March 24, 2025
Solar Manufacturing Politics, Global Expansion, and Australia's Synthetic Fuel Ambitions
Today on the Clean Power Hour Live, Tim Montague and John Weaver (the Commercial Solar Guy) dive into pressing developments in the solar industry. They examine the Trump administration's decision to rescind Biden's Defense Production Act support for solar manufacturing and discuss the potential impacts on the 50 gigawatts of planned domestic solar panel production.
The conversation shifts to exciting projections that global solar installations could reach one terawatt next year—a staggering milestone representing approximately $1.5 trillion in economic activity across manufacturing and installation.
They also explore Australia's ambitious plans to build 6-gigawatt renewable energy "pods" combining wind and solar to produce green hydrogen and ammonia for export.
Throughout their discussion, they contemplate the challenges and opportunities in the energy transition, from grid capacity issues to the potential of a hydrogen economy.
Key Topics Discussed:
1. Trump administration rescinding the Defense Production Act for solar manufacturing
2. Projections for 1 terawatt of global solar installations in 2026 https://bsky.app/profile/commercialsolarguy.com/post/3lkuvm7kduc2k
3. O&M of the Week from one of our projects - 9 mm?
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7308436497660071936/?actorCompanyId=11504835
4. The group wants to build chunks of 6 GW wind+solar plants to make ammonia - what about airline fuels?
5. Germany going in on renewables with $100 billion
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-14/merz-
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Transcript
WEBVTT
00:00:02.819 --> 00:00:17.579
Tim, welcome to the Clean Power Hour live. I'm Tim Montague, your host, and welcome to another episode of solar and storage news that we're doing every other week with none other than the commercial solar guy, welcome to the show, John.
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Hey, Tim. How you doing
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solar? Guy,
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that's that's only that's not me. I was hacked and no longer have full control.
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That's the story we're going with. Mr. Montague,
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yeah, somebody took over. Somebody took over John's Twitter handle. So check it out. Yeah, totally,
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that's, that's what it is.
00:00:56.740 --> 00:01:07.680
Hey, so you, you, are you starting a pickleball club? Like, so I know it's not solar, but we might get solar on your building, but you do like professional pickleball. Like, how's this working? Because you got a cool
00:01:07.680 --> 00:02:18.180
hat. Yeah, I am officially a pickleball developer. I've been a pickleball player since 2020 I grew up playing tennis, ping pong, racquetball, so rocket sports are in my blood, and the pandemic triggered an avalanche of pickleball playing because we couldn't do anything indoors. Lo and behold, I realized that we have this thing called Winter in Illinois, where there's snow and ice everywhere, and we don't have an indoor pickleball facility or a good, dedicated indoor pickleball facility in Champaign. So I am building the CU pickleball club, and it's a 16,000 square foot four court, 24/7 John, you can, you can drop in at 2am if you'd like and play some pickleball while you're passing through Central Illinois. Alright, so that's my that's my side hustle. It's official. Tim Montague is a pickleball developer. Cool. It's going to be great. But fastest growing sport in America, in case you hadn't noticed, where tennis
00:02:18.900 --> 00:02:25.460
which aligns with the fastest growing solar a generation source on Earth?
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Yeah, I picked the two best industries to work in, John, solar and pickleball. It's just luck of the draw. Can you tip your camera down so we see more of your beautiful body?
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Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, let's get into the news. No shortage of good and bad news. Should we talk about the defense production act?
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Sure, yeah, absolutely, yeah.
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So Donald Trump rescinds Biden's defense production act, support for solar manufacturing. This story is out today on PV tech. I'll put it on screen here in a minute. But you know, we were all jumping up and down for joy a couple years ago with the defense production act, because it incentivized onshoring and reshoring a manufacturing for things like, what? Well, specifically,
00:03:29.659 --> 00:03:38.419
I think it's specifically solar panels was the item in the production act.
00:03:33.319 --> 00:04:51.279
So I think making modules, and then maybe one or two levels of them making panels and and I don't exactly know how it applies for the defense production act like, does it make domestic content required, or does because I saw one thing, it stated it allowed certain government agencies to invest in solar power production, Something to that effect, to move it forward, maybe incentivize but what this also, it's just part of a broader picture of the incremental changing of the government structure by the current administration and what. And it's also then you have to think about the future, about what's coming next. And so this is just another piece of a big machine that was put together, and little pieces are being taken out one by one. So, you know, I don't exactly know how to make use of this piece of legislation and fully understand it, but I know it's just it. It's part of the bigger reality of what the energy industry's evolving focus is. One way of saying it, yeah,
00:04:51.759 --> 00:05:59.379
I mean, governments do good things like industrial policy that incentivize things like manufacturing of. Uh, various things, but we need things like solar panels and the DPA, as it's called, defense production act, incentivized domestic production of solar modules. And here we are in 2025 John and the US is gearing up for 50 gigawatts of domestic solar panel manufacturing thanks to this and other legislation, thanks to the IRA, the inflation Reduction Act, and for some reason, Donald Trump doesn't think that solar panel factories are important, I would imagine that the governors of Texas, Georgia, Indiana, Arizona, Colorado and other states will strongly disagree with that, because these factories mean jobs and lots of cash flowing into your state, right?
00:06:02.680 --> 00:07:38.420
Yeah, governors don't make federal law, so there's that. And, yeah, now is that, you know, we have a House of Representatives. Now there was a letter, apparently, that was written by a collection of individuals in the House of Representatives saying, Hey, don't take our solar jobs. And those individuals would potentially need to be won over to change the IRA. So there's that, but that's, you know, there's so I was reading Christian Rosalind at CEA clean energy associates. And he said that, as a consulting firm, their opinion going forward to their clients as no their base case so and then they have multiple cases, I guess, but their base case is that the ITC and the PTC could end at the end of this year, at the end of 25 and that your projects have to be in construction and moving forward before the end of 2025 to get safe harbor. So various ways of having 5% of the project, and that there's different risks, there's different ways that the legislation could be adjusted and different, and, and Congress is going to do what Congress is going to do. So, so there's a there's a lot of questions about what's coming now, and, and you know these things. And as you see defense production act, that's just another one. Yeah.
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So
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why do you think there's logic, though, to pushing back on solar and battery manufacturing in the United States? Is there some good reason why the Trump administration wants to disincentivize these things?
00:08:00.399 --> 00:08:09.000
Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of money that supports gas. In the country. There's a lot of money that supports oil.
00:08:09.899 --> 00:08:14.040
The US is the largest fossil fuel generator on Earth.
00:08:16.199 --> 00:08:40.899
That's it. Yeah, yeah. I agree. I think it's just a carrot for the oil industry or fossil industries. And look, they already have plenty of carrots. We we give them all kinds of free things and incentives. I think global incentives for fossil fuels are to the tune of $6 trillion something like that. Yeah.
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Little nuance, yeah, but yes, yes, that's the number six, 7 trillion. Yeah.
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It's pretty significant resources that humanity puts into fossil fuels.
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And in case you hadn't noticed, we're not stopping the burning of fossil fuels anytime soon. CO two levels are going up at one ppm per year. And even if we, even if we fully make the energy transition by 2050, and net zero, the economy, we were left with a trillion tons of CO two pollution, Legacy co twos we, as we call it, in the atmosphere, that we have to figure out how to suck out. So that's your homework. John, suck, a trillion tons of CO two out of the atmosphere. But should we talk about a terawatt of solar next year?
00:09:28.399 --> 00:09:32.120
Sure, absolutely, absolutely. And if you don't
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mind on on this thing called blue sky, what is that anyway?
00:09:36.558 --> 00:10:02.339
That's just my Twitter replacement, where I'm no longer the evil commercial solar guy. I'm just a commercial solar guy. I just wanted to share it there, because I break it down really nicely, very cleanly with a couple of images, this terawatt thing, because I think it's a fun discussion to have and and it's just, we're.
00:09:55.119 --> 00:10:32.958
It could be that next year, the world will install one terawatt of solar panels. We're within striking distance, and there's a pretty solid logic, and it's a big, cool number, and I think the it's just representative something, and I think it actually represents, like, two and a half percent of global electricity usage, hypothetically could be generated by this one year of solar panel installation volume.
00:10:27.438 --> 00:12:17.038
And so, so. So, I think last couple weeks ago, we talked about there were almost 700 gigawatts of new solar is projected. And I reached out to Bloomberg, Jenny Chase, and she gave me some data showing what their predictions are, and then where we actually end up. And then I looked at the growth rates, because I have some solid data going back to 1980 from Bloomberg, also of how much we've installed each year. And in this article, I put out a few solid charts and do a little bit of math and show that there's a spit in chance. We go from the 600 gigawatts we installed last year to upper seven hundreds this year, and from there, we jump to a terawatt next year, which would be over 215 gigawatts of new solar added in one year, on top of a record number and so, so that's like The pitch, and it's because the world's growing every year, somebody tries to make one of these big predictions of big jumps, it's always logical to say, no, no, no, it's not that big. Here's a million reasons why interconnection China is slowing down. The United States might pull back from its 50 gigawatts and it deployed in 24 and but it still keeps happening every stupid year and and there you go. So first off, I like these numbers, so could you zoom in on there a little bit? So$100 billion in solar panels in a terawatt, if they're at like 10 cents a watt, you know, we pay a lot more here, of course.
00:12:14.818 --> 00:12:32.298
So it's probably more than 100 billion but 50 cents a watt, half a half a trillion dollars going to labor in various ways, engineers in the field, sales people, inverter, 75 billion.
00:12:27.379 --> 00:12:49.418
100 billion in racking, 200 billion in gear. I just thought it was cool numbers for what one terawatt means, and and about 1.5 petawatt hours of electricity, I think is the volume. And globally, we do, like 30 petawat hours, I think is our number. So
00:12:50.860 --> 00:12:56.259
that's how much, how much electricity are we adding to the grid in 20 to 25 Do you have any idea
00:12:57.099 --> 00:13:17.219
globally? I don't know, but it's growing a little bit right now, a couple percent, so, so it's a chunk. So we're like, maybe matching it right now. Maybe last year we matched it so, but yeah, so there's a few charts that I would love to show here that are just great.
00:13:14.399 --> 00:13:17.219
It's a beautiful math.
00:13:19.139 --> 00:13:23.899
Yeah. Well, if I try to go to the BNF story, though, I don't think that'll render, will it?
00:13:24.500 --> 00:14:08.580
Oh, no, you could just scroll down. Oh, okay, yeah. So this is the BNF chart, shown growth, uh, historically, and where we're at. You know, we can see right there in the middle, you see that 599, that was what we did last year. And here's a couple of charts here, these two that are coming next, the next tweet, no, well, this is good one too. But this one shows on the left, that's long G, and their projection that we'd hit one terawatt in 2030 and on the right, that's you, dahlomer, and I think that's how I say the name who projected that we hit one terawatt next year, and, you know, he lines up with this projection, actually.
00:14:05.279 --> 00:15:24.679
And so that was pretty cool when I covered that couple years ago, and was like, No way that's not happening. And now we're sort of kind of getting close to maybe it happening. And then the next slide is kind of neat, and this is where I got data directly from Bloomberg. And so this is a we got three chunks of data here. The pink is what Bloomberg Nef projected. The yellow is what actually hit. And then the curvy line is where they were relative the projection versus the end number, and on average, you know, you can see it up down, up down, but it's they're mostly short. Only those three red ones that you see in the middle are down years where they over projected. We almost always under Project at least over this time frame. And it averaged 10% Under projection. Over the last few years, during our crazy upturn, it's been averaging like 15% so the game was, look at their projection, and this percent, and that's where we're really going to go. And that's, and that's, I think in the next slide, I might do that. No, the one after that. There you go.
00:15:20.159 --> 00:16:50.860
That's a number. So the real number that Bloomberg would project is somewhere between 729, and 761, based on going up 10 to 15% on their q4 projection, which is amusing, because they have an optimistic projection, which is right in between those numbers, where they say, Hey, we're gonna get like, 12 and a half percent more. So they have multiple projections, and that's actually slightly off the pace for us to get to one terawatt the next year, because that's only 10 to 15% off of 16% so, you know, we need, we need a little more. So it's just cool article. We're close to getting terawatt. It's neat headline. It's a big industry. I you know, these are the growth rates. This is the last chart I made showing what the growth rates were over the last couple of years. And we've averaged growing 36% and if we hit 30% two years in a row, then we're there. So, so it's potential. Cool headline. I like the number. It represents a trillion dollars being sent on solar panels, solar stuff in one year. Yep. I think even with the US having challenges. We're still going to see extensive growth and change and and it's just going to keep hammering it, and it's going to filter back new technology.
00:16:51.100 --> 00:16:59.019
We did 50, if we did 50 gigs right out of a terawatt,
00:17:01.899 --> 00:17:06.719
we're 5% right?
00:17:01.899 --> 00:17:14.699
Yeah, world's gonna go fine. Our number might be, might instead of being 50 gigs, it'll be 35 and all right, that's fine.
00:17:11.519 --> 00:17:14.699
We'll get we'll rock off.
00:17:16.200 --> 00:17:21.380
We did 40 in 2024 right? I believe so, which we talked about last, last time
00:17:21.740 --> 00:17:26.059
in 23 we did 40.
00:17:21.740 --> 00:17:26.059
And 24 we did 50.
00:17:27.619 --> 00:17:29.359
Well, we did 50.
00:17:27.619 --> 00:17:29.359
Okay, that's,
00:17:29.420 --> 00:17:31.519
that's yeah. So we went back. We changed it again.
00:17:31.519 --> 00:17:51.640
Tim, so everybody's coming out with the number at 50. See it came out at 50. Yeah. So they adjusted their numbers. Wood Mac adjusted their number to 50 gigs and 40 for 2350 for 24 Yeah, 90 gigawatts in the last two years of solar added to the US. Pretty cool number. But
00:17:51.640 --> 00:18:35.119
you see how, if you're a solar panel maker, let's say you're a big solar panel maker, like, look like long or Canadian solar. You we here in the US, we think, Oh, we're we're America, we're important, but in the greater scheme, we're not that important to those companies and and so we have to be careful. We scare them away easily. And like right now, Canadian solar is building a cell factory in Indiana, next door to me, a true blue solar cell factory. They have broken ground. Apparently, they have a live cam for employees to see.
00:18:35.119 --> 00:19:05.759
It's not publicly available, but at some point I'll just drive over there and walk around and shoot some photos, but, but as we've seen, right, these factories, you know, think about the Foxconn debacle in Wisconsin. Foxconn was going to make a lot of iPhones or something, you know, in Wisconsin, and then those factories were just empty. So we have to be careful. We actually do want to make the solar cells in America.
00:19:08.640 --> 00:19:16.440
I got a project of the I got a project of the week, a picture of the week. No, O and M of the week. How's that? O
00:19:16.440 --> 00:19:19.799
M of the week?
00:19:16.440 --> 00:19:26.779
Yes, I will try to share it on screen. It's not my forte, but I will try. But what's the story?
00:19:27.799 --> 00:20:10.019
The story is that we went out to a site to take a couple pictures for our manufacturer. We found, I don't know what the terminology would be officially a foreign object embedded in one of our inverters. And I just thought it was funny. But the cool part is that the inverter is still working, and we're we're just moving along. I assume we're gonna have to replace a front panel. On an inverter, because eventually that will rust the it'll accelerate. And I don't know, I don't see it last in 25 years. Would you like me to share this present? My
00:20:10.259 --> 00:20:16.380
is it not? Is it not sharing properly? Sure, not yet. Oh, how about now? There
00:20:16.380 --> 00:20:19.619
we go. Perfect. So click on the one on the left. I had
00:20:19.619 --> 00:20:24.559
to click one more button, one on the left. Okay, fortress, yeah. So
00:20:24.559 --> 00:20:48.400
that's one of their inverters, one of their 12 kW I think these are the envy. Are these the NV inverters? I can't remember the exact model, but it is 12 kW unit. It's installed in Rhode Island, and it's this is a on grid, off grid battery, charge control unit, and we think that's nine millimeter and, and somebody
00:20:48.400 --> 00:20:49.420
shot the inverter,
00:20:49.839 --> 00:21:38.839
yeah, and it's still running. We checked the serial number, and the serial number is up. And, you know, we just went out to take a picture, because we had a question from a state regulator about spacing and things like that. And so our our electrician was on site, not electrician, our civil was on site. Took a few pictures, sent me this one, sent me the next one. And And what's funny is, if you scroll, if you look to the right there, the CEO of in the comments. Maybe if you scroll down a little view some more comments there. The CEO of fortress noticed this and said, Hey, if you need any help working on this, yeah, apparently people get stuff shot all the time. There she goes.
00:21:35.240 --> 00:22:05.759
She said, if you need any help with this, let us know the name right there at the bottom. So, Jane, yes, and so, but it's cool. It's working. It's kind of neat. I mean, it looks like a small bullet, but the I'm certain that the outer material would start to break down eventually, and we would have an issue, because that would start to rust, and has to stay there for 25 years. So, but it'd be kind of cool to keep it there just for the heck of it.
00:22:07.740 --> 00:22:13.440
So let's zoom out for a second. Fortress power.
00:22:13.980 --> 00:22:15.420
What are they known for?
00:22:16.440 --> 00:23:46.299
For me, I know fortress because they have a highly capable inverter. And their inverter is a, it's, it can go on grid, off grid. It can connect the battery. It has, you know, all kinds of extra here, integrated. So they're a little more expensive than your standard, just single, standalone inverter. The key feature that I liked about them and for this site, where it's at, is that the inverter has the ability to first look at the on site demand and feed that with solar. Then when the solar when the on site demand is being met, excess generation will go to the batteries, then when the batteries get filled, then it goes to the grid. And the reason we have to do that is because on site, generation is high. It's above 60, 7080, at certain times. But the maximum export to the grid here is 50 kW because it's a single phase transformer, size, limited system. And the local grid only allows 50 kW transformers, so we'd have to figure, we had to figure out how to feed the building 72 kW, while we would only peak export ever 50. And it just so happened this inverter could do it and and so for me, it's about a highly functioning inverter, apparently, take a nine millimeter so
00:23:46.839 --> 00:23:49.779
that's that was your install. Yes,
00:23:49.779 --> 00:23:52.000
that's our project.
00:23:49.779 --> 00:24:03.240
And we have batteries there. We have three cool battery I'll do a project of the week, a proper project of the week. Yeah, that's our install. That's my price. Nice. So please don't shoot our inverters.
00:24:05.579 --> 00:24:21.500
Internet. All right, we got time for one or two more stories here. Just go ahead and tell us about the next story while I get this figured out.
00:24:21.920 --> 00:24:30.799
All right, Tim, I'm good at telling stories. Uh, I'll share it too. So, um, I just, I'm really interested.
00:24:30.859 --> 00:24:55.539
There's this guy named Cody. I can't remember his last name right now on Twitter, who's, who's got a business where he's trying to make synthetic fuel and and so I'm interested in how different companies, what we might do. Oh, looks like you're taking it over. Oh, good job.
00:24:48.940 --> 00:25:19.799
And this coming out of Australia, they want to be a like a hydrogen. Economy and ammonia economy. And at some point, I remember some group was trying to make nitrogen so fertilizers and other basic fuels, synth fuels, straight from electricity. And this, I think, yeah, okay, yeah, so, and there's
00:25:20.220 --> 00:25:22.099
not obvious when you look at the story.
00:25:22.579 --> 00:25:26.059
Oh, well, the website, you know, renew economy.com.au,
00:25:27.200 --> 00:25:36.380
but I know the story. Yeah, renew economy is a Australian publication, yes, sir, okay, yeah, I didn't even know that. Yeah. John, so
00:25:38.599 --> 00:25:40.039
this is pickleball player. Come on,
00:25:40.339 --> 00:25:42.279
that's right. What do you expect?
00:25:42.819 --> 00:25:55.599
Yes, you're the party. You're the party jock on the show. That's good. So, you know, the headline is cool. I actually didn't really care about the headline. Fewer, fewer, bigger turbines. Yeah.
00:25:51.759 --> 00:27:05.579
What's really neat is that this is, these are making, they're making six gigawatt pods. Like, keep scrolling down. They have a cool little art, art piece they did to show off what they're building, yeah, so they're this thing. So they're making six gigawatt pods of wind and solar, like one and a half gigs of solar, three and a half four gigs of wind, something like that, that feed into these centralized machinery systems that generate ammonia, export it straight to the ocean and ship it. And I don't know, it just seems sweet. It seems really something like the if we could figure out, I'm you know, this is version one of making fuels, of redoing the dinosaur. No, not dinosaurs. I guess what, really, what makes a lot of our fossil fuels is trees from way back in the day, piling up because there were no fungi to digest them. So we had, like, massive, deep reservoirs of just dead detritus. And then something flipped, and something crunched, ate all that stuff, and then that turned into our coal and things. But we're redoing that.
00:27:00.839 --> 00:27:19.259
We're remaking that with little plots like 10,000 acres at a time on the coast of Australia, maybe. And I hope that they figure out how to do this. And I hope we all learn how to lose 27 pounds of cortisol bailing fat with a chair workout.
00:27:21.839 --> 00:27:26.779
So does it say how cheap this wind power will be?
00:27:26.839 --> 00:27:33.259
For example, because the the figure that I hear folks like Matt Campbell, who I'll be dropping an interview with soon.
00:27:33.319 --> 00:27:49.240
I interviewed him at inner solar in San Diego a couple weeks ago, terabase is like a penny a watt is, I mean, a penny a kWh is one of the goals to unlock affordable green hydrogen.
00:27:49.839 --> 00:28:02.940
Penny, okay, is that number floating around somewhere in this story? Do we know ice, no electricity? It produces, yeah,
00:28:02.940 --> 00:28:10.740
because this electricity, they're going to be building it and selling it to themselves. So, so I don't know how they're going to cost it.
00:28:07.980 --> 00:29:56.140
You know, the cheapest electricity I've heard, though, for solar, it comes out of India. Well, not, let me not cheapest. Let me rephrase it, the purest price, that's a real market price that's also cheap is, I'm told by, you know, reading that it's India, because they don't give an incentive, and they have, you know, cheap costs. And so they do have some import tariffs on modules for certain projects. But I think they have a lot of domestic supply, little more expensive than China, but they're at three cents a kilowatt hour. So So unless the scale here is doing something different or something I don't know, because I don't know if we're below three cents a kilowatt hour at pure pricing, because India is pretty close to the equator. I mean, this place might be the northern side of Australia, which is probably among some of the best sunlight on Earth. And so, yeah, maybe three cents, maybe two and a half, two, if something's weird, but, but I don't know, I'm thinking three ish. So, so I just, I just think it's cool. I want to see us figure out some fuels. I'm not sold yet on hydrogen. It might still be early. Batteries might come to dominate, but having sent fuels to take over, fertilizers and things like that, seems like a great path forward to start things. Because green hydrogen for electricity, sure, we need that cheap, but green ammonia for fertilizer, its pricing can be stronger and it can sustain this market and move us closer to the price that energy needs and transportation needs hydrogen at so it could be a step ladder from fertilizers and other stuff industrial needs.
00:29:57.819 --> 00:30:31.460
Yeah, the guy I like to follow. Around green hydrogen is Peter Kelly Detweiler. He's been running around, giving trainings on the hydrogen economy, and last May, I did an interview with him about this. So check that out, episode 207, of the Clean Power Hour. But, but it's, it's the title of that show was promises and perils of the hydrogen economy. And that's the thing is, there are perils you need.
00:30:31.460 --> 00:30:41.200
You need a lot of water. In this case, they're desalin desalinating sea water, right?
00:30:35.779 --> 00:31:08.220
Which is super energy intensive, totally doable, but super energy intensive. And that's just the thing, right? You need a lot of water. It's a beautiful thing if you have plenty of water, because it's H, 2o and you get oxygen and hydrogen, and then you do things like make ammonia with the hydrogen, or just compress it, store it, burn it in a fuel cell vehicle.
00:31:10.079 --> 00:31:14.160
So have you seen the Michael Lieber blowed up?
00:31:15.180 --> 00:31:18.660
Have you seen the micro the staircase? Staircase? Yes,
00:31:19.619 --> 00:31:22.579
yeah, that's a good one. Thank you. I hope hydrogen
00:31:22.579 --> 00:31:51.279
can get halfway up that thing. I want to see it happen, because I think it could be like a clean peak type of source, similar to the way natural gas right now, and the peaker plants that only have 10, 20% 5% capacity factors, and they cost 50 cents per kilowatt hour, 25 cents per kilowatt hour. I don't mind paying 2550, for real, expensive peaking electricity for 4% of the year.
00:31:46.539 --> 00:32:48.519
10% Well, 10 may be strong, but, uh, you know, if there's a large infrastructure of industrial hydrogen usage, and it's out there being used, and then we have these moments where, you know, our grid needs a little help, and the grid and the industrial people can divert, or be forced to divert, or something, you know, have their grid hooked up to our grid somehow there's if there seems like there's a path where we can Have these peaking gas plants ready to be burning hydrogen that would just be cut off from industry, and because we'll pay them four times as much for, you know, 48 hours, something like that, whatever is necessary. So this, I'm optimistic on these things, and I I always get excited by whiz bang. As you can tell Tim, I brought you a story about one giant terawatt. And now I brought you a second story about making synthetic fuels at six gigawatt power plants. So
00:32:49.480 --> 00:32:51.940
60 gigawatts, six nobody.
00:32:51.940 --> 00:32:56.740
It's 60 overall, because they want to build 10 of those. Okay, so perfect. That was the next part of the story.
00:32:56.740 --> 00:33:18.599
We didn't get to it because we were talking about 12 other things, but they want to build like, 10 of these facilities along this coast, or it's either this group or a different group in Australia who has also wants to build little mini chunks that are two to four. So it's like Australia is full of people with very large dreams. I think it's because that continent is so giant, that country slash continent, it's as big as the US.
00:33:18.720 --> 00:33:45.819
You think about the solar resources, and they're, they're like, pretty freaking massive, yeah, and yeah, Australia is not that big a population, but they could just be an energy producer, right by harvesting photons and turning it into fuels that can be shipped around the globe, right, or putting it on undersea high voltage DC that, that thing is still in the works, I think, or did that collapse? No, no.
00:33:45.819 --> 00:33:50.920
It's moving along or under underwater. HVAC is still happening mid inch
00:33:50.920 --> 00:34:18.840
and along. It gets an approval here, approval there. You know, Singapore says we're open to recognizing it. I think the last time I saw something is that they said they're open to official consideration of it. You know, there's like we are officially negotiating, I think might have been a recent conversation, so, so yeah, I'm that's just cool to watch. Good job. Australia.
00:34:15.059 --> 00:34:23.000
Please doing, please keep doing, science fair, science fiction type of pool solar, things we
00:34:22.998 --> 00:34:46.418
like. Oh, and if you haven't seen my interview with Andrew Burch, you want to do that. He we talk a lot about Australia, how they got to $1 a watt for solar, and he's the founder of Open Solar, but so check that out at Clean Power hour.com that just dropped a couple weeks ago. I think we're out of time, though, John, aren't we?
00:34:47.320 --> 00:34:54.400
We have an infinite, yet finite amount of time. Tim, that is
00:34:55.539 --> 00:35:00.059
so tell our listeners how the heck they can find you if they're not on blue sky. Uh,
00:35:01.380 --> 00:35:24.679
commercial solar guy, com, that's our website. We have a contact us page, and I'm also on LinkedIn. I post stuff there too. I try to put construction pictures to show you that we're real. And we build stuff and we make you dig holes and put panels on roots and things like that. And And Tim, if you want to play pickleball at midnight. Where do people go in Champagne?
00:35:25.940 --> 00:35:29.119
CU pickle.com, is the website for the project.
00:35:29.360 --> 00:35:43.960
Thank you for asking. And all of this content is at Clean Power hour.com. I haven't started a pickleball podcast yet, but that will be happening at some point too. But in the meantime, check us out at Clean Power hour.com.
00:35:41.199 --> 00:35:55.059
Please tell a friend about the show. That's the best thing you can do to help me and John and the energy transition writ large. And with that, I'll say, let's grow solar and storage. I want to thank John Weaver for being here, and we'll see you in two weeks. You.
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