Would you be angry? I wonder how I would handle the situation. Imagine driving a vision for a massive company that changes the path it is on, a pivot but not in a startup. Public companies are impatient and creating the new path gets you fired. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not shy and have been known to rock a boat or two but this takes major guts. After getting fired, a few quarters go by, and the company realizes you were right. A few years pass and the company is executing on your original vision because it was the right financial play. Do you sit and smile about being correct? Beat yourself up for rocking the boat? Or get angry for being fired and saying I told you so? Annoying if you ask me but NRG is an interesting case study for leadership in public companies.
Influencing the policy. We covered Thomas Pyle, the former transition chair for DOE. Now one of his former employees is taking over as the acting head for EERE. Why? To pretty much do the opposite of and undo the work of the Obama administration. EERE covers a lot of solar related activities and improves job opportunities across America, including job training, education and empowering regulations. Dan Simmons is the man you will hear about today and going forward regarding EERE matters.
Are you offering storage for your solar projects in California? I want to hear from you. In the near future, I will be doing a learning tour and meeting with contractors and developers throughout California working in and around energy storage.
As goes Ohio? The solar industry in Indiana was hoping that they could get the Governor to veto an anti-net metering bill that the legislature passed. Unfortunately that wasn’t a successful venture. This is politics and the market wasn’t big enough to pressure the Governor into making the right decision. That being said, I’m always disappointed that a reporter transcribes the utility talking points when they are so obviously untrue.
Make sure you listen to the latest episodes of EnergyWakeup. Hear from solar entrepreneur, John Gurski, the founder of Energy Toolbase, a cloud based energy bill analytics and proposal tool. I also speak with Tony Clifford from Standard Solar about being acquired by Gaz Metro and his work at SEIA.
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Yann
Anyone have $4million to spare? The politics of this 201 petition are circular. Let’s recap. SQN Capital is the bankruptcy lender. In further reading the first motions by Suniva’s CRO, SQN is offering $4million through the bankruptcy. The loan is at 12% per year plus some fees and has the first lien security. I find the interest rate rather cheap given the circumstance which raises a red flag but let’s ignore for now. We need some allies in defeating the petition. First off, the Chinese modules makers should buy the debt from SQN right now on the condition of withdrawing the 201 petition. The cheapest $4million market entry price ever. Second, the utilities across America are going to have a problem. A $0.78/watt minimum price is going to significantly reduce the amount of solar they can ratebase. EEI must be hearing from its members on this topic, what will they do?
Defining Climate Change. I didn’t read the NY Times oped on climate change. The headline was annoying and I don’t feel like losing time reading a skeptics dissertation. That being said, we need to stop talking climate change. It doesn’t poll well, it’s partisan and too complicated to argue with skeptics. How do you convince someone gravity exists if they don’t believe it? We need to change the conversation. Clean water, clean air and solar energy. We all like that, we all want that. You can live in deep red States and your neighbors will be pro-solar and want to breath clean air. March for Science and Climate Change was great, for our echo-chamber but it leaves many outside of the bubble wondering what the agenda is. Preach solar. That’s our coalition.
Are you offering storage for your solar projects in California? I want to hear from you. In the near future, I will be doing a learning tour and meeting with contractors and developers throughout California working in and around energy storage.
A budget deal. House negotiators have come to an agreement to keep the Government running through the fiscal year. Let’s just say that Trump isn’t getting his wish in gutting the EPA and DOE budgets for this year. This doesn’t mean that good things will come of the money, likely many programs will stall because of lack of staffing and effort. You can see more in coverage on the issue.
Make sure you listen to the latest episodes of EnergyWakeup. Hear from solar entrepreneur, John Gurski, the founder of Energy Toolbase, a cloud based energy bill analytics and proposal tool. I also speak with Tony Clifford from Standard Solar about being acquired by Gaz Metro and his work at SEIA.
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Happy SGIP Day. For many contractors across California today is an exciting day. The first window for SGIP funding is opening today, assumed to be fully allocated within minutes. Legislators in California have gone big in funding the incentive and they have thought it about it logically, similar to the CSI, SGIP will step down quickly. You would assume that the quickly dropping battery costs will keep up with the drops in incentive. Here is my question to California contractors. How did you choose your partner? Once you chose the battery architecture, i.e. Lithium Ion, how did you pick the rest of the system. The software? The power electronics? The manufacturers? This is going to be a big market and I am contemplating a road trip through California to learn how storage is affecting your business. More on the road trip soon.
Was it up to Suniva? Suniva first got into trouble financially in 2015, when module pricing was much higher. That is when Shunfeng came in and acquired 63% of the company. More recently, as money was running out once again, Suniva had hired their former CFO, Jim Modak, as a consultant to raise more money. Modak had been the CFO for 8 years but left the company in March of 2016, staying on for 6 months as a consultant. Modak is now the CFO of SQN Capital Management. This is where it gets interesting. Shunfeng and Wanxiang were not willing to put in more capital into Suniva, forcing the company towards a Chapter 7 filing. One lender was willing to provide post-bankruptcy capital, SQN Capital, under certain conditions. The first condition was to file the 201 petition for a tariff. If Suniva wanted tariffs, they could have filed it a year ago, this seems to have been a requirement of SQN. I don’t know how much SQN is providing but it’s a financial play betting that Suniva assets are worth more if a minimum price is put into place.
Help support SolarWakeup. If you are looking for investors or buyers of your projects, hit reply to this email and let us help you. Our expansive network is always looking to partner with you and helps us pay the bills to keep the newsletter free to you, as it has been for the past 4 years.
The pension funds. Pension funds are playing in solar. They’ve long circled the wagons, waiting to see if scale is there to make an initial investment with enough room to follow on year after year. The consolidation of assets is also creating new market opportunities because unlike utilities, pension funds will likely outsource asset management, O&M and other functions. This also creates a nice value to investment bankers that specialize in the field like MVP Capital. Pension funds are lean operations and solar is likely to create outsized returns compared to asset classes like real estate.
Make sure you listen to the latest episodes of EnergyWakeup. Hear from solar entrepreneur, John Gurski, the founder of Energy Toolbase, a cloud based energy bill analytics and proposal tool. I also speak with Tony Clifford from Standard Solar about being acquired by Gaz Metro and his work at SEIA.
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All about Suniva. Today, I want to explain the Suniva situation in a simple enough way that you can take it to your mother, child’s teacher or neighbor. With the request for a minimum price of $0.78 cents, Suniva is trying to hurt the solar industry in a way that is worse than if the ITC had not been extended. Depending on your volume, your price will more than double for solar panels. Projects in markets that compete for PURPA contracts, like NC, UT, and OR, will increase their costs by 40% or more rendering the markets null. Massachusetts may have to delay their benchmark pricing auction for the SMART program because a $0.40 cent delta in installed pricing will cost the consumers in MA more money.
The irony of Suniva. The EVP of Suniva said this, “Without today’s requested global safeguard, the U.S. solar manufacturing industry will die and we will not only lose solar manufacturing jobs today, but also those future jobs that will come from investing in the solar manufacturing industry of tomorrow.” Looking at the comment, you have to laugh at the irony behind it. Suniva took in tens of millions in SunShot and other grants to build their R&D. Moreover, when Suniva made the move to invest $12.5million into a manufacturing plant in Michigan, Saginaw offered up $2.5million in grants to do that. This is not a global safeguard, this is a company annoyed that they lost. Not building out a dealer network and selling to Sunpower dealers was bad business that had nothing to do with cheap solar modules.
Why Trump would agree. Easy answer, The Koch Brothers. A Georgia based company that opened manufacturing in Michigan is going out of business because of cheap Chinese goods. That would be the talking point pushed into the public but we all know that it is false. The real reason would be that this is about the disruption it would cause to the solar industry which would be helpful for the adversaries that wish the industry harm. It is rumored that a 201 filing typically starts with a nod from an administration prior to filing which may likely have happened here.
Help support SolarWakeup. If you are looking for investors or buyers of your projects, hit reply to this email and let us help you. Our expansive network is always looking to partner with you and helps us pay the bills to keep the newsletter free to you, as it has been for the past 4 years.
Why Trump could and should say no. Jobs and China. The argument to say no to Suniva is that it would cost the solar industry and incredible number of jobs. The industry would drastically slow and more companies would go out of business. Interestingly, Suniva would still be bankrupt and would have a hard time getting off the ground again in a slowing market where most customers would shun them. So the jobs President would have to choose to kill jobs. Second, China. China could make this a big point in the ongoing conversations between the President of both Countries. Does Trump really want to hurt American jobs while also angering a central industry in China while he is looking to get China to help with North Korea? China has seen the impact of a minimum price in Europe and repeating that in the US would be disastrous given the total capacity of manufacturing in the Country.
Make sure you listen to the latest episodes of EnergyWakeup. Hear from solar entrepreneur, John Gurski, the founder of Energy Toolbase, a cloud based energy bill analytics and proposal tool. I also speak with Tony Clifford from Standard Solar about being acquired by Gaz Metro and his work at SEIA.
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Yann