Weekend NCAA Fun. Adam Cavitt is one of the competitors in the SolarWakeup Bracket Challenge and he’s an elite picker of NCAA games. He has 3 of the 4 Final Four teams (I have zero) and he has Virginia winning it all. This puts him in the top 5,000 pickers out of 17million. One bracket does have Texas Tech winning it all so that should make for an interesting weekend.
Have a great weekend and talk to you again on Monday!
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Yann
PG&E Says, Kick Rocks. As expected, PG&E has named Bill Johnson as the CEO and ‘refreshed’ the board of directors. The only name remotely associated with associated with clean energy is a board member of NextGen Climate. Vote Solar came out with statement where Adam Browning said, “White we need a renewable energy leader, TVA, under Bill Johnson’s leadership, is a renewable energy laggard.” PG&E came back with a soft defense of the climate progress by TVA which any solar installer in the territory could easily refute. The most telling aspect of this is the comment from someone that was friendly to PG&E last session. PG&E looks to be taking the approach of most monopolies and expects everyone to get on board with their plan and they will not get on board with anyone else’s.
CCAs Making A Play. The California Community Choice Aggregators are coming together and offering an option to the legislators that want option b instead of bailing out PG&E. The CCAs are saying that PG&E should become a ‘wires-only’ business and let the CCAs serve the customers. This is an intermediary step to retail choice, which I would assume CCAs are not advocating for. I hope that the legislators give this a serious look in the name of safety and let PG&E focus on keeping the State safe.
Grassley Makes Easy Statement. I was hoping that I didn’t have to read this but after Trump said that the noise from wind farms cause cancer, my phone and email didn’t stop. Now that Senator Grassley from Iowa has given a great quote on the topic, let’s highlight the “idiotic” nature of the comment. (Not my words) Solar farms may cause sunburns I guess…
Solar Needs To Do Better. Solar is going to be a marketplace for schemes and sleaze bags that are trying to get rich quick. We see them all of the time and have friends that ask us about the latest ‘rebate’, ‘credit’ and ‘energy audit’ robocall. These scams are easy to point out but we also need to have a conversation about the folks that install solar with the same attitude. I get that I am vested in this as a manufacturer of racking products and while I think everyone should use Quick Mount products, I respect most of my competitors that meet a level of engineering, testing and quality. I am happy to compete for the business of installers that follow the code and work with the building inspectors to give homeowners solar systems that will last the duration of my 25 year warranty. What solar can’t have, and what is happening, are installations that will leak next year when the installer is long gone. I have plenty of solar wall of shame content from social media and we can point to plenty of non-code compliant product being peddled at some of the biggest conferences as well.
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Yann
More Of The Same. Bill Johnson, the former TVA, Progress Energy and Duke Energy CEO, will likely be named as the new CEO for PG&E. Working with three of the hedge funds, PG&E is nominating a new slate of directors that will not include the clean tech names that were floated by another fund. All of this will come in time for the new legislative session where Sacramento will have to decide on the bailout for the utility around the indemnities and liabilities from last years disasters. The legislature should send a strong message by denying PG&E anything and instead going all in on CCAs, solar, storage and more retail competition. First with a return to NEM 1.0 and a higher rate if a C&I project loses the tenant off taker. Maybe PG&E will realize that Sacramento isn’t playing along with more of the same.
BlackRock Goes Clean. CleanCapital is expanding their relationship with BlackRock’s Renewable Power Group with an equity investment. Last year, BlackRock and CleanCapital acquired 60 C&I projects totaling 47MW and now BlackRock will own a piece of the development platform. More to come…
Climate Change Talks Go Mainstream. On Friday, AOC held an hourlong town hall with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes to talk about the Green New Deal and climate change. One of the important notes was AOC’s reiteration that this was a resolution and not the law. That the resolution is aspirational and with the help of Rhianna Gunn-Wright explained how the goals were achievable with the help of solar and wind. I recommend watching the event, it makes the strong case around the urgency and generational need for lofty goals.
EV Critical Mass. Last month, 58% of all auto sales in Norway were Tesla. Ford announced a 370 mile range for their EV SUV and Mercedes is ready to announce a full electric lineup by 2022. Duke Energy is asking to rate base over $70 million in charging infrastructure including for mass transportation. I haven’t seen too many demand models include massive EV adoption to the extent that I expect to become reality.
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Yann
Sorry, Not Sorry. First, SolarWakeup isn’t going premium. Yesterday was an April Fools joke (for now). I hope I don’t disappoint with the newsletter continuing on with the current arrangement you and I have. If you missed it, here is the link.
Quick Mount Expanding. Sometimes the most important news of the day is something I’ve been working on with the amazing team at Quick Mount PV. When we aren’t keeping the largest racking factory operating in the US, we’re looking for ways to expand and help our customers. Yesterday we announced our new warehouse and training center in Florida. Getting closer to our customers is key to our mutual success in addition to making the best portfolio of products in the industry. We won’t stop innovating and will always listen to our partners and installers when they have great feedback.
Storage Portfolio Transacts, Again. Macquarie is selling 50% of the energy storage portfolio to SUSI partners. SUSI is a Swiss investment company that was one of the first in the market with a focused fund on energy storage. Macquarie funded the AMS portfolio of Southern California storage projects a few years ago and is exiting half of that position now that it has been derisked. Macquarie’s GIG is doing some pretty great things around the world including the purchase of my former employer, Conergy, which continues to lead in Asia.
If You Care About Climate Change. Many of the stories today talk about the role of solar in the future energy and climate policies around the world. My biggest frustration with climate policy making now is the amount of money is sucks out of the process. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; there is no industry that does more to advance good policy than solar per dollar spent. If big donors care about climate change and want to do something about it, which means they have to lobby and get involved in policy, they should be putting a large portion of their advocacy spend into solar policy groups.
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Yann