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.
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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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Quick Rundown. It was my youngest 4th birthday yesterday and my day got away from me so here’s some thoughts for the day. All of your marketing teams should be sending news to SolarWakeup when great things happen at your company.
Shorting The Planet. The EPA is basically making coal generation a market without any rules. It would seem to me that any operator would not follow the new rules knowing that eventually this will come back to haunt them, something that I’ll mention in the paragraph below and have written about in the past.
Who Bans Fracking. Biden, in his speech yesterday, said he does not want to ban fracking. Banning fracking is bad politics to begin with, it’s also as silly politically as banning nuclear given that the markets are going to make away with it. Before you throw me into environmental jail, Biden didn’t say that he wouldn’t direct the EPA, DOJ and regulators to ensure strict adherence to existing and new environmental regulations. Leaky methane from the wells? Clean it up. Contaminated water wells? Clean it up. If you can’t, don’t or won’t then the admin is coming for you. My two cents on this.
The Pipelines In Waiting. The headline in Pennsylvania is replaceable for every State in America. Solar and storage development pipelines are growing and it would be great to have legislators understand how to clear those pipeline and get the projects in the ground. Pennsylvania is a good example of how very little legislative action would do a lot to get into the right direction.
Retail Energy Plus PPA. What happens when you sign a C&I customer up to a retail energy contract, PPA for solar and onsite generator in the same deal? Find out in my latest podcast.
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