LG Ditches EV Batteries for Grid Storage. Big Signal.

LG Energy Solution and GM are converting their Tennessee EV battery plant to LFP production for the US grid storage market. The $70 million retooling signals a broader industry shift as EV demand in the US slows and grid storage demand accelerates. Tim Montague and John Weaver break down what this means for battery pricing, domestic manufacturing, and project developers on this week's Clean Power Hour Live. 

They also cover the natural gas supply disruption that sent European energy prices up 27%, balcony solar legislation advancing in 24 states, and the debut of robotic solar construction from Terabase Energy.

Episode Highlights:

• Iran attacked a major gas facility in Qatar that produces roughly 17% of Qatar's output. John Weaver estimates this takes 3.5% of the global natural gas supply offline for at least a year. (Source)
• Illinois is among 24 states advancing balcony solar legislation. A Canary Media story reports that a balcony system at $3 per watt costs about $2,000 and saves consumers $400 per year. (Canary Media)
• LG Energy Solution and GM are converting their Ultium Cells joint venture in Tennessee from EV battery production to LFP batteries for the US grid storage market. (PV Magazine Energy Storage)
• Terabase, the automated solar construction platform, is ready for full market debut. The company assembles module tables on torque tubes in a covered structure, then uses robotic vehicles to transport them to field positions. (Solar Power World)  Tim has interviewed Terabase CEO Matt Campbell on the Clean Power Hour (Episode 165) 
• Global battery storage deployment hit 17 gigawatt hours in February 2026, a 60% increase over February 2025. (Energy Storage News) 

Transcript

Tim Montague: 0:53

John, welcome to the Clean Power Hour. Live today is March 20, 2026, bringing you the latest and greatest solar, wind and battery news, and I'm joined, as always, by my co host, none other than the commercial solar guy. John Weaver, welcome John.

John Weaver: 1:09

Hey, Tim. Hello, Tim. It's beautiful, sunny, solar weather. So looking forward to talking about soon all kinds of cool solar nice records. I've been working outside because of the beautiful sun.

Tim Montague: 1:25

It's amazing, springtime. It's amazing. But true, the sun does shine every day in some way, shape or form, it shines a little more sometimes than others, and today is particularly Sunny. It's going to be 79 degrees in Illinois. I just came back from Milwaukee, where I was at NABCEP, and there was a foot of snow on the ground. It was cold just two days ago, freezing our butts off in Milwaukee, but great, a great time in Milwaukee. Shout out to all the installers and manufacturers who I got to visit with, some of whom came to our reception. Thank you all for coming to our event, and before we get into the news, John, where can our listeners find you in person, like, if they really wanted to hunt down John Weaver, where do they go?

John Weaver: 2:15

I will work in an office building in Cambridge, Massachusetts. That's where I'm at right now. So one Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts, is my office location.

Tim Montague: 2:26

And so if you are developing projects in Massachusetts, you might need a construction company, and John Weaver would be a good person to talk to about that. But you also work in a couple of other states. John, what's your what's your global footprint?

John Weaver: 2:41

All right, yeah, so we, we're definitely focused in Massachusetts, Rhode Island. We have a project we're constructing in New Hampshire right now. We've built in New York, Pennsylvania. We're developing for Connecticut right now, and we are also working in Illinois, trying to build a project or two there. So those are different states. I mean, we've consulted in many other places. We've even supported development in a lot of other places, but where we think we're going to use our GC license and have, you know, responsibility for a project, it's it's those states, Illinois, New York, where Illinois we're aiming for New York. We've been in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, mostly New England, plus the northeast, then Illinois.

Tim Montague: 3:36

Illinois is perhaps one of the, if not the, hottest DG market in the country right now, the combination of good solar legislation good battery legislation, we're going to report on a balcony solar story a little later on, but let's get into Claude to make a sensitivity analysis of sizing. And this is a growing phenomenon, as we periodically report on right that Claude and the other llms are getting very smart, and now they're becoming agentic as well. I'm going to have a fantastic guest on the Clean Power Hour in the next couple of weeks talking more about that. But what do you got here going on on blue sky?

John Weaver: 4:25

So this is just me working on a project and trying to figure out if my oversizing is too much. From an economic standpoint, in Massachusetts, we have a strong incentive to build and generate kWh, so the the incentive doesn't care about your hardware. That's the federal incentive, because the federal tax credits based on your federal tax credit number. But this is me.

Tim Montague: 4:52

So your link, your link just goes to your profile, though, John, we need the story. I think still, oh, I

John Weaver: 4:57

didn't link to the blue sky. Oh, man, messed up my air, you know, I got excited. I got excited. Here for you. Tim, no worries. It's click. There we go. Now it's been updated. Okay, so this is just a little work through I did, and this isn't even the final version. This was, you know, one of the earlier ones, but this was me being really happy that I could start to work and have the rough outlines of a spreadsheet built with the equations that I can then build off of. And that's really the thing I like the most, is how to start to construct this document to make it easier for me to build the equation to discover the financial return on investment that makes sense at this site. Yeah.

Tim Montague: 5:41

And, hence the term sensitivity analysis, yeah, yeah.

John Weaver: 5:46

And, and, I'm not proper finance person, economic analysis, but I. Out with them. So I know some of the words, and I know that this is this is important to do understanding.

Tim Montague: 5:56

But so what did you learn by doing this exercise?

John Weaver: 5:59

I learned that the incentive that we pay and the cost, the marginal cost of adding modules about a buck a watt, means that the payback is really low, one where we're really high, how it's nice, it's a good payback, and that I should maximize the roof as much as I can. That's fundamentally what I learned. Go to 1.75 DC to AC, 1.8 even. We're going to figure out how, if I can even do 1.8 but right now, we're at at least a 1.75 and the question is, you know, fundamentally is, once we get up here, the clipping on these modules is 15, 20% on these, each additional modules, and every additional module, the clipping is slightly higher. So what is this last little chunk of modules worth? And it's, it's it's cheap. If you count that the whole project cost is in the 1.4 DC to AC range. So the first the normal size project, when

Tim Montague: 7:01

I think of increasing the DC to AC ratio, I think of squaring off the shoulders on your energy production, right? Yeah. Normally we see a sign, a sign, sign, oil curve. I think it is, or, well, the bell curve right of a typical solar production day and but by adding in more DC, we're squaring off those shoulders right? The you're you're achieving maximum production earlier in the day and later in the day, right?

John Weaver: 7:35

That's in the days where you hit maximum production. So yes, but because, remember, this is a full year we're designing for, and in the winter time in a place like Massachusetts, you're not, you're gonna why you're not really gonna widen the shoulders. You're going to widen the whole peak because we're not going to max out. We're not going to hit a gigawatt or megawatt of output on this site. So So yes, you will definitely widen the shoulders in the summer months. So you're going to have a flat top for 123, hours in the middle of the day when it's clipping. And it's when it's clipping, yes, and it will be clipping then. But then as the season arrives or reaches that period, and then leaves that period, that flat top area is going to get smaller and smaller and smaller, but then you're still going to have wider shoulders the whole time. And so it's about, you know, I ran the numbers, the increase of kWh per kW at that number, and that was so me using that machine to help me design the equations, and just setting up the the nuggets of it was the beauty of it. And then I started doing testing using helioscope for output to say, Okay, here's what the real output is. So I was just excited about using Claude to help me design a better solar power project. And I thought you sir and the internet would appreciate it. Some people made fun of me for using llms, and I get it, but,

Tim Montague: 9:00

well, you got you gotta double check their work, right? They do hallucinate. They're they're not perfect, but they are smart assistants and and they can give you answers a lot faster than a human can give you. So I mean, we really are everything I see now. I watch a lot of YouTube channels on AI now, and they're the machine called just the LLM. Call it. The machine is as smart as the smartest humans now, and it's also smart in many, many disciplines, whereas you and I are smart in a handful of disciplines. Okay, we speak English, we know how to write, we know how to use a computer. We know something about solar etc, something about batteries. But you know, I don't know about astrophysics and material science and politics, etc, etc. So I'm a fan. And you know, it's, it's use it or get left behind, John.

John Weaver: 10:01

We don't want that just one, yes. I mean, we got to do it correctly, but, and one of the reasons I very specifically, you'll notice in that thread, I said, I want a copy of the spreadsheet, because I know how to do the spreadsheet if the machine just sets up the outline and sets me on a path to order, because I don't trust the machine. I can't trust the machine with this, this, this financial model is too important for me, so I have to do it the right way, and and that. So I was just, I just thought it was cool.

Tim Montague: 10:33

So no regrets using using Claude for the sensitivity analysis.

John Weaver: 10:38

No, no, I think it was pretty solid. I'm still working through using it. So I can't say, like, I really know it well, like, you know, I haven't put in the interest rate. I have a list of like, four or five edits that I want to do the spreadsheet. But. But I got the rough version of it for now. That gives me indicative that tells me I'm probably right, but to be able to use it for the team and make it better, and I showed it off to two people, because we've wondered about this sizing in house, like, what's the best for us? And we've had an inkling. But to be able to use it better, I need to add some more features,

Tim Montague: 11:11

but and you can build a you can build what Claude calls skills. It's effectively a custom GPT so that you can hit repeat more easily and not have to feed the same all the background in so that's the other cool thing, right? You can train it for your specific use cases. All right. Well, let's talk about baby mice. John, baby mice. Who doesn't love baby mice? Yeah?

John Weaver: 12:34

Well, they were, I mean, I guess they're mice. I mean, they're squirrels. Are they squirrels? Those are squirrels? It's on a roof. Yeah? Yeah. You gotta, gotta go through those images. But yes, they're squirrels, little squirrels, which is, which is the same thing as a mouse, and that's, you know, them chewing on wires and and causing a mess on the back of a module.

Tim Montague: 12:53

You call this your O and M story of the week is, this, is this one of your projects?

John Weaver: 12:57

No, no. But it's something that makes us think about and how we talk with our customers. And I like to call random things stories of the week, because it's fun.

Tim Montague: 13:05

So are you, I have to ask, Are you a fan of critter guard?

John Weaver: 13:10

The cost of it has historically made me 5050, on it. But when you have an active roof, like the times when you save the money on credit guard. It's worth it. No questions asked. Like, when somebody says, Oh, my God, I have a problem, and I lost, you know, this many wires, it's like, oh, but to install it, it's annoying. But I think if we had our install crews in cruise, in house on residential wouldn't be so annoying. And if we, you know, just depends. I'm 5050, on it. If the customer knows that their roof constantly has squirrels, and if they're on their roof a lot and they have trees hanging nearby and they don't want to trim them, then maybe yeah, like, let people make their judgment calls, Yep,

Tim Montague: 13:56

yeah, there's always that financial question, does it pencil nice to have? But does a pencil. It depends on how many squirrels you have. Like my yard used to have very few squirrels because my cats were very active, scaring the squirrels away. But now my cat is more elderly. She doesn't roam around. She's blind. Her sister passed away, and so the squirrels are having a blast in my yard. Now it's like squirrel Central. I All right, so let's talk about EVs. EVS cut oil demand. What a concept.

John Weaver: 14:32

Yeah, but this chart was pretty cool. Just, you know, we haven't seen it come out for a while, but, yeah, cuts it a lot. I thought that was kind of neat. It's, I mean, in light of a lot of other things going on the world. It's also really interesting to point out, but EVs, man,

Tim Montague: 14:48

let me close some tabs, see if I can get this to work.

John Weaver: 14:53

The most interesting thing about it, though, that I thought, was that the EVS were the biggest official technical loss of oil loss came from two and three wheelers that are moving around Southeast Asia, India, you know, the three wheeler heavy places. Yeah. So the volumes of those things and the inefficiency of them, oh my gosh, those things just burn. Even though they're small, they're they burn in efficiently, but they are, they're just so numerous, and that's where batteries have, like, dominated and really, and

Tim Montague: 15:36

this is a global picture,

John Weaver: 15:38

yes, yes, yes, yes, okay. And I think, and it's interesting, as it scales, that's going toward 2030, though, over there on the right, but right now, global transportation oil, I believe, is in like the 50 to 60 million barrels a day. So by, you know, depending what occurs, we should, we should be, you know, we're getting close to, we're doing like 5% right now. So, you know, if we're doing two and a half million barrels a day ish right now, and it was, say, 50 million, that's 5% we're

Tim Montague: 16:16

Wait, we've electrified 5% of transportation. Is that what you're saying?

John Weaver: 16:20

Yeah, no, well maybe, yeah, we've electrified 5% of transportation oil. How's that? I don't know what it means to call it transportation, but 5% of the oil that was being used for transportation is now electricity.

Tim Montague: 16:35

That's probably most of it. I mean, of course, there's

John Weaver: 16:39

no it's not, it's not most of it. It's 50. To 60% of it, 50 other 50 to 60% of oil is for heating. It's for plastic.

Tim Montague: 16:47

Oh, sure, sure, yeah, no, I understands of

John Weaver: 16:49

other stuff. I understand about it's about half. But just

Tim Montague: 16:52

thinking of transportation. Well, now I'm confused. Okay, so do we have a sense of what? And perplexity knows the answer to this. But What? What? What percent of transportation? Meaning, like wheeled transportation, trucks, cars, let's and busses. Let's keep trains out. Let's keep trains out of the picture. A lot of trains are already electrified, but what percent of that wheeled transportation. Do you think we've electrified now?

John Weaver: 17:29

Five? Yes. Okay, I say five because that's where we're at in terms of oil, and that's the easiest number for me to go with.

Tim Montague: 17:35

Okay, all right. Well, our audience can fact check us on this. We'd love to hear from you and anything else about this, we should probably move on.

John Weaver: 17:46

Yeah, that was it. I just thought that was interesting. EVs are still moving, man, they're still doing their thing, so in different ways, in different ways, yeah,

Tim Montague: 17:56

so they're just not moving in the US. You know, it's interesting. I saw that Tesla has officially said we're more we're going to be more of a battery company than an automotive company. And for years, you know, Elon was talking about, well, we're going to be a robotics company. So that's his newest which is it, is it robots or batteries? I don't know. I mean, they're both, obviously very important. The story was that the LG factory that's being propped up in Michigan is a joint venture with Tesla. I didn't realize that, because they're selling LG is selling cells to a bunch of different companies, a bunch of manufacturers in the US are using those cells as well. It's not just Tesla, which is as it should be, but all right, can we talk about balcony solar again? It's no it's no accident that you hear this expression more frequently on the Clean Power Hour. John right, because it's a real phenomenon that more and more states are enacting legislation. And this is a story from Canary media. Carrie lighterson, who's a Illinois journalist, balcony solar Bill gains momentum in Illinois. More than two dozen states are considering bills that would make it easier for households to adopt plug in solar arrays, and she gets into some great numbers here. So this bill has passed from it's passed out of the Senate Energy and public utilities committee, and now it's headed to a full hearing in the Senate and House Committee on Utilities. And the bottom dollar, though, is kind of cool, a balcony solar array could save a consumer $400 a year, and at$3 a watt, that's about $2,000 for a balcony solar system. So, you know, that's a if there's, if there's no other incentive, which there's which I don't think there is, you know,

John Weaver: 19:58

that's a five. Why not the tax credit? I guess the tax credit wouldn't work for balcony because it's movable. It has to be a permanent installation. So no tax credit.

Tim Montague: 20:07

Yeah, I've never, I've never heard of the credit on balcony. It doesn't mean we couldn't enact one, but I just, as I've said before, I love it, that it makes solar so much more accessible and and I think you know we will. I mean, as these stories point out, 24 states now have legislation moving in them, and it's going to be soon it'll be 50.

John Weaver: 20:34

So I have some multiple opinion multiple festering thoughts, opinions inside of me on it,

Tim Montague: 20:41

festering, that doesn't sound good, yeah?

John Weaver: 20:43

Well, festering, because I don't know where they're gonna go. I'm just still like, what is this?

Tim Montague: 20:48

How about incubating? Incubating, wonderful. Festering sounds negative, yeah?

John Weaver: 20:54

Well, I'm just like, Ah, so some of them are negative. Okay, so here's one negative balcony solar could be used as a wedge somehow, against bigger solar and if we were, if somebody were to manipulate it and create this wedge, these trivial, and I'm going to say it that way, these small amounts. I mean, it could be a gigawatt, who knows, but it's still who cares, relative to 50 gigs of utility scale, these small things can be used to steal from the big ones. And I hope it's not. I hope it goes like what you said. It gives access, and it gives exposure, and it it eases people into it in another way. That's what I'm hoping. That's the other idea. The balancing one is that people can see him and touch him and be part of him. Be like, holy. It just works. It just I put it there. There, there's sun. I plug it in, and it works. All right, we could do the same on the big scale. That's not the same, but it is sort of the same. And so I don't know. I hope for the best of it. I hope it's good. PV mag is about to publish a story from Ben Paulos. He's, he's a analyst, political support person. He's the one that initially showed me about the Utah legislation when it first came out a year ago. He has built his system, and we're about to do it about 65 cents a watt AC, so I'll probably bring up that story the next time, and he does a nice little walk through of what he does. So I'm hoping that the exposure and how it lets people touch them and be real and closer with him. Will will help, and we'll do something good for it. And I do hope that a bunch of people get to use it. I mean, I'm a low electricity user. I have a small apartment, so you know, I'm gonna do one. I'll do some pictures when

Tim Montague: 22:37

I 65 cents a watt AC.

John Weaver: 22:40

Yes, he bought used modules. Just FYI, okay, there you go. I mean, that's, that's the driver, yeah,

Tim Montague: 22:48

yeah, I think, I think for new equipment, though, you're, you're maybe in the 90 cents.

John Weaver: 22:54

So, you know, we should get somebody on the show Who Wants to pitch their wares, their kit, yeah?

Tim Montague: 23:01

Like signature solar, gigawatt. I met some, I met some additional. There's, there's more suppliers, solar supply houses, out there than meets the eye. But as I'm not a contractor, I don't, yeah, I don't, I don't think so much about supply. I just hear my clients talking about it, but signature is famous for serving the DIY market, and now they're now they're launching a national EPC. I don't know if I've said this on the show before, one of their staff told me this in San Diego, and I think that's treacherous waters, but James Showalter is a very smart dude, so we'll see. Definitely going to follow that. All right. Should we talk about keys Van Van der lune European natural gas prices just jumped another 27% to 70 euros per megawatt hour. 70 euros per megawatt hour translate into dollars? Do you know

John Weaver: 24:07

roughly the same? It's one to one. Nah, it's not, but it's close enough. Let's see euro to dollar. It's about $1.16 per euro. Okay, so, so would say 70, so about 80. Yeah, just say 88 times 1680, plus this 48 so,

Tim Montague: 24:25

but it's more than doubled since the war started, right?

John Weaver: 24:29

That's what I there's two jumps here. That's That's why I was trying to point out my post. So the war starting is the first set of jumps, then it eased off, then it popped again, then it eased off, then yesterday, day before a very specific event occurred. The United No, sorry, I don't know exactly, but Israel attacked a large gas field in Iran, maybe the the world, amongst the world's largest, and that's what it says here, yeah, okay, and then Iran attacked, yeah, so that was the first attack. But then Iran attacked the world's largest gas field in Qatar, okay? And it took off. So Qatar generates like 20% of the world's gas. This facility, per the things I was looking at, generates 17% of Qatar's gas. So for three to five years, the world just lost three and a half percent, if my mind remembers the math I did this morning, three and a half percent of the world's natural gas is gone. So it's like, boop, we're just going to shut off that faucet. This may never, like people are saying, this is going to be like, at least a year before the price of stuff comes down. So last, last show, we talked about our financial models in the US and our gas price, we are isolated significantly from the cost of liquid natural gas globally, because we have so much of it domestically. But there's still an effect, because the local sell into the domestic market. But another little thing that I'll just bring up. There's a gas export facility in Texas that shut down last week or this week because it tripped offline. So it's like, it was just funny to be like, Wow. The world could use a whole bunch of liquid natural gas right now, but we're just, we just flipped off a facility. So, so just the world, man, the world has stuff going on. And I just thought to bring that up, just so everybody, because that gas price directly affects the wholesale price of electricity that everybody in the US is paying.

Tim Montague: 26:33

So yeah, and the the only winners in this, in my opinion, are the oil companies and perhaps the bank. Yes, the consumer loses, right? Because we're not making more money, but the cost of goods, right? Our everyday cost of living is going up. And this is not just us, and of course, it affects other people in other countries, much more than us, but it also affects us. And so you have to ask, why are we doing this? And I think the answer is to enrich the oil industry. You know, I can't think of another good reason. All right, let's talk about batteries. That's a little brighter topic, in my opinion, than oil wars, LG and GM, pivot, ultium cells, JV to LFP battery production for us storage market at Tennessee plant. So LG is a beast. They've got several factories, I think in the US, because they have they have Michigan, and this is about Tennessee. But we mentioned earlier,

John Weaver: 27:42

what David Kansas facility, too.

Tim Montague: 27:44

Oh, I don't know. I don't know. Ask perplexity. But this is story in PV magazine, energy storage by Tristan Rayner from the 18th of March. And what is it about? I have my opinions about this story, but John, what's what grabbed your attention about this story?

John Weaver: 28:00

The thing that grabbed my attention is that we're seeing a another factory shifting from making EV batteries into grid batteries and grid batteries. We, as solar developers, care about EV batteries. We do as well. That's as well, but this is showing power grid demand in the US market, and that should speak highly of, you know, building batteries, and pricing of batteries and availability of domestic batteries, and, you know, getting that domestic content adder and and that kind of stuff. This is another factory with more capacity that's going to come online to be able to feed the domestic energy storage grid connected market. And so that's really what I thought was cool. It's just, and it's what that first sentence, the move, is less about the battery itself then the speed of the pivot. So this EV, battery, man, something's happening the US, likes our big gas cars, whatever. I'm sorry, can't fix that, but got some more batteries, and that's going to make me happy. Soon, one day, I'm going to build some more batteries. And it's going to be great.

Tim Montague: 29:07

Interestingly, it says LG, es, which I believe stands for energy storage, said that more than 80% of its planned global ESS battery production capacity this year will be located in North America.

John Weaver: 29:19

Heck, yeah. So yeah, they definitely air look LG Kansas, like they had a massive facility there.

Tim Montague: 29:26

This mentions Lansing, Michigan, Windsor, Ontario, Jeffersonville, Ohio.

John Weaver: 29:39

Maybe it's Panasonic doing the Kansas one. Yeah, yeah. LG, chem will supply the cathodes for Panasonic's North American. So awesome. Thank you.

Tim Montague: 29:49

LG, keep building. What's the magazine that has a really good tracking site? It's not solar builder. Solar power world.

John Weaver: 29:59

Solar power world has a good one. Yeah? Modules for a module manufacturer? Yeah, for, I think both

Tim Montague: 30:03

modules and batteries.

John Weaver: 30:05

Yep, they were at the they were at a factory, and they were inside of one and they had, there was good reporting. It was very cool to see solar power world in there.

Tim Montague: 30:17

Yeah, I've I ran into them when I went to the Helene factory, also up in Minnesota a couple years ago. All right, what's next? Robots, Terra fab. Robots. This is, Oh, speaking of solar power world. Here's the story in solar power world. Terra base, automated solar construction platform is ready for its full market debut. Wow. Yeah, we've covered this. We've interviewed Matt Campbell several times about Terra base. He's the CEO, and they are building a robotic construction platform. And I'll get this on screen. What? What is this story saying? It's, it's game time.

John Weaver: 31:06

Yeah, it's, well, the thing that was a little more interesting to me, so prior, we've talked about them assembling the, what they're called tables, tables of a solar panel on a single axis tracker. So you have a table of 1020, 30, however, many modules are on that table, on a torque tube. On the torque tube. And you can kind of see the picture. They're standing vertically. You can see it in the article. You can see the people working there. If you scroll down, there's a second picture. Yeah, that one. So you can see the panels lined up on the wall. You see the torque tube right there, and they're assembling it, and then they'll take it out. And this was the part that I thought was my. Interesting. They didn't get into the details of it, because they're smart. But then they have a full suite of robots. And if you scroll up, you can see one of them. So they have a full suite of robots, vehicle that brings these torque tubes to the field, fully assembled. So, you know, historically, you see that the cool 123, combo of, you know, people grabbing the module, putting on top, and then some dude underneath going, like they're changing tires on a race car. Oh, man, it's gone. Tim, that that small window of somebody busting their back and and sliding underneath those modules. At least at the big time utility scale shops, you're going to have robots doing this, dude, yeah, they're effectively

Tim Montague: 32:27

setting up a factory on site that that, you know, take solar modules and torque tubes and puts the modules on the torque tube in a semi controlled environment. It's a covered structure, right that we saw there. And then the robotic vehicle. Then an arm picks the whole thing up and puts it on a vehicle that then today, I think there's still humans driving these things around, but eventually that vehicle will be autonomous. In this

John Weaver: 32:57

article, it's talking about autonomy and AI and everything so, but it's probably human beings with a robot with a joystick, so they won't run anybody over. But, well, yeah,

Tim Montague: 33:05

it's been a year and a half since I interviewed Matt Campbell, so things definitely change in a year and a half. And I'm a believer in robotic construction. There's, you know, many different ways to approach this, yeah, luminous, but there's a handful now of these. You know, module, our friends, our friends at sunzon also have a robotic solution for module installation. And then I just dropped an episode with it was a, it was an inner solar special, but one of the guests was Dean Solon with create, and he just bought a robotics company. It's not for installation today, it's for mowing. There's a company called graze robotics, which apparently ran out of resources, but, but Dean is a believer. He thinks grazing is the or, sorry, mowing is the biggest pain point for solar asset owners. And yeah, if I was, if I was an installer, I would jump at the chance to work under a shade structure, right? Instead of out there in the wind, snow, rain, etc. Being a field installer is a tough job. And Dean talks, Dean talks about mowing like talk about a dirty job, right? You're out there 10 hours a day riding on a noisy, mostly ice engine machine, right? Not a not a good job. It's very hard to retain those people, apparently, because it's such an uncomfortable work

John Weaver: 34:39

environment, they probably pay crap, to be honest. I mean, yeah, they're probably like, yeah, we're just gonna get some kids to run lawn mowers and but who knows? I don't know that.

Tim Montague: 34:48

All right, we got another storage story over 17 gigawatt hours of best deployed globally in February 2026, by Cameron Murray in energy storage news.

John Weaver: 34:59

Yeah. I just thought I'm this is a now a once a month story that they do from our battery friends. So you might see it every other month. I probably won't do it every month, but I wanted to point out that it's a 60% increase year over year for February versus February 25 and last year was a massive pop. So last year we did like, 300 gigawatt hours of solar globally. If we did 12 times 17, let's see what that math means, 12 times 17. Oh, that's 200 so that's not actually that great for February, but maybe it scales. Maybe February is early. We don't

Tim Montague: 35:41

do as we did 300 in 2025,

John Weaver: 35:44

yes, sir. Just over like, or at least something just over 300 303305 I don't know, but according to minerals, our guys here, they 300 globally. So, so, you know, it's just cool. It's neat to see it growing 60% increase. January was a lighter month too. The majority of this is going to get deployed in China, like 50% plus, yeah, 53% deployed in China. There you go. And I think it's going to be the same for the rest of the year. But it's coming the US. We're going to do like 50 gigawatt hours. Ish, I don't know, off the top of my head right now, but we're going to grow and have a nice chunk as well. So I'm, I'm going to keep paying attention to batteries. Man, got to get smart. It's got to get better control systems. Got to understand the commissioning and constructing of them. Going to try and learn a lot more about batteries.

Tim Montague: 36:40

Yeah, that's been a clear signal. I. The trade shows the growing importance of batteries, and I'm doing lots of research on CNI and residential batteries now. And it's kind of the Wild West. There's a lot of lot of companies. The question is, how many good, easy to install and commission solutions are there. We'll be bringing elm micro grid on the show in the near future, Dean Solon has hitched his wagon to Soka MAC, which is a French company. Of course, we have our friends at CPS America with the Gonzo. We talk a lot about that. We'll be bringing more content in the near future, about the Gonzo that we collected at inner solar, but it's kind of the Wild West. What is your Do you have a favorite? One or two or three? CNI battery manufacturers?

John Weaver: 37:37

No, nothing, no, not at all. Nah. No favorites. I mean, I've not bought anything, really. I'm trying to procure a little bit, but I don't really have a favorite. I, you know, I just, I'm watching, trying to, well,

Tim Montague: 37:51

I definitely have noticed, I've definitely noticed a few signals and but there's no clear winner, but some of those names I mentioned definitely getting intention Oh, and then yada and yada has been on the show. It's been a couple years now, but they seem to have you ever looked at yada?

John Weaver: 38:18

Tiny bit? Yeah, I mean, but not really, but a tiny bit.

Tim Montague: 38:21

Yeah, yeah. It's a rooftop battery. The battery replaces the ballast block, literally the dimensions of the battery. It's a one kilowatt hour battery. Comes with a micro inverter from APS, and so it's completely scalable. The question is, how does it pencil? I got to chat with the CTO in Milwaukee, and it has more UL certifications because of, well, I'm not sure there's a variety of reasons, but they had to meet all the UL standards for resi and commercial. So it's, it is the most UL certified battery in the US, apparently. Alright, that sounds rough. That sounds hard to deal with. India launches tender for one gigawatt round the clock, renewable

John Weaver: 39:07

power round the clock. Yes, that's what I thought was cool. And it's really, it's really more, maybe even a paperwork thing. But I just like the precedence. That's what's being set here. So what they said, Here's, you know, the devil's in the details, as they say, but it's not like they're saying, We want you to build a power plant right here in this one spot that's going to be 24/7, in the document, they say you can be anywhere. You can be spread out. You can have the wind over here, you can have the solar over there, the battery over there. You can have three batteries. It can even be a portion of other projects, but you're going to be contractually obligated to build a 24/7, circle of supply, and you better figure out how to get it to us. And I like that. They're given developers a full they're given developers a requirement. Hey, you want to do a 200 to 500 megawatt project, you need to tie it all together. You need make a one beautiful project. So figure it out. Here's your here's your procurement. And I just thought that was kind of neat. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's dividing the solar from the wind from the battery, and just smashing them all together and saying, buddies. Figure it

Tim Montague: 40:25

out that model it references Build Own Operate. Do you understand exactly what that is?

John Weaver: 40:33

Yes, yes. So Build Own Operate means the the person who's doing the bidding will essentially just sign a PPA with the off taker, and so they're going to build it there. They may not necessarily build it themselves, but they're going to control it. So it's like, let's say you're a developer, you're going to bid on the thing, you're going to have the responsibility of getting it built, you're going to own it, and you have the responsibility

Tim Montague: 40:57

of operating it. Bidders will be IPPS, right? And then they will end up contracting with EPCs to do the construction.

John Weaver: 41:06

Yes, probably, highly probable, yes. And then, and then they will sign, and that's why I put in the 25 year PPA. At the end of it, they'll sign a 25 year contract, which is really nice with whatever the legal entity is that signs them in India, which could be the utility, but they have, like a nationwide host wholesale market, which I don't fully understand, like you can get a guaranteed 345, cents per kilowatt hour for a project built like anywhere in India. I think, you know, don't use me as your investment guidance. But they have. Unique stuff relative to say, the US, where every single state is hopscotch and and even then you gotta fight to get anything done. So it's just interesting, different place, big place, amazing place.

Tim Montague: 41:57

Do you have a sense that India is an easy place to develop? Solar easy,

John Weaver: 42:01

I would not say easy. Yeah, I would not say that anything is easy in a country with 1.4 billion people, and they're smart man, those folks work and they are budget conscious there, it's a poor country, so they got to make there's no like, big bag of incentives. It's build it and figure it out. They give them the manufacturers. Manufacturers get incentives. It seems, seems competitive. Man, it's like no deal is final in India, like they'll the state will come back and say, You know what? Price of pounds have dropped since we signed this deal. Lower your price, and they win. The capitalists don't win. The capitalists got to bend the knee. So I you know, you better have some deep pockets.

Tim Montague: 42:49

I don't understand why the capitalists are bending the knee,

John Weaver: 42:54

because the state is very strong in India, and they can influence the people wanting to make the money, because the nature of the politics is a bit more socialist versus capitalist. So with that, yeah, so like, nationally, there's a lot of unions, a lot of employment unions, and there's still a lot of corruption, a lot of bribery. Like the Adani guys, you know, they, they apparently bribed like, $200 million to win some solar deals. Like, I can't even comprehend the dollar amounts of bribery to make the project work. So it's so but it's just the state is very strong, and they have very strong price pressures on the market. So the markets don't rule the state do, and then the markets have to bend. And if the market, you know, and if there's a windfall, the state is going to get that money back, or some of it. Maybe that's just my gut with solar so far, sure. So it's and I've seen it happen. That's why I'm saying it. I've seen it happen. So it's not like, I'm like, speculating. I've seen this occur. And smart people have said this is reality. It's like, All right,

Tim Montague: 44:00

so here's a story about Panasonic claiming the world's first trial of cyber security monitoring for grid scale batteries, and the project is in Japan.

John Weaver: 44:11

Yeah, I like some of the words, like, if you notice what I pasted on the document, the location and detailed specifications of the demonstration facility have not been disclosed, right? So it's like, what is that? Security through obscurity. Security through obscurity. I like it. I'm also very interested in this test, because the digitization of the power grid is big risk when we think about the geopolitics of the world when we think about like hackers and controlling systems, and what you could do with batteries if batteries are like the end all be all of the system. So this is cool. They go through a lot of different ways they want to test. They even have a cool little infographic showing how to do some tests. But I just thought it was interesting the depths of the testing that we're going to do to make us feel safe and secure with power grid operating systems.

Tim Montague: 45:12

Honestly, I don't think we talk enough about cyber security. You know, you think of how, like the US was able to knock out the grid in Venezuela when they kidnapped Maduro. And if the grid goes down, whether because of nature or because of humans, you know a cyber attack, right? I mean, that is a major economic disruption if it lasts for any length of time. So it is extremely important that we have robust cybersecurity. And the little I've listened to cyber experts about the American grid is it is not as secure as we'd like it to be. I've heard that, yeah, I think the I think there's more vulnerability in the grid than we recognize. Of course, there is a penultimate vulnerability, which is, if there's a huge solar storm that fries all the transformers, then we're really Sol for a while, because you can't just we don't have a supply of transformers that's readily available, and many of the Transformers on the ground in warehouses will get fried too when that storm hits and and then you don't have a grid for a couple of years, driving without a grid for two years. John, I think,

John Weaver: 46:37

I think lots of people have been hardening the grid thinking about those things. So there. Many locations which have hardened the grid and have infrastructure in place. But who knows? Maybe we'll do it to each other. Maybe we got a bunch of em, one of the EMPs floating in space, ready to be dropped.

Tim Montague: 46:56

Yep, the MP is also an issue. That's not a cyber security issue, per se. That's a military that's a military issue.

John Weaver: 47:05

It's an everything issue. You know, there's some cyber security involved in that. All right? Tim, well, it's usually you who says, John, all right. Are we good?

Tim Montague: 47:21

Just right. Check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Tell a friend about the show. That's the best thing you can do to help others find the show and come visit with me in Atlanta. I'll be at Atlanta at the end of the month for re plus southeast. Then I'll be at the CPS gig a week slash Innovation Day in Dallas in April, April 22 to 24 and you too could be there. Just go to clean power hour com. Go to the events tab. You'll see all these events. You can click and register. It's free to go to the CPS event, especially installers, engineers, technicians and even some other OEMs will be there. So check it out. John Weaver, how can our listeners find you?

John Weaver: 48:07

Oh, five a week, 4999786, and talk to Craig. That's our office number, commercial, solar guy, calm, of course, I'm on blue sky. Got a LinkedIn profile, and if you want to come to Boston, we can hang out and have a beer. I know a bunch of cool spots, and it's springtime, so we can do it outside. So that's kind of nice.

Tim Montague: 48:28

I only go to Boston in February for some reason,

John Weaver: 48:33

because it's a show and it's freezing here every single time you're

Tim Montague: 48:37

gonna have to invite me some other time of the year,

John Weaver: 48:41

I'm gonna hop on a train from right now, and I'm going to work the rest of the afternoon outside, because it's just so pretty.

Tim Montague: 48:47

All right. All right. All right. Well, thank you all for being here. And with that, we'll say, let's grow solar and storage. We'll see you on the third of April.