The Drought And Effect. The west is dry and while we all hope for the best, there are already worrisome signs of wildfires and lack of water for agriculture. The energy effect will be more power shutoffs than before and a grid that consumers will consider unreliable. Grid planners have not adjusted any major items to ensure new infrastructure is built out but if I were still living in California, I’d be making sure my solar and battery were ready for primetime.
Low Capacity Bailouts. Expect to see more bailout legislation coming out after the low capacity clearing price in PJM. Nuclear operators will be legislating towards ZREC policies that provide a kicker for their plants but always opens up opportunities to get a broader energy package passed.
SolarAPP+ Thanks. It has been a village to get SolarAPP+ to where it is today and there are many people that are integral to this process and without ignoring everyone’s efforts I want to call out one particular person. Andrew Birch, a co-founder of Sungevity and current co-founder of OpenSolar, first pitched me the idea of instant/uniform permit policy over 3 years ago on his patio in Alameda. He’s been tenaciously cheerleading the effort and getting the biggest names and companies in the solar business to spend time, money and sweat on the effort. I told him then that it would be an uphill climb, and some of you emailed me when I first brought you the idea agreed that it was crazy to think this was possible. So for having the willpower to bring an idea to fruition against all odds without ever asking for credit, here’s a token of appreciation from me.
Will Manchin Deliver? Joe Manchin remains unpopular but very powerful and in some ways is taking the infrastructure bill on his shoulders to bring a bipartisan support of the bill to reality. We’re getting very close to seeing whether he can deliver the votes and give Biden the bipartisan win his 47 years of government would assume he could get.
The Solar Market Update. Tomorrow, I join Phil Shen of Roth Capital (subscribe to his newsletter), for our monthly resi solar market update. We’ll be talking about supply chain, financing, policy and of course, storage. You can register at this link.
- New York Times: The Western Drought Is Bad. Here’s What You Should Know About It.
- Canary Media: PJM’s low capacity-auction prices spell trouble for Exelon’s Illinois nuclear fleet
- Solar Builder: Inside SolarAPP+ and NREL’s pursuit of seamless residential solar permitting
- Vox: The fastest way to get more people to buy electric vehicles
- Politico: Manchin – ‘All the confidence in the world’ for bipartisan infrastructure deal
- Utility Dive: Texas lawmakers approve bill mandating power plant weatherization, market reforms
- REuters: U.S. moves to restore endangered species protections weakened under Trump
- PV-Tech: LONGi launches maiden n-type module featuring 570W output and 22.3% efficiency
- Energy Storage News: Leap taps California’s ‘abundance’ of batteries for flexible summertime electricity capacity
Opinion
Best, Yann