I am often surprised just how far this platform has come and the reach it has. After my announcement about SolarWakeup Live! yesterday, so many of you reached out with kind words of encouragement. We are sending well over a million emails this year and the network is bigger than ever. I did get a few questions about the event and the reasons for it.
Why 1 on 1 Interviews? Solar conferences are broken. In this format, we are going to do a deep dive with 4 speakers on their domain expertise that has value to the local market. I will be doing the interviews from a perspective of someone that has been there and done that. I don’t like at the questions as a reporter or a theoretical exercise but does it grow the market, can it be financed and does it make the industry money. My aim is to ask the question that a solar CEO or developer wants and needs to hear the answer to.
Why Only A Half Day? Events don’t need to be multiple days to drive value and if the goal is to bring a community closer together, then a half day is sufficient. Folks from out of town can plan a trip to the markets and include an afternoon of learning and networking into a bigger trip, justifying the travel expense. Most importantly, I want to bring this to at least 10 cities next year and longer events just take too much logistical planning to make that work.
How Do I Fund This? Unlike SolarWakeup, these events will be paid for by sponsors because events are not cheap! To make the sponsorships better than anything available in the conference market, you will see sponsors for the entire month leading up to and after the event on the daily newsletter. Because of this, there will be limited sponsorships sold to cover the costs of event and hopefully bring more information in a relevant format to you.
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Yann
SolarWakeup Live! The big news you’ve been waiting for. The first SolarWakeup Live! event will be in Boston at the end of October and the second in early December in Washington DC. Over the next few weeks, I will be able to share the speakers with you and give you more information on the location. The mini-conference will go deep into the issues affecting the local market, no panels where panelists only get a few minutes to give talking points but a 1 on 1 discussion that goes in-depth on what you want to know. There will be limited sponsors for this event, if you are interested in discussing how to help please reach out.
The Contract Versus Subsidy. The BNEF summit in London is currently underway and the annual discussion about utilities in a solar era is underway. This year, there are more and more projects that are subsidy free. We have come to the point where most solar developers would choose length of contract (with good credit) over higher PPA rates. For example, most solar investors would take a 30-year 3 cent contract versus a 10 year (then merchant) 7 cent agreement. With the advent of dc-coupled storage, intelligent solar will be more focused on pricing signals from the grid as opposed to contract lengths which has been the principal attack on PURPA contracts.
Friday’s ITC Decision. On Friday the ITC will make a decision if injury was caused to US panel manufacturers. The answer is a resounding no, injury was not caused to SolarWorld and Suniva. Both companies were rewarded with many subsidies by various Government entities and in some cases simply failed to adapt to the solar market. In other cases, customers were left without timely deliveries when supply chain software wasn’t executed on properly or new manufacturing lines didn’t optimize in time. Solar is hard, that is no secret. But riding the solar coaster means we all have to go through the ups and downs together, nobody gets to skip the line and go to the finish line because they didn’t feel up to it.
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Yann
Internet is back but the shutters will stay up as everyone keeps their eyes on Hurricane Maria for round 2. Maria is currently decimating the Caribbean again and will hit Puerto Rico this week as a major hurricane. If we are thinking about grid infrastructure and storm readiness, 2017 may be the year we re-evaluate the way we do power.
Three Right Turns To Paris. On Saturday, rumors came out of DC that the White House may be thinking about staying in the Paris agreement, which resulted in a questionable approval from this writer. Paris has always been a self-reported, non-binding accord but staying in is important from a leadership and societal standpoint. Many different White House voices came out since the reporting that contradict and confirm the news so I guess we all remain glued to our Twitter feeds, follow me @yannbrandt.
What Corporates Want. As Facebook chooses an Ohio location for its newest data center, clean energy availability always comes up. When we spoke with Sam Arons from Google, he said the same thing, data centers would not get located where renewable energy is not available or prominent. Now that Amazon is looking to place its HQ2 with 50,000 jobs, cities around the Country are looking around to see where they can get more renewable energy to tout as well as mass transportation. My point is that the new workforce’s values mimic the companies that invest billions. Clean air, clean water and clean energy are not ideals to think about when it’s too late, do it and you will stand out.
Grid Study, Net Metering Study. Is this round two of a useless, pre-ordained DOE study? First, I didn’t realize that net metering became a national issue. Power to the States only pertains to some things I guess. Moreover, it seems that things being left out of the scope mean that the study is looking for a certain result. According to the article, societal benefits and network effects are amongst the issues that will not be reviewed. I guess we shall say, stay tuned…
Yann
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As we head into the weekend, an update from South Florida misery. Power is back! Wifi is down. I don’t know which one is worse (I’m kidding, but it is close). Over the next few weeks, I want to examine and share with you my experience going through this storm. I wrote on my facebook that for the first time I felt like a climate change refugee with the primary mission of keeping my family safe, driving hours on end to get out of harm’s way. I came back to my County, completely destroyed thinking about the regulations that focused on important yet small (in comparison) priorities. Reading about number of workers brought in to fix the infrastructure, I start to think about the role, incentives and oversight of monopoly utilities. This includes Comcast, currently on my shitlist because I have to tether to my AT&T phone.
Time To Coal Off The Planet. Every coal plant should be turned off tomorrow. We’ve seen how resilient the planet is when we stopped doing stupid stuff like polluting rivers or destroying forests. Coal electrified industries but now coal is bad for people, planet and profit. The government should buy the plants and promptly shut them down. Seems abrupt but it’s necessary and urgent. If you think about it, there would be issues with power markets but I don’t actually think the grid would suffer except in pockets which would quickly be remedied by renewable power, cogen and energy storage.
Will California Go 100%? Well it doesn’t look like the 100% RPS bill will happen this year. Some corporations and PG&E came out against it. Surprisingly the electrical union came out against it as well, still thinking that traditional power could be bigger than renewables. My guess is that has more to do with the front office tenure than actual business strategy given that RPS in California doesn’t count distributed generation and most large scale is built by unions. Legislation never really dies, SB100 had a great session and looks that much better going forward.
September 22nd. A lot of talk from SPI centered around the 201 petition. Having spent the weekend in Atlanta, I kept going back and forth on reaching out to the Suniva people. I’ve said it before, they are good people and we’ve always had a good relationship. This 201 petition is stupid and I think they know that. On the 22nd, the commission will vote and a lot of bets are being placed on a 3-1 vote. This is really a 2-2 vote but since a tie prevails to the petition and only yes votes can vote on the remedy, a no will vote yes. That being said, a yes can flip and we could get a 3-1 vote against the injury. Let’s hope that the powers are pushing a yes to a no and we can put this thing into the past. Another speed bump on the solar coaster.
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Yann