April 22, 2025 • 46 mins
Join Tim Montague and John Weaver for this bi-weekly Solar & Storage News LIVE, where they dive deep into the latest developments shaping the solar industry. In this April 18, 2025, episode, our hosts explore critical industry updates from policy battles to technological breakthroughs that could reshape the future of renewable energy.
The discussion evolves into a broader conversation about America's position in the global renewable energy race, particularly in relation to China's aggressive advancement in solar, battery, and EV technologies.
Key Topics Covered:
- IRA Update: Bipartisan support grows with legislators stating opposition to wholesale repeal
- Oxford PV Breakthrough: The company signs a landmark perovskite silicon tandem patent licensing agreement with Trina Solar
- Global Solar Milestone: Solar power surpasses 10% of global electricity consumption in 2024
- Silver Prices Impact: 21% increase in silver prices affects solar manufacturing costs and innovations
- China vs. US: Analysis of technology leadership in renewable energy and the importance of collaboration
- Safety Alert: Discussion on workplace safety following a tragic wind turbine accident
- Project Updates: Real-world challenges including foundation issues in carport installations
- Copper Theft: Law enforcement tackles organized copper theft targeting solar plants in Spain
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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, bringingyou solar, battery and wind
energy news on a bi weekly basisnow with my co host, John
Weaver, welcome to the show,commercial solar guy.
John Weaver (00:14):
Hello, Timothy.
Thank you for bringing me backyet again. Hope you're having a
nice day.
Tim Montague (00:19):
Life is good.
Spring is sprung here in centralIllinois. It's very blustery,
but warm, and I am just happyit's warm.
John Weaver (00:30):
Good, good starts.
I'm wearing short sleeves rolledup with no jacket, no hat, no
nothing. Yeah, I gotta wear myhat because it's sunny again,
and you know that type of thing.
So I'm enjoying it. It's thestart. It's the start of the
season.
Tim Montague (00:45):
Well, let's jump right into it. You got a story
on blue sky, a wholesale repealor the termination of certain
individual credits would createuncertainty, jeopardizing
capital allocation, long termproject planning and job
creation in the energy sector.
What a concept. Yeah, repealingthe IRA is really not a good
(01:06):
thing for the US economy. Butwhat did the senators have to
say?
John Weaver (01:17):
So there were four senators and 21 representatives,
and this is, you know, slightlyaged news, you know, a couple
weeks months for therepresentatives, maybe two
months and but essentially, 21House of Representatives
Republicans came out and saidthey didn't want to repeal the
(01:39):
IRA. And then four senators cameout and said the same, I
believe, based on those numbers,if those people were to hold
hard and say, No, we don't wantto do that, that would be enough
to protect the IRA as a whole,as well sia the solar energy
(02:02):
Manufacturers Association. Ithink I always mix up the last
number, letter or two, yeah,
Tim Montague (02:08):
Industries Association, technically, but
yeah, it's, it's an industryassociation.
John Weaver (02:13):
So sia sent out an email which kind of suggested
that it looked like we might beokay, and we need to reach out
to our senators and say, Thankyou. Um, in fact, the apparently
the reconciliation bills, whichis where it was thought the IRA
(02:35):
might get attacked. I thinkbased on my reading, these
reconciliation bills have beencompleted, or at least started
to be moved with but in, withinthe Senate and within the house,
and a version, a high levelversion, has been approved. I
don't know the dynamics. I'm nota politician yet, but it just it
(02:58):
feels like, at least, I mean, itfeels like we're definitely not
going to see a wholesale justcanceling of it. We still might
see some refinement. It might beshortened. We might see we might
see it slow down faster. Youknow, there just, there might be
a few other things. But again,it just, it doesn't feel right
(03:21):
now we're going to see a majorrepeal, and it doesn't feel like
we're going to see the wholething get hacked, hacked up. Um,
there's a senator from Nevadawho was interviewed recently
saying he's not going. He saidit's a red line for for him to
see the lithium productioncredits and the EV incentives
(03:47):
from going away, yeah, and thisguy in this article from Nevada,
he was talking about how thelike finding gold back in the
day, all the money ended upgoing across. He called the
hill, which I think means theRocky Mountains, but, or
something, some mountain rangebetween Nevada and San
Francisco. And it's not theRockies, it's uh, maybe the
(04:09):
Sierra Nevadas, but um. And hesaid, I don't want to see that
happen again. I want to see thelithium wealth stay here. We
have we have the resources. Wehave this, we have that. So in
my opinion, biggest thing I'veseen come out over the last week
was that letter from sia saying,hey, reach out to your people.
(04:30):
We're in the home run, or we'rein the the final run of it. We
feel, I don't know it just ithad a, it wasn't a, like a super
rah, rah email, but it was onethat had a, I would say, a
positive ish feeling in it. Sofor that, you know, that's a
good emotion, yeah,
Tim Montague (04:50):
you know, I ran into Costa Nicolaou at
InterSolar in February in SanDiego and coast. Is a long time
CEO. Board member. He's the alsothe CEO of panel claw, the
number one flat roof rackingcompany in the United States. If
you don't know about panel claw,you know many installers, John
coming from resi and lightcommercial into flat roof large
(05:14):
commercial. Just don't knowabout some of these companies.
But panel claw is a major, majormanufacturer. Anyway, Coast has
been on the show three times,something like that, and we did
a quick interview about thisphenomenon. And to some extent,
it's Clash of the Titans now,because on the one side, we have
oil and gas trying to keep a lidon renewables, because they see
(05:38):
the writing on the wall thatsolar and wind are eating their
lunch. Yep. And, and now we're asizable industry creating lots
of jobs on shoring manufacturingof batteries, EVs, wind
turbines, solar panels, andsomeday inverters, not very many
inverters yet, being made in theUS, but it's coming and and so
(06:03):
these are major economic forces.
And I just say, look, oil andgas, you know, you you've got
plenty of subsidies already. Youdon't need to beat us up. You
don't need to continue to try tosquash us. You can't, truly, you
can't squash renewable energy.
(06:23):
It's too big. And this is goodfor the US economy. It's good
for national security. John likethat's what concerns me, is that
China is going hard after theenergy transition. Yeah, they're
building nuclear. Yeah, they'rebuilding coal plants, but
they're also building batteries,EVs and solar, and their EV
(06:46):
technology has surpassed ours.
If you scour the web for peoplethat have actually visited China
recently and sat in some ofthese Chinese cars that Huawei
is making now, for example,their minds are getting blown.
And I'm just like, great, we'regetting left in the dust. The
the future is AI, robotics,renewable energy,
(07:08):
electrification of everything,and we're stuck on, well, let's
just pump up oil and gas. I justdon't see that serving the
future of America. And,
John Weaver (07:20):
you know, China sees renewables two ways, one
way, and they've explicitly saidit is as literally an economic
tool, like not just a tool forthe purpose of building it, but
as it's so big now that for themit's like the Federal Reserve
(07:41):
lowering interest rates, or thegreen New Deal. It's a program
whose purpose is to pump theeconomy. So it's beyond just
energy security, which is reallyinteresting. That's what the IRA
was as well. It was more thanjust a tool for energy it's also
a tool for jobs. It's a tool forpushing things and and political
(08:06):
tool now. So, so renewables aregoing beyond just energy, beyond
cleaning energy. And then, ofcourse, China sees it. I'm
certain, from a secondperspective, a nation state,
geopolitical one, if China is nolonger dependent on importing
fuel oil gas, then if they needto go into a complex military
(08:31):
situation, for instance, whenthey choose to reintegrate
Taiwan, um, they're no longergoing to be susceptible to
external forces cutting offresource supplies, because all
they got to do is wake up nextmorning and there will be more
(08:52):
electricity. All they got to dois wait for the next breeze to
come by. There's going to bemore electricity. And if their
vehicles are electric, if theirweapons are electric, you know,
that starts to, starts to tiltthe world in a certain way,
where, where energy, energywarfare, will change. And so we
(09:14):
should be conscious on multiplelevels. I mean, we really should
be just caring about climatechange, but we should be
conscious, and that's why Bidenmade solar panels part of the
very specific military purpose,and nobody really acted on it to
make use of it, but what itallowed the federal government
(09:36):
to invest in it as if it were awartime investment, and that was
specifically solar panel modulefactories. And now, uh, Trump
has removed that designation,but it says tell you that some
people are looking at it andthinking about it that way, very
much. So, so, yeah, you know,our job is just to build, keep
going. Every panel I put in theground, I'm like, that's 30
(09:58):
years of energy. That's how.
Makes me feel and, you know, andeven if the world goes mad max,
it'd be really great to knowthat there are billions of solar
panels distributed that can berepurposed. And I know that
sounds a little, you know,chaotic, but you know, we're not
necessarily a smart speciesalways. So one day maybe that's,
Tim Montague (10:21):
well, yeah, I mean, if you are, if you truly
are a prepper, preparing for theend of days, whatever that means
you're into solar and batterieslike that doesn't need a
external fuel source, right?
It's got a fuel source from thesky. And if that fuel source is
gone, then we have biggerproblems. So let's talk about
Oxford. PV. That name will notbe due to our listeners, but
(10:46):
they've been kind of quiet forthe last couple of years, so I'm
glad to see that they're back inthe news, and they have struck a
deal with Trina. I'll get thison screen. But why don't you
tell us what the story is? Thisis in PV tech, Oxford PV, Trina
Solar enter perovskite silicontandem patent licensing
(11:08):
agreement.
John Weaver (11:12):
So Oxford PV, which is an Oxford, UK based company,
has been talking aboutperovskites for a lot of years.
I've interviewed them at leastin 2020 and they said they were
going to deploy modules thatyear. They didn't, but it seems
(11:35):
like they deployed a smallvolume into Texas. I don't know
if that's actually occurred, butwhat's really coming into view,
though, is that Oxford PV isprobably just going to be a
patent company, and now they'retrying to leverage that patent
strength. I've heard from otherfolks, when I've asked
questions, what what their goalis, and but whatever they're, if
(11:56):
they're the company that has thepatents that somebody wants,
great Trina one of the world'slargest, if not the world's
largest, solar panelmanufacturer. Maybe it's jinko.
I always mix up jinko TrinaLongy. They're all in the top.
But Trina has signed what seemslike an agreement of some sorts
(12:17):
for perovskites in China,specifically. And Trina also put
out an 808 watt module recentlythat was perovskites. It's the
first time I've seen a fulllarge module tested and approved
by one of the testing agencies.
I believe it was TV in Germany,in Europe. And so I'm starting
(12:38):
to get a little more, you know,little happier. I saw some
respectable organizations sayinglarge scale perovskite module
manufacturing should come in 27that's the closest I've seen
somebody say it prior. It'salways been five years. So it
just it seems like stuff iscoming more more and more every
(13:01):
day there's manufacturing linesbeing built across China for
perovskite tandem perovskite,silicon tandem modules, GCL
poly. Last summer, when I was inInterSolar in Munich, Germany, I
interviewed them on theirs andtheir unit, they were very happy
(13:21):
with it. Still had a lot oftesting, but they were moving
with it, and just like yesterdayor your last three days long, G
put out a new press releasesaying their silicon, or
perovskite silicon tandem cellhit 34.8 something percent, oh,
inches away from 35% solar cell.
(13:44):
Tim, so it's just, it's coming,and it's going to be here, and
it's probable, it's probablethat it's not going to come to
the United States for a littlewhile, but they're going to hit
the field, they're going to hitthe world, and it's going to
expand, and we're going to havemodules that are 33% within I
(14:04):
don't know, maybe by 2030 wemight see a module at 30% plus
is my is my hope, and that wouldbe really massive, because it'll
lower the cost of install andand it sets a path toward A 45%
solar cell and a 43% module,which would just be awesome, and
it might come close to cuttingthe cost of solar electricity,
(14:29):
maybe not in half, but like 3540% because every time you go up
1% you drop the LCOE, thelevelized cost of electricity
coming out of a module by youknow, if you go up 1% from 20%
that's a 5% and it's 4.8 4.7 4.6so by the time you get to like
(14:49):
42 you're at like 45% off thelevelized cost of electricity,
when solar is at a 20% efficientmodule. And. If and if the price
of electricity is three centsper kilowatt hour at that
number, without incentives. Thatmeans we're talking penny and a
half without incentives for aperovskite silicon module. And
(15:14):
that's just cool. That means,like in the Middle East, we'll
see the cost well under a penny,because their cost, you know,
Saudi Arabia, because theirnumbers don't include things in
the US. If we have an IRAattached to it, we'll probably
see a power purchase agreementapproach a penny is, is what my
little dreams are. So it's,it's, it's, we're just, we're
(15:38):
moving on stuff. And it makes mehappy. It makes me happy to see
it.
Tim Montague (15:41):
Yeah, I I got to talk to Matt Campbell at Terra
base when I was in San Diego,and dropped an interview with
him recently. I think it waslast week that penny a watt,
Penny a kWh really is the holygrail for unlocking green
hydrogen, but I agree. I'mexcited to see these tandem
(16:06):
cells coming to market. And youknow, in that story, the
efficiencies mentioned were 25to 27% so they're nipping at 30%
and my only question is, what isthe durability of the
perovskite? That's one of thechallenges with perovskites, is
those materials tend to breakdown faster than traditional PV
(16:31):
technology, and that's whythey've been slow to come to
market. But they're solving thatproblem. I don't know how
they're solving that problem,but presumably they're solving
that problem. You can't haveyour solar panels degrading in
the sun, yeah,
John Weaver (16:46):
so, so a couple things on that. First, solar
panels do degrade in the sun,half
Tim Montague (16:52):
a percent per year is, is kind of the rule of
thumb. I mean, a higher qualitypanel is as low as a quarter of
a percent, right? Or glass
John Weaver (17:01):
glass. Some people have suggested borderline zero
half with 1000 hour acceleratedtesting. But so but what's I
have seen GCL poly say, theirsolar their perovskite panel
passes silicon degradation testsin the way silicon would degrade
(17:24):
and had a rate that was similarto silicon. However, the person
at the booth was very explicit.
He said, listen, just because wecan pass these tests doesn't
mean we can pass those othertests, because we don't even
know what the other tests are.
We don't know how perovskitescould potentially fail, because
it's a new thing. We've beenmessing with silicon since like,
(17:47):
2055 or, sorry, 1955 right? 2055so, 75 oh, yeah, yeah. So it's,
you know, but yes, it seems likepeople believe it, because
there's perovskite solar panelsin the field today being used.
And, you know, one megawatthere, one megawatt there,
(18:09):
probably less than 100 megawattstotal, but they're out there and
they're being tested and they'rebeing looked at. And I feel
hopeful. I feel hopeful, youknow, I am always hopeful,
because I love the new tech, butI just I feel good about it so
cool. It's cool. Let's goperovskites. Let's
Tim Montague (18:27):
talk about solar supplied over 10% of global
electricity consumption in 2024story and PB magazine by Ryan
Kennedy, cumulative solarinstallations climbed 37% from
1.6 terawatts to 2.2 terawatts.
Last year, said the IEA
John Weaver (18:49):
and 10% is just a nice, cool, chunky number. Um,
it's just, you know, the thejoke is the first million is the
hardest. When you go from zeroto one, that's the biggest
number, because you growinfinitely. And now we're at 10%
(19:11):
and that's pretty cool, andwe're still in a time where
we're now growing by massivevolumes of capacity. And I just,
I saw the 10% number. I waslike, oh, man, that's, that's
just cool. And I don't know, Ijust, I'm happy to see it. It's,
it's really just a headlinenumber. I don't have any in
(19:33):
depth discussion on this one.
It's just like, hey, heyeverybody. We're there. We hit
this thing and, and it's abeautiful number, and let's be
let's pat ourselves on the backa little. Let's be happy. And I
don't know, it's just cool. It'scool to see it there. We're
there, so close, and we'removing. We're all working, man,
(19:54):
we're all working hard. And it'sjust, it's nice to see it. So I.
So I'm just, I just thought itwas cool seeing a big, pretty
number. And there it is,
Tim Montague (20:04):
and it's a good reminder that we here in the US,
yeah, we've reached, as thisarticle says, 8% of total
electricity with solar in 2024so we're average, right? We're
at the global average now andbut look at China. John, China
is generating as much solarelectricity as the rest of the
(20:27):
world combined. Almost Fun fact,China produces 10 times more
STEM graduates than the UnitedStates and more graduates in
STEM science, technology,engineering and mathematics,
right? More more graduates thanthe rest of the world combined.
(20:52):
So we have to be careful aboutgoing to war with China. It
might sound good in a soundbite, we're going to be tough on
China, but we have to recognizethat they are such a powerhouse.
Now this is not the China of the80s. You know, we like to pick
(21:12):
on China for being a copycat,but now China is truly a
technology powerhouse andinnovator of their own. And this
graph demonstrates that, to behonest.
John Weaver (21:28):
Yeah, I, you know, I saw a neat little chart.
Actually, China and the US havea similar percentage of
electricity from wind and solar,and it was almost the same
chart, like somebody laid overthe two and it showed it going
(21:49):
seasonally. And they also had asimilar curve. You know, China
uses about two or three timesmore electricity than us, and
they have two or three moretimes of solar. But that was
just a really neat curve to see.
Yeah, and it was, I was justsurprised. I was, I don't know,
my brain wasn't going that way.
It wasn't thinking, Oh, Chinaand the US have the same but
(22:12):
percentage wise, it was almostthe same two lines. One was
green, one was blue, and theyjust kind of wiggled up words to
the right. And I was like, cool,and that's kind of nice, because
China and the US are the twolargest users of electricity in
the world. If those two groupscan hold together and do some
good work, man, that's that'lljust help us as a species. So go
(22:35):
us. Go China, keep building.
Yeah,
Tim Montague (22:37):
I think it's a both. And this should be the age
of collaboration, right? Wefilled the earth with our stuff.
We won. Humans won the battleagainst nature. And if we
continue to be tribal and pickon each other and create
conflict with one another,that's just gonna expose us to
(23:01):
so many pitfalls, and it's goingto hold us back from the next
potential age of prosperity forour children's children like we
have a lot of cool things aheadof us if we're careful. And
right now, we're not being verycareful, we're being very
boneheaded and tribal, and we'repicking on one another and
(23:22):
spending a lot of energy doingthat, right? And it's just us.
It's just a suck on oureconomies. Yeah, okay, it's
economic growth to build weaponsof mass destruction, you could
make that argument. And so if weweren't in conflict with one
another or some kind of armsrace, maybe there wouldn't be as
much innovation, but there wouldbe different kinds of
(23:43):
innovation. Think aboutinnovation in healthcare, right,
and providing for less fortunateand and truly creating a
wonderful future for everyone.
We have the resources to dothat. It's a choice. Choice,
choice
John Weaver (24:02):
without doubt. Oh, that's just cool. 10% man, first
10% is hardest. First 1% artist,first everything's the hardest,
but we're doing them, and it'sjust neat. Good job solar. Good
job everybody who's installingit around the whole world.
Awesome.
Tim Montague (24:20):
Yeah, it is. It is a feel good industry to work in.
I'm very happy to work in thesolar industry. I'm very happy
that my soon to be 23 year oldson works in solar. He's having
a birthday in May, and I tellhim he has 30 years of pure
happiness ahead of him, if heplays his cards, right? So we
(24:44):
have another story in PVmagazine, this one by Emiliano
Bellini, average silver price up21% in 2024 says silver
Institute. So the PV industryhappens to have an affinity for
silver. It sounds. Like
John Weaver (25:01):
so I did a little math. Solar used 17% of all
solar mind in 2027 I thoughtthat was kind of a neat number.
I calculated it from here. Did alittle work. What was really
interesting, though, and I don'tknow fully how to parse this
(25:21):
yet, because I don't think ourtechnology has advanced that
fast. But maybe reallyinteresting is that solar grew
33% we went from 450 Meg gigs to600 gigs. So we added 150 gigs,
which is 1/3 of 450 to get to600 so we grew by 33% but our
(25:45):
silver use grew by one half of1% and I don't even know I that
number is so astounding, mydefault is that there's
something wrong somewhere. So Iredid the math in a spreadsheet
instead of just using acalculator, so I can't mess up
and and that. And so first off,17% I had no idea we were using
(26:10):
17% I knew that solar silver wasreally used a lot by solar, but
I just didn't know it was 17% asbig number. Yeah, that's pretty
cool. Um, and then if you do themath on it, uh, roughly silver
at 30 bucks an ounce, and rightnow it's about 28 bucks an
ounce, but at 30 bucks an ounce,it's about one cent per watt.
(26:36):
And if you think about the priceof a solar panel these days, 10
cents, 11 cents, 12 cents,that's 10% of the cost of a
solar panel. Is the silver whichis kind of interesting. I happen
to see also another article atthe same like this morning,
Fraunhofer, the ResearchInstitute in Germany, solar
(26:59):
research institute, they put outa press release saying that they
got hetero junction solar cellsin a model down to two
milligrams of silver per watt.
If I do the math on 2024 itlooks like currently there's 10
(27:21):
milligrams of silver per watt,and so Fraunhofer sees a path to
drop silver usage by 80% nowwithin that, and I didn't get
too deep into the researchpaper, but Within that, they
also talked about blending solarwith or silver with copper, and
(27:42):
then doing pure copper. Sothere's places where they can
believe in copper, can gettingstuff done. But it's just kind
of neat to see the advancementand what's happening with um
silver and how it's in inhardware. And it represents our
constant evolution in ourindustry. So you There are
modules out there, very highefficiency with silver, but
(28:03):
generally silver, or, sorry,with copper. Generally silver is
better because, I guess it'smore conductive and easier to
work with, and it can be spraypainted, sort of kind of thinner
and so you don't block thesunlight copper, though, if you
have a back contact solar cell,you don't block the sunlight on
(28:27):
the front. And so I think it'sIco Ika. They have the 25%
module that's out they have aback contact silver or copper
module. No silver in it at all.
So it's out there, and there's aAustralian company pushing
Copper instead of silver. Soeither way, it's a penny per
(28:48):
watt right now, cost of silverin your modules, it might drop
to a quarter of a penny per wattin the future. So, so silver,
Silver's Cool, man, solar peopleshould start buying silver, just
to, you know, represent, but nottoo much, because you don't want
to drive up the price.
Tim Montague (29:05):
It's a really good conductor, which is why it's
used in solar panels. It'sinteresting, John, that precious
metals, including copper, likehumans historically, have made a
lot of jewelry and things thatwe think makes make us sexy
right out of copper, gold,silver, titanium, but gold,
(29:30):
silver and copper, those threemetals are also amazing
conductors, but also justattractive to humans. It's
interesting that there is thatit's completely coincidental, I
think. But who knows? Well,
John Weaver (29:46):
gold, I mean, I've read about gold and why it is
the most important metal, andit's, you know, there's like, it
doesn't go bad and it doesn't
Tim Montague (29:56):
tarnish and it doesn't oxidize, you. Oxidized,
John Weaver (30:00):
yeah. And so there's a reason it's people
like gold. I've only read thatabout gold once, because
everybody's like, Why gold? Whygold? And somebody went down
this list, and he looked atevery element this author, and
they said, well, we can't dothis one. We can't do this one.
Can't do this one. You know,gold is like, almost the only
one that aligns with this longlist of traits that people are
(30:22):
like, Yeah, this makes it apressure, the precious metal,
and that was interesting.
Tim Montague (30:29):
So I can, I can list a few, but maybe you could
list a few more. It's it's rare.
It doesn't oxidize, it's shiny,it's pretty it's easy to work
with. It has a low meltingtemperature. What else is it
that makes it gold soattractive? Well,
John Weaver (30:46):
let's see, gold is perceived millennia jewelry.
Individual is rare. It'smalleable. It's useful inside of
people. It's durable, noncoronavisive, magnetic. This
one. I'm just doing the Googlefast to see, to see of all the
118 periodic okay. Oh, here itis. So well this. This person
(31:11):
started with the here. I'll justpost it in the room chat, in
case anybody's super interested.
But like this article, you seehim start going down. He says,
like, all right, in thealkalines, we can't use those,
because if they get wet, theyblow up. So, you know, gold
doesn't blow up when you get itwet. That's a good one. Thorium,
uranium, plutonium, those killyou. Rare earths can't really
(31:32):
find them, not easily, at least.
And then we get to the 49elements that he said considers
realistic iron, aluminum,copper, lead. So iron terrible,
because there's so much of it,it goes down in price. Copper,
same thing. Lead, same thing.
Now we're getting to the nobleelements. Oh, they're gasses. So
(31:55):
that's, you know, platinum. Youcan't work with platinum because
it's melting is 17 168 degreesCelsius. Now at least two silver
and gold. You know, I flipped, Iskipped a couple, but, uh, gold
ends up being it, and goldinertness is one of the things
(32:16):
that it has. And, you know, he'sjust got this neat little list
where he just breaks down, youknow, and that article kind of
goes through it, and I've seenit more in depth, but, uh, you
know, it doesn't catch on fire.
It's naturally that's kind of anice thing.
Tim Montague (32:35):
Yeah, it's a bummer about lithium. Um, yeah,
okay. Well, you have an unhappystory to share. I'm really sad
to see this actually. Is thisyour project? John, yes,
John Weaver (32:46):
sir, it's been fixed. Just been fixed. But yes,
wow.
Tim Montague (32:50):
So, yeah, just, just a couple of news cycles
ago, we were showing photos ofthis project under construction,
yeah, and that that was like ahole in the ground, and they
were pouring the concrete, andnow they're having to dig it up,
apparently.
John Weaver (33:04):
Yeah. Well, this was only four of the foundations
out of about 60, but four ofthem were delivered with the
wrong with the wrong bolt. Andyou can see the bolts kind of
sticking out of the top of theconcrete on that image. Yeah,
but those bolts are one inchdiameter, and they were supposed
to be one and one quarter inchdiameter, and that means you
(33:26):
can't, can't go forward withthat. So so that, and we fixed
it. It was, we had niceconversation between us and the
manufacturer to decide who isgoing to be at fault. We decided
to split it because they sent usthe wrong product. Yeah, we
didn't check it. Is how theargument went. And so, yeah, so
(33:49):
that's how it works. So, yeah.
So there you can see us tearingup some stuff. There's a lot of
CO two in that pile of garbage,which is, you know, breaks your
heart, but now we're puttingmodules on those car ports at
this time, really, yeah, yeah,oh, yeah. We're done with that.
We're moving on to the next wehave a new project where we're
pouring new foundationsdifferent city. And so this
(34:11):
project, all the car ports areconstructed fully, all
assembled, and we're moving onto installing modules at this
point, and that's pretty nice.
So we've got our first, I don'tknow, 150 modules done so far on
this project. So moving along, Iwould remove that. Whenever some
(34:37):
weird plug in pops up on mybrowser. Tim, it is immediately
deleted.
Tim Montague (34:41):
Yeah, no, that's there on purpose. I want to try
that tool, but not right now.
John Weaver (34:50):
We can show everybody you know, if there
were people in our chat room,they could tell us whether they
want to see you work on thattool. So if you want to tell Tim
to use a tool during the middleof the clean power. Hour, you
need to log in and say, what'sup.
Tim Montague (35:05):
So we have another PV magazine story. Where's the
John Weaver PV magazine stories?
John, I don't know you've beenslacking.
John Weaver (35:13):
I'm writing, you know, I could tell you about
what I'm writing, but these arethe ones that were more
interesting to me. You know, Icould, we could talk about so,
no, I have two things for PVmag. We'll do them real quick.
Um, one. So Nova is auctioningoff $17 million worth of
hardware, mostly Generac energystorage stuff. So if you want to
(35:34):
get a deal a bunch of gear, youcan go to, down to Houston,
Texas. There's a big oldwarehouse with 198,000
individual components, most ofthem, in terms of value, are
going to be Generac energystorage type hardware. So, so
that's one article I wrote. Andthen another one is, you know,
(35:55):
the headlines, where Trump soright now, well, we'll talk
about the terrorists, you knowwhat? Let's talk about the other
stuff. Another article I wroteabout tariffs. We'll do that.
We'll do that. After the Spanishtheft, we get to talk about real
fast.
Tim Montague (36:09):
What's the title of the story you want to talk
about? Oh, the 145 No, no, let's
John Weaver (36:14):
go to the Spain arrest 23 people first. We'll do
that one next.
Tim Montague (36:18):
Yeah, Spain.
Arrest, 23 people in coppertheft. In copper theft ring
targeting solar plants, okay?
From Pilar Sanchez Molina,
John Weaver (36:29):
from not just stealing copper from a site, but
stealing copper from acollection of sites and making
it a career. Um, it's really,you know, they, they, when you
read the article a little bit,you can see that there's a
process. There's a group ofpeople who only steal the
copper. There's a group ofpeople who only transport it.
(36:52):
There's a group of people whobuy it. And it's just, it's an
organization of stealing copper.
And when I saw this, it made mecall my our master electrician
and say, Hey, that warehousewhere we have our copper, what
kind of security do we have inplace? He goes, Well, first off,
it's licensed, it's bonded, soit's protected. But here's a
camera, and He zoomed in on thecopper. And I was like, great.
(37:15):
I'm glad we still see thecopper, because, you know, it's,
it's a lot of money we got, youknow, we gotta buy a lot of
copper. And, you know, just aswe were talking, silver is
number one in the solar industryin terms of cost per ounce as a
metal, but copper and aluminumnot that far behind. So, yeah,
Tim Montague (37:35):
this doesn't just happen in Spain, right? I mean,
solar farms get hit in the US aswell, where they will come and
take all the copper wiringthat's accessible, and it's a
real bummer, because it destroysthe solar farm.
John Weaver (37:51):
Hey, Chris ledmon here, what's up? Just how you
doing? Chris, nice to see you inthe room. Chat. So one time back
in 2015 ish, when I worked for abig EPC, we had a shipping
container whose lock was cutoff, and all the copper was
stolen from one of, one of, notmy project, but a project I was
(38:14):
supporting. And so I've, I'vedealt with it, and then, on a
regular basis, people arecutting the copper. Hey, there
goes Chris. Uh, people arecutting the charging cables off
of EV chargers, because it's abig fat chunk of copper at one
(38:35):
time. Ran the numbers though,it's like a $50 piece of metal,
and if there's 10 EV chargers,Are you really willing to go to
jail over 500 bucks? I guessyes. We know that people still
packs a gum, but yeah, I wouldnot want to put a piece of metal
on a EV charger with 800 ampscoming through it. You know, if
(38:57):
you're going to steal copper,steal it like on a roll that's
on the ground. Don't cut anelectronic piece of hardware.
That's a great way to be turnedinto a rice krispie real fast.
Tim Montague (39:08):
Well, yeah, I think they, they tend to hit
these solar projects at nightwhen that's less of a concern.
Yes, I guess you have to hopethat there's not batteries on
site, yeah. Oh, man, are wegoing to do another story? Or
(39:28):
what's the story?
John Weaver (39:30):
Well, let's do one piece of bad news, and then we
can do that in in Wyoming, ayoung man fell off a wind
turbine while he was working,wow. Um, 19 or Yeah, I don't
know any details. He must nothave been wearing a harness, or
maybe it busted, I don't know,but it just made me, I don't
(39:55):
know, just, you know, first off,it's a human being who hurt
himself. Um. And you've not hurthimself, who's no longer with
us. So it sucks, and then itmakes me think about my people
that we're climbing on roofs. Imean, even a 10 foot, single
story roof is enough to changesomebody's life or end
(40:15):
somebody's life. So for sure,where I would end this one is
just to say, Hey everybody, ifyou're working on a roof, if
you're working on a site, ifyou're on a freaking wind
turbine, be safe. You know, takean extra moment. I know you're
getting pressure from costinstallation people and and your
general contractor and yourproject manager, tell them to go
(40:36):
stick it. You gotta. You gottatake care of yourself. It's
just, uh, just something, youknow, yeah,
Tim Montague (40:43):
we have the expression safety first, for a
reason. That is the mostimportant thing. Let's be safe
out there. I do want toencourage our listeners to check
out Chris letman interview onthe Clean Power Hour. We had
Chris on the show that dropped,I believe, yesterday. And the
topic is understanding domesticmanufacturing, domestic solar
(41:05):
manufacturing. Chris is theDirector of Sales for Imperial
Star Solar. They have a solarfactory in Houston, Texas that
uses domestically made solarcells from Suniva, so you can
get domestically content, viablesolar panels from Chris letman.
(41:28):
You heard it here, John, whenare we going to see you again?
John Weaver (41:34):
That minimum of being Vegas at re plus we're
Tim Montague (41:38):
see you may 2 right here on the Clean Power
going toHour, live in two weeks. We're
doing the show every two weekswe do it. We have been
transmitting live on LinkedIn,YouTube and Facebook. We may
change that up. I need to talkto you off Mike about that. But
in terms of the platform we use,we may go to zoom, but I want to
(42:01):
talk to you about that. Butanyway, check out all of our
content at cleanpowerhour.comthat's the that's the place
cleanpowerhour.com you can alsofind us on YouTube, but there's
a link to the YouTube oncleanpowerhour.com Give us a
rating and review. Follow us onYouTube, reach out to me on
LinkedIn. Love hearing from ourlisteners and John, how on earth
(42:21):
can our listeners find you?
John Weaver (42:26):
Well, first, you could call Chris letman and ask
him about that two gigawatts ofmanufacturing capacity they have
down there in Texas. Then youcould ask him for my phone
number, because he's definitelygot it. But
commercialsolarguy.com. Is ourbest place to find us. I'm also
on LinkedIn. John FitzgeraldWeaver, I'm the only one and
(42:46):
commercial solar guy there aswell. So those are really the
best places. We got nice contactform. And we're located mostly
in the northeast, focused in NewEngland, Massachusetts, Rhode
Island. We love to buildconstruction. We love to build
solar projects. That's ourfavorite thing to do. So if you
got a big roof, big field, got ahouse, we also own a residential
(43:08):
company. It's called whalingcity solar, and that's that's
the best for us. Timothy, whencan we go play pickleball with
you?
Tim Montague (43:19):
24/7, but not until October. That's when the
CU PC, as we call it, the CUpickleball club, is going to
open here in Champaign,Illinois, but, but, yeah,
wherever, wherever I'm travelingto, like I'm going to Dallas
next week, I'll be at re plus inVegas, of course, in September,
I'll be in Chicago, of course,at Midwest solar Expo in June,
(43:43):
solar farm summit in August.
Wow. So many, so many goodChicago events need to go
nowhere else than Illinois.
John, I think
John Weaver (43:52):
I'm going to go to a Chicago event pretty soon. I
got to thank my lawyer for doinggreat work for us. And Chicago
is such a beautiful citydowntown. Man, so I just don't
want to go for a walk again. I'mgonna go in the water. Well, I
don't know if I want to go inthe water. It's probably cold,
but it looks pretty. And allthose buildings downtown,
they're nice, man,
Tim Montague (44:10):
are you gonna go to the solar farm Summit?
John Weaver (44:13):
I should go to something. Maybe the solar farm
summit would be it, because I replus, is already plus, but I've
never been to the solar farmSummit, so maybe that's what I
should say. That's in August.
Tim Montague (44:22):
That's in August, and that is, I think that is
downtown. Well,
John Weaver (44:26):
that'd be cool. So maybe, maybe you just invited me
there. Tim, right on now, yougot to buy me a beer. Oh, for
Tim Montague (44:33):
sure. I'll buy you five beers. Great.
John Weaver (44:38):
I'm kind of a lightweight, but I'll take it
all
Tim Montague (44:43):
right. Well, thanks everybody for listening,
and have a great weekend, andwe'll see you on May 2. See you
next. I'm Tim Montague, let'sgrow solar and storage. You.
Welcome to the Clean Power Hour live. I'm Tim
Montague, your co host, bringingyou solar, battery and wind
energy news on a bi weekly basisnow with my co host, John
Weaver, welcome to the show,commercial solar guy.
John Weaver (00:14):
Hello, Timothy.
Thank you for bringing me backyet again. Hope you're having a
nice day.
Tim Montague (00:19):
Life is good.
Spring is sprung here in centralIllinois. It's very blustery,
but warm, and I am just happyit's warm.
John Weaver (00:30):
Good, good starts.
I'm wearing short sleeves rolledup with no jacket, no hat, no
nothing. Yeah, I gotta wear myhat because it's sunny again,
and you know that type of thing.
So I'm enjoying it. It's thestart. It's the start of the
season.
Tim Montague (00:45):
Well, let's jump right into it. You got a story
on blue sky, a wholesale repealor the termination of certain
individual credits would createuncertainty, jeopardizing
capital allocation, long termproject planning and job
creation in the energy sector.
What a concept. Yeah, repealingthe IRA is really not a good
(01:06):
thing for the US economy. Butwhat did the senators have to
say?
John Weaver (01:17):
So there were four senators and 21 representatives,
and this is, you know, slightlyaged news, you know, a couple
weeks months for therepresentatives, maybe two
months and but essentially, 21House of Representatives
Republicans came out and saidthey didn't want to repeal the
(01:39):
IRA. And then four senators cameout and said the same, I
believe, based on those numbers,if those people were to hold
hard and say, No, we don't wantto do that, that would be enough
to protect the IRA as a whole,as well sia the solar energy
(02:02):
Manufacturers Association. Ithink I always mix up the last
number, letter or two, yeah,
Tim Montague (02:08):
Industries Association, technically, but
yeah, it's, it's an industryassociation.
John Weaver (02:13):
So sia sent out an email which kind of suggested
that it looked like we might beokay, and we need to reach out
to our senators and say, Thankyou. Um, in fact, the apparently
the reconciliation bills, whichis where it was thought the IRA
(02:35):
might get attacked. I thinkbased on my reading, these
reconciliation bills have beencompleted, or at least started
to be moved with but in, withinthe Senate and within the house,
and a version, a high levelversion, has been approved. I
don't know the dynamics. I'm nota politician yet, but it just it
(02:58):
feels like, at least, I mean, itfeels like we're definitely not
going to see a wholesale justcanceling of it. We still might
see some refinement. It might beshortened. We might see we might
see it slow down faster. Youknow, there just, there might be
a few other things. But again,it just, it doesn't feel right
(03:21):
now we're going to see a majorrepeal, and it doesn't feel like
we're going to see the wholething get hacked, hacked up. Um,
there's a senator from Nevadawho was interviewed recently
saying he's not going. He saidit's a red line for for him to
see the lithium productioncredits and the EV incentives
(03:47):
from going away, yeah, and thisguy in this article from Nevada,
he was talking about how thelike finding gold back in the
day, all the money ended upgoing across. He called the
hill, which I think means theRocky Mountains, but, or
something, some mountain rangebetween Nevada and San
Francisco. And it's not theRockies, it's uh, maybe the
(04:09):
Sierra Nevadas, but um. And hesaid, I don't want to see that
happen again. I want to see thelithium wealth stay here. We
have we have the resources. Wehave this, we have that. So in
my opinion, biggest thing I'veseen come out over the last week
was that letter from sia saying,hey, reach out to your people.
(04:30):
We're in the home run, or we'rein the the final run of it. We
feel, I don't know it just ithad a, it wasn't a, like a super
rah, rah email, but it was onethat had a, I would say, a
positive ish feeling in it. Sofor that, you know, that's a
good emotion, yeah,
Tim Montague (04:50):
you know, I ran into Costa Nicolaou at
InterSolar in February in SanDiego and coast. Is a long time
CEO. Board member. He's the alsothe CEO of panel claw, the
number one flat roof rackingcompany in the United States. If
you don't know about panel claw,you know many installers, John
coming from resi and lightcommercial into flat roof large
(05:14):
commercial. Just don't knowabout some of these companies.
But panel claw is a major, majormanufacturer. Anyway, Coast has
been on the show three times,something like that, and we did
a quick interview about thisphenomenon. And to some extent,
it's Clash of the Titans now,because on the one side, we have
oil and gas trying to keep a lidon renewables, because they see
(05:38):
the writing on the wall thatsolar and wind are eating their
lunch. Yep. And, and now we're asizable industry creating lots
of jobs on shoring manufacturingof batteries, EVs, wind
turbines, solar panels, andsomeday inverters, not very many
inverters yet, being made in theUS, but it's coming and and so
(06:03):
these are major economic forces.
And I just say, look, oil andgas, you know, you you've got
plenty of subsidies already. Youdon't need to beat us up. You
don't need to continue to try tosquash us. You can't, truly, you
can't squash renewable energy.
(06:23):
It's too big. And this is goodfor the US economy. It's good
for national security. John likethat's what concerns me, is that
China is going hard after theenergy transition. Yeah, they're
building nuclear. Yeah, they'rebuilding coal plants, but
they're also building batteries,EVs and solar, and their EV
(06:46):
technology has surpassed ours.
If you scour the web for peoplethat have actually visited China
recently and sat in some ofthese Chinese cars that Huawei
is making now, for example,their minds are getting blown.
And I'm just like, great, we'regetting left in the dust. The
the future is AI, robotics,renewable energy,
(07:08):
electrification of everything,and we're stuck on, well, let's
just pump up oil and gas. I justdon't see that serving the
future of America. And,
John Weaver (07:20):
you know, China sees renewables two ways, one
way, and they've explicitly saidit is as literally an economic
tool, like not just a tool forthe purpose of building it, but
as it's so big now that for themit's like the Federal Reserve
(07:41):
lowering interest rates, or thegreen New Deal. It's a program
whose purpose is to pump theeconomy. So it's beyond just
energy security, which is reallyinteresting. That's what the IRA
was as well. It was more thanjust a tool for energy it's also
a tool for jobs. It's a tool forpushing things and and political
(08:06):
tool now. So, so renewables aregoing beyond just energy, beyond
cleaning energy. And then, ofcourse, China sees it. I'm
certain, from a secondperspective, a nation state,
geopolitical one, if China is nolonger dependent on importing
fuel oil gas, then if they needto go into a complex military
(08:31):
situation, for instance, whenthey choose to reintegrate
Taiwan, um, they're no longergoing to be susceptible to
external forces cutting offresource supplies, because all
they got to do is wake up nextmorning and there will be more
(08:52):
electricity. All they got to dois wait for the next breeze to
come by. There's going to bemore electricity. And if their
vehicles are electric, if theirweapons are electric, you know,
that starts to, starts to tiltthe world in a certain way,
where, where energy, energywarfare, will change. And so we
(09:14):
should be conscious on multiplelevels. I mean, we really should
be just caring about climatechange, but we should be
conscious, and that's why Bidenmade solar panels part of the
very specific military purpose,and nobody really acted on it to
make use of it, but what itallowed the federal government
(09:36):
to invest in it as if it were awartime investment, and that was
specifically solar panel modulefactories. And now, uh, Trump
has removed that designation,but it says tell you that some
people are looking at it andthinking about it that way, very
much. So, so, yeah, you know,our job is just to build, keep
going. Every panel I put in theground, I'm like, that's 30
(09:58):
years of energy. That's how.
Makes me feel and, you know, andeven if the world goes mad max,
it'd be really great to knowthat there are billions of solar
panels distributed that can berepurposed. And I know that
sounds a little, you know,chaotic, but you know, we're not
necessarily a smart speciesalways. So one day maybe that's,
Tim Montague (10:21):
well, yeah, I mean, if you are, if you truly
are a prepper, preparing for theend of days, whatever that means
you're into solar and batterieslike that doesn't need a
external fuel source, right?
It's got a fuel source from thesky. And if that fuel source is
gone, then we have biggerproblems. So let's talk about
Oxford. PV. That name will notbe due to our listeners, but
(10:46):
they've been kind of quiet forthe last couple of years, so I'm
glad to see that they're back inthe news, and they have struck a
deal with Trina. I'll get thison screen. But why don't you
tell us what the story is? Thisis in PV tech, Oxford PV, Trina
Solar enter perovskite silicontandem patent licensing
(11:08):
agreement.
John Weaver (11:12):
So Oxford PV, which is an Oxford, UK based company,
has been talking aboutperovskites for a lot of years.
I've interviewed them at leastin 2020 and they said they were
going to deploy modules thatyear. They didn't, but it seems
(11:35):
like they deployed a smallvolume into Texas. I don't know
if that's actually occurred, butwhat's really coming into view,
though, is that Oxford PV isprobably just going to be a
patent company, and now they'retrying to leverage that patent
strength. I've heard from otherfolks, when I've asked
questions, what what their goalis, and but whatever they're, if
(11:56):
they're the company that has thepatents that somebody wants,
great Trina one of the world'slargest, if not the world's
largest, solar panelmanufacturer. Maybe it's jinko.
I always mix up jinko TrinaLongy. They're all in the top.
But Trina has signed what seemslike an agreement of some sorts
(12:17):
for perovskites in China,specifically. And Trina also put
out an 808 watt module recentlythat was perovskites. It's the
first time I've seen a fulllarge module tested and approved
by one of the testing agencies.
I believe it was TV in Germany,in Europe. And so I'm starting
(12:38):
to get a little more, you know,little happier. I saw some
respectable organizations sayinglarge scale perovskite module
manufacturing should come in 27that's the closest I've seen
somebody say it prior. It'salways been five years. So it
just it seems like stuff iscoming more more and more every
(13:01):
day there's manufacturing linesbeing built across China for
perovskite tandem perovskite,silicon tandem modules, GCL
poly. Last summer, when I was inInterSolar in Munich, Germany, I
interviewed them on theirs andtheir unit, they were very happy
(13:21):
with it. Still had a lot oftesting, but they were moving
with it, and just like yesterdayor your last three days long, G
put out a new press releasesaying their silicon, or
perovskite silicon tandem cellhit 34.8 something percent, oh,
inches away from 35% solar cell.
(13:44):
Tim, so it's just, it's coming,and it's going to be here, and
it's probable, it's probablethat it's not going to come to
the United States for a littlewhile, but they're going to hit
the field, they're going to hitthe world, and it's going to
expand, and we're going to havemodules that are 33% within I
(14:04):
don't know, maybe by 2030 wemight see a module at 30% plus
is my is my hope, and that wouldbe really massive, because it'll
lower the cost of install andand it sets a path toward A 45%
solar cell and a 43% module,which would just be awesome, and
it might come close to cuttingthe cost of solar electricity,
(14:29):
maybe not in half, but like 3540% because every time you go up
1% you drop the LCOE, thelevelized cost of electricity
coming out of a module by youknow, if you go up 1% from 20%
that's a 5% and it's 4.8 4.7 4.6so by the time you get to like
(14:49):
42 you're at like 45% off thelevelized cost of electricity,
when solar is at a 20% efficientmodule. And. If and if the price
of electricity is three centsper kilowatt hour at that
number, without incentives. Thatmeans we're talking penny and a
half without incentives for aperovskite silicon module. And
(15:14):
that's just cool. That means,like in the Middle East, we'll
see the cost well under a penny,because their cost, you know,
Saudi Arabia, because theirnumbers don't include things in
the US. If we have an IRAattached to it, we'll probably
see a power purchase agreementapproach a penny is, is what my
little dreams are. So it's,it's, it's, we're just, we're
(15:38):
moving on stuff. And it makes mehappy. It makes me happy to see
it.
Tim Montague (15:41):
Yeah, I I got to talk to Matt Campbell at Terra
base when I was in San Diego,and dropped an interview with
him recently. I think it waslast week that penny a watt,
Penny a kWh really is the holygrail for unlocking green
hydrogen, but I agree. I'mexcited to see these tandem
(16:06):
cells coming to market. And youknow, in that story, the
efficiencies mentioned were 25to 27% so they're nipping at 30%
and my only question is, what isthe durability of the
perovskite? That's one of thechallenges with perovskites, is
those materials tend to breakdown faster than traditional PV
(16:31):
technology, and that's whythey've been slow to come to
market. But they're solving thatproblem. I don't know how
they're solving that problem,but presumably they're solving
that problem. You can't haveyour solar panels degrading in
the sun, yeah,
John Weaver (16:46):
so, so a couple things on that. First, solar
panels do degrade in the sun,half
Tim Montague (16:52):
a percent per year is, is kind of the rule of
thumb. I mean, a higher qualitypanel is as low as a quarter of
a percent, right? Or glass
John Weaver (17:01):
glass. Some people have suggested borderline zero
half with 1000 hour acceleratedtesting. But so but what's I
have seen GCL poly say, theirsolar their perovskite panel
passes silicon degradation testsin the way silicon would degrade
(17:24):
and had a rate that was similarto silicon. However, the person
at the booth was very explicit.
He said, listen, just because wecan pass these tests doesn't
mean we can pass those othertests, because we don't even
know what the other tests are.
We don't know how perovskitescould potentially fail, because
it's a new thing. We've beenmessing with silicon since like,
(17:47):
2055 or, sorry, 1955 right? 2055so, 75 oh, yeah, yeah. So it's,
you know, but yes, it seems likepeople believe it, because
there's perovskite solar panelsin the field today being used.
And, you know, one megawatthere, one megawatt there,
(18:09):
probably less than 100 megawattstotal, but they're out there and
they're being tested and they'rebeing looked at. And I feel
hopeful. I feel hopeful, youknow, I am always hopeful,
because I love the new tech, butI just I feel good about it so
cool. It's cool. Let's goperovskites. Let's
Tim Montague (18:27):
talk about solar supplied over 10% of global
electricity consumption in 2024story and PB magazine by Ryan
Kennedy, cumulative solarinstallations climbed 37% from
1.6 terawatts to 2.2 terawatts.
Last year, said the IEA
John Weaver (18:49):
and 10% is just a nice, cool, chunky number. Um,
it's just, you know, the thejoke is the first million is the
hardest. When you go from zeroto one, that's the biggest
number, because you growinfinitely. And now we're at 10%
(19:11):
and that's pretty cool, andwe're still in a time where
we're now growing by massivevolumes of capacity. And I just,
I saw the 10% number. I waslike, oh, man, that's, that's
just cool. And I don't know, Ijust, I'm happy to see it. It's,
it's really just a headlinenumber. I don't have any in
(19:33):
depth discussion on this one.
It's just like, hey, heyeverybody. We're there. We hit
this thing and, and it's abeautiful number, and let's be
let's pat ourselves on the backa little. Let's be happy. And I
don't know, it's just cool. It'scool to see it there. We're
there, so close, and we'removing. We're all working, man,
(19:54):
we're all working hard. And it'sjust, it's nice to see it. So I.
So I'm just, I just thought itwas cool seeing a big, pretty
number. And there it is,
Tim Montague (20:04):
and it's a good reminder that we here in the US,
yeah, we've reached, as thisarticle says, 8% of total
electricity with solar in 2024so we're average, right? We're
at the global average now andbut look at China. John, China
is generating as much solarelectricity as the rest of the
(20:27):
world combined. Almost Fun fact,China produces 10 times more
STEM graduates than the UnitedStates and more graduates in
STEM science, technology,engineering and mathematics,
right? More more graduates thanthe rest of the world combined.
(20:52):
So we have to be careful aboutgoing to war with China. It
might sound good in a soundbite, we're going to be tough on
China, but we have to recognizethat they are such a powerhouse.
Now this is not the China of the80s. You know, we like to pick
(21:12):
on China for being a copycat,but now China is truly a
technology powerhouse andinnovator of their own. And this
graph demonstrates that, to behonest.
John Weaver (21:28):
Yeah, I, you know, I saw a neat little chart.
Actually, China and the US havea similar percentage of
electricity from wind and solar,and it was almost the same
chart, like somebody laid overthe two and it showed it going
(21:49):
seasonally. And they also had asimilar curve. You know, China
uses about two or three timesmore electricity than us, and
they have two or three moretimes of solar. But that was
just a really neat curve to see.
Yeah, and it was, I was justsurprised. I was, I don't know,
my brain wasn't going that way.
It wasn't thinking, Oh, Chinaand the US have the same but
(22:12):
percentage wise, it was almostthe same two lines. One was
green, one was blue, and theyjust kind of wiggled up words to
the right. And I was like, cool,and that's kind of nice, because
China and the US are the twolargest users of electricity in
the world. If those two groupscan hold together and do some
good work, man, that's that'lljust help us as a species. So go
(22:35):
us. Go China, keep building.
Yeah,
Tim Montague (22:37):
I think it's a both. And this should be the age
of collaboration, right? Wefilled the earth with our stuff.
We won. Humans won the battleagainst nature. And if we
continue to be tribal and pickon each other and create
conflict with one another,that's just gonna expose us to
(23:01):
so many pitfalls, and it's goingto hold us back from the next
potential age of prosperity forour children's children like we
have a lot of cool things aheadof us if we're careful. And
right now, we're not being verycareful, we're being very
boneheaded and tribal, and we'repicking on one another and
(23:22):
spending a lot of energy doingthat, right? And it's just us.
It's just a suck on oureconomies. Yeah, okay, it's
economic growth to build weaponsof mass destruction, you could
make that argument. And so if weweren't in conflict with one
another or some kind of armsrace, maybe there wouldn't be as
much innovation, but there wouldbe different kinds of
(23:43):
innovation. Think aboutinnovation in healthcare, right,
and providing for less fortunateand and truly creating a
wonderful future for everyone.
We have the resources to dothat. It's a choice. Choice,
choice
John Weaver (24:02):
without doubt. Oh, that's just cool. 10% man, first
10% is hardest. First 1% artist,first everything's the hardest,
but we're doing them, and it'sjust neat. Good job solar. Good
job everybody who's installingit around the whole world.
Awesome.
Tim Montague (24:20):
Yeah, it is. It is a feel good industry to work in.
I'm very happy to work in thesolar industry. I'm very happy
that my soon to be 23 year oldson works in solar. He's having
a birthday in May, and I tellhim he has 30 years of pure
happiness ahead of him, if heplays his cards, right? So we
(24:44):
have another story in PVmagazine, this one by Emiliano
Bellini, average silver price up21% in 2024 says silver
Institute. So the PV industryhappens to have an affinity for
silver. It sounds. Like
John Weaver (25:01):
so I did a little math. Solar used 17% of all
solar mind in 2027 I thoughtthat was kind of a neat number.
I calculated it from here. Did alittle work. What was really
interesting, though, and I don'tknow fully how to parse this
(25:21):
yet, because I don't think ourtechnology has advanced that
fast. But maybe reallyinteresting is that solar grew
33% we went from 450 Meg gigs to600 gigs. So we added 150 gigs,
which is 1/3 of 450 to get to600 so we grew by 33% but our
(25:45):
silver use grew by one half of1% and I don't even know I that
number is so astounding, mydefault is that there's
something wrong somewhere. So Iredid the math in a spreadsheet
instead of just using acalculator, so I can't mess up
and and that. And so first off,17% I had no idea we were using
(26:10):
17% I knew that solar silver wasreally used a lot by solar, but
I just didn't know it was 17% asbig number. Yeah, that's pretty
cool. Um, and then if you do themath on it, uh, roughly silver
at 30 bucks an ounce, and rightnow it's about 28 bucks an
ounce, but at 30 bucks an ounce,it's about one cent per watt.
(26:36):
And if you think about the priceof a solar panel these days, 10
cents, 11 cents, 12 cents,that's 10% of the cost of a
solar panel. Is the silver whichis kind of interesting. I happen
to see also another article atthe same like this morning,
Fraunhofer, the ResearchInstitute in Germany, solar
(26:59):
research institute, they put outa press release saying that they
got hetero junction solar cellsin a model down to two
milligrams of silver per watt.
If I do the math on 2024 itlooks like currently there's 10
(27:21):
milligrams of silver per watt,and so Fraunhofer sees a path to
drop silver usage by 80% nowwithin that, and I didn't get
too deep into the researchpaper, but Within that, they
also talked about blending solarwith or silver with copper, and
(27:42):
then doing pure copper. Sothere's places where they can
believe in copper, can gettingstuff done. But it's just kind
of neat to see the advancementand what's happening with um
silver and how it's in inhardware. And it represents our
constant evolution in ourindustry. So you There are
modules out there, very highefficiency with silver, but
(28:03):
generally silver, or, sorry,with copper. Generally silver is
better because, I guess it'smore conductive and easier to
work with, and it can be spraypainted, sort of kind of thinner
and so you don't block thesunlight copper, though, if you
have a back contact solar cell,you don't block the sunlight on
(28:27):
the front. And so I think it'sIco Ika. They have the 25%
module that's out they have aback contact silver or copper
module. No silver in it at all.
So it's out there, and there's aAustralian company pushing
Copper instead of silver. Soeither way, it's a penny per
(28:48):
watt right now, cost of silverin your modules, it might drop
to a quarter of a penny per wattin the future. So, so silver,
Silver's Cool, man, solar peopleshould start buying silver, just
to, you know, represent, but nottoo much, because you don't want
to drive up the price.
Tim Montague (29:05):
It's a really good conductor, which is why it's
used in solar panels. It'sinteresting, John, that precious
metals, including copper, likehumans historically, have made a
lot of jewelry and things thatwe think makes make us sexy
right out of copper, gold,silver, titanium, but gold,
(29:30):
silver and copper, those threemetals are also amazing
conductors, but also justattractive to humans. It's
interesting that there is thatit's completely coincidental, I
think. But who knows? Well,
John Weaver (29:46):
gold, I mean, I've read about gold and why it is
the most important metal, andit's, you know, there's like, it
doesn't go bad and it doesn't
Tim Montague (29:56):
tarnish and it doesn't oxidize, you. Oxidized,
John Weaver (30:00):
yeah. And so there's a reason it's people
like gold. I've only read thatabout gold once, because
everybody's like, Why gold? Whygold? And somebody went down
this list, and he looked atevery element this author, and
they said, well, we can't dothis one. We can't do this one.
Can't do this one. You know,gold is like, almost the only
one that aligns with this longlist of traits that people are
(30:22):
like, Yeah, this makes it apressure, the precious metal,
and that was interesting.
Tim Montague (30:29):
So I can, I can list a few, but maybe you could
list a few more. It's it's rare.
It doesn't oxidize, it's shiny,it's pretty it's easy to work
with. It has a low meltingtemperature. What else is it
that makes it gold soattractive? Well,
John Weaver (30:46):
let's see, gold is perceived millennia jewelry.
Individual is rare. It'smalleable. It's useful inside of
people. It's durable, noncoronavisive, magnetic. This
one. I'm just doing the Googlefast to see, to see of all the
118 periodic okay. Oh, here itis. So well this. This person
(31:11):
started with the here. I'll justpost it in the room chat, in
case anybody's super interested.
But like this article, you seehim start going down. He says,
like, all right, in thealkalines, we can't use those,
because if they get wet, theyblow up. So, you know, gold
doesn't blow up when you get itwet. That's a good one. Thorium,
uranium, plutonium, those killyou. Rare earths can't really
(31:32):
find them, not easily, at least.
And then we get to the 49elements that he said considers
realistic iron, aluminum,copper, lead. So iron terrible,
because there's so much of it,it goes down in price. Copper,
same thing. Lead, same thing.
Now we're getting to the nobleelements. Oh, they're gasses. So
(31:55):
that's, you know, platinum. Youcan't work with platinum because
it's melting is 17 168 degreesCelsius. Now at least two silver
and gold. You know, I flipped, Iskipped a couple, but, uh, gold
ends up being it, and goldinertness is one of the things
(32:16):
that it has. And, you know, he'sjust got this neat little list
where he just breaks down, youknow, and that article kind of
goes through it, and I've seenit more in depth, but, uh, you
know, it doesn't catch on fire.
It's naturally that's kind of anice thing.
Tim Montague (32:35):
Yeah, it's a bummer about lithium. Um, yeah,
okay. Well, you have an unhappystory to share. I'm really sad
to see this actually. Is thisyour project? John, yes,
John Weaver (32:46):
sir, it's been fixed. Just been fixed. But yes,
wow.
Tim Montague (32:50):
So, yeah, just, just a couple of news cycles
ago, we were showing photos ofthis project under construction,
yeah, and that that was like ahole in the ground, and they
were pouring the concrete, andnow they're having to dig it up,
apparently.
John Weaver (33:04):
Yeah. Well, this was only four of the foundations
out of about 60, but four ofthem were delivered with the
wrong with the wrong bolt. Andyou can see the bolts kind of
sticking out of the top of theconcrete on that image. Yeah,
but those bolts are one inchdiameter, and they were supposed
to be one and one quarter inchdiameter, and that means you
(33:26):
can't, can't go forward withthat. So so that, and we fixed
it. It was, we had niceconversation between us and the
manufacturer to decide who isgoing to be at fault. We decided
to split it because they sent usthe wrong product. Yeah, we
didn't check it. Is how theargument went. And so, yeah, so
(33:49):
that's how it works. So, yeah.
So there you can see us tearingup some stuff. There's a lot of
CO two in that pile of garbage,which is, you know, breaks your
heart, but now we're puttingmodules on those car ports at
this time, really, yeah, yeah,oh, yeah. We're done with that.
We're moving on to the next wehave a new project where we're
pouring new foundationsdifferent city. And so this
(34:11):
project, all the car ports areconstructed fully, all
assembled, and we're moving onto installing modules at this
point, and that's pretty nice.
So we've got our first, I don'tknow, 150 modules done so far on
this project. So moving along, Iwould remove that. Whenever some
(34:37):
weird plug in pops up on mybrowser. Tim, it is immediately
deleted.
Tim Montague (34:41):
Yeah, no, that's there on purpose. I want to try
that tool, but not right now.
John Weaver (34:50):
We can show everybody you know, if there
were people in our chat room,they could tell us whether they
want to see you work on thattool. So if you want to tell Tim
to use a tool during the middleof the clean power. Hour, you
need to log in and say, what'sup.
Tim Montague (35:05):
So we have another PV magazine story. Where's the
John Weaver PV magazine stories?
John, I don't know you've beenslacking.
John Weaver (35:13):
I'm writing, you know, I could tell you about
what I'm writing, but these arethe ones that were more
interesting to me. You know, Icould, we could talk about so,
no, I have two things for PVmag. We'll do them real quick.
Um, one. So Nova is auctioningoff $17 million worth of
hardware, mostly Generac energystorage stuff. So if you want to
(35:34):
get a deal a bunch of gear, youcan go to, down to Houston,
Texas. There's a big oldwarehouse with 198,000
individual components, most ofthem, in terms of value, are
going to be Generac energystorage type hardware. So, so
that's one article I wrote. Andthen another one is, you know,
(35:55):
the headlines, where Trump soright now, well, we'll talk
about the terrorists, you knowwhat? Let's talk about the other
stuff. Another article I wroteabout tariffs. We'll do that.
We'll do that. After the Spanishtheft, we get to talk about real
fast.
Tim Montague (36:09):
What's the title of the story you want to talk
about? Oh, the 145 No, no, let's
John Weaver (36:14):
go to the Spain arrest 23 people first. We'll do
that one next.
Tim Montague (36:18):
Yeah, Spain.
Arrest, 23 people in coppertheft. In copper theft ring
targeting solar plants, okay?
From Pilar Sanchez Molina,
John Weaver (36:29):
from not just stealing copper from a site, but
stealing copper from acollection of sites and making
it a career. Um, it's really,you know, they, they, when you
read the article a little bit,you can see that there's a
process. There's a group ofpeople who only steal the
copper. There's a group ofpeople who only transport it.
(36:52):
There's a group of people whobuy it. And it's just, it's an
organization of stealing copper.
And when I saw this, it made mecall my our master electrician
and say, Hey, that warehousewhere we have our copper, what
kind of security do we have inplace? He goes, Well, first off,
it's licensed, it's bonded, soit's protected. But here's a
camera, and He zoomed in on thecopper. And I was like, great.
(37:15):
I'm glad we still see thecopper, because, you know, it's,
it's a lot of money we got, youknow, we gotta buy a lot of
copper. And, you know, just aswe were talking, silver is
number one in the solar industryin terms of cost per ounce as a
metal, but copper and aluminumnot that far behind. So, yeah,
Tim Montague (37:35):
this doesn't just happen in Spain, right? I mean,
solar farms get hit in the US aswell, where they will come and
take all the copper wiringthat's accessible, and it's a
real bummer, because it destroysthe solar farm.
John Weaver (37:51):
Hey, Chris ledmon here, what's up? Just how you
doing? Chris, nice to see you inthe room. Chat. So one time back
in 2015 ish, when I worked for abig EPC, we had a shipping
container whose lock was cutoff, and all the copper was
stolen from one of, one of, notmy project, but a project I was
(38:14):
supporting. And so I've, I'vedealt with it, and then, on a
regular basis, people arecutting the copper. Hey, there
goes Chris. Uh, people arecutting the charging cables off
of EV chargers, because it's abig fat chunk of copper at one
(38:35):
time. Ran the numbers though,it's like a $50 piece of metal,
and if there's 10 EV chargers,Are you really willing to go to
jail over 500 bucks? I guessyes. We know that people still
packs a gum, but yeah, I wouldnot want to put a piece of metal
on a EV charger with 800 ampscoming through it. You know, if
(38:57):
you're going to steal copper,steal it like on a roll that's
on the ground. Don't cut anelectronic piece of hardware.
That's a great way to be turnedinto a rice krispie real fast.
Tim Montague (39:08):
Well, yeah, I think they, they tend to hit
these solar projects at nightwhen that's less of a concern.
Yes, I guess you have to hopethat there's not batteries on
site, yeah. Oh, man, are wegoing to do another story? Or
(39:28):
what's the story?
John Weaver (39:30):
Well, let's do one piece of bad news, and then we
can do that in in Wyoming, ayoung man fell off a wind
turbine while he was working,wow. Um, 19 or Yeah, I don't
know any details. He must nothave been wearing a harness, or
maybe it busted, I don't know,but it just made me, I don't
(39:55):
know, just, you know, first off,it's a human being who hurt
himself. Um. And you've not hurthimself, who's no longer with
us. So it sucks, and then itmakes me think about my people
that we're climbing on roofs. Imean, even a 10 foot, single
story roof is enough to changesomebody's life or end
(40:15):
somebody's life. So for sure,where I would end this one is
just to say, Hey everybody, ifyou're working on a roof, if
you're working on a site, ifyou're on a freaking wind
turbine, be safe. You know, takean extra moment. I know you're
getting pressure from costinstallation people and and your
general contractor and yourproject manager, tell them to go
(40:36):
stick it. You gotta. You gottatake care of yourself. It's
just, uh, just something, youknow, yeah,
Tim Montague (40:43):
we have the expression safety first, for a
reason. That is the mostimportant thing. Let's be safe
out there. I do want toencourage our listeners to check
out Chris letman interview onthe Clean Power Hour. We had
Chris on the show that dropped,I believe, yesterday. And the
topic is understanding domesticmanufacturing, domestic solar
(41:05):
manufacturing. Chris is theDirector of Sales for Imperial
Star Solar. They have a solarfactory in Houston, Texas that
uses domestically made solarcells from Suniva, so you can
get domestically content, viablesolar panels from Chris letman.
(41:28):
You heard it here, John, whenare we going to see you again?
John Weaver (41:34):
That minimum of being Vegas at re plus we're
Tim Montague (41:38):
see you may 2 right here on the Clean Power
going toHour, live in two weeks. We're
doing the show every two weekswe do it. We have been
transmitting live on LinkedIn,YouTube and Facebook. We may
change that up. I need to talkto you off Mike about that. But
in terms of the platform we use,we may go to zoom, but I want to
(42:01):
talk to you about that. Butanyway, check out all of our
content at cleanpowerhour.comthat's the that's the place
cleanpowerhour.com you can alsofind us on YouTube, but there's
a link to the YouTube oncleanpowerhour.com Give us a
rating and review. Follow us onYouTube, reach out to me on
LinkedIn. Love hearing from ourlisteners and John, how on earth
(42:21):
can our listeners find you?
John Weaver (42:26):
Well, first, you could call Chris letman and ask
him about that two gigawatts ofmanufacturing capacity they have
down there in Texas. Then youcould ask him for my phone
number, because he's definitelygot it. But
commercialsolarguy.com. Is ourbest place to find us. I'm also
on LinkedIn. John FitzgeraldWeaver, I'm the only one and
(42:46):
commercial solar guy there aswell. So those are really the
best places. We got nice contactform. And we're located mostly
in the northeast, focused in NewEngland, Massachusetts, Rhode
Island. We love to buildconstruction. We love to build
solar projects. That's ourfavorite thing to do. So if you
got a big roof, big field, got ahouse, we also own a residential
(43:08):
company. It's called whalingcity solar, and that's that's
the best for us. Timothy, whencan we go play pickleball with
you?
Tim Montague (43:19):
24/7, but not until October. That's when the
CU PC, as we call it, the CUpickleball club, is going to
open here in Champaign,Illinois, but, but, yeah,
wherever, wherever I'm travelingto, like I'm going to Dallas
next week, I'll be at re plus inVegas, of course, in September,
I'll be in Chicago, of course,at Midwest solar Expo in June,
(43:43):
solar farm summit in August.
Wow. So many, so many goodChicago events need to go
nowhere else than Illinois.
John, I think
John Weaver (43:52):
I'm going to go to a Chicago event pretty soon. I
got to thank my lawyer for doinggreat work for us. And Chicago
is such a beautiful citydowntown. Man, so I just don't
want to go for a walk again. I'mgonna go in the water. Well, I
don't know if I want to go inthe water. It's probably cold,
but it looks pretty. And allthose buildings downtown,
they're nice, man,
Tim Montague (44:10):
are you gonna go to the solar farm Summit?
John Weaver (44:13):
I should go to something. Maybe the solar farm
summit would be it, because I replus, is already plus, but I've
never been to the solar farmSummit, so maybe that's what I
should say. That's in August.
Tim Montague (44:22):
That's in August, and that is, I think that is
downtown. Well,
John Weaver (44:26):
that'd be cool. So maybe, maybe you just invited me
there. Tim, right on now, yougot to buy me a beer. Oh, for
Tim Montague (44:33):
sure. I'll buy you five beers. Great.
John Weaver (44:38):
I'm kind of a lightweight, but I'll take it
all
Tim Montague (44:43):
right. Well, thanks everybody for listening,
and have a great weekend, andwe'll see you on May 2. See you
next. I'm Tim Montague, let'sgrow solar and storage. You.
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