This is your SolarWakeup for September 14th, 2020

Here’s The Scoop. There’s something big brewing in the residential solar market. SolarWakeup has learned that industry veterans are coming back into the market in a big way, looking to to build the next national platform through acquisitions of existing market leaders. With the fragmentation that exists today, it makes sense that this would be the strategy and for those companies that seek that exponential growth it seems that the opportunity is coming up. We can’t say more at this point but stay tuned to this space…

An Expanding Market. Even with the impacts of COVID in the space, halting installations and changing sales strategies, the residential solar market is now forecasted to remain strong. After my comments were published by PV-Magazine about the finance market faltering, Woodmac responded and changed the terminology to indicate a strong investment environment for residential solar. The forecasters also increased the 2020 estimates by 700MW to remain flat year over year. This was something SolarWakeup predicted in May on our podcast episode. Even if megawatts will remain flat, SolarWakeup has the estimate at 10-15% increase over 2019 numbers, total spend will be up over 10% given the average system value has increased by almost 15% due to bigger systems and energy storage inclusion. You can now understand what drives the investment thesis in the scoop above.

500+ Air Quality. 6 of the largest fires in California, including the largest ever, are burning right now. Oregon saw fires within 20 miles of populated areas around Portland and the impacts of the fires are dramatic. Air quality measurements are reaching very unhealthy levels, over 600 AQI in some areas. At 500 AQI, you need to consider wearing heavily filtered masks inside your home at all times. We don’t know what this means for long term health but this is definitely not a positive sign of things to come.

Let’s Have Solutions. As I read about Gaval family in Pennsylvania, I think about how the solar industry can be a home for them. We are all thinking about how companies operate with more remote work, I’d love to see the idea of distributed offices instead of larger facilities in metros. Imagine a 20 person office in Mahanoy City, a coal mining town where the Gavals live. The solar industry is advocating for distributed energy, why couldn’t we also distribute our workforce in a similar way.

New Products, Lower Prices. The SolarWakeup Buyer’s Group has been hard at work to improve the product and price list over the past few weeks. If you haven’t talked with us about it, send us a note or do a price discovery. 

Opinion

Best, Yann