Tickets. We are almost halfway sold out for SolarWakeup Live! on March 26th in Boston. Get your now before they are gone, like a freight train. www.solarwakeuplive.com
Manufacturing Partnership. New reporting by Reuters is out that SunPower is looking for a manufacturing partner (I hear Flex has a new awesome CEO, according to Dan Shugar Linkedin post) that would acquire parts of the manufacturing operations in Hillsboro Oregon and make modules through a JV. This shows that SunPower is continuing the track to be focused on the market share and margins created in the residential market.
The Fight Over Storage. We will talk about this a lot over the next few months and years. Incumbent market utilities will do everything they can to limit the market access for energy storage assets including among other things the requirement for storage to be able to operate for 10 straight hours. The challenges will also attempt to require certain charging parameters for the assets in order to limit the revenue that those assets can generate.
PG&E Strike Team. Maybe Newsom has a member of his staff reading SolarWakeup, maybe we just had similar ideas. Governor Newsom is creating a ‘Strike Team’ to convene a plan regarding the PG&E situation. More on this to come!
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Yann
Job Number Headline. Solar jobs dropped in 2018 by nearly 8,000 jobs (~3%) and they did so due to the direct actions by Trump. Those are facts that can’t be misplaced. While that makes for a juicy headline, some consolidation due to efficiency in the market is a positive. I would also argue that some of those jobs are made up in the storage market. Keep in mind that both the 201 tariffs and aluminum/steel tariffs hurt the solar industry directly. So while this is the second year in a row that the employment has shrunk, the market is growing in capacity this year again.
The Report. See the results of the full report here.
The Upside. Most of the job losses came in California and Massachusetts, which aligns with the delay in the SMART program and slowdown in the utility scale procurement due to the 201 tariff process. The upside comes in the other States, some which have had to wait for the ‘free market’ to work itself out and now solar is competitive on cost alone. Florida is now the second largest jobs market for solar in the Country. I’ve been waiting for this to happen ever since 5 of us met at that hotel breakfast in 2007 to work with the Florida PSC to draft the net metering rules. The market growth is also why Quick Mount is the first manufacturer to open a regional warehouse to provide industry leading customer service to the Florida market. Don’t remind me of the irony of having lived in Florida for ten years working in solar only to move to California right when it turns around!
Manufacturing Insight. There has been a lot of pressure on manufacturing in 2018. First it came from the delay while the 201 decision was being made and then it doubled down with the tariff on all imported metals. As a manufacturer, utilization of the factory operations is instrumental to efficient company management. When the market disrupts predictable forecasts, the impacts can be detrimental to employment growth even when the market expands overall.
LA Power Plants. Mayor Garcetti announced yesterday major changes to power plant rebuilding plans at LADWP. This is an environmentally driven decision that will required LADWP to reset its views on power generation, grid reliability and energy procurement. It will also have to move rather quickly and hopefully look towards distributed generation to play a part in the process as well.
Trump/Xi Part Deux. Don’t underestimate the impact of the trade talks with China that are happening at this moment, all eyes are on the potential deal to be made at Mar-a-Lago next week.
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Climate In Presidential Politics. In prior presidential campaigns climate change was an after thought and many debates skipped over the topic altogether. With half a dozen announced candidates, I can’t think of a single speech that doesn’t touch on climate change within the first few minutes of the announcement. That includes Trump, who comes at it often from the other side of the argument, many times conflating weather with climate. There is more reporting on the fact that republicans are excited about the green new deal for the fact that it may be used against democrats in campaigns.
Listening To David Crane. At the most recent Powerhouse event, Emily Kirsch interviewed David Crane about his career. For those catching up, Crane took an economic and moral stand when he was at the top. Rarely do you see corporate courage because it tends to end poorly for the executive or at least feels extremely lonely. In Crane’s case, his vision did not align with shareholders short term vision for higher stock prices because running a public company includes daily performance reviews with every single shareholder holding a different goal. I personally enjoyed the comment about CEO’s being lonely, I find that part of the job is often to guide in the right direction (quickly) while also providing a safety net in colleagues decision making. On the other hand, the CEO rarely has a place to go to for his or her decisions.
Performance Based Utilities. Keep a close eye on the proceedings in Hawaii about performance based regulations for the utility. This is a topic that is being circulated not only in Hawaii but across the mainland as well. The idea is proposed to enable distributed generation and demand response technologies to have a valuable benefit to the utility. If utilities are the toll collector on the highway, advocates would like the utility to benefit most when renewables, DERs and EVs have equal or prioritized access to the fast lanes. Let EV charging companies interconnect within days or weeks, not months or years. Let DERs compete every minute of every day for revenue.
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Boston Live! Get your tickets to SolarWakeup Live! Boston happening on March 26th. Great event and agenda being put together to make you more competitive. If you haven’t been to a SolarWakeup event, please come out to Boston. I do everything I can to give you the information that I would want if I were in your shoes. Happy to connect you with folks that have come out and like this alternative model of conference conversations.
The BFD GND. Congresswoman AOC and Senator Markey released the draft resolution also known as the Green New Deal. This bill is part green and part new deal, highlighting some of the biggest issues facing the Country and the reasons for proposing the resolution. Note that this is not legislation at this moment, more of a battle cry to create laws that aim to execute on the proposals.
Trump Cries Socialism. The GOP and Trump have come out in favor of the GND being a label for the Democrats seeking to divide the Country on this issue. This is a battle to label the resolution as socialism while the Democrats will seek to message the resolution in its part since clean air, clean water, green jobs, renewable energy and fighting climate change all poll well over 70% favorable.
Justice For All. Green New Deal seeks to highlight environmental, financial and social justice within the policies that will drive action against climate change. The sponsors are not only looking to move forward but also seeking to ensure those that have been left behind are leading the pack.
Renewable Energy. Wonks have been quick to skip to this paragraph. Is it 100% renewable energy or clean energy? Is nuclear included? They are missing the point, this is a vision to get as close to 100% within 10 years, 15 years faster than California’s SB100. It also looks to invest billions in energy efficiency while creating a job guarantee for anyone that would like to work in the expanded fields. Any variation of this would be a big growth for the solar market we operate in, from distributed generation to community solar.
Solar Storage ISO Win. Sunrun won a capacity bid in the ISO-NE grid market. This is a big deal and it reached the twitter account for Senator Whitehouse (D-RI). While this is a big win that generates new revenues for the solar plus storage market, it is an example of the new economy fitting within incumbent markets. The capacity win is meant for fossil fuel power plants that want capacity contracts to pay for their existence while raking in double digit returns for energy sales on top of that. The pros call that revenue stacking. What would be the better way? The better way would be for operators of distributed storage assets to be able to bid into the real time market with the right pricing signals that generate additional cash flows for homeowners and businesses. One day, Sunrun may be sending ‘storage dividend’ checks to their customers who want to let the company maximize the value of their investments.
Yann
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Yann