Is It All Behind For Resi? Suppliers into the resi solar market have been on a PR circuit to talk about margins, inventories and demand. From that point of view, it’s all coming to an end for resi and demand will pick back up in Q1. The problem is that the market has fallen behind on policy spend and focus with major losses racking up. The largest suppliers are barely coming up with the funds to join the trade associations that do this work, so of course the associations can only do so much. Solar got big and it looked easy to make a buck for outside investors that weren’t here when the fights to create net metering were happening so they don’t think regulators would hurt something that’s obviously good for the economy. I’ve spent nearly half my career in solar talking to solar installers and while it’s not my day job at the moment, I still talk to many. The reality is that while the market is hard for suppliers, especially those that are or want to be public companies, the companies are spending too much time complaining about the market and not enough time taking market share from each other by investing in the installer relationships. I know what I’d be doing if I was running any of these companies and blaming market sentiment wouldn’t be at the top of that list.
Managing Installer Cash Flow. Interest rates are the highest in 22 years, increasing solar financing costs and softening consumer demand for loan products. Businesses are feeling the pain of strained cash flows, labor costs and profitability pressures. Palmetto, a B2B technology company accelerating the adoption of clean energy, has announced a new partnership offering for solar installers to help stabilize cash flows and grow faster in today’s market. Built on top of Palmetto’s Clean Energy Operating Platform, this is a comprehensive suite of tools and services enabling installers to streamline operations, optimize performance, and increase profitability. Visit https://www.palmetto.com/finance or contact capital@palmetto.com for more.
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Modeling Demand Increase. LCOE has been solar’s favorite metric ever since it was the lowest of all LCOEs but let’s talk about it amongst our echo chamber. The solar LCOE is ignored because, like it or not, it’s also the LCOE with the least amount of leverage. And when I say least, I mean zero. Let me explain. The marginal cost of solar product is essentially zero. It’s the first kWh that costs all of the capex and related return expectation but after you’ve made the installation and turned the site on, all you have is the contract that buys your energy. That doesn’t mean that the production is worthless, we’re just in a crappy negotiating position in case the counterparty wants to hose you. On top of that, solar farms can’t provide the kind of grid services that sometimes get more revenue than the generation itself. Sometimes buying negative rate energy is more valuable than the 3 cent PPA. But that’s all about to change with the massive expansion of storage. Solar doesn’t just get to produce energy, it gets to control energy delivery and even absorb excess production when the pricing signals say it makes financial sense. So let’s look at the global market LCOEs and you’ll find that solar plus storage and a grid with a lot of solar and storage will have a stable and low cost of energy environment for consumers.
Managing Installer Cash Flow. Interest rates are the highest in 22 years, increasing solar financing costs and softening consumer demand for loan products. Businesses are feeling the pain of strained cash flows, labor costs and profitability pressures. Palmetto, a B2B technology company accelerating the adoption of clean energy, has announced a new partnership offering for solar installers to help stabilize cash flows and grow faster in today’s market. Built on top of Palmetto’s Clean Energy Operating Platform, this is a comprehensive suite of tools and services enabling installers to streamline operations, optimize performance, and increase profitability. Visit https://www.palmetto.com/finance or contact capital@palmetto.com for more.
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Managing Installer Cash Flow. Interest rates are the highest in 22 years, increasing solar financing costs and softening consumer demand for loan products. Businesses are feeling the pain of strained cash flows, labor costs and profitability pressures. Palmetto, a B2B technology company accelerating the adoption of clean energy, has announced a new partnership offering for solar installers to help stabilize cash flows and grow faster in today’s market. Built on top of Palmetto’s Clean Energy Operating Platform, this is a comprehensive suite of tools and services enabling installers to streamline operations, optimize performance, and increase profitability. Visit https://www.palmetto.com/
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Inverters Up To Par. NERC continues to be concerned about solar farms and their inverters’ ability to handle grid issues without tripping off. Losing GW of power generation is troublesome for a grid that would then potentially trip off other generation in a zipper effect like has happened in the past. Ultimately there’s a mismatch around specifications and controls being unimportant to developers compared to the value that they represent to the grid operators and asset owners especially as they are asked to keep up with new generation. Will existing solar assets have to find ways to comply with these revised standards and will new projects follow them, meaning will the capital markets require this of new builds.
Managing Installer Cash Flow. Interest rates are the highest in 22 years, increasing solar financing costs and softening consumer demand for loan products. Businesses are feeling the pain of strained cash flows, labor costs and profitability pressures. Palmetto, a B2B technology company accelerating the adoption of clean energy, has announced a new partnership offering for solar installers to help stabilize cash flows and grow faster in today’s market. Built on top of Palmetto’s Clean Energy Operating Platform, this is a comprehensive suite of tools and services enabling installers to streamline operations, optimize performance, and increase profitability. Visit https://www.palmetto.com/finance or contact capital@palmetto.com for more.
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Yann