my
carport installs are nowherenear this cool man, I don't do
250 overnight. I got humanbeings attaching modules, and
they believe 3x faster, 3xproductivity, doing it their
way. And you know what, with theway challenge, how challenging
it is to deploy labor machinesconsistently on site. Yeah, I
(24:24):
believe these guys.
Tim Montague (24:28):
Yeah. I like this concept of a prefab carport. You
can see how those, you know,those tables, call them tables,
right? You can prefab a table,and then you're just craning
that onto the structure andbolting it on instead of, I
mean, today, what they often dois install the well, they I've
(24:49):
seen two approaches. One isinstalling panels on the ground
and then lifting the table buton site. And then two, I've
actually also seen where they'redone. Doing individual modules,
running around with thesescissor lifts or similar. That's
John Weaver (25:07):
what I do. That's what we generally do. We got
lifts and we we got a series oftwo or three machines. You got
one holding the modules, anotherlift in the module, bringing it
up to the guys, and then anotherinstalling. You go to and they
move fast.
Tim Montague (25:23):
Well, you can't move faster than you can move in
a factory. No, of course not. Sowhy is this so new? Why haven't
others done this? I'm
John Weaver (25:33):
sure others have.
If you click the PV magazineAustralia link, there's another
nice image. This image, yeah.
Well, there's a second one onthe hat. Who cares? Oh, there it
is. There it is. That's theimage. Yeah. Oh,
Tim Montague (25:46):
that is cool. Yes.
Are they called tables, or arethey called something
John Weaver (25:51):
else? The we call them tables on single x
trackers, on trackers, we callthem tables. I don't know what
this would be called E, call ita table, yeah, and call whatever
you want. Tim, it's your show.
They call them pods. So from thepost, they call them pods, 36
pods, okay,
Tim Montague (26:14):
36 yep, that's
John Weaver (26:18):
what they deployed.
So about nine kW each, or Yeah,it seems a little strong. Maybe
36 parking spots covered,something like that, but they
mentioned the pod number intheir article. So it's pretty
cool. I like it.
Tim Montague (26:37):
Did they say what the installed cost was? Oh,
John Weaver (26:40):
of course not. Come on, they never give us good
data. Gotta go fight for that.
Now you're interested. I couldtell I interested you in
something
Tim Montague (26:51):
you did. You did well, both these stories are
great. I mean, all the storiesare good. I'm just it's, it's
all relative. I'm a huge fan ofprefab. It's just so smart, so
much more efficient. All right,EIA, US Energy Information
(27:15):
Administration, us developersreport half of new electric
generating capacity will comefrom solar.
John Weaver (27:22):
That's cool, but that's not actually the article
I wanted to highlight on scrolldown a bit. They have a second
chart in this article, and whatI'm really interested in is that
this year, we'll officially seta new record for energy capacity
deployments in the UnitedStates, and we'll break the like
5060, gigawatt record of theearly 2000s which was mostly
(27:43):
gas, but this year will be it,bam. Check it out right there.
That's it. And it's actually alittle bit bigger, because that
doesn't include distributedsolar, so another four or five
gigs AC. So gaining on 70gigawatts of capacity will be
deployed in the United Statesthis year, and that's it. That's
(28:06):
just cool. Still got some jobsand energy, plenty of them.
Tim Montague (28:12):
Yep, yeah, I don't, I don't see, I don't see
the federal plan to revive coal,gas and nuclear, working for
grid operators. Frankly, if I'ma grid operator, I want solar
batteries and wind, because Ihave a fiduciary responsibility
(28:35):
to my investors, whether I'mpublic power or or private. IOU
right, Money talks and and thething that keeps coming up is
solar, wind and batteries arecheaper and faster, and speed
matters when all these datacenters and all this electric
(28:57):
vehicle infrastructure is comingonline like you got to be able
to deploy this stuff in three tofive years, not five to 10 or
five to 15 years in the case ofa nuclear power plant, right?
Yeah, just not. This is,
John Weaver (29:15):
you know, this looks at, yeah, this looks at,
you know, solar and storage,both as generation. And I
believe that storage should beconsidered a generation asset,
because that generation wouldn'thave existed otherwise. And so
while it may come from anothersource, I guess that generation
would have existed would havecome from gas. But when it comes
(29:36):
to solar, batteries that chargefrom solar, it wouldn't have
existed because that solar wouldhave been curtailed. You know,
we talked about it last showabout California's curtailment
being limited by batteries,which is great. I believe
batteries should be considered ageneration source as they are.
Tim Montague (29:56):
Yep. And you know this. Uh, points. Points out
that Texas is a huge part ofthis phenomenon. And I was
looking at the ERCOT dashboardfor July. 50% of Texas's grid
power came from solar, wind andbatteries. That's so cool. Um,
(30:17):
now it'll be less in the winter,but, yeah, it's solar. Wind and
batteries are a major force nowin the ERCOT grid and Texas
installed 11 gigawatts of solarlast year. Most states in the US
are lucky if they install onegigawatt, right? There might be
(30:41):
15 states in the gigawatt I callit the gigawatt club. How many
states per are installing morethan a gigawatt of solar? John,
I'm
John Weaver (30:50):
gonna say 21
Tim Montague (30:53):
Whoa. You think?
Let's see
John Weaver (30:56):
as of early 20 Okay, so the Google,
Tim Montague (31:00):
we better perplexity this one? Yeah,
John Weaver (31:03):
I google told me 33 No, but have more than one
gigawatt of capacity?
Tim Montague (31:09):
No, I'm talking about
John Weaver (31:10):
per year. Yeah, that's a good number. Yeah, I
don't know that's a goodquestion. So
Tim Montague (31:15):
it's too bad that it's so hard to say perplexity,
but perplexity is a way bettersearch engine. And so maybe the
term is plexig it. Maybe youneed to Plex it instead of
Google it. There are six statesthat are installing more than
one gigawatt per year as of 2024California, Texas, Indiana,
(31:37):
Arizona, Michigan, Florida andNew York,
John Weaver (31:41):
I was more than six. It sounded like 1234567,
Tim Montague (31:47):
it lied. It said that was six. All right, you
gotta check, you gotta check thefacts. But
John Weaver (31:54):
all right, let's ask chat. Let's Okay. Chat. How
many states in the USA installedmore than one gigawatt AC of
solar. Let's see what the chatsays. Well, 33 states have
broken.
Tim Montague (32:11):
Yeah, that's the install base. 33 states. And
that's good, because just a fewyears ago, that number was more
like 10, the number of stateswith an install base of over a
gigawatt so,
John Weaver (32:25):
so, uh, a link to SPC global said, uh, 13 states
at a greater than one gigawattof solar in 2023 how's that for
you? And that's a chat GPT, andit always gives me a link,
because I demand it with allanswers that it ever gives. How
many states? 13 states addedover one gigawatt of new solar
(32:46):
capacity in 2024 according toenergy global.
Tim Montague (32:49):
Don't believe it.
I don't believe it for a second.
John Weaver (32:53):
I got a lake better. It's better than
perplexity. Who couldn't
Tim Montague (32:56):
even say that number is twice the perplexity
figure. Hey, all right, we'regonna have to report back next
week. We'll do a deep dive, andwe'll we'll report back. We'll
find the real numbers. Great,great. All right, let's talk
about hurricanes and solar,because sometimes solar doesn't
survive the extreme weather. Youhave a story in PV magazine,
(33:21):
field tested hurricane survivalstrategies for solar I'm sure
this is referencing our friends,arrow,
John Weaver (33:31):
B, E, R, Y, l was the hurricane, Hurricane barrel,
something like that, yeah. Butwho wrote the report Rmi, Rocky
Mountain institution, yeah, butisn't Chris
Tim Montague (33:44):
Rosalind, Chris Needham.
John Weaver (33:46):
Needham, Needham, I don't know if he still works
there. Maybe he does. He wasjust in Alaska, though, we
should get that guy in the showsometime. I mean, he's got his
own show, but, yeah,
Tim Montague (33:56):
Chris Needham has a show. Think so
John Weaver (33:58):
maybe, maybe not. I don't know much, all
Tim Montague (34:02):
right, I'm gonna put this on screen. I do like go
down to the I like looking atphotos of failed solar projects.
It's a strange view. Yeah, lookat that mess. That's what
hurricanes do to solar arrays.
But, you know, they do that toall kinds of infrastructure. So
it's like, well, yeah, duh. Thethe wind was over 100 miles an
(34:24):
hour. What was the wind for thisphoto? Do we know?
John Weaver (34:28):
Well, I don't know this photo, but I know this
storm was a category five. So,yeah,
Tim Montague (34:33):
that's 150 plus.
John Weaver (34:36):
So the key thing about this article, I think it
gives explicit lists. Here wego. You get these common faults.
What breaks the most commonthing are cheap clamps, mid
clamps. You need to throughbolt, and that's really the
fundamental the thing thatcaused the most damages is how
you bolt your modules to yourracking structure on in these
regions. That's number one. Soif you do a through bolt,
(34:58):
meaning you. Put the bolt intothe solar panel, and then it
goes through your racking, andyou put a nut on the back that
is your strongest and then yougot to do it a quality now, it's
got to be stainless steel. It'sgot to be tagged. It's got to
have something going on and andso get through bolting. But
there's an interesting thing, ifyou scroll down modules that are
(35:21):
too thin, they'll rip off thatthrough bolt. So not only do you
have to through bolt, you haveto through bolt, it with a piece
of metal that's strong. Sothat's just important,
Tim Montague (35:33):
yeah, um, I need to scroll down. Okay, yeah, you
John Weaver (35:38):
just see a nice picture. Keep going a tiny bit.
Keep going. Keep going. Rightnear the end. Little farther
right there. That's a throughbolted module. Good policy, good
practice. That little metalthat's coming back is what's
left of the module after wasripped off because the frame is
too thin and cheap. Thin framesare great in the desert, but not
(36:03):
in 150 mile per hour currenthurricane region. Yeah, have
multiple your weakest link willbe found.
Tim Montague (36:13):
So Chris Needham has been on the show. I thought
he had his company is calledazimuth advisory services, and
yeah, he is one of the authorsof this report. Oh, check out
episode 247, of the Clean PowerHour. Him and his partner in
crime, whose name is Frankoudhuizen, ood Houston. He has a
(36:37):
Dutch name. It's a it'spronounced, tricky to pronounce.
But anyway, Frank and Chris,they're the real deal. They are
racking geeks, hardcore. They dothese studies on failures in the
field. And if you're an assetowner, you want to hire these
guys and look at what, whatracking you're using in your
(36:59):
solar projects, if it's in aterritory that might have hail
or hurricanes or tornadoes orwhat else, that's about it.
John Weaver (37:12):
Well, tornadoes, I don't know, man, solar system,
Tim Montague (37:20):
yeah, good luck.
John Weaver (37:22):
Yeah. I mean, hurricanes are, I mean, I guess,
you know, lower speed tornadoesare the same thing as
hurricanes. And, you know, highspeed hurricanes, you know,
because low speed tornadoes getup to 1/5 you know, start in the
130s 140s but I don't know,tornadoes just seem so much more
violent than a hurricane. Itjust, it just seems that way.
(37:44):
So,
Tim Montague (37:46):
should we do another story or what? What do
you think? All right,
John Weaver (37:52):
how about, uh, how about we go to the last one?
Well, yeah, we do the one beforethat cool looking building. You
know, I talk a lot about newenergy storage capacity, you
know, it's, it's, it's growingCanada's dominating capacity
deployed. So energy storagecapacity deployed globally might
(38:13):
reach pumped hydro soon, yeah,share this building time. This
is, isn't it cool?
Tim Montague (38:18):
This is a cool photo. Yes.
John Weaver (38:24):
So it's a tall structure, yeah, check out this
photo. So is that real? Yeah,there's a document in within the
blue sky linkage that it goesback to the original document,
and they actually have picturesof the construction of it, and
some good a couple of neat this
Tim Montague (38:40):
is like balcony solar on steroids. Yes,
John Weaver (38:44):
absolutely, yeah. I mean, and it seems reasonable,
like the you could clean it. Youdon't want people putting food
and planters on top of it orsomething.
Tim Montague (38:56):
Yeah,
John Weaver (38:58):
but it's neat. I love this idea. This is just so
cool. It's shade. It absorbs. Itseems accessible. It's a lot of
capacity.
Tim Montague (39:09):
And this is China, right? I think Germany. What?
John Weaver (39:14):
Yeah, yeah, close it, yeah. I think it's Germany.
From what I read, the source isa gentleman I follow. It's one
Tim Montague (39:20):
of the only people. It's got some cool east
west rocking on the top too.
John Weaver (39:24):
Oh, I didn't even notice that. Didn't even notice
that. Look at that. That'sclean,
Tim Montague (39:28):
yep.
John Weaver (39:30):
Just just cool looking building. I just was
really when I saw it the firsttime. Yeah, you get to see some
up close stuff, yeah. So this isdefinitely
Tim Montague (39:39):
real, man. Like, I like to say, if you want to see
the future of solar, go toNorthern Europe or China to
both. Absolutely, I'm not in ahurry to go to China, but
someday
John Weaver (39:52):
I'll be there. Next June, I'm going to go into
snack. Oh yes, wow. That's theirbig soul. That's the biggest the
world. Biggest solar conference.
So slowly, go in the snack.
Tim Montague (40:03):
What? What's, what's, what's the the impetus
behind that,
John Weaver (40:07):
it's China. It's gotta go. I mean, PV magazine is
heavy in China. You know, theguys that I've met, Victor and,
oh my goodness, I've just forgothis name, Curtis, they're so
awesome. The guys that write forPV magazine, and they're based
in China, okay? They knowthey're just great guys to talk
to. And, you know, hanging outat PV magazine, and I hear that
(40:30):
there's like 12 rooms, and eachone is a conference of its own.
And even the professionals, youonly get through, like three or
four, one per day type of thing.
I you know everybody'sexaggerating, but it's the
place, so you gotta go there.
Gotta go there once. I'll bethere next June.
Tim Montague (40:47):
Cool. I love it.
Can't wait to hear about thattrip. Wow, we'll tell you all
right. Well, let's wrap it up.
Check out all of our content atclean power hour.com, we're on
YouTube. We're on audio, AppleSpotify. I'm on LinkedIn. Reach
out to me. Love to hear from mylisteners. How about you? John,
where can people find you?
John Weaver (41:08):
Commercial? Solar guy, calm, really. Best place
you know, LinkedIn, all over.
Check out our post there. Try tobe educational, but commercial.
Solar guy.com, 5084, 99, nine,son, I forget my own phone
number sometimes.
Tim Montague (41:26):
And when you call that number, does a human pick
up
John Weaver (41:29):
first? It goes to Craig. He's our sales guy. So,
yes, okay, yes, human being willpick it up. Human
Tim Montague (41:34):
in the loop. Yes, sir. All right. All right. Well,
thank you so much. John Weaver,commercial solar guy, and we'll
see you in two weeks. Have agreat one. Let's grow solar.
You.
John, welcome to the Clean Power Hour live
bringing you the latest insolar, wind and battery news
every other Friday with my cohost. John Weaver, welcome to
the show, John. Hey Tim.
John Weaver (00:13):
The the world is still turning and burning, and
we're still here, still working.
So nice to see you. I hopeeverything's all right,
Tim Montague (00:24):
and life is good.
I'm glad that the heat of thesummer has passed. We had a very
hot summer here in centralIllinois, and now it's cooled
off a little bit, and hopefullythat'll stay that way. I'm not a
fan of 90 plus degree hot andhumid, but anyway, that's really
my only major gripe, is it'sbeen hot.
John Weaver (00:45):
That's not too bad.
No,
Tim Montague (00:48):
there are worse things. There are worse things.
Yeah. I mean, well,
John Weaver (00:52):
it depends how hot, because that's part of our
career purpose, that too hot isgoing to be bad. But yeah, yeah.
So yeah, it's actually justhitting the cool, perfect
weather here around I'm tryingto figure out whether wear
shirts or long sleeves. Windowsare open. AC is a non it's
wonderful. I'm sure the duckcurve is in hardcore work today
in New England, because theweather is just perfect. So,
(01:15):
but, but, and it's goodconstruction weather, which is
wonderful. So solar is gettingbuilt this summer.
Tim Montague (01:20):
Yeah, it is interesting that there tends to
be a pulse of construction in q3q4 especially q4 which gets
tricky because the weather getsnasty in q4 in November,
December. But it's just the wayof the world. Things come
together later in the year, andit's messy, so we're going to
(01:47):
talk about the tax
John Weaver (01:52):
credits. No, technically not tax credits.
This is federal treasuryguidance on safe harboring.
Tim Montague (02:00):
Safe Harbor, yeah, yes, yes, yes. Sorry.
John Weaver (02:04):
Well, yeah, it's, it's start of construction
related to tax credits. Sothat's my my headline there was
written badly for you because Ijust went with the PV magazine,
but some of the key items hereis that the Treasury was nicer
to us, and many thought, butthere's some nuance and some
creative stuff. I actually had agreat interview yesterday with a
law firm based out of Dallas.
I'll, I'll remember their momentname in a moment. But looking at
(02:26):
some of the Treasury guidance,what has to be done, it's, it's
something interesting and andwhat came out was helpful, like
so for people like me, thatprojects that are under 1.5
megawatt AC, no rules reallychanged. We have this 5% safe
harbor. If you purchase stuff,you're safe you're moving
(02:46):
forward. For the bigger folks,the 5% rule is gone. Now they
have to have something calledcontinuous construction. And
obviously it could mean thatyou're on site building things
that's the cleanest and easiestway, however, continuous
construction can occur off site.
(03:07):
So if you start purchasinghardware today, and your
transformer takes three monthsto make, well, you need a second
component that startsconstruction before the three
months of the transformerfinishes. So you need to have
hardware lined up so that youalways have something being
assembled somewhere. And that'skind of the fundamental for the
(03:29):
big folks that they have to nowstart figuring out how to do, is
how to show and prove that theyare having continuous
construction starting liketoday. You know it's going to
be, it's tight now, I thinkthere's a cut off at September
3, fourth, September 2. Yeah,you can see it right there. So
there's this, there's there'srules, there's dates and but I
(03:53):
guess the biggest thing out ofhere is this transition from
being able to spend 5% of theprojects cost on modules and
gear and just toss it in awarehouse to now having to be
smart enough to makeconstruction start little
building blocks somewhere faraway from the site. So you can
show true work occurringcontinually.
Tim Montague (04:14):
But the real point, you know, I think my our
core audience here is the DG,installer, developer, financier,
service provider or prosumer,
John Weaver (04:30):
and some big players on this actually, Tim.
People walk up to me and say,John, I listen to you and Tim.
And it's like, holy crap. Youguys spent a lot of money. You
should give us a call stuff likethat randomly.
Tim Montague (04:40):
And it's like, nice. You're talking about
utility developers, orabsolutely
John Weaver (04:44):
lots of people listen to us who are across the
spectrum, size project, sizewise, you would be surprised
people that walk up to me,
Tim Montague (04:51):
Well, I certainly try to bring content to a wide
audience in the clean energytransition. But anyway, so
there's. There's these twoworlds, right? The sub multi
megawatt world of DG, and if youjust procure 5% of the equipment
(05:13):
a safe harbor, then you're good,until what is that? Cut off now
when, like, four years. Okay,
John Weaver (05:21):
if you Yeah, if you safe harbor, you have, like,
three or four years. It's somereally long number. Absolutely,
Tim Montague (05:27):
yeah. So it was good news. People were expecting
this to be perhaps worse. I'mnot going to kid anybody the OB
B, B, the O, triple B is tough,and it is forcing a lot of
companies to reinvent theirfuture. You can no longer be
(05:48):
just a solar installer. You haveto be a solar battery and maybe
something else. Solar battery,EV infrastructure, maybe heat
pumps. I love heat pumps.
Electrification of HVAC is athing. If you can install
batteries, you can install heatpumps. It's a little more
complicated. There's plumbinginvolved, but it's doable. But
I'm curious. You know, in yourconversations about this, John,
(06:13):
how people are you know,reconsidering their lives and
their and their futures becauseof the O, triple B. That's
that's the clear signal for me,is batteries and micro grids.
But what is it? What is yourtakeaway?
John Weaver (06:34):
Well, I can tell you what we in house are doing.
We're going to double down ourfocus and solar distributed in
New England, specifically massin Rhode Island, because they
have strong incentives,expensive electricity. But the
second thing, and I've mentionedthis in prior weeks, we're
moving forward on a battery EPCarrangement, where we partner
with a pretty we're hoping asmart integrator, pretty soon we
(06:58):
might be able to talk about it,and they're going to bring in
the hardware, the design, themodeling, the pricing, you know,
get around, manage fioc andeverything else, and make sure
we bring in good hardware andwe're going to build it. And
that's part of my game, is we'regoing to have to learn how to
build batteries. So that'sexplicit right there. When it
(07:19):
goes to residential. Man, I hada call with a guy who works for
Sun run. He's been there for awhile. He's got a family. They
were paying pretty well. Theystarted chopping back heavily on
incentives, on commissions. AndI told him to go look for a
small local shop, yeah, andfigure out what their red line
(07:39):
is, and tell them, Listen, guys,you got to get down to two bucks
a watt. And let me sell a 260something like that. People are
still looking, but it's about tohit. You know, a bunch of resi
people are going to lose some
Tim Montague (07:52):
work, yeah. And one of the, one of the things
about batteries is this VPPphenomenon. Some states have
incentives for E, P, P, S,California, Massachusetts, and
imagine I just did a interviewwith AJ Perkins that'll be
(08:13):
dropping in the next couple ofweeks here. But he's a he's
known as the micro grid mentor,and he works in Hawaii, in
California, he's done some workin Alaska also, but he's
involved with these large, largeresidential projects where
they're putting a battery inevery home, and sometimes a
bigger battery, like a 40kilowatt hour battery, for for
(08:37):
two purposes, resiliencylocally, for the home, but also
then the community functions asa VPP, and you know, you take a
bunch of 40 kWh batteries andall of a sudden you've got 20
megawatt hours of batteries, andthat's really good for the grid
operator. And I think this is anopportunity for installers and
(08:58):
developers who can narrow in onthese types of opportunities. So
you need to work with developersthat these are real estate
developers that are buildingtranches of homes or
retrofitting tranches of homesand and then, you know, there
are financiers that will financethese capex projects where a
(09:20):
third party owns the batteries,provides it as a service to the
consumer, so the consumerdoesn't have a big out of
pocket, but it's still aconstruction project for you.
Mr. EPC, I think that's alsosomething to really just have in
your awareness. As a solarcompany,
John Weaver (09:42):
the agree with it at all. Yep, it's going to be
work. It's going to be hard toget through this stuff. You
know, my residential company,we're essentially just going to
run it the back end with thecommercial group, and we're
going to be really light on thefront end. And that's going. Be
key to having low cost install.
We're going to do small amountsof outbound marketing based only
(10:04):
on installations that we'vedone. We're not going to have a
massive door knocking campaignpaying, you know, dollar per
watt incentives. It's it's gottabe reasonable, it's gotta be
fair if it's going to work,because at least that's my
initial model. You know, not allof us are Sun run who figured
out somehow to get theirresidential projects to have
(10:25):
like a four year Safe Harborlike so they probably just
bought 30 gigs of modules, putthem in a warehouse, and now all
their resi projects, they havethree to four year window. Think
about that. Normally, a resiproject can't use safe harbor
effectively because it takes twoweeks to build it. No, let me
(10:45):
rephrase that, two days to buildit, one day to build it. But Sun
run with the legal ease and themagic is going to be able to
still keep doing distributedsolar, residential solar, well
after 2027 so they're going todo something special and
different. They're going to makethe resi market still exist
somehow, to some degree, butit's going to be third party in
(11:06):
their model, and they integrateVPPs, and they integrate
batteries and and they integratethe Ford, what's it called, the
lightning. And now they'reworking with Tesla. So I think
we're going to maybe, you know,if you know, if you want to buy
some solar stock, buy some sunrun, it's probably risky, but,
you know, they had the crap beatout of them already. I mean, I
know everything go lower, but
Tim Montague (11:28):
that sounds very risky to me. I can't recommend
that. But, I mean, I love thiswork in the angles. Okay, you
got to work the angles. I lovethat. What concerns me about
companies like sun run is in myown neighborhood, I see homes
where they're putting solar onthe north facing slope of homes
in central Illinois where it'sfine. In the summer, you will
(11:51):
get, you know, photons toelectrons off that north north
face. But in the winter, nobueno, right? You're going to
get zero off the north face inthe winter, and what that means
is the ROI is less, but they'reall about the capex and the ITC,
and they're and they're juicingthat, and that's interesting.
(12:14):
But is it sustainable? I don'tknow. That makes me nervous.
Unknown (12:18):
We'll find out. We will. Well, let's
Tim Montague (12:21):
talk about EV infrastructure, or EVs. Okay,
you found a story on blue sky.
Huge news out of the IRS today.
What's the story?
John Weaver (12:31):
Essentially, you can do a down payment and sign a
contract on your EV today andtake delivery through the end of
2026 so a year and a quarteraway, and still get the $7,500
tax credit so that.
Tim Montague (12:54):
So if you were going to buy an EV, you already
own an EV. John, in case youhadn't noticed, but if you were
gonna buy an Eevee today, whatEV would you buy?
John Weaver (13:05):
I'd buy another Hyundai IONIQ five for my
company. Or, if it's not for acompany, it's for somebody wants
a little finer living TeslaModel Y, yeah, for for middle
class home. That's my brotherjust bought he just got to use
Tesla Model y for under 20k withlike, 32,000 miles, needed new
(13:26):
rims in the back. They had alittle wobble, but he's got four
kids. They all fit in the car.
Tim, four kids and his wife allfit in the car. My goodness. So
that's pretty cool. He got theback row, so he got the third I
guess there's three rows, frontrow, middle row, background, and
it's two little ones fit in theback. So Ionic five is what I
bought for my company. It's whatI own personally, and what I
(13:47):
pushed my brother toward was aTesla Model
Tim Montague (13:50):
y I heard that Ford, Ford has launched a
$30,000 electric truck. Now Idon't know if it's for sale yet,
but they've announced it, right?
So it's basically an electricversion of their Ford Maverick
truck, all right? And I don'tknow what the range is, but
that's interesting to me. I wasa big fan of my model. Why I was
sad to see it go when I wentback to the ice because of my
(14:13):
camping trailer and now my boat.
I sold the trailer, my campingtrailer for my boat, and I tow
it around the Midwest and andI've heard horror stories John
of the range that you get whenyou're towing a trailer with an
EV but that aside, I'm a hugefan of EVs. It is the future,
(14:35):
and this isn't this is greatnews, because it was painful to
lose the $7,500
John Weaver (14:41):
it's the current Tim, not the future. It's the
current, yeah.
Tim Montague (14:48):
Well, 20% of new cars in new cars are in Cala are
sorry, 20% of new cars are EVsin California. Yeah, in the US,
in China, in the US writ large,it's 2% so we have a long way to
go, but you gotta, gotta startsomewhere.
John Weaver (15:12):
Gotta start with a $7,500 rebate. It affected my
solar or my lease payment somuch. When I bought one for the
company, I got 2500 bucks inmass. No, 3500 in mass. 7500
federal applied directly to thelease payment. Wonderful, cool.
Tim Montague (15:31):
So you found a story in Wired magazine. I used
to read Wired Magazine, nolonger. But anyway, might need
me to share it? No, I have it onscreen here. I'll share it in a
sec. It says Africa is buying arecord number of Chinese solar
panels. Yes, the whole world isbuying a record number of
(15:52):
Chinese solar panels, not justAfrica. But what's the story
with Africa?
John Weaver (15:57):
Well, Africa's growth is happening now. Is what
the story is. You know, lastyear it was Pakistan that blew
everybody out and surprisedeverybody this year. Well, end
of last year, we started to seeit in Africa, q3, q4, and then
this year it's starting to pop.
They set a new record for themonth of May, 1.6 gigawatts for
the continent. There was thisparticular line. Let's read this
(16:23):
line less developed countriessuch as Chad, so these are
countries that don't have asmassive an infrastructure have
imported enough solar panels toreplace their country's entire
power generation capacity. This.
You know that leapfroggingphrase they used to talk about
(16:44):
what cell phones are like, ah,Africa is going to skip
landlines and go straight tomobiles. And they did, yeah, and
then, ah, rural society might gostraight to Starlink and skip a
lot of infrastructure forwideband. That's maybe happening
right now. Maybe we'll see if,if that can happen. Well, it
just happened with solar inthese countries. We just saw
(17:04):
LeapFrog. Everybody kept saying,oh, let's get some SMRs. Let's
get them some gas. You know,none of them delivered. Nobody
delivered to Africa. You know,who's delivering solar, solar
from China. And there's anotherarticle. I didn't include it,
but one of the massive batterycompanies are now moving into
Pakistan to complement theirsolar because now they have the
(17:25):
marketplace to put the batteriesin to capture the excess. Yeah,
that's happening in Africa next.
And this is a billion people inAfrica, dude, and they have zero
infrastructure. They're justthey're not going to have any of
the stupid interconnectionissues we have. They're going to
build their grid around solar,solar and batteries, and they
have a grid. You know, Nigeriais one of the most biggest
(17:46):
countries. What
Tim Montague (17:48):
is it? But though, what is it that has happened in
Africa that is causing this? Doyou think this tipping solar,
John Weaver (17:53):
solar panels at six cents a watt?
Tim Montague (17:57):
Yeah. I mean, I in the back of my mind, I go, Well,
yeah, it seems like China isreally trying to embed itself
into Africa in terms ofinfrastructure. They're building
ports.
John Weaver (18:10):
And that's not what's driving this. This is
price. This is the masspopulation. Think so it's
pushing though. This is softpower attempts. Yes, that's, you
know, but what's occurring nowis called secular market. So the
politics, push, push, push, butnow the demand is starting to
pull it's going to yank it up.
That's what's happening. You canonly push so far with soft
(18:33):
politics, soft power with, youknow, subsidies, but there's a
tipping point that's occurringUnited States, our modules are
40 cents, so it can'tfundamentally occur with us.
It's almost occurring at theutility scale if solar is beaten
stuff. But so
Tim Montague (18:49):
if we didn't have tariffs, we could get solar
panels for six cents. Well,
John Weaver (18:53):
we wouldn't want the ones at six because those
are from the cheaper Chinesecompanies with the crap
warranties. We'd want the onesat like 14 that's just finance,
dude. My people won't buy thosepanels. I'd put them on my
house.
Tim Montague (19:06):
Do you think? Do you think the six cent panels
are truly, what's going intothis story?
John Weaver (19:12):
Absolutely, absolutely. I've read, I've read
about some of the companies andwho's getting products there.
There's some nice product goingthere too. In the bigger
projects, you know, long G Tong,Wei, Ginko, the big companies, I
have micro grid stuff talk aboutfor those areas.
Tim Montague (19:26):
And if you buy, if you buy a six cent solar module
or solar technology, how do you,how do you tamper your or temper
your expectations? What is that?
Is it going to degrade faster?
Is it going to stop working?
What's going to happen?
John Weaver (19:45):
I mean, it should work fine. Maybe it'll be a 20
year panel with cheaper backsheets instead of a 35 year
panel, yeah, because that's whatyou get with those cheaper
panels. You got it. You got sometrade offs, you got some thinner
glass. You got some heavier youknow. Your rail isn't as strong,
maybe your back sheet isthinner. You don't have a
warranty. You can't guaranteethat Chinese company is going to
(20:08):
exist, because those middle andlower size Chinese companies
fight and they're fightingGinko, and they're fighting long
G and the biggest, mostchallenging market on Earth. So
you just gotta recognize it'scomplex and just be happy with
having electricity for 30 bucks.
Tim Montague (20:27):
Yeah. Okay, so you want to move on to Indonesia.
John Weaver (20:32):
Well, this is kind of the opposite of that
Indonesia is doing. Youmentioned micro grids a minute
ago. So they have 80,000villages that they want to give
a one megawatt solar fourmegawatt hour microgrid to wow.
That's like the biggestprocurement ever, first off 80
(20:54):
gigawatts of solar, and then a320 gigawatt hour battery
project to distribute littletiny power plants. This is the
future right here, dude, likelittle tiny power plants across
their country, one and this isagain, another example. Where's
all the SMRs? Everybody kepttelling me, everybody's going to
(21:17):
get a two megawatt 24/7 Nuke,small modular reactor. I don't
see one on Earth, except insubmarines underneath the
Arctic. Yep, you know. So rightnow I got my SMR. This is a
modular fusion fusion reactor.
It's coming from this, straightfrom space. This is the SMR,
yes, sir, right here. Andthere's gonna be 80,000 of them
(21:38):
deployed in Indonesia, and we'regoing to gain some beautiful
expertise. The species willlearning how to do this. So and
then they have another casual 20gigawatts of centralized solar,
awesome. But the what I wasreally psyched about was 80,001
megawatt micro grids spreadacross the country. That is
(21:59):
something, that is something.
Tim Montague (22:04):
Do you know the backstory here? How did, how did
somebody convince Indonesia todo this? This is very cool. I
have to say. Coal
John Weaver (22:13):
is expensive, and they're trying. Indonesia is
like the third, third largestcountry on Earth, like 700
million people. Wait, no,Indonesia population 280, 3
million. That's like fourth. Ithink that puts, you know, we
got India, we got China, we gotthe US, we got Indonesia. Tons
(22:35):
of coal. But, you know, coal isexpensive nowadays, solar is
cheaper getting he can't build acoal power plant in the middle
of the woods, in the middle ofthe jungle. They got a million
islands down there. Man, youcan't build power lines across
that. Not when cyclones and, youknow, ships have to move those
very populated, very, verycomplex areas to move stuff
(22:58):
through infrastructure. So thisis like the ultimate for a
massive island nation. Yeah,they have energy goals, so I
don't know who pushed them, butI think China being a strong
partner and just the way theworld is going is my favorite
story of the week, to be honest,maybe favorite of two weeks.
Tim Montague (23:18):
Yeah, it's a good story. I'd like to learn more
about it, so thank you forbringing that to our attention.
Good story. All right, we'removing on install of the week,
prefab carport, 250 kWprefabricated solar racking
carport, done overnight,
John Weaver (23:38):
overnight. The racking the foundation was
already in place. So let's,let's vet that one. Let's say
that real quick. But they camein with some cranes, and they
dropped 250 kW of prefab modulesinto place, strapped them in
overnight, and the pictures lookcool. That's what I liked about
it,
Tim Montague (23:59):
too. Oh, this is in Australia. Okay,
John Weaver (24:01):
yes, sir, yes, sir.
Yeah. I felt some self esteemchallenges here, Tim, because my
carport installs are nowherenear this cool man, I don't do
250 overnight. I got humanbeings attaching modules, and
they believe 3x faster, 3xproductivity, doing it their
way. And you know what, with theway challenge, how challenging
it is to deploy labor machinesconsistently on site. Yeah, I
(24:24):
believe these guys.
Tim Montague (24:28):
Yeah. I like this concept of a prefab carport. You
can see how those, you know,those tables, call them tables,
right? You can prefab a table,and then you're just craning
that onto the structure andbolting it on instead of, I
mean, today, what they often dois install the well, they I've
(24:49):
seen two approaches. One isinstalling panels on the ground
and then lifting the table buton site. And then two, I've
actually also seen where they'redone. Doing individual modules,
running around with thesescissor lifts or similar. That's
John Weaver (25:07):
what I do. That's what we generally do. We got
lifts and we we got a series oftwo or three machines. You got
one holding the modules, anotherlift in the module, bringing it
up to the guys, and then anotherinstalling. You go to and they
move fast.
Tim Montague (25:23):
Well, you can't move faster than you can move in
a factory. No, of course not. Sowhy is this so new? Why haven't
others done this? I'm
John Weaver (25:33):
sure others have.
If you click the PV magazineAustralia link, there's another
nice image. This image, yeah.
Well, there's a second one onthe hat. Who cares? Oh, there it
is. There it is. That's theimage. Yeah. Oh,
Tim Montague (25:46):
that is cool. Yes.
Are they called tables, or arethey called something
John Weaver (25:51):
else? The we call them tables on single x
trackers, on trackers, we callthem tables. I don't know what
this would be called E, call ita table, yeah, and call whatever
you want. Tim, it's your show.
They call them pods. So from thepost, they call them pods, 36
pods, okay,
Tim Montague (26:14):
36 yep, that's
John Weaver (26:18):
what they deployed.
So about nine kW each, or Yeah,it seems a little strong. Maybe
36 parking spots covered,something like that, but they
mentioned the pod number intheir article. So it's pretty
cool. I like it.
Tim Montague (26:37):
Did they say what the installed cost was? Oh,
John Weaver (26:40):
of course not. Come on, they never give us good
data. Gotta go fight for that.
Now you're interested. I couldtell I interested you in
something
Tim Montague (26:51):
you did. You did well, both these stories are
great. I mean, all the storiesare good. I'm just it's, it's
all relative. I'm a huge fan ofprefab. It's just so smart, so
much more efficient. All right,EIA, US Energy Information
(27:15):
Administration, us developersreport half of new electric
generating capacity will comefrom solar.
John Weaver (27:22):
That's cool, but that's not actually the article
I wanted to highlight on scrolldown a bit. They have a second
chart in this article, and whatI'm really interested in is that
this year, we'll officially seta new record for energy capacity
deployments in the UnitedStates, and we'll break the like
5060, gigawatt record of theearly 2000s which was mostly
(27:43):
gas, but this year will be it,bam. Check it out right there.
That's it. And it's actually alittle bit bigger, because that
doesn't include distributedsolar, so another four or five
gigs AC. So gaining on 70gigawatts of capacity will be
deployed in the United Statesthis year, and that's it. That's
(28:06):
just cool. Still got some jobsand energy, plenty of them.
Tim Montague (28:12):
Yep, yeah, I don't, I don't see, I don't see
the federal plan to revive coal,gas and nuclear, working for
grid operators. Frankly, if I'ma grid operator, I want solar
batteries and wind, because Ihave a fiduciary responsibility
(28:35):
to my investors, whether I'mpublic power or or private. IOU
right, Money talks and and thething that keeps coming up is
solar, wind and batteries arecheaper and faster, and speed
matters when all these datacenters and all this electric
(28:57):
vehicle infrastructure is comingonline like you got to be able
to deploy this stuff in three tofive years, not five to 10 or
five to 15 years in the case ofa nuclear power plant, right?
Yeah, just not. This is,
John Weaver (29:15):
you know, this looks at, yeah, this looks at,
you know, solar and storage,both as generation. And I
believe that storage should beconsidered a generation asset,
because that generation wouldn'thave existed otherwise. And so
while it may come from anothersource, I guess that generation
would have existed would havecome from gas. But when it comes
(29:36):
to solar, batteries that chargefrom solar, it wouldn't have
existed because that solar wouldhave been curtailed. You know,
we talked about it last showabout California's curtailment
being limited by batteries,which is great. I believe
batteries should be considered ageneration source as they are.
Tim Montague (29:56):
Yep. And you know this. Uh, points. Points out
that Texas is a huge part ofthis phenomenon. And I was
looking at the ERCOT dashboardfor July. 50% of Texas's grid
power came from solar, wind andbatteries. That's so cool. Um,
(30:17):
now it'll be less in the winter,but, yeah, it's solar. Wind and
batteries are a major force nowin the ERCOT grid and Texas
installed 11 gigawatts of solarlast year. Most states in the US
are lucky if they install onegigawatt, right? There might be
(30:41):
15 states in the gigawatt I callit the gigawatt club. How many
states per are installing morethan a gigawatt of solar? John,
I'm
John Weaver (30:50):
gonna say 21
Tim Montague (30:53):
Whoa. You think?
Let's see
John Weaver (30:56):
as of early 20 Okay, so the Google,
Tim Montague (31:00):
we better perplexity this one? Yeah,
John Weaver (31:03):
I google told me 33 No, but have more than one
gigawatt of capacity?
Tim Montague (31:09):
No, I'm talking about
John Weaver (31:10):
per year. Yeah, that's a good number. Yeah, I
don't know that's a goodquestion. So
Tim Montague (31:15):
it's too bad that it's so hard to say perplexity,
but perplexity is a way bettersearch engine. And so maybe the
term is plexig it. Maybe youneed to Plex it instead of
Google it. There are six statesthat are installing more than
one gigawatt per year as of 2024California, Texas, Indiana,
(31:37):
Arizona, Michigan, Florida andNew York,
John Weaver (31:41):
I was more than six. It sounded like 1234567,
Tim Montague (31:47):
it lied. It said that was six. All right, you
gotta check, you gotta check thefacts. But
John Weaver (31:54):
all right, let's ask chat. Let's Okay. Chat. How
many states in the USA installedmore than one gigawatt AC of
solar. Let's see what the chatsays. Well, 33 states have
broken.
Tim Montague (32:11):
Yeah, that's the install base. 33 states. And
that's good, because just a fewyears ago, that number was more
like 10, the number of stateswith an install base of over a
gigawatt so,
John Weaver (32:25):
so, uh, a link to SPC global said, uh, 13 states
at a greater than one gigawattof solar in 2023 how's that for
you? And that's a chat GPT, andit always gives me a link,
because I demand it with allanswers that it ever gives. How
many states? 13 states addedover one gigawatt of new solar
(32:46):
capacity in 2024 according toenergy global.
Tim Montague (32:49):
Don't believe it.
I don't believe it for a second.
John Weaver (32:53):
I got a lake better. It's better than
perplexity. Who couldn't
Tim Montague (32:56):
even say that number is twice the perplexity
figure. Hey, all right, we'regonna have to report back next
week. We'll do a deep dive, andwe'll we'll report back. We'll
find the real numbers. Great,great. All right, let's talk
about hurricanes and solar,because sometimes solar doesn't
survive the extreme weather. Youhave a story in PV magazine,
(33:21):
field tested hurricane survivalstrategies for solar I'm sure
this is referencing our friends,arrow,
John Weaver (33:31):
B, E, R, Y, l was the hurricane, Hurricane barrel,
something like that, yeah. Butwho wrote the report Rmi, Rocky
Mountain institution, yeah, butisn't Chris
Tim Montague (33:44):
Rosalind, Chris Needham.
John Weaver (33:46):
Needham, Needham, I don't know if he still works
there. Maybe he does. He wasjust in Alaska, though, we
should get that guy in the showsometime. I mean, he's got his
own show, but, yeah,
Tim Montague (33:56):
Chris Needham has a show. Think so
John Weaver (33:58):
maybe, maybe not. I don't know much, all
Tim Montague (34:02):
right, I'm gonna put this on screen. I do like go
down to the I like looking atphotos of failed solar projects.
It's a strange view. Yeah, lookat that mess. That's what
hurricanes do to solar arrays.
But, you know, they do that toall kinds of infrastructure. So
it's like, well, yeah, duh. Thethe wind was over 100 miles an
(34:24):
hour. What was the wind for thisphoto? Do we know?
John Weaver (34:28):
Well, I don't know this photo, but I know this
storm was a category five. So,yeah,
Tim Montague (34:33):
that's 150 plus.
John Weaver (34:36):
So the key thing about this article, I think it
gives explicit lists. Here wego. You get these common faults.
What breaks the most commonthing are cheap clamps, mid
clamps. You need to throughbolt, and that's really the
fundamental the thing thatcaused the most damages is how
you bolt your modules to yourracking structure on in these
regions. That's number one. Soif you do a through bolt,
(34:58):
meaning you. Put the bolt intothe solar panel, and then it
goes through your racking, andyou put a nut on the back that
is your strongest and then yougot to do it a quality now, it's
got to be stainless steel. It'sgot to be tagged. It's got to
have something going on and andso get through bolting. But
there's an interesting thing, ifyou scroll down modules that are
(35:21):
too thin, they'll rip off thatthrough bolt. So not only do you
have to through bolt, you haveto through bolt, it with a piece
of metal that's strong. Sothat's just important,
Tim Montague (35:33):
yeah, um, I need to scroll down. Okay, yeah, you
John Weaver (35:38):
just see a nice picture. Keep going a tiny bit.
Keep going. Keep going. Rightnear the end. Little farther
right there. That's a throughbolted module. Good policy, good
practice. That little metalthat's coming back is what's
left of the module after wasripped off because the frame is
too thin and cheap. Thin framesare great in the desert, but not
(36:03):
in 150 mile per hour currenthurricane region. Yeah, have
multiple your weakest link willbe found.
Tim Montague (36:13):
So Chris Needham has been on the show. I thought
he had his company is calledazimuth advisory services, and
yeah, he is one of the authorsof this report. Oh, check out
episode 247, of the Clean PowerHour. Him and his partner in
crime, whose name is Frankoudhuizen, ood Houston. He has a
(36:37):
Dutch name. It's a it'spronounced, tricky to pronounce.
But anyway, Frank and Chris,they're the real deal. They are
racking geeks, hardcore. They dothese studies on failures in the
field. And if you're an assetowner, you want to hire these
guys and look at what, whatracking you're using in your
(36:59):
solar projects, if it's in aterritory that might have hail
or hurricanes or tornadoes orwhat else, that's about it.
John Weaver (37:12):
Well, tornadoes, I don't know, man, solar system,
Tim Montague (37:20):
yeah, good luck.
John Weaver (37:22):
Yeah. I mean, hurricanes are, I mean, I guess,
you know, lower speed tornadoesare the same thing as
hurricanes. And, you know, highspeed hurricanes, you know,
because low speed tornadoes getup to 1/5 you know, start in the
130s 140s but I don't know,tornadoes just seem so much more
violent than a hurricane. Itjust, it just seems that way.
(37:44):
So,
Tim Montague (37:46):
should we do another story or what? What do
you think? All right,
John Weaver (37:52):
how about, uh, how about we go to the last one?
Well, yeah, we do the one beforethat cool looking building. You
know, I talk a lot about newenergy storage capacity, you
know, it's, it's, it's growingCanada's dominating capacity
deployed. So energy storagecapacity deployed globally might
(38:13):
reach pumped hydro soon, yeah,share this building time. This
is, isn't it cool?
Tim Montague (38:18):
This is a cool photo. Yes.
John Weaver (38:24):
So it's a tall structure, yeah, check out this
photo. So is that real? Yeah,there's a document in within the
blue sky linkage that it goesback to the original document,
and they actually have picturesof the construction of it, and
some good a couple of neat this
Tim Montague (38:40):
is like balcony solar on steroids. Yes,
John Weaver (38:44):
absolutely, yeah. I mean, and it seems reasonable,
like the you could clean it. Youdon't want people putting food
and planters on top of it orsomething.
Tim Montague (38:56):
Yeah,
John Weaver (38:58):
but it's neat. I love this idea. This is just so
cool. It's shade. It absorbs. Itseems accessible. It's a lot of
capacity.
Tim Montague (39:09):
And this is China, right? I think Germany. What?
John Weaver (39:14):
Yeah, yeah, close it, yeah. I think it's Germany.
From what I read, the source isa gentleman I follow. It's one
Tim Montague (39:20):
of the only people. It's got some cool east
west rocking on the top too.
John Weaver (39:24):
Oh, I didn't even notice that. Didn't even notice
that. Look at that. That'sclean,
Tim Montague (39:28):
yep.
John Weaver (39:30):
Just just cool looking building. I just was
really when I saw it the firsttime. Yeah, you get to see some
up close stuff, yeah. So this isdefinitely
Tim Montague (39:39):
real, man. Like, I like to say, if you want to see
the future of solar, go toNorthern Europe or China to
both. Absolutely, I'm not in ahurry to go to China, but
someday
John Weaver (39:52):
I'll be there. Next June, I'm going to go into
snack. Oh yes, wow. That's theirbig soul. That's the biggest the
world. Biggest solar conference.
So slowly, go in the snack.
Tim Montague (40:03):
What? What's, what's, what's the the impetus
behind that,
John Weaver (40:07):
it's China. It's gotta go. I mean, PV magazine is
heavy in China. You know, theguys that I've met, Victor and,
oh my goodness, I've just forgothis name, Curtis, they're so
awesome. The guys that write forPV magazine, and they're based
in China, okay? They knowthey're just great guys to talk
to. And, you know, hanging outat PV magazine, and I hear that
(40:30):
there's like 12 rooms, and eachone is a conference of its own.
And even the professionals, youonly get through, like three or
four, one per day type of thing.
I you know everybody'sexaggerating, but it's the
place, so you gotta go there.
Gotta go there once. I'll bethere next June.
Tim Montague (40:47):
Cool. I love it.
Can't wait to hear about thattrip. Wow, we'll tell you all
right. Well, let's wrap it up.
Check out all of our content atclean power hour.com, we're on
YouTube. We're on audio, AppleSpotify. I'm on LinkedIn. Reach
out to me. Love to hear from mylisteners. How about you? John,
where can people find you?
John Weaver (41:08):
Commercial? Solar guy, calm, really. Best place
you know, LinkedIn, all over.
Check out our post there. Try tobe educational, but commercial.
Solar guy.com, 5084, 99, nine,son, I forget my own phone
number sometimes.
Tim Montague (41:26):
And when you call that number, does a human pick
up
John Weaver (41:29):
first? It goes to Craig. He's our sales guy. So,
yes, okay, yes, human being willpick it up. Human
Tim Montague (41:34):
in the loop. Yes, sir. All right. All right. Well,
thank you so much. John Weaver,commercial solar guy, and we'll
see you in two weeks. Have agreat one. Let's grow solar.
You.
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