Lightning Round Thursday!
Saving Coal. The coal trade organization is running PR and wishing itself a new coal plant. Good luck with that.
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Get the $F out of here. Elon went all Silicon Valley on some investors. If you don’t like Tesla the way it is, go buy Ford.
Make sure you listen to the latest episodes of EnergyWakeup. Google is now at 100% renewables, how do they do it and what is next? Sam Arons talks to SolarWakeup. We also speak with OSEIA Director about Oregon’s solarmarket.
More power. The resi solar + storage market. Will it be the negotiating tool that solar uses to help with NEM battles?
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Yann
What the PREPA. It could have been. It should have been. That’s what I think about the solar market in Puerto Rico. Plenty of C&I roof space and a willingness from the community to transition to clean solar energy. The utility, PREPA, was also a willing participant and started writing contracts for PPAs years ago. The problem came with the financial downturn of Puerto Rico itself. PREPA became an offtaker that could not be financed making most contracts stay on the sidelines, stranded and never built. In many ways, PREPA is like HECO on almost all comparisons except financial. Maybe it’s time for PREPA to go private.
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.
A Colorado Settlement. I can’t say that I have been following the process in Colorado that closely. A State once at the top of the national leaderboard has been quiet for a few years. Not on the corporate standpoint as several big name firms have made its home in Colorado. The market has been soft for years as new companies try to get into community solar and muni deals. Let’s see if the happy middle solution creates new opportunities for the market going forward. We will try and get COSEIA’s Executive Director on the podcast to find out.
Make sure you listen to the latest episodes of EnergyWakeup. Google is now at 100% renewables, how do they do it and what is next? Sam Arons talks to SolarWakeup. We also speak with OSEIA Director about Oregon’s solarmarket.
Please hold my solar energy. I’ve been a skeptic on this platform about storage in the past. I’ve been reading a lot of data in recent months and I think we are getting close to gametime. Storage is getting close to offering a value proposition to customers across rate schedules in various States. Moreover, I think the State level initiatives aren’t going to have to be so costly to make it work. I’m curious to hear what you think and where the market will be.
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Federal influences. I am happy to see the Federal NAACP publish this report on energy access and increased clean energy. All too often we have seen utilities coopt well meaning local chapters in ways covered a few months ago by major publications. Solar jobs are local jobs. These are jobs that cannot be moved to other areas and that extends beyond the jobs available to installers. Policy wonks pushing regulations at local city halls and State Capitols are likely to be local. Lawyers that understand the State laws are hard to find at a national level. NAACP understands that clean energy, in a distributed market, is good for the local workforce and local small business owners.
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.
Find your dream (solar) job. Solar Foundation continues the important work of identifying the many jobs in solar and now has created a platform to connect employers with job seekers. Recruiting is one of the most important aspects in solar company management. Our work can be quite complicated so having access to more talent is always helpful. We even have some of the best recruiters working in our cleantech segment and I hope that this tool is helpful to them. Check it out at solartrainingusa.org
Make sure you listen to the latest episodes of EnergyWakeup. Google is now at 100% renewables, how do they do it and what is next? Sam Arons talks to SolarWakeup. We also speak with OSEIA Director about Oregon’s solarmarket.
The branding halo. The first version of Tesla’s solar tile is out and it looks like a version of everything that already exists on the market. A skirted standard racking system was released to the media with Panasonic branding. The reach that a Tesla press release has still amazes me today, and that comes after years of seeing it in effect. Tesla has become the most valuable car company in the Country and I don’t think Musk is anywhere near finished. But let’s slow our horses when covering the news.
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More Solar Clickbait. For some reason, newspapers forget that the solar industry is a business. The solar market has a global impact and global supply chain. Silicon from the US that goes to China, cells and materials that come from Georgia that go to Asia for assembly, etc. Sometimes those businesses have to adapt to market conditions and jobs are realigned, which is always unfortunate. When Sungevity files for Bankruptcy, small family owned solar installers get more market share. When China drops the cost of solar modules, more lawyers, accountants, developers are hired in the US. More importantly it means cheaper energy for consumers and more clean energy for the environment. New York Times got this headline wrong, I’ll stay subscribed though.
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.
Community Solar. Okay, community solar is going to be a thing. I still worry about the solar credits being under the control of regulators, and we have seen what regulators can do to change the rules of the game. That being said, we now have a community solar trade association and big companies like NRG going big with it. Maryland has spent the better part of two years working on their rules and now comes the execution. A municipal utility in Florida has signed a PPA and is selling the energy to its customers if they want to opt-in. Lots of new business segments to round this market out, would be nice to see larger pools though so we can avoid a boom-bust.
Make sure you listen to the latest episodes of EnergyWakeup. Google is now at 100% renewables, how do they do it and what is next? Sam Arons talks to SolarWakeup. We also speak with OSEIA Director about Oregon’s solarmarket.
Signals create liquidity. It’s no secret that California has a lot of solar. There are efforts to connect the CAISO with the Western States. All of this is important because the solar industry wants to move to a more flexible model, away from 20 and 25 year contracts. In order to achieve that, we need to connect our grids together in pricing and send clear pricing signals to solar and storage operators. Let traders place value of the potential value of capacity and available solar energy so that sponsors can generate revenues as if it was a coal plant.
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Yann