This is your SolarWakeup for August 2nd, 2019

Low Cost Energy. These charts that show solar costs plummeting are always satisfying but they are also incredibly misleading and I would go as far as saying they are false. When it comes to coal and gas there is no cost for the societal costs around the emissions of the direct pollution or the costs to resources like water. Asia will be making a straight 180 especially with the massive increase of storage access and cost reduction. Those markets also price renewables with the right level of return to project sponsors. 

PG&E Proceedings. News came out late yesterday that PG&E had renegotiated a contract with Recurrent Energy. I’ve reached out to representatives on whether this is an unbuilt project that has an awarded offtake agreement or an operating asset. The latter would be a problematic precedent but with the storage association, I presume it has not yet been built. The bankruptcy is causing some issue in the market with some dollars due to operating assets being held up by the bankruptcy process as well as funds that were due to be paid to other vendors across the business. 

Resi’s Real Market Scale. Enphase shipped over 1million inverters in the quarter and the majority of that was in the US. The company does not release market share but you can back into the scale of the residential market in the US and abroad and how fast the market is growing. If you carried options on the Enphase stock into earnings you were rewarded with a 4x return on those contracts, Sunpower’s investors also had a nice day in the market. Time for everyone to double down on the market and get involved in policy as well. 

Let’s Go. Another tax credit bill was published in the Senate yesterday, this time to extend the wind credit for offshore facilities. Whether congress will take up a tax extender bill this fall will decide which vehicle will be best for the solar ITC to get an extension. During recess, go see your Congressional representatives and their staff!

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Opinion

Have a great day!

Yann