The Future of Solar: Maintenance, Communication, and Content Creation with Derek | EP249

In this episode of The Clean Power Hour, host Tim Montague welcomes Derek, known as Derek the Solarboi, a seasoned solar professional and content creator. The discussion begins with Derek sharing his journey into the solar industry, highlighting his transition from general electrical work to becoming an expert in operations and maintenance (O&M). With over a decade of experience, he provides valuable insights into the common challenges faced by solar installations today.

Derek delves into the top three issues that solar arrays encounter in the field, including component failures, communication problems, and even unexpected wildlife interference. He emphasizes the importance of quality installation practices and shares his perspective on minimizing failure points through careful system design.

The conversation also explores Derek's evolution as a content creator. He discusses his motivation for producing educational content that demystifies solar technology for both industry professionals and consumers. By utilizing platforms like YouTube and TikTok, he aims to bridge knowledge gaps and foster a better understanding of solar energy systems.

Listeners are encouraged to tune in to this informative episode to gain practical tips on maintaining solar systems and learn about innovative communication strategies that can enhance system reliability. Whether you're a solar installer, technician, or simply interested in renewable energy, this episode is packed with insights you won't want to miss!

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Transcript

Derek the solarboi: 0:51

Like. So if you're going to get into the solar industry, you're either going to get into it on the office side or in the cruise like in the install crews. And if you're jumping in on the on the install crew side, that you either, as a person, have to be ready to accept what that culture is and adapt to it and work with it, or you're just you're just not going to last.

intro: 1:17

Are you speeding the energy transition here at the Clean Power Hour, our host, Tim Montague, bring you the best in solar, batteries and clean technologies every week. Want to go deeper into decarbonization. We do too. We're here to help you understand and command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get to it together. We can speed the energy transition

Tim Montague: 1:43

Today on the Clean Power Hour, Derek the solar boy, he's a content creator, He's a solar professional. He's somebody that you want to know, and he's also an O and M expert. Welcome to the show, Derek,

Derek the solarboi: 1:54

hey, thanks for having me. It's it's good to be on here.

Tim Montague: 1:57

It's long time in the coming I wish I'd thought of this sooner. It took Sean white to prompt me to bring you onto the show, and I'm grateful for Sean. I'm going to be well you probably will have already seen the second show I did with Sean by the time you see this. But anyway, shout out to Sean white, great advocate for the solar industry, great trainer and Derek. Tell our listeners a little bit about yourself. How did you get interested in solar and how did you get interested in being a content creator?

Derek the solarboi: 2:24

Great question. I so I started in solar industry back in 2014 so it's been a little over 10 years now I've been in the congratulations,

Tim Montague: 2:34

officially an OG I am.

Derek the solarboi: 2:36

It really is. It's insane how quickly in the industry you get to be like this, a senior person with knowledge like I've been in the solar industry for 10 years now. You're basically one of the originals. Just so funny. But I jumped over from general electrical work to start doing solar, and was installer for probably four or five years, probably four years, and then jumped over to doing service stuff, so going out and fixing people's problems and having a great time learning about all the intricacies of how solar ages over time, how it fails, how to fix it, all that stuff. What

Tim Montague: 3:21

are the top three problems that solar arrays experience in the field, in your opinion? So

Derek the solarboi: 3:27

usually it's component failure as long now this is assuming that whatever company that is doing the installations has a reasonable ability to ensure quality of installation, right? So assuming that there's not install problems, install quality problems, it's gonna be

Tim Montague: 3:48

okay. It would be okay if workmanship was one of the three problems. I think there's a lot of shoddy workmanship out there.

Derek the solarboi: 3:54

So yes, it's possible. The thing is, I've been very blessed to be a part of a couple of companies that have really had good paid very good attention to quality. So most of the time, what I see is stuff like inverters failing. I mean, if you have optimizers, optimizers, you're gonna fail. Microinverters. You like that kind of stuff,

Tim Montague: 4:15

sure. So, okay, so inverter failures are probably a big one. But is it? What are the other two? Is, are squirrels? One of them?

Derek the solarboi: 4:26

Squirrels? Totally. Yeah. So there is a particular point at the beginning of the year that you'll start to get phone calls, and it's spring, it's when squirrels go and try to build nests and start having babies, and they're finding places under solar panels and creating arc faults or ground faults, or shutting down systems entirely, just as they laid a nest, or laid a nest, built a nest, and, you know, started chewing around stuff. So for sure, communications issues also pretty high up there. Those are more or less not terribly important, but they can make an entire site look like it's down, which freaks people out. Yeah,

Tim Montague: 5:07

you know, I, I'm always fascinated by different installers approaches to communications. In particular, I'm a fan of the Barry cinnamon approach, which is cellular communication. He's against using Wi Fi. Now in residential solar, you obviously are close to a Wi Fi signal most times. In commercial it's a different animal or utility. But I personally am into dedicated cellular devices for solar communications. But what, what do you do? You have any preferences? Or do you see any trends?

Derek the solarboi: 5:42

Yeah, I mean, I will. I will always try to avoid doing Wi Fi, if at all possible. I will also try to. Avoid using cellular if at all possible. I'd much prefer just a hard wire communication to whatever right the building is now obviously utility style setups, you're going to need a cell card because that's where the internet comes from for that kind of a system. But if you're doing CNI, trying to tie in with with an ethernet cable is always best bet.

Tim Montague: 6:14

Yeah, that would be, I think in CNI, that's a standard so, but

Derek the solarboi: 6:20

yeah, I mean going back to reliability issues, like the thing that I see the most is where you have just a huge number of components, like optimizers. Optimizers is my bugaboo. I really don't like putting putting on optimizers or micro inverters or rapid shutdown devices on a system if I don't have to. So one of the things I'm known for in the on the internet at this point is UL 3741 advocacy. So something I care about to try to reduce the number of potential failure points, because that's how we get more reliable systems.

Tim Montague: 6:57

I totally agree, and I'm glad that the new Rapid shutdown rules allow for other things than module level power electronics, because I don't like all the connectors and all the electronics both, both are a point of failure, and connectors can cause fires and and have caused fires. Now every solar panel has connectors, so you can't avoid having connectors, and you have to pay attention to what kind of connector you're using and make sure they're compatible. Blah, blah, blah. But if you're adding extra connectors on each panel, or each pair of panels even, right? That's a lot of connectors. It's a lot of exactly, points of failure. And, yeah, I

Derek the solarboi: 7:40

have seen connectors like, and you can do everything right with those connectors, right, and still have them burn up sometimes, like, I've been on a especially like 1500 volt system, if, if the panel doesn't come with a good quality connector, even if they're like, to, like, like, I've seen those pry pretty, pretty spectacularly. I mean, nobody's gotten hurt, but I've had to replace a lot of wire and couple of panels. But, yeah, you know, there's, there's always going to be failure points. It's just about reducing the number of them, I

Tim Montague: 8:12

think I saw a photo of you standing in front of a burn solar array, did I not?

Derek the solarboi: 8:18

Yeah, so, I mean, that's photoshopped, but that was, there was a, there was a big fire that I went to go. I don't think it was caused by the solar. It was just on top of the building. But went up to do some sort of a quote. This was a couple of years ago. Was trying to quote, to see what it would what it would take to take them off, take off the good ones, etc. But

Tim Montague: 8:42

right on, run on, yeah, fires a scary thing. Fire and solar don't go well together. I mean, generally, solar is pretty safe. And, you know it is a very much a set it and forget it, but you want to do regular maintenance. You want to do an annual checkup make sure there's no hot spots. You know that the connectors aren't getting hot, or the wiring isn't getting loose, or something. So big advocate for regular O and M, but Derek, what tell us about your journey as a content creator. Why did you get into that, and how has that evolved over time?

Derek the solarboi: 9:20

Yeah, so the the start of it was the company I was working for at the time did a lot more, did a lot more, like YouTube creation stuff. And I was like, you know, I feel like there's this big problem with getting people, getting customers, to understand actually what you're installing, like, you can tell them five different ways that solar isn't going to produce when the power cuts out, but it doesn't mean that that's going to actually sink in, right? There's, and there's not a lot of people doing the sort of, the nuts and bolts, the on the ground type of content creation on YouTube or other platforms. So I saw that as very appealing to have a kind of do. My vision at that point was like doing a vlog style, and this is the day in the life of an O and M technician for solar. So I started messing around with that, probably 2021 probably the end of 2021 I was like doing Instagram stories, like trying to figure out video creation, because they didn't do any of that up until then. And then, as Tiktok expanded its length of video that you could upload, like, I think one point it got up to like, it bumped from three minutes to five minutes. And at that point I was like, Oh, now I can make some videos. But. Because under three minutes is still pretty tight sometimes. But so I started making tiktoks as again, practice in sort of preparation to try to do YouTube. And that took off. I have, like, third I have over 30,000 followers there on Tiktok right now. Oh, cool. And I was like, Okay, well, just keep going with this, but I also want to be able to appeal to a larger demographic of people. And there's, I mean, there's a ton of people on Tiktok, but a lot of our industry and a lot of customers are going to be on YouTube right? So I'm trying to focus more on doing YouTube content going forward, because I can really stretch out and do, like, good, solid explanations and like, feel like I could put a lot more production quality and effort into this kind of

Tim Montague: 11:41

video, and it's a both end, right? You can cut it up into shorts. That's what I've started to do, is I still mostly do long form content creation, meaning 15 minutes to 45 minute episodes, and then we and then we produce shorts from those, and that works pretty well.

Derek the solarboi: 11:58

I'm still trying to figure out the workflow of how much time I have to spend on, yeah, on doing all of that. So,

Tim Montague: 12:07

yeah, no, I have no patience for that side of the business. I pay others to do that. Now, I did a little bit of editing in the early days, more on the audio side than the video, but, but both, and it's good to know what it takes and but you'd be amazed. You'd be amazed how reasonable that you can achieve that working with others. So, yeah. Anyway,

Derek the solarboi: 12:32

yeah, and it is something that it's one of my goals for this next year to figure out, like, get some sort of partnership going with an editor, because, and hopefully I can start making enough money off of it that I can justify paying an editor to it just right now it's, you know, I'm not monetized yet or anything, but certainly could be. I just gotta push to get sort of that mass momentum right before I can start having an editor do stuff, but then I feel like I could probably do a lot more.

Tim Montague: 13:05

So when you think about our industry and the content that is out there. Are there some shining stars in your mind, or are there gaps that need to be filled?

Derek the solarboi: 13:22

I mean, there's, there's a lot of great content creators out there. I mean, I do listen to a number of podcasts. Obviously, you know Nico and Sean, great podcasters. There are other podcasts out there that I haven't started listening to that I keep seeing him like I need it. I need to go find them, listen to him and catch up. There's a lot of people on social media that are worth paying attention to. I became friends with solar goat on Tiktok pretty early on.

Tim Montague: 13:48

Okay? And he's

Derek the solarboi: 13:52

Yeah, he's, he's, he would be on Tiktok Instagram. He's very much a shorts focused type of person, though, he does have a Youtube as well. Yeah, he just doesn't spend as much time on on YouTube, but he definitely has stuff. But yeah, there's, there's a ton of like, of like Instagram and Tiktok style solar people out there. And of course, what's the name that is going to bother me that I can't think of it off the top of my head, the solar for women. Person that's embarrassing, Riley. Riley, Riley from just Riley, New gabaer, solar for women. I enjoy watching her videos a lot, okay, Instagram, because she brings a perspective of someone who, who is an installer, is like, sort of in a any realm that I'm not in most of the time, because I'm not, I'm an O and M, right? Yeah, I don't do as much install.

Tim Montague: 14:50

Well, let's talk about women in solar i I'm on a journey to bring a female co host onto the Clean Power Hour. It's going very slowly. I have discussions going with with one potential host and but, but it's hard to find women in solar period, there's still a minority, and we're getting more intentional, okay, about this, and, and I know quite a few companies who are very intentionally hiring women into solar, and that's great, and we want to see this. It's probably 8020 today, right? The the the imbalance, there's probably 80% may men in the solar industry. When you go to the trade shows, you see this blatantly so and but, but anyway, I mean, it is science and technology and it is construction. Now an interesting statistic at the University of Illinois, where I live in. Payne, home of the University of Illinois, in the engineering school, they've achieved, I think women have achieved, 52% of the student body in the engineering school. So women are interested in science and technology, but they're not so interested in construction. You know, I don't know how to crack that nut, but what are your thoughts about, how do we get more women into the solar industry? Honestly,

Derek the solarboi: 16:16

I don't feel super confident speaking on that, but I will absolutely forward you to Riley of solar program women, because she's gonna have a much better answer for that. Yeah, but some of the problems that I see in like so if you're going to get into the solar industry, you're either going to get into it on the office side or in the cruise like in the install crews. And if you're jumping in on the on the install crew side, that you either as a person, have to be ready to accept what that culture is and adapt to it and work with it, or you're just, you're just not gonna last. And the problem is we should not be expecting that of people like and and when I talk about the culture of of installation crews like, it is still very blue collar like, I think that our culture in solar it'll depend, obviously, on the company you work for is more welcoming to women, to you know, two people outside the very blue collar, you know, white dude with a beard that you know, type of culture, right? I think solar is better at that, but it's still not there. And I think as we continue to grow, it's gonna get worse, like I think part of our privilege in that is that we're still a fairly small industry compared to the other blue collar trades, right? So it's something that if it's going to work, we need to have really good messaging inside every single solar company about being inclusive to women, to people of color, to LGBT, sure, all these people like, we just need people right to to help us install and save the planet, right? Hello, you know, for companies on the office that I think, to encourage that, and also, we need heroes in the cruise to also champion those values, because it's tough to push back against that in the culture

Tim Montague: 18:33

on the office side, I do notice one company in particular. I was at a party for Engie not too long ago, and there were a lot of women at this party now the host was a woman. Shout out to Kristen fornas, who's been on the show, is coming back soon, hopefully, and she's the head of the DG group at at NG. But there's a lot of women in development, a lot of women developers out there, project managers, so on the office side, we are making some inroads. And kudos to those women who have done that? And I mean, I tell my son who's a project manager now, you have 30 years of pure runway in the solar industry. This is a pure growth industry, irrespective of who's in Washington. The Trump administration Part Two is not going to be a huge slowdown for the solar industry. There's too much momentum and too much global finance flowing into solar batteries and wind and other sources too, but solar batteries especially, and I appreciate your comments about being more inclusive and welcoming and construction is going to be tough, a tougher nut to crack. I do. I work with a woman who's an electrician in Chicago for an installer, and so they are out there. But in all the job sites that I've visited over the years, I would say less than 5% of the crews are women, yeah, and there are reasons for that. It, I mean, it just it is a very blue collar thing, and men are more attracted to that type of work, working with your hands. But for the right women,

Derek the solarboi: 20:19

I don't know that. I don't know that men as a whole are more attracted the idea of working with your hands. I think it's entirely sociological, just the structures of how we've set up society, for sure, like but if a woman is more interested in working with her hands, that she's going to find a place to work with her hands that doesn't involve getting misogynistic comments every single day she goes in, right? She's gonna, she's gonna optimize for the less misogyny, right? Um. Um, and the one thing that I hear from people, well, at least what I believed back in the day, like I've developed in my understanding of this as a person over time, I was not perfect. I'm still not perfect on this, but the the idea that women are just not as strong as men, and I think that there's a lot of people, I think there's a lot of dudes out there who forget very quickly how they got reamed out by their foreman for not knowing how to swing a hammer, and it's just skill building, right? Like I have seen very, very capable women working in blue collar situations that can do exactly what the men can do. Oh, sure, there's no reason, because it killed that strike the skill, right? Exactly. But it's, it's there. It's a nugget in everybody's heads. And that's like, one of the main things that I try to talk about When opportunity comes up,

Tim Montague: 21:49

yeah, the Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, the maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over six gig Watts shipped in the US. The CPS America product lineup includes three phase string inverters ranging from 25 to 275 kW their flagship inverter the CPS 252, 75 is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts, the 252 75 pairs. Well, with CPS America's exceptional data communication controls and energy storage solutions. Go to chintpowersystems.com. To find out more. Let's talk about the solar industry. Other aspects of the solar industry, we have the solar coaster. There's a boom and bust phenomenon. You know, markets pop and and then boom. I mean, in bust, we have this in Illinois, we had a great boom in 2017 and a great bust in 2019 and then we had a second boom, starting in 22 and we're riding that. Luckily, we have probably a longer runway now, maybe 10 years, hopefully. But I'm, I'm a big fan of spreading your wings, not being all in on one single market because of that phenomenon. But what is your experience with the solar coaster and what? Yeah, what are your thoughts, I guess just about our industry as it, as it matures and grows, I'm curious what you think about it and what needs to improve.

Derek the solarboi: 23:19

Stresses me out. To be entirely honest, I have intentionally stayed in positions where that sort of solar coaster, Enos I either it either doesn't affect me as much, or I don't have to solve for it. But what I have seen people do like that. My previous company I worked for was spread, spread out across like five different states, five, six different states. So there's a lot of markets to choose from, right? They had branches in a couple of different states, and I would say that they're one of the responsible ones. There are a lot of companies out there that are not responsible with doing the multi state thing, but it is a good way of, sort of balancing out your solar portfolio, as it were, because if one market happens to be going down for whatever reason, like s Rex dried up or whatever, like, you can still be getting revenue from other branches while another branch is suffering type of thing, by keeping the whole company afloat that way, in service, we're only going to be seeing more and more from here on, which is nice, and there's not going to be that much of a boom and bust type of thing, because there's just a lot of solar out there. It all will need service at some point. It's not all going to last forever. Everything needs inspections. Much more consistent type of work. It is still like you need to have something fail in order to have in order to go out to something. So there's that but, and there's actually, there's an interesting mini solar coaster for service during a normal calendar year as well. Because over the winter, you're not going to get as many calls because people are not paying as close attention to their solar they're like, it's not producing much anyway. They're not, you know, they're not really looking at it. But once spring comes around, they're starting to look at that. They're starting to notice that, oh, I have, I've had a string down this entire, this entire winter, or whatever, and they start calling in. So usually we'll see an increase in site visits, you know, once spring hits. Also, the other thing that happens is, if an inverter dies, it's most likely going to die in the early spring, early summer time frame, because it's all winter. It's been mostly unstressed. It's been cold. It's not been hot. Heat is what kills everything, and once the warmth starts coming, once the once we get more constant irradiance. Longer periods of the day you're seeing all, all of a sudden, start seeing, Oh, there's a bunch of inverter that inverters that died at site A so that's an interesting little coaster in my realm.

Tim Montague: 26:07

I appreciate the ups and downs. They are painful sometimes, and I'm a fan of having either working in multiple segments of the industry. You know, like one of my specialties is helping residential and small commercial installers grow into large CNI and community solar. And if you're listening to this, and you're a residential installer, and you're thinking about getting into commercial, please reach out to me. I love helping installers grow into commercial. It's a great opportunity. Some installers are getting out of residential that's that is a trend, you know, with things like nem 3.0 in California, which crushed, okay, it just absolutely demolish the residential solar industry by 70% in California. And there were some positive things there. It's driving up the attachment rate, the battery attachment rate in California, I think, is upwards of 80 or 90% now, if you're listening to this and you know that statistic, please let me know. Make a comment or reach out to me on LinkedIn. Check out all my content on cleanpowerhour.com By the way, please subscribe to the show on Apple or Spotify and reach out to me on LinkedIn. Love hearing from my listeners. I do this for you. You know solar installers, EPCs, developers, asset owners, and I love hearing from you about ideas that you would like to see me bring to the show. So But Derek, what else should we talk about? I'm I don't know what I don't know, and you bring a fresh perspective. So I'm curious what you think our audience might appreciate.

Derek the solarboi: 27:48

I'm actually curious to hear from you on the topic of solar coaster Enos, what do you see as, really the source of that? Or what do you feel like? I guess, what I'm trying to say is, do you talk politics on the show at all?

Tim Montague: 28:05

Yeah, me and Sean white, me and Sean White geeked out on the Trump administration. So that is a very hot topic. Whether you're a manufacturer or a developer. People are very concerned about the Trump administration. They hear him talking about crushing the IRA, for example. And guess what, guys, he's not going to crush the IRA. There's too many red states that are getting factories built right now, solar batteries, EVs, EV chargers. He can't do that, you know, I

Derek the solarboi: 28:35

mean, at the same time, he has been known to bite his own followers in in the foot if he thinks it gets ahead, like I mean, and all cards on the table. I did vote Democrat this year. I'm pretty upset, but I so, but I do wonder how much of you know solar people that vote Trump this year, friend I've seen, and more of them than I would have expected to Yep, right? So they're out there. And it's just a fact, I wonder how much of the solar coaster Enos is creates that kind of a desiring people to see somebody just kind of because I think there are people out there that expect Trump to crush the IRA, crush the tax credit, and because they want to see solar become more self sustaining, right? So on the on the liberal side of the aisle, we've got people that want to that see climate change as a real thing, right, and want to solve it, and think solar is a good way to go, that route. The other side, they're like, Oh, it's just an industry we're just propping up for reasons. And I wonder you started,

Tim Montague: 29:50

you started this with a question to me about the solar coaster, though, so I'm not sure where did Yeah.

Derek the solarboi: 29:56

So my question is in terms of, like, I think people are, I wonder if people are tired of the solar coaster, and they're like, Yeah, invest in investment tax credits, great, and, but I like normality, or I like consistency, and they see, I wonder if they see, like political endeavors like the ITC to be antithetical to getting rid of the solar coaster. You know what I mean, I could be way off on that too. Let me tell me I'm wrong. I

Tim Montague: 30:25

don't know that there's any way to avoid booms and busts in fast growing industries. We are a fast, growing industry. When you look, when you do the math on, you know, I had my call on the show two years ago, and in when he got into solar, he's the founder Borrego now, he has a company called Anza. Check it out there. We were doing one megawatt a year in 2000 and. Two in the United States now, we're doing 40 gigawatts a year, right? And the compound annual growth rate of that is something like 20% it's a very high CAGR, or CAGR and and so anyway, in a fast growing industry, there are just going to be these natural waves and troughs. And you see this in the internet boom. You're we're in the middle of an AI Boom. That's going to have a boom and a bust. There's going to be a lot of companies that get venture capital and then die because they missed what the target, right? There's not a need for a you know. I mean, the first internet boom was fascinating, all the medical internet websites and the and the products and all these little niches, and then it all collapsed into Amazon, right? Like so many, so many companies just couldn't keep going. But we're also in the energy industry, okay? And this is very important to understand, all forms of energy are subsidized by these things called governments, just the way other types of infrastructure, transportation, infrastructure is another one where there's not private companies willing to take enough risk to grow industries like these. It takes governments, and it is so good for the economy and for the people, ultimately, right? When you can bring clean energy to America or to the globe, right, we're creating a healthier environment. We're reducing pollution, air pollution from coal and oil kills a lot of people, 6 million plus, asthma.

Derek the solarboi: 32:33

I am big fan of cleaning up the air. Yeah, we're part of that, part of that. Derek,

Tim Montague: 32:38

we are part of the solution to air pollution. And then there's climate change, right? And we're only partially part of the solution there. Because, as I like to point out, net zero in the economy doesn't solve the climate crisis, because by the time we net zero the economy, it's 2050 and guess what ppms in the atmosphere is 450 today it's 420 so you think things are scary today, wait till 450 that's really scary. So we have to decarbonize the atmosphere. That's called Climate restoration. I had Peter Fauci on the show. I bring it up a lot because this is super important. All of us energy professionals need to also be climate restoration professionals and advocates, because the energy transition alone cannot get it done. It's still important. We still need an energy transition. I'm not giving up being an energy transition professional, but I'm also getting into climate restoration, and that's a pretty different suite of technologies, like ocean iron fertilization, but But back to this thing about energy, like the oil industry highly highly subsidized, right? And we happen to have a lot of fossil fuels, and this is why solar happened first en masse in Europe and Asia, because they have less access to fossil fuels than we do. And so if your energy is expensive, you're more likely to glom on to things like solar and wind, which were relatively expensive, but now they're coming down, and they're going head to head, you know, right? And if you're a utility that operates a fleet of, say, natural gas and coal power plants, guess what? You are making plans or executing plans today to convert that fleet to wind, solar and batteries, and it is the most economically efficient technology to do grid, scale energy. Yeah,

Derek the solarboi: 34:37

there is a major oil CEO that came out and was like, Hey, we don't support taking out solar incentives anymore, because they also invest in this stuff. So,

Tim Montague: 34:46

oh, I think you're referring to Exxon, right? Exxon was in the news. I was Exxon. I couldn't remember for sure. I think Exxon is just in the news. The CEOs kind of advocating for solar incentives, or renewable energy incentives and and there's some enlightened interest, self interest there, like, of course, trying to be one of the good guys. The the the fossil industries are creating a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt about solar, about the energy transition, they are threatened. They will have stranded assets, but we're not stopping to burn fossil fuels. Have you noticed? Right? Yeah, right. And globally, ppms are going up. One PPM a year, they're going up. So we're still riding that train. And I like to say I don't have anything against fossil fuels, they gave us the good life that we're enjoying today. Derek, it's very important. I want the good life. I just want to figure out the transition to the next phase sooner than later, because we do have to stop creating climate change and stop killing people with air pollution.

Derek the solarboi: 35:49

We want to keep going. With that good life that we have absolutely

Tim Montague: 35:54

and there's no reason we can't, right, we get 10,000 times more energy from the sun than all of society uses. So the sun truly can power society with wind, solar batteries, and then you can make hydrogen, right? When you have very cheap electricity from solar. You can make affordable hydrogen with an electrolyzer and then do all the other stuff, right? Hydrogen is a great replacement for some fossil fuels, and that's happening slowly. It is going to be pretty slow, because hydrogen is still pretty expensive. I had Peter Kelly on the show to talk about this. He's become super knowledgeable. He's giving trainings on the hydrogen economy now around the country. So if you if you want to bone up on the hydrogen economy, check out. Peter Kelly. Detweiler, yeah, for sure, in our last few minutes together. Derek, what else should our audience know or be thinking about when it comes to solar, O M or solar content,

Derek the solarboi: 36:55

um, so sort of the last thing that has been a big thing I've been thinking about recently is repowers, yeah, getting systems back up that are old, that the inverter is dead and it's just not doesn't make sense to fix it, because don't Have a warranty on that thing anymore, or, or it, you know, or it's a string inverter, and it's just dead, right? There's, there's no fixing it. And there's a lot of central inverters out there that are really difficult to figure out how to repower because they're in like, weird voltage windows where, like, maybe if you had a 480 volt system, you could make it work within the voltage tolerances that you need. Or if you had a 208 like or like, you'll have a 480 volt system that's like a 600 volt on the DC side. And it's really hard to find inverters for that hour class, because everything is, everything on 480 is like 1000 volt or 1500 volt, stuff like that. So that I have, I have a couple repowers in the works. I think I'm going to be working. I think I'm going to be doing a video on one of them, because I think I figured out a really sweet way to do a repower so I have to, have to keep tuned for that. That's that's that's been a thing I've been thinking about. There's not enough products out there that serve repowers Very well, especially like the old central inverters, old selectria, the old TVP inverters, that kind of stuff.

Tim Montague: 38:25

Yeah. And the solar panels too, right? They get repowered. You can tear off, tear off the old solar panels. This is more of a thing in the more mature markets, like California and but it's but it's happening, and it will continue to happen. I mean, luckily, solar panels do last for 20 plus years at the end of the light, at the end of 20 years, a modern solar panels still producing at least 80% and often more, yeah,

Derek the solarboi: 38:52

yeah. I mean, you, you do get those situations right where you have the broken, a couple of broken solar panels that you have to figure out, Okay, do I do I fix this? Do we just how to string out and call it, like, a bit economical to, like, buy a solar panel and ship it over the ocean, and, you know, to sort of within the right power class panel. Like, it's hard to match that sometimes,

Tim Montague: 39:17

but when you talk about central inverters, what kW are you talking,

Derek the solarboi: 39:21

um, like 60 to 100 120 like that area of things, basically the larger of an inverter that you have, that's that is still in the 600 volt DC range. Gets really tough to solve for it. I have done, I know Chen is a regular sponsor of yours. I have done repowers, where usually we just buy a bigger inverter than we need to for a set of of panels, and then, like, downsize how much, how much you can output, and then it's generally in the right production class. But even then, you can't always find the right buys for an inverter that's like, over 60 kW. Yes, tricky. That's all, yeah,

Tim Montague: 40:10

cool. Well, our time is up. Derek, I am going to run and do some pickleball drilling. I'm an avid pickleball player, and it's great way to get exercise, even in the cold, it is cold now in the Midwest, winter finally came. It's been a it's been an amazingly warm fall here. But now it's now, it's winter. It snowed yesterday.

Derek the solarboi: 40:33

Yeah, we're getting flurries here on the East Coast. So that's been that's been lovely today reminds me that winter might still come around. Yep,

Tim Montague: 40:40

it's coming. Well, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving, and thank you for coming on the show. Derek. How can our listeners find you? Um,

Derek the solarboi: 40:48

you can find all my stuff at solarboi.com that's solar. Boy with an i instead of a y. You can find me on YouTube, Tiktok, Instagram, I am on blue sky. Blue Sky is having a moment in the energy community. If you're still on Twitter, come over to blue sky. It's great. I know John's on there. John Fitzgerald Weaver, solar Fred just joined torvalenza. Okay,

Tim Montague: 41:13

yeah, I haven't looked at people. I haven't looked at blue sky. I know that that people were going to Mastodon, but that seems to have been a failed attempt. I don't know. I'm still

Derek the solarboi: 41:23

on mastodon. I still love Mastodon, but blue sky seems to have a certain community appeal at the moment. So look, whatever gets people off Twitter, I'm totally fine with so you can interact with me on on literally everything I am around so but that's solar boy with an i Not a Y.

Tim Montague: 41:43

Check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com. Please give me a rating and a review on Apple or Spotify. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. And I love hearing from my listeners and tell a friend about the show. With that, I want to say thank you, solar boy, for coming on the show. And I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage. Take care. You too.