Power Crisis Part 2. California entered the weekend with a heat wave reaching record temperatures across the state causing grid operators to ask consumers to lower consumption as much as possible. There was no reporting about any widespread outages because Californians responded and a massive buildout of distributed generation helped the distribution networks. This isn’t how it should be done, the grid has a reserve margin and if that margin isn’t being met then the operator needs to increase the reserve threshold. Moreover, consumers shouldn’t have to be philanthropic participants to the transaction. If the grid needs their action, that should be a transaction with financial value. The utilities have the responsibility to serve and came close to failing once again, but don’t wait long to see the failure.
Heat Waves, Fires, Outages. The heat waves caused a power crisis, someone will have to do a dumb it down version on why heat waves (on weekends) cause an undersupply but I digress. About 10 minutes before I started writing this, PG&E announced it would cut power to 172,000 accounts in 22 counties due to low moisture and high temperature environment that is conducive to wild fires. How in the world is that utility still operational? It’s early September and fires are burning in large numbers, the last thing that folks should worry about is losing power in addition to all of the other concerns they are facing. The Bay Area is consumed by smoky conditions at unhealthy levels, no electricity means no circulation or worse if your health conditions require medical devices. Ratepayers in California pay some of the highest rates in the Country and deserve better service for their investments. This is a problem with transmission infrastructure, which is causing the utility to shut off power. Remember that for the paragraph below.
Nationalize This. Here is a tweet from the Secretary of Energy, who never missed an opportunity to make his point and desire to return to the 20th century. The key quote “He [Sec. of Energy] also encourages policymakers to evaluate why the grid is not able to handle extreme stress, which could be alleviated with the support of greater caseload power generation and natural gas supply.” This was in response to the state’s request for federal intervention, clearly a moment of need and not a moment to get a backhanded comment.
Fixed Electricity Price. Here is your question of the day. Why is our electricity price a fixed rate, especially for IOUs? Competitive markets would do a better job of creating the types of behavior the grid needs to be resilient, resilience can’t just happen on the generation side of the ledger. We talk about this and more in this week’s podcast which posts later this week.
Join The Buyer’s Group. Residential installers should be taking advantage of the 20%+ savings in the buyer’s group with new products added last week and more coming. You can fill out the price discovery and get a 1-week trial if you do.
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The Trade Association Consolidation. Bloomberg’s Brian Eckhouse has the reporting that a new trade association is forming out of AWEA, the national wind association. American Clean Power Association. Founding members include NextEra, Berkshire Hathaway and Avangrid. The idea is to consolidate the message around clean energy without regard to the source of the fuel, planning to represent all sources including solar.
SEIA’s Decision, Position. If you are in the solar industry, you should thank SEIA’s leadership for not joining the new group. Sources over the past year have been telling SolarWakeup that SEIA was discussing the option of being part of the new association. While I think we have gone beyond the fight between RE sources (see West Wing episode), how would an all source association advocate for net metering policies in California for example or deciding whether QF facilities should be 10 or 50MW. More importantly the new association, in my opinion, represents the status quo and leaves no room for getting involved in energy choice discussions or fighting IRP filings given the fox is in the henhouse. The political power for clean energy is in solar because everyone has the ability to participate, you can put a panel on your RV, 20 on your home or build out a 1GW solar farm. This is a tough year for associations that lost their revenue streams in trade shows, didn’t qualify for PPP and companies struggle to pay their fees, SEIA still bet on the future of solar by staying the course alone.
The Best Blackout TicToc. When the lights went out in California, and more importantly when they didn’t (but almost), a lot of factors came into play. This quote from CALSSA’s leader sums it up, “They were texting and emailing and calling us: ‘We need all of your battery customers giving us power,’” said Bernadette Del Chiaro. Grid operators had no plan on how to activate the distributed resources across the State and no way to send a market signal to create value for homeowners discharging their batteries. The resiliency ended up showing up out of goodwill from homeowners while an unnamed natural gas plant went offline when it was being counted on. This is part of the reason this publication has written at length about price signals for distributed resources and giving local RA procurement control to the operators closest to the capacity. Residential solar and storage can now provide up to 530MW of capacity and that’s over 1GW next year and growing. Add that with demand response operated by companies like OhmConnect and a real plan could provide over 2GW on demand.
Clean Jobs Good Jobs. I think everyone that works in solar loves their job. Loving your job doesn’t mean you don’t aspire for more but you love what you do and the impact it has on society. I’d love to see a Polaroid campaign of you and your employees/colleagues that says why you love your job.
The Savings Commence. Yesterday, an installer saved over $10,000 buying modules through the Buyer’s Group, it costs you money not taking a look and calculating your savings. If you’re curious about our price list, hit reply or take the price discovery.
Sell More Solar with CollectiveSun. My friends at CollectiveSun know Nonprofits. They know that Nonprofits are looking for three things when going solar: a simple and user friendly process, the ability to utilize tax benefits, and access to funding that doesn’t break the bank. CollectiveSun can help you give them all that and more. These days, more than ever, Nonprofits are looking to lower their operating expenses. CollectiveSun will help you generate more sales and will work with you to become the go-to solar installer for Nonprofits. Click here to learn more about working with CollectiveSun.
Have a great weekend!
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Duke’s IRP. Duke filed their IRP and gave regulators a menu of options to choose from but in many ways is telling the story that they want to tell. The way it reads to me is this, let us build more gas, stop our coal plants when we want and we’ll do some solar and storage along the way. Less gas and closed coal means big expensive options for consumers is the headline that the utility wants to see in the news. Good thing for consumers and the solar market is that solar advocates are becoming experts in IRP dockets. This is the opening salvo, watch this space for more updates along the way. I even heard rumors that advocates are doing a special website to cover this.
A Regulators View On CA. Former FERC commissioner, Cheryl LaFleur, breaks down the energy situation in California in 5 categories. This is a macro view of the problem without delving into some of the micro issues that have riled up energy twitter or when Trump talks about the topic. The counterpoint comes from Sunrun’s Lynn Jurich on the impact resi solar can have.
The Fallout. This is the decision we have to make in this decade. Solve the problems on our grid with more resilient infrastructure close to the demand or leave generation in place that has already reached the end of its useful life. Microgrids versus capacity contract extensions, that’s the argument in a nutshell.
Benefits Of Retail Energy. Here is what happens when you combine Peter Thiel, bitcoin, data center, heat wave, no wind and competitive power markets. A bitcoin mine back by Thiel in Texas had a clause in their retail energy contract that let it sell back their energy by powering down their consumption and reap the benefits from the trade. Funny story of the day.
The Savings Commence. Yesterday, an installer saved over $10,000 buying modules through the Buyer’s Group, it costs you money not taking a look and calculating your savings. If you’re curious about our price list, hit reply or take the price discovery.
Sell More Solar with CollectiveSun. My friends at CollectiveSun know Nonprofits. They know that Nonprofits are looking for three things when going solar: a simple and user friendly process, the ability to utilize tax benefits, and access to funding that doesn’t break the bank. CollectiveSun can help you give them all that and more. These days, more than ever, Nonprofits are looking to lower their operating expenses. CollectiveSun will help you generate more sales and will work with you to become the go-to solar installer for Nonprofits. Click here to learn more about working with CollectiveSun.
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Storage For Big Dollars. NextEra has changed over the years and will now be going all in on energy storage to the tunes of billions of dollars. As FERC 841 gets implemented look to storage to make innovation happen not only on the technology side but capital deployment, trading and policy fronts as well.
Win Then Govern. You can’t govern until you’ve won the election, this is one of the biggest sins of campaigns that never get to govern. Climate change activists wants a hard commitment from Joe Biden to ban fossil fuel reps in the administration and take stronger stances against fossil fuels during the campaign. Here’s what I would recommend instead, be involved in the campaign or support group like Clean Energy for Biden and then apply for the job yourself. Not every fossil fuel rep is Scott Pruitt or Rick Perry, we have former folks from natural gas in solar today, coal workers on rooftops and subprime bond originators in project finance. No purity tests for me, win first and then advocate for change from the inside.
The Southeast RTO. Next week’s podcast will be with the author of the report on the benefits of having a power market in the Southeast. What is most interesting about the concept to you and what questions do you want the answers to?
New Products, Better Pricing. The SolarWakeup Buyer’s Group has an updated price list for members now available saving them money and giving them price transparency on products they buy every day. If you’re curious about joining, hit reply or take the price challenge.
Sell More Solar with CollectiveSun. My friends at CollectiveSun know Nonprofits. They know that Nonprofits are looking for three things when going solar: a simple and user friendly process, the ability to utilize tax benefits, and access to funding that doesn’t break the bank. CollectiveSun can help you give them all that and more. These days, more than ever, Nonprofits are looking to lower their operating expenses. CollectiveSun will help you generate more sales and will work with you to become the go-to solar installer for Nonprofits. Click here to learn more about working with CollectiveSun.
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Yann