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Leading The Manufacturers To Speak Up. During the latest episode of our podcast, the CEO of PanelClaw gave us a forecast that something big would happen this week and yesterday it came. 27 companies with manufacturing jobs wrote an open letter to the trade commission that should reverberate with the commissioners and staff. Don’t miss the podcast,you can listen to it here.
500 minus 37,000 ≠ 114,000. NPR did a great interview and the above mentioned open letter highlights it. Solar is not a binary economy where one parties success is not dependent on another. As an example, if modules go up in price, less projects get done meaning less work for lawyers, appraisers and companies that make widgets. Widgets like adapters, combiner boxes, fuses and racking have less volume when fewer projects are built. When Suniva and SolarWorld want to save their 500 manufacturing jobs, they forget the 37,000 manufacturing jobs that build those widgets and keep the circular ecosystem going in solar. 88,000 jobs are at risk in solar but most importantly the trade commission is being asked to add jobs by killing more jobs and that math just doesn’t add up.
The Path To 100%. A few months ago I spoke with Senator Wiener from California about the plan to increase the RPS to 100%. The 50% by 2030 plan is already ahead of schedule and you could look at market forces making the case for 100% easily achievable. Peaking plants will be replaced by more advanced solar operations, essentially making solar farms 40%-50% capacity factor assets with some dispatching potential. All of this because it lowers the cost of energy for consumers and dramatically lowers the cost volatility.
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Yann
The Big News. SolarWakeup is going on the road with SolarWakeup Live!, a regional in person breakdown of the top news in solar. I’ll be interviewing local leaders, investors and startups about their work in the solar industry. The tour will go around the Country but now is your chance to tell me where I should start. Fill out this survey and make your voice heard.
LADWP Goes Storage. LADWP is fast tracking an energy storage project after an earlier halt to a massive natural gas power plant. Grid level storage is continuing to ramp nicely in California but what most solar pros should be thinking about is adding batteries to their existing solar farms on the DC side of the inverter. Lost energy and management of solar power is best when it is done this way without the massive efficiency losses of AC connected energy storage. For years now, energy storage and solar have been separate markets. Neither needing the other until today. Soon enough, every solar asset will have storage integrated like another inverter but large solar farms will have the ability to replace the peaking plants in operation today that will not be rebuilt at the end of life. More on this to come soon.
Specific Examples, Humanizing Solar Impact. Take your life savings, start a business and create jobs. That’s the story of Las Vegas solar company Louise Helton who made it through the recession that hit Vegas hard only to be struck by utility overreach and regulatory uncertainty. Taking this story public is where solar wins. No amount of lobbying and political donations can compare to the story telling of people’s lives.
The Solar Eclipse Of The Heart. The eclipse was cool but most importantly my job of finding solar articles gets easier. Also, congrats to any editor that was able to write a headline without using the word eclipse as a pun. I did hear that global solar will be eclipsing nuclear going forward.
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Yann
New Podcast, Summer Break is Over. The kids go back to school tomorrow including Kate starting kindergarten and my schedule can get back to some routine. As two bankrupt companies that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars try to use an antiquated trade policy to save themselves (hard to see how that would work) while taking so many other companies with them. I spoke with the CEO of PanelClaw, Costa Nicolaou. Costa has run PanelClaw for a decade and has the leading marketshare for the rooftop market. Most importantly, PanelClaw has market share while having to play in a commodity market where premium pricing is hard to get. Costa walks through how he runs the company and what he sees happening going forward. He breaks some news on the podcast about new offerings that will be coming from PanelClaw.Listen Now!
Solar Is For Everyone. I really dislike this type of headline, because it is so obviously false. Maybe a decade ago, solar was reserved for those with extra dollars in their bank accounts. Today, solar financial products span the entire income range. Loans, leases and PACE give homeowners more choice than ever. Community solar and meter aggregation policies provide even more access to low income families and renters through shorter terms. Of course, there is a preferential treatment for people with good credit but that’s a talking point that utilities don’t like because they milk low credit scores for hundreds or thousands in deposits. This regulator should tell us why this op-ed was written.
IPPs Go Merchant And Regulated. A third bidder for Oncor has emerged after the denied acquisition by NextEra. Joining Berkshire and Elliot is Sempra, the well known IPP may be looking to get some regulated holdings into its portfolio. At the same time, Calpine has agreed to a private equity buyout by a group of investors led by Energy Capital Partners.
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Yann