Checking In On Solar. Making it a quick rundown today, lots of interesting news to catch up on. Reuters does a trans-atlantic review of rooftop solar. SolarWakeup readers will catch that analysts have not adjusted their 2020 forecast which was brought to 30% down from 2019 when Corona started. We’ll be up in 2020, as I’ve said before.
Digging For C&I Gold. With their unique way of financing C&I solar, Wunder now has more dry powder behind them with a $100million capital raise. Congrats to the team that is looking to solve this large and untapped market.
Hedge The Gas Bridge. Natural gas is a bridge for marketing purposes only. In reality most of the gas utilities also want to repower with renewables as long as they can rate-base that change. One way to do it is to get regulators to start including the cost, or equivalent of, a hedge to guarantee the 30year fuel cost estimates for those power plants. That hedge is expensive if impossible to get, and ratepayers currently provide it for free.
V2G Has My Attention. Vehicle to grid technology is fresh and in the very early stages. I can’t wait to see how it works and how the market creates revenue streams. It’s going to be like uber for utilities except I don’t have to drive anyone, just let the utility take electricity from my car.
Vote To Make Impact. BlackRock takes its climate voice into the board room and proxy votes. 53 is a good start, I look forward to seeing it at 5,300.
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Studies are out that there are almost 1 million jobs available in the clean energy industry with targeted stimulus in the next package. Congress should see that there is great value for growth right here.
New Pod On Midwest Solar. I talk with TJ Kanczuzewski, the CEO of Inovateus Solar, about his company’s recently released sustainability report. Both how sustainability impacts their customers demand for solar and how they recently installed a solar farm with zero waste. Catch it on your favorite podcast app.
Event Today. Clean Energy for Biden is hosting a discussion on the Clean Power Plan with the plans policy advisors. There are some great events coming up that are focused on the policy and how it can be implemented.
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Yann
$2 Trillion Man. As expected, Joe Biden announced a $2 trillion plan green infrastructure plan. The plan centers around two fundamental truths, we can create a generation of great jobs while also achieving 100% clean energy by 2035. With less than 100 days to the election, I can’t emphasize enough how feasible this plan is. Both to get this done legislatively and have the leadership to push this as a must have for future generations. As I mentioned, my oldest turned 10 yesterday and I spent a good part of the day thinking about the future and the year 2035 kept coming up in my mind. 2035 is the year my oldest goes to college and 2020 is the year that Columbia opens its climate school. That being said, my kids know that they are bound to Hopkins.
The Tech Is Already Here. One of the realities with a 2035 plan is that we already know how to execute it and the costs already near competitiveness across the board. We need to scale up some of the manufacturing but otherwise the industry is ready to act. Where this falls short is regulatory leeway. Whether it means approvals for projects, allowing companies to enter into competitive agreements for energy or instant permitting for residential solar, the regulations still prioritize incumbent monopolies.
Location, Location, Location. The concept of buying the land around coal plants makes all the sense in the world if only for the proximity to the substation and transmission. Much like the PG&E project at Moss Landing, California, where the coal plant building is being retrofitted with massive banks of batteries. Why not just buy the coal plant instead?
Biden Talks Transmission. In a Clean Energy event with Biden which raised over $1 million for the campaign the Vice President brought up his focus on transmission not once but twice. It reminds me of when Senator Warren got into a policy discussion about net metering, this time with the VP wanting to get serious about reducing the barriers of implementation for cleaner generation.
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Yann
Happy Birthday. Today is my oldest child's 10th birthday. That seems insane to me but in the hopes he one day comes back and reads every newsletter, happy birthday E! Not to worry, we'll be at 100% clean energy by the time you graduate college.
Talking To Congress. This week 650 companies in the solar industry made their voice heard in Congress. This is a bipartisan call for action on policies like refund ability of the ITC, inclusion of storage and more. Over the past 3 months the solar industry has shown its resilience, not only in bouncing back with jobs and market but also with public company performance. Public solar companies have done better than other companies. The industry is also there to pull the rest of the economy up with it as we expand.
A Big Announcement. Reporting from Bloomberg has it that Joe Biden will announce his plan to build back the economy later today which will include a call for 100% clean energy by 2035. That’s 14 years away and quite the initiative, one I support for financial, moral and environmental reasons. The saying goes, if we’re right about climate change we will have done something about it but if we’re wrong about climate change we will have created jobs and economic growth. There is no downside to actually implementing this and a clear distinction of the political race we’re in.
A Decade Of Action. I want you to think about what it means to get to 100% and the steps you have to undertake in order for us to achieve that. It won’t be easy but it is readily achievable. It sure that we will need more of everything but like all things that solar undertakes we have to also figure out how to do it better. That’s why tonight the latest SolarWakeup podcast talks about sustainability inside solar companies. I talk with TJ Kanczuzewski from Inovateus. They recently published their sustainability report and talk about zero waste construction for their EPC projects. We need more solar but unlike the oil and gas wells that are left behind creating environmental disasters, solar will do better.
Industrial Electrification. What would a truck look like that has a battery in the bed of it that goes to a construction site and charges electric caterpillar machinery? Seriously, I have no idea of the scale of the truck it takes to achieve that. Today, trucks carrying diesel go to the sites but if we electrify machinery that truck gets replaced by something else. Maybe utilities will have mobile stations that get connected to temporary power instead but for the electrical engineer readers, I’m interested to learn.
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EVs In Focus. Rivian has raised another $2.5billion. What is now becoming clear to me is that the existing OEMs are not able to get real on EVs. They have the teams, money and facilities but can’t get around to making EVs that actually do what they are supposed to, cannibalize their existing market. Tesla will be joined by Rivian and then another but until salespeople, dealers and designers see the benefits of change, they will resist it.
Effective Load Capacity. Twitter has the best headlines buried in it and I hope that reporters will take this one on. California utilities have studied the effective load carrying capacity (ELCC) of various forms of renewables, names solar, solar with 4 hours of storage, wind and wind with 4 hours. You’ll have to read the filing to get the full definition of ELCC but it is as it seems, how effective at providing electricity is each source when the grid needs it. Here’s the headline, tracking PV is 6.9% when judged as an as-available resource. Add 4 hours of storage to it and it jumps to 99.8%. This remains true even in 2030 when the ELCC for solar hybrid is still 93.2%. Let’s reevaluate the race to the bottom on energy cost and get projects built that monetize the value of the assets.
500 Million Solar Panels. Part of the Biden-Sanders plan brings back an idea from Clinton in 2016, 500 million solar panels. In my podcast from a few weeks ago with John Farrell, we talked about his plan for 30 million solar roofs and it’s similar to a memo I wrote a year ago pushing for no more naked roofs, i.e. solar on every rooftop. Biden’s plan is clear, we’re going to do more solar. Industry folks will push for a different metric but people understand solar panels more than they understand watts or kWhs. If you could write the plan for the Biden campaign, what are the bullet points?
Are Modules Fungible? Rinse and reuse as they say. The SolarWorld factory in Oregon was acquired by SunPower and now the factory in Germany is taken over by Meyer Burger. Meyer was historically a provider of factory solutions to OEMs looking to manufacture. Now they feel that their solution is fine branded under their own flag. So I ask you to think about this, what is the value of the label on the module? I’m not talking about quality or materials used, but the label itself. Residential solar modules range from modules in the 30s per watt to over $1. Brand names and names only solar pros know, silver on white and black on black. Is this fungible or drive a homeowner to make a decision one way or another.
Mobile But Stationary. Here is the corrected link for the podcast with Orison CEO, Eric Clifton. Orison is the storage company that makes storage for your home but plugs into your outlet. Podcast link for Apple and Spotify
Trivia Answer. Last week I asked who the largest pure play installer was now that Sunrun is acquiring Vivint Solar. Of course SunPower and Tesla follow Sunrun but they aren’t only installers. The answer is Trinity Solar out of New Jersey.
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