Things You MUST KNOW About RE+ 2025

The Clean Power Hour LIVE is back with the latest in solar, wind, and storage. Tim Montague and John Weaver dive into the most important stories shaping clean energy today. The hosts also discuss their upcoming RE+ booth visits, hardware purchasing strategies, and the evolving landscape of energy consultancy beyond traditional solar installation.

Episode Highlights

• German researchers at Fraunhofer develop aesthetic solar facades with 80% efficiency for building-integrated PV (Interesting Engineering).
• China launches the world’s largest perovskite project, a 5 MW demonstration plant pushing tandem solar forward (Perovskite-Info).
• Ørsted tests drone deliveries for offshore wind farms, moving equipment and supplies 75 miles offshore (Renews Biz).
• New ultra-low-cost underground battery solution priced at $53/kWh unveiled in Shanghai, sparking industry discussion (Energy Storage News).
• T1 Energy, formerly FREYR, sells out 2025 solar module capacity after a 437 MW deal, signaling strong US demand (Taiyang News).
• Fraunhofer ISC establishes a US TopCon solar cell pilot line, targeting a 4 GW factory in Houston (Solar Global).
• New Mexico utility chooses distributed batteries over gas peakers, retrofitting storage into existing PV sites (Energy Storage News).
• Understanding FEOC compliance: layers of verification create an “onion” of complexity for tax credit financing (PV Magazine).

Transcript

Tim Montague: 0:52

Welcome to the Clean Power Hour live bringing you the latest in solar, wind and battery news with Tim Montague and none other than the commercial solar guy. Welcome to the show. John Weaver, hey Tim brother, we're going to Vegas. We're going to Vegas. John going to ru plus, it's very exciting

John Weaver: 1:11

in let's see, it's Friday, so two, two nights. I leave Sunday at least morning.

Tim Montague: 1:18

Oh, cool. I leave Monday morning. So we'll be in Vegas, September 8. Well, John will be there on the seventh through the 11th. I leave on the afternoon of the 11th. And this is, if you don't know what re plus is, it's the largest trade show conference for clean energy in the United States. There are larger conferences elsewhere. But anyway, it's a great convening of, what, 50,000 people maybe this year.

John Weaver: 1:48

No, it's gonna be more than that. You think, absolutely.

Tim Montague: 1:53

And I spend most of my time on the trade show floor in Booth V, 8470, V is for Venetian with my friends at Chin power systems, doing interviews with their customers. But I'll also be running around the trade show when I can grab a minute here and there, visiting other booths, always looking for cool, racking modules, software, other power, electronic solutions, building management systems. You know, the thing that really is on my mind, John, is that we have to put it all together. We have to become energy consultants, not just solar professionals, right? And and so you've got, you know, smart devices and turning your building into a battery, controlling the HVAC system, controlling the battery, controlling the solar, to attack your power bill and hopefully offer some level of resiliency. That's that's the dream. But what are you looking forward to about re plus

John Weaver: 3:08

walking around the floor for the first time I'm going as a buyer of hardware for my company.

Tim Montague: 3:16

What kind of hardware you looking for?

John Weaver: 3:18

Well, just like we have a portfolio of about four megawatts of rooftop and 600 KW ground mount, that's going to be agrovoltague, so I need racking I might be using Helene modules. Really like them. They have good domestic content product, the inverters, I'm not 100% which direction on. I'm thinking about using the end phase, but that's a little expensive for big rooftop projects. However, to get me domestic content that I want without a risk. Need some racking product. I've been thinking about this interesting concrete product, Sun ballast based at least a manufacturer up in New Hampshire, got to see their their facility where they make the product. So it's kind of neat. So just looking at stuff, I mean, I know all the names, KB racking. We use a lot uni rack. We use a lot agrovoltaic stuff. I've never really purchased a thing yet, but,

Tim Montague: 4:18

well, when you say agrivoltaics, there's so many options there. So what do you think, though, that you're looking for? I did interview solar geek, or solar geek at they've quoted this project at the solar fire Summit, they've got an elevated tracker. I liked it,

John Weaver: 4:36

and that's what I want, specifically elevated tracker, okay? Because within the Massachusetts SMART program, to be agvoltague, you have to be elevated, I think, 10 feet above. And there's an adder for using a tracker. So I'll pay more for a tracker and maximize it and get some good revenue out of the system. So that's, uh, so that that's so we're just, you know, we're at the very beginning of it, working through finance, putting together a portfolio teaser of the project.

Tim Montague: 5:05

And what is the dual use? Is that known what the dual use will be?

John Weaver: 5:09

Uh, well, currently, they grow corn and then various gourds at this at this particular portion of the farm. So there's two different fields. We specified that we were going to use one chunk of the field. They say they're going to probably move the gourds there and not do the corn there, and they'll have the corn at the upper field. But that's actually part of the discussion. To start having a little more complexly right now, we're we're working toward it so and then also, I want to be there as somebody who's not only a hardware buyer for our own projects, but I want to sales pitch my own company for the first time. You know, if I see a developer, hey, you're looking for a small EPC, you. In mass Rhode Island, we have, we have the ability to get a few more bodies consistent in the field. So, yeah, you know, working this is the first time I've done that as my own company. I mean, I'm still writing for PV mag, and there's so much cool gear, and I just want to walk around and see new stuff, thinking about doing a five minute interview format where I just like do a quick recording, say, Hey, what's up? And then go back and forth. And I don't know, I just want to talk to the people on the floor. There's so much going on. It's complex time. So all right, plus cool. And you know what, you're right, you I was, I looked it up. It is 40 to 50. G's 40 to 50,000 people. So that's a lot of people.

Tim Montague: 6:30

It's a lot of people, and it's a little overwhelming, but, but, you know, just be curious, be open minded. You know, plan some meetings, but leave some unscheduled time to walk the show. The show is really the show floor is really interesting, and I'm looking forward to seeing, of course, many people that I already know, I want to give a shout out to celesca in Booth V 3020, Venetian level one. That is a software design tool that I heard the commercial solar guys using. Have you heard of Have you heard of Celestica?

John Weaver: 7:09

I've been using celesca for at least a year. I know this because I just had to read and I have to send them a document back. I know this because I just had to re up for my second year. And maybe, maybe we had a first year, so maybe even two years, but at least one full year we've been using them for for their product.

Tim Montague: 7:29

So if you don't know about Celestia, that's a design tool, and so it's a competitor of helioscopes, but they're doing a lot more, and they're they're taking on PB Assist. They have a big announcement on the eighth or ninth, so look for that, and check them out in Booth V 3020, but I want to give a shout out to a couple other clients of mine and sponsors of the show, om co solar for all your racking needs, they have trackers. They have fixed tilt. They're very good friends with suns on another sponsor of the show that makes vertical by facial racking, which I'm sure John Weaver's familiar with, although I don't know have you ever gotten a quote on a son's on project. I have

John Weaver: 8:12

not but I do know them. I have written about their product before with PV mag as a product project or two. Yeah, that I got to cover, but I've never quoted a vertical. I so totally do want to that.

Tim Montague: 8:24

Yeah, I too, wrote a story about sons on and strawberry farming recently for PV magazine, and I read that Helga biernath is the CEO. He's not, he's not exhibiting, so you have to reach out to me or John to find Helga, but he'll be walking around. And he's a jolly guy. He's a great guy to know. He also has a installation company called Sun stall that does DG ground mount installations all over the place. I think he's worked in 40 states now. But some other people I'm looking forward to seeing Mark Palmer and Aaron James with conductor solar, that's a solar finance marketplace, and they're just walking the show. Wattch.io V 3525 on level one. That's a performance monitoring platform yourself. John Weaver, how are we going to find John Weaver if you're just wandering around?

John Weaver: 9:18

John, well, there is a booth for PV magazine, and so you might see me there, but no, you won't. If you want to find me, just message on blue sky or, you know, look for the large shiny head that'll be cruising around.

Tim Montague: 9:34

Because I love that. Look for the large shiny head that is awesome. Well, if you message John on blue sky or me on LinkedIn, I will help you find John too. I am officially John's concierge.

John Weaver: 9:51

So, perfect, perfect. Oh yeah. So it'd be cool show. I'm looking forward to it. I just it's, it's kind of neat this year to go with three different hats, instead of mostly just a PV mad guy, who's, who's an industry guy learning stuff, but not really doing business there. But this year, I might make a handshake. That's a real business opportunity.

Tim Montague: 10:11

So cool, right on. And then one last shout out, this company is exhibiting in v3 648, on level one. Denowatts, another performance monitoring platform, Dan, Leary OG in the industry, I know you know Dan, and he's just a great guy, but he's also got a wonderful technology for monitoring your asset. If you're an asset owner, this is really your cup of tea, so check it out at re plus. And with that, we should move on to the news. Maybe there's

John Weaver: 10:46

all kinds of news, dude, I put up like 20 things just for. The sake of it. So you could, like, delete a bunch, but there's, like, all kinds of stuff always going on, always going, Yeah, you pick the first one

Tim Montague: 10:59

though. Well, yeah, I want to talk about this. This story out of Germany. German scientists create esthetic solar facades achieving 80% efficiency. I'll get this on screen. And so as you know, as our listeners know, by building integrated or VIP v is the bee's knees, right? It's an awesome thing, because we have lots of buildings, and if you could clad them, whether it's a high rise glass building or just an apartment building that stucco today and tomorrow is solar panels. BIPV is the bee's knees. And so they've developed a technology for screen printing on top of solar panels so that you can give it color and texture. And that's it's all about making things more pleasing to the human eye. Because some people don't think solar panels are the prettiest thing. They're pretty cool, I think. But I get it. You know, the architects want more flexibility to color and texture things, and that's what they're doing here. And Fraunhofer, this big Tech Institute out of Germany, Fraunhofer Institute for electron beam and plasma technology. There's a mouthful. Has reached a major milestone in designing. In design PV, they call it, okay, I like that. Like that language. John, design PV, yes, yeah, that's pretty hip.

John Weaver: 12:27

I really like colored modules. There's a few companies that have tried, there's a few companies that make, like, custom modules. And I want to see more bi PV. The only negative I have in my emotions is that we don't build enough buildings. I guess we do, if we really could overthrow the building retrofit and work that's going on, then we could really get some volume out there. Like, for instance, there's 5 million residential roofs changed every year. Was a number that was always thrown around. We could get rooftop building integrated product, if we could get stuck facades done. I'm working on a really big solar project right now in a residential and multi housing, multi family, and the whole building siding. All 1418, structures are being redone. Man, that'd be a whole bunch of cool solar to add there. We'd be overpowering the site. We'd be beyond 100% now we're in the 80 90% range. So I totally down with it. I just wish we were, you know, like in Singapore or something, they rebuild their buildings every 30 or 40 years. If we were doing that, that'd be pretty awesome. Then, then building integrated, I think, would be much more massive, interesting.

Tim Montague: 13:52

Yeah. I mean, I agree, eventually every building is going to have PV integrated, because the sun shines everywhere, you know, except for the extreme latitudes, you know, Antarctica or the Arctic in the winter, then you've gotten very little sunlight in the winter, right? It's dark. But other than that,

John Weaver: 14:11

that's the issue. If the issue is that we can't power Antarctica or the Arctic and their respective winners, then we have won. If that is our only issue that we cannot overpower, I will accept fossil fuels in those locations. How's that? Yeah, we can do it.

Tim Montague: 14:30

Um, all right, well, let's move on to this perovskite story

John Weaver: 14:34

project of the week. Tim, give it it's due credit.

Tim Montague: 14:41

So this China landing unveils five megawatt commercial perovskite, perovskite photovoltague demonstration base, yes. All right, what's the story?

John Weaver: 14:52

So, this is the biggest perovskite project I've seen. I saw one megawatt before. This is now five megawatts. It doesn't explicitly state which module This is which technology.

Tim Montague: 15:09

Yeah. I found that a little frustrating, honestly?

John Weaver: 15:12

Well, yeah, I mean, the company has made a 26% tandem sell, so they do have a perovskite silicon tandem within their business line. But, you know, this is what comes out. Sometimes it just says, perovskite.

Tim Montague: 15:29

There's an ad here for a perovskite focused trade show. Perovskite connect

John Weaver: 15:36

this whole website. It's literally perovskite. Dash info,

Tim Montague: 15:39

oh, cool. It's a perovskite news site. I didn't know this existed. Yeah, this is,

John Weaver: 15:44

this is one of my favorites. I see all the solar stuff there, and they link back constantly, like PV. Magazine and other stuff. So they're just perovskite folks, which is kind of neat, which, you know, there's perovskite people. They exist. So I'm just excited to see perovskite moving. It's it's still coming. The machines are still being developed. It seems to be getting better. It seems like we can deal with the degradation, because, literally, sunlight makes perovskites break down. So that's an issue, because these are solar panels, but it seems like it's coming, and all the big companies have all the cool kids on the block have a big perovskite module, and so, yeah, there's a perovskite book. I didn't even know that. So one reason I'm kind of inter I'm I'm also positive on perovskites, yeah, is you see that long list of items across the bottom that aren't perovskite solar, you know, LEDs,

Tim Montague: 16:49

yeah, yeah, on the website, yeah, all that stuff. Props got graphene, props got lasers, props get qds, whatever qds. Props get LEDs, yeah. What is quantum so? The quantum dots, yeah, maybe, yeah, the

John Weaver: 17:03

LEDs and the quantum dots, those are really interesting because those are in TVs. And TVs are made in a similar manner as solar panels. They're flat panels, lots of spraying of stuff, and that's a big industry, and it's parallel to perovskites, just like lithium ion had laptops and cell phones to help move the technology along, a secondary revenue stream, perovskites has multiple layers of intelligent beings staring at rocks. I mean, you know, our lightning rocks, the rocks that we hold to the sky, and they make power, we're all, I guess we're all just sort of kind of witch doctors. Tim, you and I

Tim Montague: 17:52

and well, we're bot Wranglers, is what we are. John, I like it before we before we get wrangled by the bot. We're bot Wranglers. But those, the clock is ticking. We have about five years. I venture five before, before we get wrangled. All right. But so what do I I'm

John Weaver: 18:12

excited looking at perovskites. I like that. This potential it's developing. There's, there's concurrent research from different experts all around the world looking at perovskites and, okay, five, that's the project that week, project of the half week, two weeks, whatever. Cool.

Tim Montague: 18:29

All right. Well, let's talk about drones and wind farms, drone deliveries, hit spot for Orsted. Cool, cool photo there. Yeah, you know my first question, right? Predict my first question,

John Weaver: 18:43

John, is that a real picture?

Tim Montague: 18:46

Uh, no, that was not my first question. My first question was, what is the carrying capacity of this sky lift, or heavy lift drone.

John Weaver: 18:56

Scroll down tiny bit. I think 400 kilograms. Okay, I think it's right in there is that 700

Tim Montague: 19:02

weighing up to 70 kilograms of oh, 70.

John Weaver: 19:05

There we go. So, a lot smaller.

Tim Montague: 19:07

So that's like a human being, right? 2.2 pounds per kg, yep, 150 I guess. Yeah, a smaller human, yeah?

John Weaver: 19:21

154 Okay, so there you go. That's cool. Yeah, I thought what was neat is that one is that the turbines stay on. Two that you don't have people loading things on and off into this elevator. Yeah? And I thought it was really neat that they had 550 flights planned during a trip,

Tim Montague: 19:43

yeah, 75 miles offshore. That's crazy.

John Weaver: 19:47

Well, there's a boat that goes out. It's not the boat.

Tim Montague: 19:52

Is the platform that they launch from. I get it. Yeah, that's cool.

John Weaver: 19:55

And this, I've been seeing this ongoing. They've been doing this for a while, so now it's, but now it's actually, you know, doing stuff, yeah?

Tim Montague: 20:04

So I just want them to 10x the capacity, right? Because then they could, they could lift, like, pallets of modules or racking, or inverters, or, like, really, like construction grade materials, not just like some little, I mean,

John Weaver: 20:19

well, actually, so, you know, maybe by the time we move along, I shared a, I'm blue sky, not, not here, but a an article within the past couple of weeks about China. Let's, let's do a quick search China.

Unknown: 20:35

From there it is, blue sky again, calm.

John Weaver: 20:40

Heck, yeah, that's where I put my news. Man, that's how I track the knowledge that I dispersed to the world. I gotta post it somewhere first, and then slowly go back and see what's cool. Yeah. So there's a project in China where they moved stuff up a mountainside and use drones. And here it is, bam, getting it into the document real fast for you. And it had some serious volume, and there's actually a little video in there. So with this project, they had 16 large drones, okay, 100 tons of steel and concrete up roads. Drones carry up to 420 kilograms, which is 925 pounds, yeah, and 1.3 kilograms or kilometers at a time. That's, I think, what you're talking about this is the level that you need to do what you want. Oh, and this big stuff that's big drone, man, look at that thing.

Tim Montague: 21:41

Are those? Uh,

John Weaver: 21:44

those are turbines and helicopters.

Tim Montague: 21:48

What are the poles that they're carrying?

John Weaver: 21:50

Oh, well, I think it's for building wind. Let's see. Oh, no, solar farms. No, this is racking. Solar racking. Okay, yep, yeah, that's that's gonna be it. Maybe those are foundation maybe those are piles going into the ground, those first big ones, those longer, heavy poles. Look at that. They're building solar on the top of a mountain. How much cheaper is that than building a road? Only that that's just racking gear, man,

Tim Montague: 22:16

that's not your mom's drone. That's that's a beefy drone.

John Weaver: 22:20

Yes, big drone. You are right, but that's it.

Tim Montague: 22:25

So, yeah, why are they showing the fixed the fixed wing aircraft?

John Weaver: 22:31

Just to let you know that they'll blow you up. Yeah? Just a reminder, and we can put some

Tim Montague: 22:38

solar panels up here. There isn't there is a dark side to the drones for sure. Hey, you. You said it like

John Weaver: 22:44

30 seconds ago, man, five years they're coming for us, yeah? So become friends with the drones. Be nice. Say thank you to chat.

Tim Montague: 22:51

GPT, yeah, I was wondering the other day if they, if they like, have some kind of dashboard at open AI, or, you know, these other LLM companies about how humans are treating the chat bots, right? Like, are they being kind, or are they being abusive and that kind of thing.

John Weaver: 23:18

They pay attention. They actually comment that we say, thank you so much that it costs 10s of millions of dollars in electricity to respond to it.

Tim Montague: 23:26

Oh, so Yeah, certainly, I've certainly trimmed down my language. I don't put question marks anymore on my question. Questions, because I know it, knows it's a question. There you go. But I don't know if I'm saving millions of dollars in electricity by doing that, but you're helping. You're helping. I'm saving my fingers from from carpal tunnel, I guess.

John Weaver: 23:51

All right, that's what I thought was cool.

Tim Montague: 23:52

Starry stone energy.

John Weaver: 23:54

Starry stone and energy, well, starry stone energy storage product that is super cheap at a small capacity because it's buried underground. And so their thought is, you don't need the same cost. You don't need the same fire protection. It's a battery that's buried. It buried there. So here's a showing of it. Pretty much burying anything is expensive. John labor is cutting some ground is, you know, digging a hole, a little bit of excavation, you know, 10 grand, 10 grand to build a hole. All right, the

Tim Montague: 24:29

story is ultra low cost. Battery storage launch provokes price war discussion at Shanghai trade show, August 21 Okay, so I I'm still not following what's the story?

John Weaver: 24:42

The story is, somebody's got a cheap battery.

Tim Montague: 24:46

$53 is lithium iron phosphate, yes.

John Weaver: 24:53

And it's, it's just underground, and that's what the story is. The story is creativity. The story is somebody has an idea they want to drop the price. I like the idea of putting batteries underground. I don't know if that's good idea, though. I just like

Tim Montague: 25:07

the idea. What is what? Why? Why did it trigger a price war?

John Weaver: 25:11

Well, the discussion is, how did you get to such a low price with such a low product and

Tim Montague: 25:17

a low product,

John Weaver: 25:19

a small product, like 53 bucks per kilowatt hour, that's smaller than the largest procurements for two, three years out, that are gigawatt hours, 10s of gigawatt hours in size. Yeah. So this is the lowest battery price that's been out there for lithium phosphate, by far. And it's and this guy's response is, listen, it's just because I've innovated. I have this battery two meters underground, low temp, it's not going to catch fire.

Tim Montague: 25:50

So the. There's no, like, space conditioning system, and that's how they're making it cheaper. It's not actually the cells, it's the

John Weaver: 25:56

no correct, the full wrap. It's the wrap correct. We are saving on rap Correct, yeah, that's the innovation that's occurring here. That's the creativity.

Tim Montague: 26:57

I mean, that that stuff can still catch fire underground,

John Weaver: 27:00

yeah, but it's underground. Who cares?

Tim Montague: 27:04

I mean, I guess I'm just completely starved for oxygen. Maybe it can't, I don't know.

John Weaver: 27:09

It's interesting. Maybe it can't go too far. So interesting idea. I was just just thought it was creative. I was like, All right, I like that idea. Keep thinking, man, so heat battery if you want to go underground. An idea that I've always thought should come about is that every cul de sac should have a little battery, have a little control system, and every house, not every house, but everybody that can gets a little bit of solar on their house, yeah, make yourself cul de sac level micro grids with the battery underneath the cul de sac seems kind of cool. Yeah? So, oh, so I like this idea. Battery underground,

Tim Montague: 27:47

all right. Well, you found a story about t1 energy, one of my favorite companies. They formerly known as fryer battery. Their their origins are in Norway, and I had, I had their former CEO on the show, but they were still, at that time, they were still planning a battery factory in Georgia. They've since scrapped that plan. Yep, they bought a five gigawatt solar panel factory from Trina. I believe, right?

John Weaver: 28:15

I think, yes, I think it was Trina. Let's, let's.

Tim Montague: 28:22

So they're, they're all in on on solar modules. Now, yep, I don't know if they've given up the ghost on batteries or not, but

John Weaver: 28:32

Well, in the US, I think they have.

Tim Montague: 28:34

The story says, t1, energy sells out 2025, module solar module capacity after 437, megawatt deal, increased interest post OB, BBA drives, t1 energy's new agreements.

John Weaver: 28:47

Okay, it looks like for the year, they're aiming to be in the 2.6 to three gigawatt of modules sold, and they say they're sold out. And I just thought that was cool, yeah, that they're sold out. I haven't even seen their product in the market, so they're probably selling straight to utility scale people or something.

Tim Montague: 29:13

They're claiming 50% non FEOC Billa materials,

John Weaver: 29:17

all right, well, they're also working on cells to do some work. I believe they're, they're going to start producing cells. Well, you know, actually, I have a cell, solar. It says solar cell, fab, yeah, there we go. Yes, I knew that they had something. So five gigawatt solar cell, fab, yeah, so that, I'm sure

Tim Montague: 29:39

that have pushed her. Oh, yeah. And they're, they've been in the news for their deal with Corning. Corning.

John Weaver: 29:44

That's who I was thinking. Yes, there it is. It's right there on the page. Geez. So I just thought it was cool to see that they were sold out. I was happy to see it, and good luck. I hope they rock on. Um, that. I'm annoyed that Trina had to sell their factory, but I get the politics. Trina got out as they did it fast, and that was good. It allowed this to move fast. And so, oh, good luck with fryer. Hope they get to that five gigawatt number. I want to see what kind of modules they sell. Man, I don't really know what they sell, so be kind of neat. I guess we could. We could look it up, yeah,

Tim Montague: 30:18

go to their website. I'm sure it says, I'm sure it says,

John Weaver: 30:23

t1 energy. So it's just neat. It's just nice to see. And selling out. And good job. So they got some cool robots on their site. They got a top con module here, 600 and a 400 Ooh, 600 watt. I like that. Nice black, all black. Nice residential frame, 430 been looking around 23% efficiency, all right, pretty solid. Good looking gear.

Tim Montague: 30:51

Oh yeah, I mean, it's basically a Trina Solar module, right?

John Weaver: 30:54

So, yeah, good product. So, yeah, there you go. T1 energy. They're sold out, so there's no point calling them for this year, folks. But I'm sure next year they'll take some phone calls, but you got to buy about 100 megawatts at a time. That's not true. I don't know that at all. Good job. Good job. T1 and keep going. And so I kind of stuck on the US solar module line because I thought this was also really interesting. This is Fraunhofer again. So we get to talk about Fraunhofer. They're not just some research agency. Mr. Timothy Montague, there they are. The NREL of Europe is who Fraunhofer is. They are wonderfulness. If I go to next time I'm nearby, I'm gonna go like, lay up against. Are building. They might like call the cops on me or something, but they're awesome.

Tim Montague: 31:47

Oh yeah, very storied organization. Yes,

John Weaver: 31:51

they, they did the first article I ever remember on agrivoltaics and and it's cool. So, so here,

Tim Montague: 31:58

so you've got a story avoiding patent disputes. Fraunhofer ISC establishes topcom pilot line targeting four gigawatt us factory. It's funny, the

John Weaver: 32:08

article didn't really talk about the patent disputes that much I, or at least maybe I ignored them because I didn't care, but I just thought it was cool to see Fraunhofer and Tom Talon putting together a four gigawatt cell factory, because we need cells. We need solar cells. It's good to have the whole line, you know, especially with the way the fiox stuff and all those things go, I'm happy to see this work ongoing, even with manufacturing credits and domestic tax credits kind of getting hacked up a bit. So the motivation to buy domestically produced product that's a little more expensive goes away soonish. You know, 2007 27 for short term buyers. Maybe long term buyers can secure stuff before that. I don't know. Maybe there's some strategy where you can do that continuous construction thing. So So I'm interested in it. I like seeing this new company showing up. I don't know much about them, but, oh yeah, by the way, very, very at the end, they threw in a perovskite silicon tandem. So that made me really happy. Just, you know, always like to see that slip into stuff. So just interesting, very, very interesting to me, that that there's still people growing, still stuff going out. And so this is a good announcement.

Tim Montague: 33:32

Yeah, it's this is factories underway. When I was talking to jigger recently, jigger Shah, we dropped an interview with jigger just this this past Tuesday. So check that out. cleanpowerhour.com. He commented, you know, I pushed back a little bit. He said, Well, all the 45x incentives remain in place. That's the manufacturing incentives. Yes, in the IRA. And I was like, well, jigger, there's been just a boatload of cancelation announcements. And he's like, Well, yeah, if they didn't have steel in the ground, then they're having trouble raising money. But those factories that were already broken ground, then they're probably moving forward. But I don't know how true that is. It's an interesting perspective.

John Weaver: 34:20

Well, I'm going to meet with Abby Hopper from sia when I go to Ari plus. And one thing I wanted to talk about is firming up a better list of available domestic product, because they do a pretty solid job of tracking it. I'd love for them also to supply a contact name for a salesperson with their list on their website that we can say, hey, here's the modules. I want to go buy some

Tim Montague: 34:45

modules. Hasn't solar power world been very good about this tracking?

John Weaver: 34:51

They have a good map. Maybe that's the place where I should look and get my but I want a salespersons name on a list, so maybe I could go bother solar power world. Yeah, they definitely had a map too.

Tim Montague: 35:00

So and to answer my question, it says here that I so I went to perplexity. That's my new Google. I just perplexity everything now I don't google anymore, and it says they're building a factory in Houston, Texas. Smart place to build a factory. All the solar companies are based there, all the big ones anyway, right? And other energy companies. It's the energy capital of the US. So that's cool, interesting. All right, Houston, Texas, I'm doing a lot of work in Texas, John, it's a hot it's a hot market.

John Weaver: 35:34

It's one of the biggest. It's the biggest, Let's rephrase that, it's a very, very hot market in the US, yes, and it's literally hot and getting hotter. So, all right, so that's, that's, you know, actually, that last thing that you said just kind of triggered a good thought in me, um, they're, they're going to Houston. They're surrounded by solar panel makers. They're surrounded by this, surrounded by that. Are we seeing, are we beginning to see a hub of solar module manufacturing that's going to start to arise, in which we then start to see the natural arising of the sub component suppliers being in nearby regions.

Tim Montague: 36:13

There's definitely a lot of manufacturing going on in Texas when it comes to solar and batteries. Now it's not just Houston, it's Dallas, it's El Paso.

John Weaver: 36:23

That's that big highway thing they got going on there, right? Go 90 miles an hour in Texas. That's legal, right? Yeah.

Tim Montague: 36:30

I mean, having driven across Texas, it is a freaking big place.

John Weaver: 36:36

Things a day, takes a day to go east to west.

Tim Montague: 36:39

So, but, but, yeah, there. Is definitely a lot of manufacturing going on there. And, yeah, I mean, if I was, if I was going to do manufacturing in solar, I would definitely take a close look at Texas, but also Georgia. You know, they want Georgia. Yes, these factory owners, they want quick ways to get things done building a factory, right? They don't want too much regulation. They want low wages for the factory workers, ready access cheap energy. It's a combination of things, right? Cheap land, cheap energy. I don't know how cheap the land is in Houston, but it's probably on the outskirts of Houston. Houston is the third largest city in America now,

John Weaver: 37:30

pretty good city. I

Tim Montague: 37:32

wouldn't want to live there because of hurricanes, but and the humidity. It has really high humidity. I'm not fond of humidity. Do we don't want to talk? Do we want to talk about New Mexico.

John Weaver: 37:45

Uh, that's, it's a good energy storage story. So I like, I like the concept of it.

Tim Montague: 37:50

Did you know I grew up in New Mexico, John, I did not know that. You didn't know. Did you know about green chile? Oh, yeah, I know all about hatch. Green Chili.

John Weaver: 37:58

Hatch. That's layers, layers beyond my knowledge.

Tim Montague: 38:03

You know, I grew up eating these sandwiches that my dad made with cheddar cheese, mayonnaise and hatch green chilies, and they're delicious. It's a great combination. It's not really traditional New Mexico food. It's just something he made up. But sopapias, you can get a good SOPA Pia, New Mexico, which is really comes from the Native Americans, but the Nate, you see this blending of Native American and and Hispanic culture, right? And it's a unique it's a unique cuisine. It's good, good food. Beautiful place, aka the Land of Enchantment. Have you been to New Mexico? John, come on, bro, I

John Weaver: 38:47

don't think I've been to New Mexico. I think I've, like, touched it, because I've been to four corners. So I know I've like, Oh, you have next to it, yeah. But I don't know if I've actually been to New Mexico. The day I

Tim Montague: 38:56

went to four corners, it was closed. I couldn't get into I couldn't get into the park there, but

John Weaver: 39:03

it was for me too, but then I camped out, went the next day.

Tim Montague: 39:07

All right, I'll put this on screen. New Mexico utility picks batteries over fossil fuels. It says ordering best retrofits for solar PV plants.

John Weaver: 39:18

Interesting. They had the opportunity to pick a small gas plant as a peaker plant, and they were specifically looking for peakers. And instead, they chose to deploy five, six megawatt 24, megawatt hour batteries. So I'm guessing three to four shipping containers spread across three to four shipping containers at five different sites. And so I'm just watching battery stuff, different capacities, different way they do things. And the reason this caught my attention because I'm trying to get into batteries, and I'm installing smaller size batteries. And so these batteries six megawatts, 24 megawatt hours lined up with a portfolio that I'm looking at and trying to get in, helping to develop and then maybe constructing. So I am excited to see small distributed batteries. And it also triggers a different thought of, how should solar plus storage, or solar and storage be installed and deployed. I pay for the premium version here, so I get to read the whole thing. Sorry. And should it be dc coupled solar with, like, massive, oversized DC to AC ratios, or should it just be a bunch of solar plants distributed anywhere randomly, and then a bunch of batteries distributed anywhere randomly, and they're all charging in the daytime because they have capacity and output requirements overnight. Or, like, how should the how is this going to be laid out? Or is it going to be a mix? And so with this one, we see a bunch of batteries being hooked up to solar plants using the same interconnection, I think, and just kind of, I don't know, rolling around in small little chunks.

Tim Montague: 41:10

So, so they're retrofitting batteries into existing solar projects, yes, okay,

John Weaver: 41:16

instead of adding gas peakers, and they're distributing them. And that's how they looked at it. They looked at this as a distributed peaker plant, yeah, that's just, it just triggered so many like, oh man, cool. And I, you know, they're just so Massachusetts and Rhode Island, along with Connecticut, all have a distributed battery. And. A clean, peak type of program, where, if the state is allowed, and also Vermont, and I think New York, and I think it's growing, but it's a VPP, but it's on a distributed asset, like a five megawatt hour or five megawatt chunk, yeah, so not like what you have behind your house, which is also a cool VPP. You know, Sun runs at five kW each. Are awesome, but I'm the commercial solar guy, so, so I look at people's parking lots, and I want to put, you know, two or three shipping containers, and that's what's starting to happen. And I kind of like seeing this. This is, this is the commercial solar guy, scale, distributed, level, energy storage. And I don't know it's cool. Yeah.

Tim Montague: 42:25

So alright, should we do one more? Last one of the day? I wrote this one Timothy the onion of FEOC, Safe Harbor and tax credits in PB magazine by John Weaver. What's the story while I get this on screen?

John Weaver: 42:39

So I spoke to really smart lawyers who I think were in Houston as well, in the middle of it, and in a cool building that had a nice view. But I spoke to Jenny speck, and she's an attorney who focuses on tax credits and all energy tax credits. I came to learn because I at first was, I jokingly said, Ah, you must not do residential that's going away. And she says, Nope, I have some very big residential customers. My brain went toward thinking it was Sun run, but I didn't really. We didn't talk about any specific customers. In fact, when I jokingly asked about, uh, fervo, because they do work with geothermal, I said, Hey, do you work with fervo? I said, I know you can't tell me. She goes, No comment, but she works with geothermal as well. So I do know that.

Tim Montague: 43:25

So what is the what is the onion reference?

John Weaver: 43:28

So the onion is how there are layers in FEOC of the verification you have to do to make sure that everybody in the transaction is not influenceable by foreign entities of concern. So before, here's a comparison. And I brought it up when I was asking questions. You know, we used to have to check out where our poly silicon was coming from for the Uyghur Protection Act. I said, Hey, so is this Fiat sort of like that? She goes, Yes, but times about five or 10, because now you have to look at the bank that's giving you loans, you have to look at who's going to buy your tax credits, who's going to buy your depreciation, who owns the land that you're leasing from, you know as what, who within the project, what stakeholder could have influence and affect This? And so people who are doing $100 million tax credits, they are doing due diligence, Layer, Layer, Layer, Layer. And so in this, if we scroll down a tiny bit, you can see the quote where Jenny speck actually called it an onion. And then she goes into, what is it? So I think a little bit lower than that. And but, but it's that, it's that we have these different layers of verification of things. So for tax credit buyers, you have to do, you have to look at who's buying the credits, and, yeah, ownership, debt board, lots of layers. So it's, it's just that you have to look so much deeper and so much further to verify who is running this in order to get through FEOC and and that was, you know, one of two big interesting things. I mean, there were a bunch of stuff, but FEOC was the big discussion.

Tim Montague: 45:16

So this question you posed, how painful could Fiat compliance become? What's, what's the answer to that question?

John Weaver: 45:25

Well, you know what? Click on that link for the for an example, actually, that link is from Bloomberg. Scroll down there. I'm gonna show you a chart. We're going to visually show you what painful FEOC is projected to potentially be. And this comes from Bloomberg. That's painful FEOC, right there, buddy. This is the deployment of clean energy tech, so wind, solar, storage, everything that's that's a painful tech, and that's heavily because of solar. The painful FEOC is showing utility scale going from or going from solar, going from about 50 to 60 down to 20 to 30, 50% drop if FEOC is painful. So that's that's that. So if FEOCis painful, expect a lot of people to get fired. 150,000 people will lose their jobs if that chart comes to be maybe 100 because these are going to be a lot of utility scale associated people, but, but that's what that chart that's, that's a six figure job loss if that chart comes to be so she says. Lot of people are working on it really smartly, um, you know, we'll see, we'll see what feox bands. But at the same time, we see, uh, very strong solar through the end of 27 and because of certain things, it's actually in this article by Jenny, another item, this will be the last one, continuing construction, a new concept I learned, and then I saw a manufacturer, sales pitching, Game Change, solar racking. So really, really, really, just intelligent people. I actually have a friend who works at Game Change, so in essence, if you start making customized parts that are specific for your factory, that is the beginning of construction, you have started your project, yeah, and as long as you can show that you have pieced together. And Jenny, Jenny taught me this during that conversation. So now we have Jenny Chase from BNEF, and Jenny Speck, I can't say her law firm name yet, but whatever. So she said, as long as you can show concurrent, ongoing third party Sarah certified, if you really need it construction, you have four years to finish your project, get it done, and so if it takes you two years before you break ground because you got development stuff going on, that's fine, but put down your money, sign a contract. That's the key. She said, document yourself. She's talking about from a lawyer in which there may be an aggressive IRS, that's the wording I added. She's a lawyer, and so document. It work, it do your construction. That's how you can have your

Tim Montague: 48:34

sign a contract by wind.

John Weaver: 48:38

Well, you missed one date. One date was July 4 this past summer. Another date was September 2. That dates gone. Now the next date is going to be December 31 the date after that's going to be July 3, 2026 so there's different dates of construction, start stuff and but I think the last date, I'm not positive because I'm but it's in that email. But I do have lawyers now who who have paid to teach me this stuff. But right now, my shorter my timeframe is end of this year for my starts. I know there's at least one or two other deadlines after but I think the big one is going to be July, 4. July, 3, 2026, that's going to be like the last special deadline. So you can see a lot of stuff happen before then on documents get signed or not. You know, then we have that FEOC cliff of 2028, so

Tim Montague: 49:39

I think the industry is going to adapt to the post ITC world. And you know, utilities are faced with this onslaught of demand, they want to build the cheapest form of grid power, and that's solar, wind and batteries, and yeah, the ITC has helped a lot, but I think that when you when you compare the speed at which you can deploy solar, wind and batteries, and the cost to natural gas or nuclear, you're going to go, Yeah, we might go there, But then we're going to come back. So only time will tell, only time and tell the only, the only for sure thing is that eventually we will have a 50% powered, solar powered grid. And so don't, don't shy away from the solar industry. It's good to have some diversification of the services that you offer, as we have talked about many times on this show, but don't stop doing solar and batteries. All right, John, I'll see you in Vegas. Any chance you can come to beer Park Monday evening.

John Weaver: 50:56

There's chance I've made zero plants. I have like, two or three, four things scheduled total. So yeah, but Yeah, where is that so, yeah, well, we could talk about it. Is there a chance we do a show in Vegas, maybe a 30 minute? Oh, you're, you're booked because you're a busy guy. Hey, everybody. Tim Montague, there's

Tim Montague: 51:12

a possibility, but I don't know that I'll have the gear. Oh, all right. I'm just like recording with a with a video crew, so in the Chint booth, and if you come by the Chint booth, we could record,

John Weaver: 51:31

well, maybe that's what we'll do, or something so good re plus is coming. I'll be around the floor. Yeah, I'm

Tim Montague: 51:39

looking forward to it. We could also record on our phone.

John Weaver: 51:42

I was thinking the same thing too. It's from the floor. It's already plus it's live stuff, man. People are interested.

Tim Montague: 51:48

I have two I have two portable mics. I'll have with me. So all right, I'll see you in Vegas. John, let's grow solar. I'm Tim Montague. Check us out on Clean Power Hour and John, how on earth can our listeners find you

John Weaver: 52:03

commercialsolarguy.com, that's the easiest way. And then I got an email address, got a phone number,

Tim Montague: 52:09

all those little ways to get or go to blue sky, if you know what that is. Commercial solar

John Weaver: 52:14

guy on blue sky, that's me. All

Tim Montague: 52:17

right, thanks everybody. We'll see you next on the 19th. That's our next. That's our next live.