This is your SolarWakeup for August 23rd, 2017

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Leading The Manufacturers To Speak Up. During the latest episode of our podcast, the CEO of PanelClaw gave us a forecast that something big would happen this week and yesterday it came. 27 companies with manufacturing jobs wrote an open letter to the trade commission that should reverberate with the commissioners and staff. Don’t miss the podcast,you can listen to it here.

500 minus 37,000 ≠ 114,000. NPR did a great interview and the above mentioned open letter highlights it. Solar is not a binary economy where one parties success is not dependent on another. As an example, if modules go up in price, less projects get done meaning less work for lawyers, appraisers and companies that make widgets. Widgets like adapters, combiner boxes, fuses and racking have less volume when fewer projects are built. When Suniva and SolarWorld want to save their 500 manufacturing jobs, they forget the 37,000 manufacturing jobs that build those widgets and keep the circular ecosystem going in solar. 88,000 jobs are at risk in solar but most importantly the trade commission is being asked to add jobs by killing more jobs and that math just doesn’t add up.

The Path To 100%. A few months ago I spoke with Senator Wiener from California about the plan to increase the RPS to 100%. The 50% by 2030 plan is already ahead of schedule and you could look at market forces making the case for 100% easily achievable. Peaking plants will be replaced by more advanced solar operations, essentially making solar farms 40%-50% capacity factor assets with some dispatching potential. All of this because it lowers the cost of energy for consumers and dramatically lowers the cost volatility.

Opinion

Have a great day!

Yann