Solar Needs Your Action. While the solar market is growing in residential and utility scale segments, the House of Representatives committee left ITC extension and storage addition out of the tax extenders bill pushing forward a ‘skinny’ bill instead. Senators are responding with a strong letter advocating for support, read that letter here. You need to get on the phone with your Congressional representative and let them know that you and your company want an ITC extension. If you need the contact info, you can type in your zip code here.
More US Manufacturing. Not a lot of manufacturing happens in the US but when the market grows and you sell hundreds of different products with a 1-week lead time, you find value in doing it here. At Quick Mount we’re taking advantage of the growing market and investing in doubling our capacity with a second shift. This is not because of the tariffs but in spite of them, because tariffs slow the overall market down but we believe in the future growth of our partners and trust that our technology is what the market wants. Hope you share some enthusiasm in the great news we are highlighting today!
Finish The Trade War. As Trump heads to Japan for G20 meetings, the big spotlight will be not the US-China trade talks. US business leaders are hoping for a resolution so we can go back to growing the economy across the segments that deliver goods to consumers. The solar market grows despite the headwinds on aluminum, steel and other tariffs in addition to the module level soft costs added without value to the market.
Yield Mania Is Back Down. The ten year treasury yields are back down under 2%, go refinance your portfolios now!
Dirty Power Plan. The administration is out with the change to the clean power plan, Obama’s marquee plan to lower carbon emissions. Environmental NGOs are touting it the dirty power plan as it seeks to bring back coal, which one author points out is having financing troubles since the future of coal is bleak.
Battle Of The Solar Bands. CALSSA is currently offering an EARLY BIRD SPECIAL DISCOUNT on tickets. Get your ticket before June 21 and pay only $60 per ticket and even less per ticket on ticket bundles! One of the most important ways you can support YOUR industry is to get tickets to this special event! Visit CALSSA’s website to learn more and get your tickets today! Each ticket includes two free drinks! (button or text links to: http://bit.ly/ET-SBOB-
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Crane Chimes In On DNC. Check out the David Crane op-ed about the DNC decision to not host a climate debate.
The Energy Fair. Meet me next week in Custer, Wisconsin for the famous Energy Fair as I host a special edition of SolarWakeup Live! sponsored by Panasonic with leaders in Wisconsin’s solar market. This is my first time to this event and would love to meet many of you! More info on the event here
Battle Of The Solar Bands. CALSSA is currently offering an EARLY BIRD SPECIAL DISCOUNT on tickets. Get your ticket before June 21 and pay only $60 per ticket and even less per ticket on ticket bundles! One of the most important ways you can support YOUR industry is to get tickets to this special event! Visit CALSSA’s website to learn more and get your tickets today! Each ticket includes two free drinks! (button or text links to: http://bit.ly/ET-SBOB-
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Q1 Solar Market Grows. In the first three months of the year, the U.S. installed 2.7 gigawatts of solar photovoltaics (PV), making it the most solar ever installed in the first quarter of a year. The residential market experienced annual growth as well. According to the report, the U.S. saw 603 megawatts of residential solar installations during the first quarter, up 6 percent annually. In fact, the report notes that 29 percent of residential capacity in Q1 2019 came from markets outside the top 10 solar states by capacity, the highest share for emerging markets in industry history. Source: SEIA
Solar And Storage Top Finance Survey. When it comes to the most attractive investments, investors told ACORE that PV and storage come out on top. This was the result when ACORE asked about investment priorities for the next three years by investors that look to deploy more than $500million per year.
Electrification Driven By Democratization. “Most Californians will soon drive an electric car. Good bye dirty air. Goodbye smelly gas station. Goodbye international oil cartel determining the cost to fill up. Now is the time to think differently about energy: who owns it, who controls it, who manages it. Thanks to renewable energy, we have the opportunity to achieve aggressive climate goals while easing the transition to a cleaner future through democratized energy.” CALSSA’s Bernadette Del Chiaro
More Storage In More Places. There’s been talk about merchant storage in ERCOT for a few years and now someone is going for it. The key is to make your money back fast before the market changes or adjusts to the storage unit on the node. This happened to operators in PJM that made a bet before losing the valuable revenue streams.
Get Active Income Allocation Instead. The MLP legislation is back in Congress. I would love to see someone propose solar to get the same ability as oil and gas to offset active income with passive tax equity investments. That would create the largest access the solar industry has ever had to tax equity with legislation that simply requires the addition of ‘and solar’.
The Energy Fair. Meet me next week in Custer, Wisconsin for the famous Energy Fair as I host a special edition of SolarWakeup Live! sponsored by Panasonic with leaders in Wisconsin’s solar market. This is my first time to this event and would love to meet many of you! More info on the event here
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The Energy Fair. Meet me next week in Custer, Wisconsin for the famous Energy Fair as I host a special edition of SolarWakeup Live! sponsored by Panasonic with leaders in Wisconsin’s solar market. This is my first time to this event and would love to meet many of you! More info on the event here
EVs And Stationary Storage. The Tesla business model is one that Rivian likes and is emulating. Not just making electric cars, and I hope Rivian comes out with the EV SUV because it looks pretty awesome, but stationary power micrograms as well. Rivian is looking to create a market for their second life batteries, which sounds good in theory but given where I see battery costs, that will likely be a foolish idea in 5-10 years.
Hacking The Grid. Power outages scare me, every time I am affected by one I realize how dependent I am on electricity. I’m close to the PG&E outage zones and worry about the shutdowns much as I worried about outages post hurricanes in Florida. Worse than both of those situations is a prolonged attack by hackers on the electric grid and potentially power plants.
GE Ventures For Sale. The venture group from General Electric is looking for an investor to buy the portfolio from the corporate. Some of the names you’d know are Stem, Sonnen (exited), AMS, FlexGen Power Systems and others.
Oh PTC, Stay With Me. PTC and ITC are inherently different but if the wind industry has loud voices asking for the PTC to go away, why don’t they simply choose to not use it? Given where wind is being installed, see below, wouldn’t the PTC going away eliminate some of the other markets from growing?
Wind’s Political Power. Wind is being installed in areas that look like a pipeline proposal, right through the middle of the Country. It’s helping farmers, ranchers, landowners and rural America more than any other part of the Country. Looking at the map and the members of Congress that represent the areas shows how big the potential political power is in the wind sector.
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