By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: The invaluable Michael Panfil, lawyer for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), created a tweet-storm on Friday worthy of a president as the nation’s ISOs offered comments on the FERC resilience docket. In short

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: The invaluable Michael Panfil, lawyer for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), created a tweet-storm on Friday worthy of a president as the nation’s ISOs offered comments on the FERC resilience docket. In short

• With the exception of PJM, the regional ISOs say the weakest link in the current electricity-distribution system is in the wires connecting centralized generation plants to customers.
• More distributed generation with storage is the most likely solution to the problem.

SolarWakeup’s View: Short version: A 19th century grid isn’t the most effective way to transmit electricity in the 21st century. That sound you hear is the U.S. solar industry saying, in one loud chorus, “Well, duh.” Of course, the reality of the transmission system in this country is far more complicated than that, but at the same time, it really isn’t. When you have an electricity distribution system based on stringing wires is liable to break down at some point - and it is far more vulnerable to widespread attacks by people and groups looking to terrorize the U.S. population. In 2003, my family and I were at Epcot when we started getting phone calls from relatives in Cleveland about widespread outages and fears of large amounts of food spoiling because of a freezer failure. Turned out, it was a combination of drooping wires combined with a computer glitch - and a lot of energy analysts would tell you little has changed in that system since then. That’s why most ISOs filing on Friday talked about the importance of adding more distributed electricity production combined with storage. They understand better than anyone how vulnerable our grid is to attack, and they have laid bare a plan to improve it. Let’s hope FERC is smart enough to listen to them. More  Michael Panfil Twitter Stream SolarWakeup Interview with former FERC Chairman, Jon Wellinghoff

Prosumerism Consolidation. Before Innogy existed and E.ON split itself, RWE and E.ON were the German utilities trying to make sense of the new direction of the power economy. Germany led the way in solar before everyone else and eventually RWE and E.ON realized they had two distinct businesses. Power plants and consumer services. Both of them created a prosumer business, spun out from the parent company. Now, E.ON is acquiring innogy, the RWE prosumer business in a complicated transaction. For solar, especially in the US, it doesn’t mean much except for a bigger player on the block in E.On. Both entities have been investing heavily, more on that to come. Most notable units with the transaction is Belectric (owned by innogy) which appears to be heading to RWE once the transaction closes.

Vote Solar’s Michigan Report. Frank Andorka covered the report released by Vote Solar late last week. We’ve talked about the strategic shift in Vote Solar’s tactics to opine on issues that otherwise wouldn’t affect solar except now solar is a better choice for consumers. This report presents the data to make it so and hopefully the regulators will listen. These types of projects are not free nor cheap. Vote Solar needs your help to make markets like Michigan prosper so you can do business there. Join me and hundreds of solar friends at Equinox 2018 in San Francisco next week on the 22nd. Reminder: if you buy 10 tickets and send me the receipt, you get to write a paragraph here.

Storage Market(s). Make sure to catch my conversation about dc-coupled energy storage or read the write up from Frank. This was recorded at SolarWakeup Live! New York. A lot of hype about dc-coupled has got storage companies claiming big things but I spoke with one that has had it up and running for a year. If you are doing solar farms or C&I, you’ve got to be thinking about storage.

Oklahoma? My friends know that this is the State that I want to make the poster child of energy systems. So when I read about EV growth in Oklahoma and feedback from people that bought an EV, I get excited. OG&E and the other utilities have such a great opportunity to send us a postcard from the future.

SolarWakeup Live San Francisco. The second speaker to join us on the SolarWakeup Live! stage is Bernadette Del Chiaro, the Executive Director of California Solar and Storage Association. Everyone knows Bernadette and the work she’s done to bring CalSSA to where it is today. She is going to be a great conversation and will give us the insight on the legislative agenda ahead for the largest market in America. Get your tickets now, WAKEUP20 for 20% off.

March Madness Bracket. SolarWakeup is having the 1st annual March Madness bracket challenge and it’s free. Go to ESPN Tournament Challenge and search for SolarWakeup group. The password is GoSolar. The more folks we have, the more fun we will have. The winner gets to write the opening paragraph and promote their agenda, company or cause. Must have your bracket complete by Tip-off on the 18th.

Have a great day!

News

 

Have a great day!
Yann

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: GE unveiled its latest wind turbine, the Haliade-X. It will

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: GE unveiled its latest wind turbine, the Haliade-X. It will

• Stand 853-feet tall.
• Have blades the length of a football field.
• Will, if all goes according to plan, will produce 67 GWh annually (Vox calls that “whackadoodle.”)

SolarWakeup’s View: First off, let me say my first reaction to this story was, “Whoa - that is one enormous wind turbine.” But then it got me to thinking: When a utility retires a fossil-fuel-fired plant, how much wind and solar will we need to replace all that generation? The answer is a ton. When a plant is retired, it takes a lot of megawatts with it. If you multiply those megawatts by the capacity factor, the amount of electricity production that is actually disappearing is staggering - and it provides an enormous opportunity for solar and wind to take up that space. Here’s the rub, however: The wind industry seems to have realized how much production it will have to make up, and they are engineering their new technology to account for it. From our vantage point, the solar industry lags a bit behind its renewable energy cousin. It’s time for us to get with the program. Although it’s true energy storage is the hot new technology, with breakthroughs coming at an ever-quickening pace (see our article yesterday on DC-coupled battery storage), it’s important not to forget that flexibility still requires energy generation. The bottom line is this: Whatever else we are focusing on in the industry, it’s time we did some long-term planning to account for the sheer volume of electricity production we’re going to need to make up - and get our technology ready to fill that need. More  GE Renewable Energy Secured $10.4 Billion In Orders In 2017 (CleanTechnica) E030: GE Invests In Renewable Energy To Grow Its Power Business With Daniel Hullah of GE Ventures

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: A report by Vote Solar and the Union of Concerned Scientists revealed that if DTE Energy, a Detroit-area utility, implemented a renewable/energy efficiency portfolio instead of a $1 billion, 1,100 MW natural gas plant

Vote Solar Equinox 2018