State of The Solar Union: Sean White
Since we started This Week In Solar last year, three news stories have gotten far more attention than any others:
* Plug-In Solar
* Large solar companies failing (Sunnova, Titan, Posigen, and Fredom Forever, specifically)
* The One Big, Beautiful Bill.
So in today’s episode, we sat with solar legend Sean White to get his opinion on all three.
Sean is a self-described "chronic optimist” and solar pioneer dedicated to training the next generation of solar pros and finding the positive side of the solarcoaster’s ups and downs.
He’s also very, very funny. If you’re looking for a light, optimistic take amidst all the doom and gloom, today’s episode is for you.
Listen to this episode on:
* YouTube [https://substack.com/redirect/22722f68-af55-4cff-9d91-59795a4f2fda?j=eyJ1IjoiNThpZDQ3In0.MZMUaPmeTeHUokctFrWz4x2t7_RaZLBh4_veTGzt8dA]
* Apple Podcasts [https://substack.com/redirect/bc3410ce-74e6-43a8-9a6e-dfdf05144e96?j=eyJ1IjoiNThpZDQ3In0.MZMUaPmeTeHUokctFrWz4x2t7_RaZLBh4_veTGzt8dA]
* Spotify [https://substack.com/redirect/b98925fe-f2c7-4259-9e28-15c79f73c390?j=eyJ1IjoiNThpZDQ3In0.MZMUaPmeTeHUokctFrWz4x2t7_RaZLBh4_veTGzt8dA]
Connect with Sean on LinkedIn here [https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanwhitesolar/].
Expect to learn:
* Why plug-in (or balcony) solar comes with unique safety and electrical challenges.
* Why seasoned solar pros should ignore high-profile company bankruptcies and just focus on building.
Quotes from the episode:
“It just goes to prove that the people in the solar industry are the coolest people in the world. And they're not out here for selfish reasons. They want people to be able to plug in their own solar.”
— Sean White
“They need to taper back all incentives. Don't cut them off all at once. Like 30% overnight is just stupid. It's bad for business, bad for jobs.”
— Sean White
Transcript:
Aaron Nichols: Sean, welcome to Philly.
Sean White: Aaron as well. Are we on your show or mine?
Aaron Nichols: Yeah, we’re on my show.
Sean White: We’re on your show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Aren’t we? wait. No, I thought we were on my show. No, wait. You want to fight about it?
Aaron Nichols: Well, why don’t we put it on both our shows? Sean, you’re here in Philly doing a sales training for Exact Solar. And there was a couple of things I wanted to get your opinion on because we are, you know, we do a news roundup here at This Week in Solar, which is my show. And I think the three stories that people have been most interested in in the last year that we’ve gotten the most attention and engagement on are first, plug-in solar, second, large solar companies failing, and third, the one big beautiful bill. So I wanted to, in that order, get your opinion on those things. As someone who’s been in the industry probably longer than I’ve been alive. Let’s start with plug-in solar. What are your thoughts on it?
Sean White: Okay, you teenager. You expect me to remember three things in a row?
Aaron Nichols: I’ll remember them for you. We can, we can go over them together.
Sean White: Okay, maybe we can just combine it. And what was it? was plug-in solar.
Aaron Nichols: It was big companies failing.
Sean White: Yeah. And what one big beautiful thing that’s going on with tax credit is freezing out. I say we just treated it as three different things. So so um, so it was a plug in solar company that failed because of the one BBB.
Aaron Nichols: I don’t think that’s happened yet because the plug-in solar hasn’t passed so it can’t fail because of the taking away of tax credit.
Sean White: Okay, I was trying to like cheat and get out of it just with like answering one question. No, let’s take these.
Aaron Nichols: Let’s take these all three of them. What is your opinion on plug-in solar? It’s getting a lot of momentum. Several states have just legalized it. Colorado is close. I know Maine and Virginia have legalized it. And we’re going to see more and more states starting to let people just buy their own systems and slap them down in the and plug them into a standard outlet. So what do you think about
Sean White: You know what, I was kind of thinking, it’s kind of a DIY thing. And I thought it was kind of interesting that the people that are full force behind it are actually people that it might even hurt a little bit because they’re in the solar industry and they’re trying to do solar themselves. And now people are going to be like, why do I need you? can just plug. solar. So I think that’s kind of cool. And it just goes to prove that the people in the solar industry are the coolest people in the world. And they’re not out here for selfish reasons. They want people to be able to plug in their own solar. And, and so I was at the the inner solar medical, the smart or E and inner solar being part of it conference in Munich last year, where they’ve been doing plug in solar, they call balcony solar for a while, because they kind of pioneered it in Germany, where they pioneered stuff in the solar industry and it was was kind of interesting to me that they had like a big trade show biggest probably the second biggest solar trade show in the world after SNCC and They have like huge like aisles and aisles of plug-in solar companies, balcony solar companies. And they didn’t just have like people making the equipment. They actually had cool dudes that I was hanging out with and they were plug-in solar installers. And so they went and they made their own plug-in solar companies where they go out and help the homeowner. So if people like might be in the solar industry and they know how to do wire. and stuff like that, people might hire them to do it. And then you can be a solar installer that doesn’t do permits. Because that’s kind of the big thing about plugging solar.
Aaron Nichols: Ooh, that is.
Sean White: You don’t have to do permits.
Aaron Nichols: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s part of what the law’s about. And I know they’re going to try to include it in the 2029 National Electrical Code. different states that are trying to do it. sounds like it might just be this huge thing that happens all at once. So it’s pretty cool. So potentially a lot of opportunity because like homeowners are going to want these mounted correctly, even though they plug into a standard outlet, the average person is not going to know how to mount them to their porch.
Sean White: Yeah, or like they and they were kind of telling me because I was asking them about that too and they were just like, yeah, there’s just some people want to have somebody do it a little bit better. Right. It’s probably not that hard to do some of that stuff, but maybe to make it more symmetrical. And then a lot of these systems, I think, have batteries associated with them. So it is something that you should be able to pick up at your big box store and take it home and plug it in. have battery, have some PV, plug it into the wall, there you go. But I guess the one thing that makes it so you might not be able to do in certain states or like maybe it doesn’t comply with the code if the states don’t approve it is that what if you got a new one every week, kept on plugging it into your power adapter and then you’re like plugging in and plugging in and pretty soon you have like 20 plug-in solars on your giant balcony in one outlet.
Aaron Nichols: has like 16 portable space eaters in it yeah don’t do that yeah I think someone mentioned that it might I think short out GFC I or like the current protection for anyone who doesn’t understand electrical acronyms and then you know like it would make it so that if there was water someone could touch the outlet and potentially electrocute themselves. I don’t know much about it, but I’ve heard that there’s some safety concerns we need to overcome. But most states have wattage limits. Like I think Colorado is 1,900 watts. think... Utah is 1.12, 1200 watts that you can have of balcony solar.
Sean White: But I think also it’s probably very hard to tell and very hard to enforce.
Aaron Nichols: Yeah. So it’d be interesting to see what happens when lots of people have it to see if anybody has a problem, you know, and they plug too many of them in. Because another thing that you know is homeowners. are going to comply with the rules, right?
Sean White: Right. So you can only have as many wads like that. That’s another.
Aaron Nichols: Yeah, we were talking about that the other day. Me and a friend was just like that, you know, so much of this depends on homeowner competence. But we live in America where. says there’s a sticker that says don’t put your head in here and turn it on.
Sean White: Yeah, and what do I do when my head gets cold? So we have to assume that there’s going to be some kind of user error with plugging in solar.
Aaron Nichols: Yeah. And so and so like, I think it’s one of those things where you could come up with all these different scenarios of like, yeah, like just like I was saying, to plug in a whole bunch of things into power strips and space heaters. It’s obviously stupid and probably unless they were just trying to be stupid on purpose to get their fire insurance.
Sean White: for attention online.
Aaron Nichols: It’s like the YouTube video, I wired 50 plug-in solar systems to each other to see what happens.
Sean White: So it would be stupid and they’ll probably have stickers on them and it’ll say like, warning, do not plug more than two of these into this kind of outlet. Yeah. And I think some other things too that I was trying to think of like how, like you have a branch circuit and maybe you have multiple plugs going to one breaker. So if you have different branch circuits, you should be able to put different systems or you don’t want to put in that same branch circuit. You don’t want to put your plug-in solar in one of them in two space heaters into the other one. Like there’s some little things like that that could get people into trouble. So maybe there could be some kind of way to get a homeowner to be able to know what’s in that branch circuit. And maybe there should be some kind of way where it could be simple enough for a homeowner to understand. It’s like turn off the breaker. See which plugs turned off and then go out there and like the ones that turned off you put something over like do not use or something like that. Yeah. Or do not plug two space heaters into this outlet. You can still use it. But just not two space heaters.
Aaron Nichols: OK. All right. So so overall, you think plugging solar is very cool. It’s awesome. There’s a lot of opportunity, but there’s probably going to be some people who mess it up and it’ll just kind of have to be like a natural evolution of who makes it through the natural safety testing of deploying a bunch of these with the public and seeing what happens.
Sean White: Yeah. And like, like, I guess I’m thinking personally, like, yeah, I teach a lot about codes and standards and how to be safe and stuff. But I also maybe in my personal life know how to be dangerous. It’s kind of fun. Like yeah, go like I know other people that teach solar classes and then you go to their house and like you’re obviously doing lots of testing here. It’s remotely legal.
Aaron Nichols: I think we have episode 100 coming. Mr. Money Mustache online. something like that. So he bought 10 250 watt solar panels off of Craigslist for like nothing and then just wired them in series just and then unplugged his water heater and wired them through. pulled his water heater off of his panel and just used them to heat the water in his home. And so far the water heater has not exploded?
Sean White: No, no, it’s actually fine. He must have read something to know that the right amount of solenoid.
Aaron Nichols: Yeah, by the way, if you’re listening to this, do not do anything like that. I work for an accredited installer. Please find professionals. Do not mess around with electricity in your home unless you’re a professional like Sean.
Sean White: Yeah, yeah, something like that. And there’s so many different rules of what you can do in this state, that state. And then you see what they’re doing in different countries. Right. And just I think common sense and being careful are probably like the most important things. hooking 10 solar modules into a hot water heater, if you did 20 maybe or something like that, something like something could happen. Right. And the worst case scenario like what I was saying was like like is But with the hot water heater there’s a pressure relief valve and say that some say that didn’t work and then the hot water got too hot and the way that a lot of old style power plants work is with steam and once you heat up water past 100 degrees Celsius 212 Fahrenheit it explodes right and pressure makes it not as explode as much but the whole hot water heater could be sort of like a bomb yeah, so So that’s why, unless you want bombs in your house.
Aaron Nichols: Right. Yeah. Don’t go messing around with that.
Sean White: And hopefully the pressure relief valve would work and probably would. There’s also types of ways to do that. They’re legal, and they have special controllers where you have direct solar hot water heater. And so let’s say it’s an electric hot water heater. A lot of electric hot water heaters have two elements in it, maybe like a top one and a bottom one. What you can do is you can take one of those elements, it, you know, do the direct solar thing on it. And the other one works off the electricity. And then on a cloudy day, you still have hot water. So Mr. Muddy Mustache, you might not want to sit next to him on a cloudy day. Maybe takes a cold shower. don’t know.
Aaron Nichols: Well, he would sometimes unplug it from the water heater and then plug it into a bucket.
Sean White: Okay, good, good.
Aaron Nichols: All right. So, lightning round, first round wasn’t very lightning, but lightning round number two, moving on to topic number two.
Sean White: Well, let me just say one more thing about plug-ins. Yeah, it’s cool.
Aaron Nichols: It is. I’m very excited about it. It’s true power to the people, especially for like renters who don’t have a roof that they can put solar on and have been locked out of that market. still stuck like you know where you live in PG &E renters are paying the same price that homeowners are paying for electricity and they’re stuck in an apartment they can’t do anything about it. incredible for someone like that.
Sean White: Yeah, you can take it with you, you can do it yourself, and it brings solar to the masses which could increase the visibility of solar and then make more people go to exact solar or get solar installed.
Aaron Nichols: Amazing. Alright, so number two, second of three things I wanted to ask you about. Since I’ve been in the solar industry, we’ve had several larger installers, multi-state installers, basically crash and burn. Some could say that they grew too fast and then exploded. There’s a bunch of different theories, but I think since I’ve been in the solar industry, it’s been SunPower, Sunova, Titan, Posigen, and most recently, Freedom Forever, as we’re recording this. I wanted to ask you your opinion about... Like, what do you think is happening here? Homeowners are very interested in it, but when a company does that, they leave homeowners without anyone to service their systems, without anyone to fix the systems that they’ve put in. And there’s a lot of people who are stranded because some of the biggest companies in the industry just grew really fast and then disappeared. Just love to get your
Sean White: are we looking at an angle here? is going bankrupt or like these poor people that don’t have the right service on their systems. What would you prefer? I like being an optimist. I like talking. I like turning every negative into a positive. Like I twisted around.
Aaron Nichols: chronic optimist.
Sean White: So let’s look at like the solar companies crashing and that’s not a new thing and if we go back and look at computers and tech, know, and you look at these companies, you know, like Google and Apple. and stuff like that and you’re thinking, man, that was the right thing to invest in. But if you went back, if you knew that was the right technology to invest in, but you didn’t have the right stock picker and you might’ve invested in, what was it, like Netscape or some of these things that we don’t even remember their names or it’s kind of a joke. You’re lucky when you pick a winner. like booms and busts you know and so it kind of cleans it up and the strongest survive Darwinism and all that kind of stuff and so even to look on the side of the solar coaster and there’s ups inflation reduction that downs topic three that we’re going to talk about this will be yeah and and so it it makes the industry kind of weed stuff out you know and it’s just it’s all part of growing it’s all part of part of evolution and there’s going to be some companies that go under and there’s other companies that are gonna be stick with it, make it last, maybe they foresaw that there was gonna be some hard times that they were gonna have to come up against, know, because things change, there’s four year political cycles and stuff like that. And then when the next cycle comes along and what will we have? President Ocasio-Cortez, know, they seem to correct pretty hard these days. Like if you just see, you know, got Obama, got Trump, got Biden, got Trump. I think Ocasio-Cortez fits that kind of overcorrection or whatever you might call it. So you got to be ready for that. And then when that happens, it’ll be really good for the solar industry. And the companies that stuck with it are going to turn into the Googles and the Apples and all that. stuff.
Aaron Nichols: Okay, so you’re saying this is more of a natural evolution and as someone who’s newer to the industry, I’ve only been here just under three years really, that I shouldn’t be afraid of this. This is just kind of what happens in any industry is you have like earlier adopters, people grow really fast, take advantage of opportunities, go out of business and then the people who are around kind of become the stable giant.
Sean White: Have you ever heard of a Tucker or a Studebaker?
Aaron Nichols: No, I haven’t.
Sean White: If you look at car history, they’re before my time, but there were some really cool car companies back in the day when they were like inventing cars in the decades after that, that went out of business. The Tucker, even when you turned the wheel, they had this mon... this headlight in the middle that turned. I mean, it was really cool. That’s cool stuff. And it might have been better technology than the competitors, but they just didn’t set up their business right. Or, you know, just like sometimes you’re too early for something. Sometimes you’re too late.
Aaron Nichols: Right. So it’s it’s just all, you know, catching the right wave.
Sean White: Yeah. You know, and it’s just the way things that the way things happen. You know, it’s like, why isn’t, you know, what would we had like AOL? Some people still have their AOL email addresses. We had Yahoo, there’s still a couple of Yahu’s around there. Yeah, but it’s it perhaps it’s something like that, you know, I kind of think too that that sometimes even the big companies go under like you’re talking about Sun power.
Aaron Nichols: Yeah.
Sean White: And sometimes the companies to like they sort of go under but somebody gets their assets and then they they they come back to life resurrection. Right. So, you know, corporations are more important than people. call corporate person, corporate person. And and so just like resurrection religion. We have corporate resurrection for for corporate religion.
Aaron Nichols: yeah.
Sean White: Well, you know that that like so I think Solyndra is going to come back. yeah and be the main company out there. They’re going to be like take over all the fast food, everything, you know.
Aaron Nichols: Folks, you heard it here. Sean White says, Solyndra is going to come back and take over the story.
Sean White: One time I was in the audience at the Colbert report. Yeah. Before he had, you know, he got. big bucks when he was a fake conservative talk show host. I was wearing a Salinda shirt and he was warming up on the audience. stood up and he was like, what’s that shirt there? I told him, Salinda is the corporation going to take over the world. Salinda had just died so it was all in the news. I told him my theory about corporate personhood and the corporate messiah. was to amazing. It was going to be Salinda. They’re to come back.
Aaron Nichols: You must have been his favorite audience member that day.
Sean White: He told the security guys to keep an eye on me. That was best joke he could come up with. I think it would have better than that.
Aaron Nichols: To sum up what we’ve learned so far, plugging in solar, very cool, but some things that we need to iron out and some natural safety evolutions that are going to happen. large companies growing really fast and then going out of business is part of the natural evolution of an industry. So let’s move on to the biggest story of the last year, the one big beautiful bill act.
Sean White: Why do you call it beautiful? Because it was the literal name. I know, but you’re just giving it more power. That’s true. I am still calling it NREL. I refuse to call it whatever they want us to call it. something of the Rockies.
Aaron Nichols: Especially because I’m from Colorado and I’m like... just rename landmarks that’s been you know that you know it used to be called solar energy research institute Carter named it Siri so by that same theory you got to go back and call it Siri I will happily do that yeah yeah so start calling it Siri solar energy research Institute because then Reagan he’s the one that changed it to NREL
Sean White: So then now the same thing happened that Trump did to Reagan. He’s like stepping on Reagan. Well, fantastic. Reagan is a liberal compared to Trump, right? He’s like like immigrants and all that kind of stuff. And yeah, and you know, was he was well, both of those guys used to be Democrats.
Aaron Nichols: anyway, well, I like to be obstinate, especially if I think it’s funny. So yeah, Solar Energy Research Center. So Institute. Yeah, Siri. Solar Energy Research Center. Yeah, Siri. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. And so, yeah, so what about this bill?
Sean White: So it’s all part of that probably bleeding. Of course, it’s like related to the last question that we just had about the companies going under and stuff like that. And sometimes it doesn’t just have to do with like a bad company or just the management changes or if you look at it’s SunPower, they have like internet. and stuff like that. Sometimes companies get rated. I’m not saying that that has to do with any of the companies that we’re talking about. So there could be a big company and the CEOs and the board, go like, let’s pay ourselves a whole lot of money until the company goes bankrupt. That’s a smart money move for a CEO. So. work if you can get it. And then SunPower, their manufacturing is just called Maxian. So that’s still around and I’m turning, is SunPower still in existence in some way right now? I’m not actually sure. Yeah. Yeah. And by the way too, I had the founder of SunPower, just had him on my podcast, 80 year old Dick Swanson, which I was super honored to use. And so he started SunPower. He developed the back contact solar cell. He came up with this thing called Swanson’s Law. He’s too modest to take credit for it. Anyway, so we’re back to the Triple B, a big bad, whatever you can call it. I have trouble saying it.
Aaron Nichols: I’ve heard it referred to in a lot of hilarious ways. Yeah. Triple B. But they’re all named for marketing.
Sean White: Inflation Reduction Act. Right. I think it was IR. It’s like, was it how did I don’t really understand how it reduced inflation, but it’s a good marketing word. Yeah. And also it gets a lot of like Irish dissidents on their side. I don’t want to say too much more. was going to cancel me. OK. I don’t know how angry. but maybe. And so the bill, you know, it’s like a big stand against renewables and all this kind of stuff. And so it’s it took out the customer owned. 30 % tax credit, right?
Aaron Nichols: Like New Year’s Eve last year, people are on roofs, installing in the snow just to get it out right at the last minute.
Sean White: And that way, if you weren’t fortunate enough to be a corporation like I am. I’m you can get this same tax credit until there’s a couple of different deadlines that I talked about in another podcast what is it it’s like there’s a July 4th is it
Aaron Nichols: yes start the project July 4th this year yes I’m starting the project
Sean White: so for big utility scale projects all that you start it like do something to start it and then they have a lot of time and it takes a long time to do those projects. Or what is it, the following year, year’s eve, I think, is that it?
Aaron Nichols: Yeah. And they have to finish the project.
Sean White: So, and then also I’m thinking too that they’re gonna get these projects in and you’ve got midterm elections November of this year. And so by the way, we are in 2026. If you didn’t know. And so November this year there should be elections, things are gonna shift around. Also they might extend the tax credit. Why not? like I’m hopeful of all that.
Aaron Nichols: There’s legislation actually that was just introduced. Patrick who was one of the only no votes on the one big beautiful bill Republican rep who’s actually our rep for exact solar for the district I had on the comments about that legislation. Yeah, so they’re thinking of extending specifically the commercial credit. Their legislation doesn’t include bringing about the residential credit. But I know that when we were doing the training today, you talked about how It’s really important that we advocate to our legislators to say that we can’t just take things away like really fast. It’s just bad for business.
Sean White: Yeah, they got they need to taper back all incentives. So I know all of the government listens to your podcast. You hurt me government paperback incentives. Don’t cut them off all at once. Like 30 % overnight is just stupid. It’s bad for business, bad for jobs. They create like an extra amount of business before it expires and then, you know, of course it drops off after that and then it takes a while to ramp up and it’s just, it hurts people. It hurts all kinds of people, all parties and all that kind of stuff and we gotta not do that anymore. No more. quick pulls. So yeah, so there and so that it affects people a lot when they when they do these things and then it puts in fear and then it makes people want to invest and so my other theory too is like yours like they might bring it back you know the best way to bring it back is have Trump say it was his idea.
Aaron Nichols: I mean yeah it could work
Sean White: yeah and he is take credit of will build a statue of him holding a solar panel I’m sure he’d love that. thing about Trump is he doesn’t he’s not afraid to change his mind.
Aaron Nichols: That’s true. So like, you know, it’s not too far fetched that it could happen. Yeah. No, think you’re right.
Sean White: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we just got to make him think that he came up with the Maybe that it was his plan all along. To just take them away and then bring them back. Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron Nichols: is because he’s playing 4D chess. It’s just while the rest of us are playing checkers. So, okay, to sum up what we’ve learned so far, plug and solar, very cool, but needs to be figured out. Big companies going out of business, part of the natural evolution of the industry. One big, bill. We need to advocate with our representatives to taper incentives rather than take them away all at once. I ask everyone who comes on this show the same closing question.
Sean White: I just had an idea. Yeah. Before it was up. Yeah. My idea. is we have corporations own the plug-in solar with microloans and then you get the 30 % tax credit.
Aaron Nichols: Interesting idea. Because I don’t think it’s excluded that you could do that. Someone will come up with this. Some sort of plug-in solar PPA.
Sean White: Yeah, sure. Yeah. And it’ll pay for itself and all that. I saw one. Have you seen one of the plug-in solar things? Like Bernadette Del Chiaro just came to the North out solar bit that we had and she brought one and it was pretty cool. just plug it in the wall.
Aaron Nichols: yeah and really anyone like anyone who’s DIY just needs an inverter and then you can get the cheapest panels you can find on Facebook marketplace like from some job site and someone pulled off. Panels for $50 usually.
Sean White: Yeah. And I actually, in a way, pioneered Plug-In Solar because I bought an inverter that would plug into the wall at 120 and then I would carry it classes. So I’ve had that for years. In I was plugging in in phase micro inverters that would work at like 240 and 208. And I would go into the classroom and I’d find plugs that were out of phase with each other. And then I would have to have two extension cords come into one inverter and I could make it back feed a hotel. I’ve been doing that for like 18 years.
Aaron Nichols: So this has been a thing forever Yeah, yeah, and if you if you just do it today like nothing happens Right.
Sean White: Well, I guess like the one thing that could happen is You got your plug-in solar you’re not home. You got an apartment Everything in your house is off. It’s a bright sunny day You’re exporting your meter is spinning backwards the utility can find out And did you ever hear of Gorilla Solar? Like if you look at old Homepower magazines, they had every time they came out with a Homepower magazine, they had somebody covering their face, feeding the grid with solar. And a lot of those were just plugging into the wall.
Aaron Nichols: Right. Okay.
Sean White: and it would be like their 240 watt system that’s, you know, with six modules and all this stuff and they’re like plugging it into the wall.
Aaron Nichols: Yeah. So my friend with the hot water heater, that’s Gorilla Solar.
Sean White: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it. And if you took plug-in solar that was legal for one state and not for the other, that would be Gorilla Init.
Aaron Nichols: Oh, OK. Yeah. not recommended for anyone who’s listening. We the rules here. We respect our state. We love the laws. Sovereignty. All right, so as I mentioned, I asked everyone who comes on the same closing question, even though this is your show.
Sean White: And yours.
Aaron Nichols: And mine, yeah.
Sean White: And whoever’s listening, you can have it too.
Aaron Nichols: So a couple years ago, I spoke at my grandma’s 80th birthday party. was when I came up. I realized that when I was reflecting on it afterwards, that 80 years means that she was born into a world where what we call renewable energy didn’t exist. I mean, we had hydropower, we had windmills that pumped water, I don’t know if they generated electricity yet, but PV cells hadn’t even been invented.
Sean White: PV cells being the building block of a solar module or solar panel. Yeah, the first thing that was like that was 1954.
Aaron Nichols: Exactly. And she was born in 45. So my grandma was born into a world where none of this existed yet. And the whole journey of the invention of PV, all the way down to PV being the cheapest power source in the world, the whole ride that we’ve gone on has all happened within her lifetime. So if you were to just moonshot, what do you think energy is going to look like 80 years from now? If we skip ahead another 80 years.
Sean White: Okay, I’ll tell you when that happens. Yeah. You come back on the show.
Aaron Nichols: So let’s see. Yeah. yeah, for sure. Yeah, you got me.
Sean White: And so I know that we’re going to figure out like longevity and life extension and all that stuff. And you know what? It’s like it’s possible. You know, there’s a lot of pathways for crazy stuff to happen. And even we look at our lifetimes, we’ve seen a lot of stuff. And I know that you’re probably younger. But but we look at our like it’s it’s like we’ve seen like people going like TV in your hand.
Aaron Nichols: Yeah. Cell phones, you know, like there was this thing called the break that was like then, you know, in the 90s, it was just like this lead acid battery cell phone or something that takes two hands to hold it sometimes.
Sean White: Yeah. And and so now we’re up to like AI when you’re just like having a conversation with your phone. Right. You know. And so, have you heard of Ray Kurzweil?
Aaron Nichols: Yes, he’s kind of a futurist. And he talks about the singularity and he was the CTO of Google for a while.
Sean White: And I’ve kind of followed him a lot and listened to a lot of his stuff. And he’s predicted a lot of this stuff. And I’m trying to remember the exact names of what he calls it and everything. But there’s like Moore’s Law. But then there’s also not just that Moore’s law fits more stuff on a small chip, but the price of it goes down too. So we’ve got like log on one side and log on the other. And so we have this, this fast growth of technology and it keeps like the doubling rate keeps, keeps getting cut in half or something like that. So you go back, um, you know, to like real long time ago and technology is like, got the stone age, you got the bronze age, the steel all that kind of stuff. Then all of you got the industrial revolution, you got the computer revolution, you’ve got the AI revolution or whatever all these things are. And it’s kind of crazy that my grandparents were like riding horses in carts, you know, and stuff like that. And then here I am mad because my car’s not self-driving. So the speed of technology goes up and And the way that the human mind thinks is linear. And the way that this kind of growth happens is logarithmic, exponential. And it’s probably like 80 years from now. you went back to the beginning of the solar industry, whatever, 2000 or 2010 or something, it was just like, in the year 2000, the whole world had something like a gigawatt, thousand megawatts. And now we have thousands of times more solar in the And it just kind of grows. And it just like you have this doubling rate, you know, as things double. And that’s for this one technology. And then there’s these other technologies and the you know, who knows what these technology in 80 years. That’s such a long time. If if what I say is true when I answer this question, everybody’s going to think I’m crazy. And actually, they’re the ones that are crazy. So like like like, I don’t know. I’m like 80 years from now, so we’re talking about somewhere in the 2100s over there. I think that it’ll be like, people will look at cars, like we’re looking out the window here at Philly and there’s Ben Franklin Bridge in the background, and it’s stupid. You know, like like all of these things going at different speed and thousands of pounds of metal zipping past each other.
Aaron Nichols: Right. The number one cause of death of teenagers.
Sean White: Yeah. You know, it’s just like stupid, you know, and it’s not it’s it kills older people, too. But we have, you know, cancer and stuff is more popular when you get older and heart disease and all that kind of stuff. So so independent pieces of metal zipping around with. traffic doesn’t doesn’t make sense. think that’s stupid. I think that there’ll be different types of transportation that where you know, like with a car, you go faster, you need a bigger distance, we’ll get rid of that. We’ll have them all going at different speeds, we’ll get rid of that. We’ll still have transportation will be much faster. We would probably be traveling. faster than the speed of sound, just, you know, even from across the city or something like that.
Aaron Nichols: Where do you think solar is going? Do you think we’ll just be able to paint it on surfaces?
Sean White: So energy, yeah, that is a good question. solar, some of like the future solar technologies, one way is to make a sun on earth. They call it fusion. I don’t think. I mean, I don’t think that’s going to be the big way of doing it because we just have a big old fusion ball up there and we have all these crystals and it does it. And so likely there will be space based solar power. They’re already doing it. And you know that they’re like, we’re trying to go to space right now. And it’s like, we’re almost caught up to where we were in the sixties, 1969.
Aaron Nichols: towards quite to Neil Armstrong yet. The time of the recording of this podcast.
Sean White: Yeah. So we’ll probably go way beyond that. You know, just like so so far away beyond that. It’s and so like, you know, the next energy race will probably be on moon and there’s water and there’s sunlight and everybody wants to get to the poles first because at the poles of the moon, you put solar there and the moon. doesn’t tilt relative to the sun when it as far as going around the sun. The moon is almost straight up and down. So like there’s no winter and summer in the moon. It’s just like, you know, it’s like it’s, oriented, oriented perfect. And so I think that means that the north of the moon is just pointing right at the North Pole. And wrong. it’s and so if you’re on the poles and you’re on the top of a crater or like a little mountain or something like you’re going to have sun even though the moon spends every 28 days. It’s got a 28 day day. It’s going to always have sun there. And so you just have to follow it. Or if you’re a little bit off, you’ll have some darkness or whatever. But those would be the valuable places to be is on the moon. And then you take in that moon. stuff that we water turned into oxygen and hydrogen. You got hydrogen, you got rocket fuel, you recombine them, you can take rockets off to get off the moon. Gravity is so much less than Earth. It’s not a big deal like it is on like so like on the moon. There’s no atmosphere either. You can actually go into orbit with this pretty much with a slingshot.
Aaron Nichols: Yeah. They call it like a rail gun or there’s something amazing. There’s something there’s something that they’re talking about.
Sean White: and so you can with Earth. You know you do something like that you have if you could get fast enough to go into orbit right off the surface of earth The air gets in your way and it heats everything up.
Aaron Nichols: Yeah Yeah
Sean White: And so though and so like moon technology that manufacturing on the moon because the moon is essentially the same elements as earth
Aaron Nichols: Yeah, and so we just have to sort it out
Sean White: There’s probably big old pieces of gold sitting around all kinds of stuff up there and and so that’s the new frontier And we’ve got orbit, we’ve got low gravity. Then pretty soon we’re going to have space stations. One of the things I want to able to go on the moon is a hotel with a room where you can have like high dives, where you can do like quadruple flips and you can put on wings and have like, like they were trying to do in the old days with those old movies where they’re trying to fly the invented airplanes.
Aaron Nichols: sounds incredible.
Sean White: But you can really do that maybe on the moon with very low gravity.
Aaron Nichols: Yeah, I think it’ll happen sooner than we think. And and and so you’re asking me where solar would be. I think I think a lot of it be in space. Yeah. But a lot of it will be everywhere. You know, like building materials just like all over the place. Shade structures. You know, a lot of the things that would be stupid to do today, like putting solar on the roads. Do you remember that solar freaking road? and all that kind of stuff. Like today’s technology is kind of dumb, eventually maybe we’ll get there. Maybe building integrated PV, which doesn’t make financial sense when you’re competing against like our beautiful rectangles that we put up. But as time goes on and technology gets better and cheaper and more robotic and stuff, we’ll probably see more building materials that are made out of solar. Maybe it’ll be something like stupid to not have a roof made out of solar. People are just like, what? Your roof doesn’t have solar on it? You don’t have a TV? You don’t have a phone? Maybe there’ll be, when you build a house, you just punch in the dimensions of the roof and a helicopter comes or drone and it and it sets the whole roof as just one giant solar module. Well, is there anything else you want to cover before we head out and meet the team?
Sean White: Gosh, well everybody keep it real, keep it fun, don’t be boring, get yourself NAPSET certified, Exact Solar to install solar for you.
Aaron Nichols: Love that. you know some you know some other galaxy with me
Sean White: okay if you have the tech to transport Sean to another galaxy send it yeah yeah yeah not Andromeda I’m like totally prejudiced against Andromeda’s yeah you can find Sean on LinkedIn yeah you can find me all over the place solarsean.com yeah thanks for coming on
Aaron Nichols: Amazing.
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