This is your SolarWakeup for August 3rd, 2017

Power To The Roofs. As I am writing this, Tesla is up about 7.4% after a quarter that Wall Street approved of. The solar anticipated roof tiles are in pilot mode and have been installed on Elon and Straubel’s house. Full line production will come out of Buffalo by the end of the year. I still believe that this is a premium product given the complete system requirements. I would expect Tesla to find another path to distribution as well. In order to drive scale, roofers will have to be an outside sales channel in my opinion, let’s see how Tesla handles that end.

Role Of The Utilities. Utilities play a large role in the solar market for a variety of reasons but most of all because they are the incumbent market participants. Having the monopoly gives utilities access to debt that are backed by having the ratebase and guaranteed returns. Other than being a bankable offtaker, the largest of the utility roles in this, utilities played a big part of owning assets in their deregulated business units. Long term cash flows, leveraged with cheap capital, make for great portfolios for utilities. At the end of the day that’s what utilities are, banks.

Perry May Move On. Now the General Kelly has left Homeland Security to be the White House Chief of Staff, there is an opening at DHS. Rick Perry is rumored to be in the running for that job, maybe because his State had a border or he has no nuclear energy knowledge. Would create another opportunity for DOE to be shaped by a new Secretary.

Opinion

Have a great day!

Yann