Time Is Tight. Here are some things you can do in the absence of my commentary today. Not sure how you are faring in these insane times, but it’s starting to make my head spin. Times are tough so I appreciate your donation of time, knowledge and resources.
Educate On Permits. SolarAPP is a project to get building departments to adopt instant and no-touch permitting for solar. Sign up for their mailing list to keep up to speed and get involved. Link
Join CALSSA. State policy is important and with events canceled across the board, your membership is more important than ever. Link
Donate To Vote Solar. Want to make sure that we don’t lose track of regulatory policies across the Country? Give $1 to Vote Solar. Link
Contact Your Member. Write a note to your representatives to let them know how your business and job in solar is doing. Ask (nicely) for things that could help like PPP, ITC extension, ITC grant or federal solar permitting policies. Link
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Yann
Publish Your Posts. I’d like to highlight your thoughts, changes and questions that you are writing about on your company pages. Times like these I find myself wondering what I’m missing and that’s why the survey has been a great tool to get information from the industry and merge it with my thoughts. If you posted any blogs, send them over and I’ll use them in the rundown.
Sales Decline May Have Bottomed. Keyword is may, if you look at the results from last week’s survey and I compare to the ongoing results of this week’s survey, it looks cautiously optimistic. If you are a residential installer, please add your responses so that we can gather this data point with more precision.
Working Capital Concerns Appear. More than 70% of this week’s responses are saying they are concerned about their working capital position. Concern isn’t the same thing as actually having issues but it measures the sentiment across the market. That being said, the overall ecosystem appears to be willing to work through these issues caused by outside circumstances.
Conf Call. For those of you that joined yesterday, I hope you were able to get good information from the panel discussion I held with Roth. We’ll host the next call on April 22nd. Hope you can join us.
Survey Link - Provide your input now, survey closes at noon today.
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Yann
Paycheck Protection. Let’s do a quick rundown today, lots going on. By now most in solar have applied for the paycheck protection program, the $350billion SBA loan that forgives most of the uses you need the money for. The problem is that the money hasn’t started flowing, not even close because banks are accepting applications but aren’t clear on the underwriting or funding process. As all of this happens in real-time, please let me know when you are able to get a loan funded, this will help others get through this.
Get Your Story Out. Speaking of getting through this. While there are positive data signals coming out of the market (selling remote, better than expected close rates, no touch permitting), the solar industry is struggling and it will get worse before it gets better. And that assumes that the consumer will be in a financial position to buy solar when the time comes. When the process of installing solar gets slower, installers find themselves in need of additional capital, everyone does. So when you combine the need for capital with the risk adjusted credit landscape that you are describing in the tracking survey, there is cause for concern. Your member of Congress needs to hear this from you and how the epidemic is impacting your business. Ideally they hear this from you through media not only from a call which you should make as well. Call your local business reporter or business journal and let them know how this is impacting the local solar economy. I wish there was a click here for outreach but you’ll have to do this one and it needs to be done. Absent a strong national cry for help, the local installers, developers and investors need to be in the news more than we are today. More on this below.
Better Data. We’re having an issue with data and estimates in the industry right now. Wood Mackenzie was out last week with their assessment of the solar market being down 30%+ and now Morgan Stanley says it could be almost 50% in Q2 alone. The data you are telling me, across dozens of companies paints a lighter picture that doesn’t drive the market as far down and a shorter duration than I’m reading about. Take part in this week’s survey to help make our case and highlight the business issues. You can then take this data to your reporter and tell your personal story with a data point behind it.
Getting The Data Out. Join me this morning as I discuss the state of the solar market with Phil Shen from Roth Capital. This is a free virtual town hall to learn about the marketplace and hear first hand information from other solar professionals in the market. 10am easter and 7am pacific.
Selling Remotely. What success are you finding shifting your sales to virtual only? Is there anything that worked for you or you had to figure out because it wasn’t? I want to hear from you about the process, software that helped and other ways to make this work for the long term.
Oil Stories Rule The Day. Since Friday of last week, Axios’ energy section has 12 oil stories. 12. While it’s a big story, the oil industry is doing a great job keeping reporters filled with information. Imitation is the best form of flattery and we should be doing this too.
First Public Co Speaks Out. Yesterday, Sunrun published early financial information for Q1 and withdrew its guidance given the drastic change in the market. The company does spell out some of the changes to their sales process: drone, video calls and digital permitting amongst others. It also includes some views on what the future consumers may be looking for, helpful information available here.
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Yann
Survey #4. The policy discussions for the next stimulus package are in full force. With the paycheck protection plan bound to be oversubscribed in the coming weeks, Congress will come back to do more. The information you provide in the SolarWakeup survey helps us tell the story of the resilient industry that we are, even in the face of adversity. All of your responses are confidential and you get to see last week’s result when you fill it out. Please participate by clicking here and share this LinkedIn post with your network.
Market Impact Conference Call. Tomorrow morning you can join me and Roth’s Philip Shen on a conference call to discuss the survey results and the depth and duration of the COVID impact on the solar industry. If you want information about the call, contact Phil at pshen@roth.com. He also publishes great analysis on some of the publicly traded solar companies, ask him to be added to his list when you email him.
A Tweet Tells The Story. Congressional leaders have soured on the idea that the next stimulus bill will include infrastructure. Yesterday, Trump gave some comments foreshadowing more support for the oil and gas industry. The oil and gas industry has been doing a good job on the public relations front, making Americans feel bad about their pending financial troubles. I know that solar tries hard to put on a brave face but we should be honest and out front about the cash flow issues solar is facing during this pandemic affecting us all. Americans can’t empathize with issues they are not aware of.
An Impossible Experiment. We can actually see the positive coming out as many of us sit on our front porch working from home. The air is cleaner everywhere in the world, sights are being seen for the first time in centuries. Snowy mountaintops in India, clean water across the world and emissions from cars are down almost entirely. The political discussion was whether humans impact emissions and we could have theorized about the impact cars have but taking them off the road for weeks/months was never feasible. Now we have the results and it is undeniable that we have to get to electric cars without delay. We can’t make EVs the fun project between GM and Honda, they have to be charged up to take each other on. Trillions of revenues are on the line and the future of the world population.
Fill out the survey, share it far and wide.
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Yann