More Rundown Tomorrow. First day of school made my day longer as we get back to regular scheduled programming. All the parents that are negotiating a back to school which involves tech support and multiple kids trying to sit still in front of a computer for 6 hours straight.
Buyer’s Group Update. For the second week in a row the buyer’s group has doubled in size. This is a program for installers by leveraging the aggregate scale in volume which levels the playing field while returning margin to installers across the Country. Through transparent pricing that we are actively negotiating with supply chain, you can not only see the trend line but actually lower your COGS. Join today at solarwakeup.com/pricing
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Yann
Trump Tweets Energy. “In California, Democrats have intentionally implemented rolling blackouts — forcing Americans in the dark. Democrats are unable to keep up with energy demand…”
Part 2. “…Meanwhile, I gave America energy independence in fact, so much energy we could never use it all. The Bernie/Biden/AOC Green New Deal plan would take California’s failed policies to every American!”
At 7pm. Friday night at 7pm it’s hard to understand how it’s solar’s fault that the grid had a shortfall in generation. The grid also generated 26GW of gas, much more than previous years on a similar Friday evening (h/t Julie Blunden for the research). The pushback from fossil folks is that regulators have been kicking out fossil generation in favor of renewables and not doing enough to shore up reliability, something that I got caught up in with on Twitter with a GA PSC commissioner pushing nukes. The reality is that unless our team gets to make the decisions on how to design the best grid, the solar industry can’t be blamed. Even in this situation, the solution is incredibly obvious with today’s technology. That’s why my frustrations have been vocal recently around taking away local resource adequacy purchasing from local CCAs and giving it to PG&E. Or ask the large scale solar operators how many times they’ve offered to add storage to existing solar plants are ridiculously low prices that would have allowed the shift to occur and cover the 7pm hour. Utilities could also contract with companies like OhmConnect to sign up millions of manual demand response participants. In short, unless we’re in charge, we can’t be blamed. That fault remains firmly with regulators for now.
Solar In Congress. In April 2019, Congressman Charlie Crist filed the Sunshine Forever Act, a bill to extend the ITC to 2029. I first met Charlie when he was the Governor of Florida and as a republican got the golden meter award from Vote Solar for an outstanding net metering policy he pushed for almost 15 years ago. That same policy is in effect today driving the second largest solar market in the Country. Tomorrow at 5pm, it would be my pleasure to have you join me as I talk about clean energy with Congressman Crist. For $20 (or more if you can) donation to Clean Energy for Biden you can be part of the discussion as well. Charlie has been a supporter of our industry for a long time and it would be great to make the event a big success.
Buyer’s Group Update. For the second week in a row the buyer’s group has doubled in size. This is a program for installers by leveraging the aggregate scale in volume which levels the playing field while returning margin to installers across the Country. Through transparent pricing that we are actively negotiating with supply chain, you can not only see the trend line but actually lower your COGS. Join today at solarwakeup.com/pricing
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Yann
The Biden Era And Climate. The current state of energy is as volatile as ever. Oil, gas and coal is in steady state of decline both in production and new generation. Coal generation as a percentage of total is down big. This is going to cause a flywheel effect that leads us to the solution that is apparent to all, renewables, storage and demand response widespread adoption. Here are some thoughts on how the Biden White House would be able to take real action on day 1, borrowing some of the successes from the Trump time. Here we go.
A National Emergency. This is the obvious one, Biden will call climate change a national emergency. This executive action triggers access to powers for the branch including the movement of funds to protect Americans against climate change. Before you blast me for exercising the unilateral executive theory, read below. This power has been litigated to the Supreme Court which allowed Trump to move money from the military for a wall. As a prerequisite this will trigger several administrative options including a reverse MOPR or at least eliminating the DOE led bailouts of coal that the Trump admin attempted but only served to create market chaos.
The Rule Of Law. Kamala Harris was a San Francisco DA when she sued local polluters taking advantage of low income communities. Across the bay, a power plant powered by jet fuel just recently came down and will be replaced with a large battery for example. Once the national emergency is declared, the EPA will use emergency inspections to find generators, drillers, pipeline operators, coal ash ponds that are not complying with environmental laws that protect your water and air, especially for the less fortunate residents. Under Harris’s guidance in collaboration with the DOJ, government lawyers will take action for immediate compliance and temporary closures. (My expectation that most coal ash ponds will be found to not be in compliance for example) This national focus on compliance with clean air act or clean water act will drive the next step.
Let’s Settle For Speed. The first thing with litigation is that everyone including the plaintiff is looking for it to end as quickly as possible. The message will be clear, the government will see this through but wants to focus on compliance and a settlement is on the table. Much like Volkswagen is providing funds for electric vehicles across the Country, polluters will be setting up the 21st century version of superfund compliance funds. This will drive training, cleanup and replacement of generation not in compliance. Some of the best renewable energy policies were found in legislative, regulatory and legal settlements. My hope is we achieve the same thing but a scale that’s never been thought of before.
California As A Bellweather. California blackouts are not caused by solar, any decent reporter would get that answer from CAISO and utility executives (if they were honest). More importantly, the energy crisis would have been exponentially worse if there was no rooftop solar which offset gigawatts of need during peak times and is not accurately tracked by grid operators. So while SMUD wants to use kindergarten math to minimize rooftop solar’s value, what the grid needs is more solar on rooftops with more batteries installed by its side. Check out the CALSSA post on the topic.
Buyer’s Group Update. For the second week in a row the buyer’s group has doubled in size. This is a program for installers by leveraging the aggregate scale in volume which levels the playing field while returning margin to installers across the Country. Through transparent pricing that we are actively negotiating with supply chain, you can not only see the trend line but actually lower your COGS. Join today at solarwakeup.com/pricing
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Yann
Why This One Matters. Today, I’ll give you the headlines of the weekend and why this election matters. First the politics. I don’t think climate change should be a partisan item, I wish that Americans could be republicans and care about climate change policies even if the policies differ from democrats. Over the past decade we’ve seen a congress that refutes climate science, renewable energy, energy efficiency and free market competition in energy production/delivery. That’s why I’m involved with Clean Energy for Biden because you will see the news over the weekend make it unavoidable, you will see rare forms of natural disasters and even learn about new ones perhaps. So join me on Thursday for a CE4B event with Congressman/Former Florida Governor Charlie Crist. I’ll be talking with him on how to tackle this issue facing us all.
The Plan. Tomorrow I will outline how the Biden/Harris administration should focus on climate change in the first 100 days and what they can do right away.
First Time In 20 Years. 2 times in as many days, the California ISO called for a stage 3 emergency and rolling blackouts. Even when the ISO lifted the emergency, PG&E continued its blackouts without notifying critical infrastructure that led to sewage entering drinking supply. High temperatures and loss of 1,500MW of central generation led to grid instability causing the emergency. The sad part is that this is avoidable and the entire regulatory complex is at fault for being captured by the utilities. As I tweeted this weekend, it’s beyond comprehension how PG&E is exactly where it was before the bankruptcy and nothing has change. This is avoidable and doesn’t require anything to get started. CAISO could contract with every homeowner that has energy storage to create a massive virtual power plant. Utilities could expand the program with OhmConnect and add a gigawatt of demand response. The governor could call for rapid solar expansion and require instant permitting across the State for residential solar plus storage, it’s on his desk as we speak. The solutions are here, we need to unwrap ourselves from this obsession we have that only PG&E and SCE can solve this problem.
Flee To Florida? Hurricane Isaias is what Floridians would call an elongated thunderstorm, Key West would party through the storm in non-COVID times. Meanwhile the infrastructure in New York and New Jersey is showing its weakness once again when it comes to hurricanes. I’ve spoken to a dozen folks from NY/NJ/CT area in the past week and they all had extended power outages. I guess it’s time to flee to Florida for when hurricanes come around. Our concrete homes, power poles and generators (solar included) will keep you running.
It’s Called A Derecho. California outages, wild fires and hurricanes aren’t the worst natural disaster in America this week. Iowa experience a derecho, a 120mph land hurricane that arrives with almost no notice. Iowans are out of power, some counties lost 80% of power and crops are destroyed across the State. Iowa is the center of attention for politics every four years and unfortunately for Iowans, the media is already gone and is not covering this. 14 million acres of crops are damaged, this will end up being experienced by all Americans when shortages reach supply chain.
For The History Books. The ice sheet in Greenland is melted beyond the point of no return. Basically more water sits on top of the ice sheet than what could melt and therefore will result in the ice sheet losing mass continuously. Our kids will read about our actions about the elusive ice sheet that has caused measurable changes in the gravitational field in Greenland today. Instead our kids will live with the measurable increase in water levels caused by the melt.
Fire Tornadoes. For good measure, a firenado.
Data Nerds. My latest podcast on data in imagery with Tim Rochman from EagleView Technologies. Catch it on your podcast app and leave us a 5 star rating.
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Yann