This is your SolarWakeup for November 23rd, 2016

Demand charges dropped. Start of some big news in Illinois where all day negotiations between the Governor’s office and Exelon resulted in a deal framework. The mandatory demand charges will be dropped from the bill that will keep the nuclear power plants open at least another decade. Final legislative language just started circulating and there is an expectation that net metering will be kept largely intact with the existing 5% cap which is almost untapped, but some changes could be required. We’ve been speaking with the participants and will continue to update as news unfold.

Trump changes his tune. In an on the record meeting with New York Times yesterday, Trump was asked about climate change with a follow up from ‘Years of Living Dangerously’ host Tom Friedman. His answer is more in line with a non-political Trump. He wants clean air but above all, it cannot affect the competitiveness of domestic manufacturing. Industry should continue to reach out and educate how solar is economically attractive today and going forward with no increased fuel costs. So while he may dismantle the Clean Power Plan, most goals have already been met on a national level as Politico points out.

An island goes solar. A good project with great video production, that’s something I can really get behind. Tesla replaced diesel generators on an island in American Samoa with 1.4MW and 6MWh within a microgrid to give the island 3 days of autonomy instead of using nearly 110,000 gallons of diesel per year. Watch the video, I’ve shared it with my family and they all asked the same question. If you can do that, why aren’t we doing it everywhere?

Loans keep going bigger. Research is showing that loans are going to surpass leases and if you look at SolarCity’s data you can see it happening in that microcosm as well. One provider, Mosaic, is adding another facility to its war chest in order to get installers the money they need. In many ways, you are seeing a distributed network of installations happening by decentralizing the network as well.

Opinion

Have a great day!

Yann