This is your SolarWakeup for October 10th, 2022

Behind The Scenes. When I started SolarWakeup, part of the reason was I wanted to share my thoughts with you and give you a sense of the things I was seeing from my seat as I ventured through the solar and now storage industry. That remains true as we share some of our professional views on the 10GWh supply deal we signed at SPI. As many of you look at storage projects for the first time, we want to make sure you see the incredible capability and opportunity that energy storage provides but also be aware of the overall market dynamics that may make a project difficult. Last year at this time, we heard from asset owners and investors that they were looking to do a project in 2022 but supply wasn’t going to  make that possible. The same is true for 2023 and 2024, supply has a limited availability but we pushed the envelope with a supply deal to make sure some additional manufacturing allocation is coming this way.

The Demand Concern. Every battery is in high demand, auto OEMs and consumer electronics want the same batteries that you may want for your project. Solar plus storage has a demand as well, especially with the ITC for storage increasing that forecast curve. Like module availability, there is a concern that your demand is mismatched with manufacturing capacity. From 2023 to 2025, you see a three year demand curve where next year is possible but challenging, two years out is achievable with urgency and three years out creates recipe for planned execution.

Opinion

Best, Yann