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Growth, Training Required. Sunrun reported their quarterly earnings yesterday and CEO Lynn Jurich led with the blackouts in California. Sales are booming for the company, as with the market, but Lynn highlighted the lagging installation numbers. With 600 jobs listed by the company, it reminds us of the work we need to do to train the workforce all installers need to get solar installed. If only there was a way to merge the impact from coal bankruptcies with the location of solar installation jobs. From a manufacturer’s standpoint, I think a lot about how we can be helpful in the training of the workforce. We have the facilities and knowledge but lack the time and resource to bring folks in and let them know that training is available.
More Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. It’s that time of year again – The Solar Foundation needs your help to complete the Solar Jobs Census. The nonprofit organization is preparing its tenth annual report that is the authoritative source of solar employment numbers, nationwide and state by state. Please help them succeed by completing the Solar Jobs Census survey now.
The DG Microgrid, Financed. Vivint Solar is out with a new PPA product that pairs solar with storage. This goes into the current state of mind of consumers that just had a blackout and are thinking about the value storage would have provided to them. As time passes, that values goes back down to zero and the consumer is no longer interested in paying for the value it creates.
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Out Of One, Come Two. Yesterday Sunpower announced that the company will be splitting into two separate entities. By bringing in $298mm in new capital into the module manufacturing business, Maxeon Solar is born. Maxeon will take over the manufacturing side of the Sunpower business, based in Singapore, and trade on the NASDAQ. The $298mm investment comes at a valuation of ~$1bb and is made by China’s TZS Zhonghuan Semiconductor. The transaction was unanimously approved by the board and is expected to spin off in Q2 2020. Maxeon will retain exclusive supply to Sunpower in the US and Canada. For more on this transaction, Sunpower was kind enough to explain it all in this presentation.
The Downstream Play. Sunrun, Vivint Solar and Sunnova have a new publicly listed competitor. Sunpower is now fully committed to the DG segment. Slide 31 of the above presentation shows that we are thinking the same thing. Sunpower is also telling shareholders that they think they should be valued closer to $3bb from the $1bb they are currently trading at which is the entire purpose of this split. Sunpower has a tremendously loyal dealer network that co-brands their companies as ‘by Sunpower’ which is a powerful marketing tool. There is still some work to be done but in a world where module and inverter supply is constrained, Sunpower dealers now have priority supply agreements with Maxeon and Enphase.
Changing New Home Solar. Here is the scoop about the work around that the utilities and some home builders are trying when it comes to the new home solar mandate. To start, an important note, home builders have no additional cost to add solar to the new homes. Solar financing companies will cover those costs for the builder and still pass along savings to the new home owners. Through a filing by SMUD, they are attempting to let home builders achieve the requirement for solar by allocating the homes to solar farms labeled as ‘community solar’ well away from the community. This will in no way help achieve more distributed generation and allow the future of micrograms to be built out. As the California Energy Commission votes on this proposal on Wednesday, it appears that the California home builders association is split on this. One of the largest homebuilders, Lennar, is against this broad proposal to eliminate the rooftop solar mandate and is expected to speak out against it at the hearing.
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Thank you to all the veterans reading right now. My family and I greatly appreciate your service to the Country.
Thank You! With your support I was elected to the board of CALSSA. I’ve had the pleasure of working with CALSSA over the past decade and in the past year even more so. Bernadette and the CALSSA team do amazing work creating the largest State market in the US and I’m excited to get involved with more responsibility. Policy is business development as we work together to advance the markets.
The Next Decade. We are going into the next decade with unprecedented public support, cost competitive systems, and more than 3.3GW of required additional capacity in the California power market alone. We know how to solve these issues as a team, through DG, community solar and large scale solar with a sprinkle of storage everywhere.
Undermining Intentions. The politics in our market continue to get a bit more complicated but we are well prepared for them. One example is how SMUD is trying to circumvent the new home solar mandate by trying to take the solar panels off the roof and solve it with what amounts to SREC purchases. There was no legislative intention to allow this to happen but rule making is always an important time for executing on new laws. I’ll be digging further into this since there appears to be more to the story.
Don’t Hold Your Breath. SEIA was granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) by a judge to hold the repeal of the bifacial module exemption for a few weeks but all indication is that it will not hold longer than that. There are some messy politics at play in the tariffs in an ever changing landscape. It’s too early to really assign much of the blame but the picture seems to be clearing up. At some point, however, we will need to understand that the industry that works together will succeed together. It will not have a winner take all scenario, people should stop trying for that.
More Demand. I’ve written about this in the past. When there is going to be a real choice of EVs in the market, with the ever expanding charging infrastructure, we will enter a new era of electric demand for transportation.
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