Can Rex represent us all? We covered it in the EnergyWakeup podcast, Rex Tillerson may be the most qualified person in the US to be Secretary of State. He has only ever worked for one company and that is Exxon. As CEO and region President, he has traveled the world and made deals with many heads of state. The problem is that he represented Exxon for 41 years. An oil company that never even faked an interest in renewables, quite the opposite, they are under investigation for covering up their scientific knowledge of climate change. So after 41 years, can Rex Tillerson change his views?
The rural coops lead the pack. We have seen this across the country, coops that are governed by members, i.e. consumers. When shareholders are the consumers there is sometimes a bit more flexibility to change the status quo. This one example is from a smaller coop in New Mexico but with today’s pricing everything is modular.
Will the Paris agreement stand? One positive note on the Paris agreement is that even Bill O’Reilly said the new administration should leave it alone. It also seems to make little sense to unravel it because what would be gained given that the goals will most likely be met regardless due to economic conditions. The biggest problem with the article is that it highlights Rick Perry as Secretary of Energy and not Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, because it was an accord negotiated through the State department.
America made a choice in solar. It was SPI in Orlando, circa 2012 when Bill Clinton spoke as the Keynote. He said America needed to make a choice, do we want to have the development, legal, finance jobs or do we want the manufacturing. At that point this was already decided, China would drive the global price of solar down while the 200k+ jobs in the US would be high end install, development and professional services. So I disagree with the premise that China is dominating. This is a global market and we all benefit from each other’s expertise.
SolarWakeup gets Political Cartoon. The idea came and I couldn’t resist. Hope you like it, feel free to download and share amongst your networks.
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Storage is upon us. I agree with Julie Blunden that storage is coming, and it is coming fast. While storage players are making many of the same mistakes solar did, i.e. selling hardware, expensive money, confusing pitches and strange executive choices, the learning curve will go much faster than solar. It took us about 10-11 years to get to 10GW. Storage has the cumulative installed solar capacity to go work with and is waiting in line to see regulatory changes that may or may not come. I’m looking at storage in depth currently on a personal level, and you will see much more storage coverage here.
Omnibus energy bills, tis the season. It was Michigan’s turn this time and again distributed generation faired well. The attempt to eliminate net metering failed and the RPS was increased by 50%. It was one of the first open attempts to increase retail energy choice which has long been an interesting catch-22 for republican legislatures across the Country. Utilities are big donors and require monopolies for access to super cheap money but take away competition from the market. The GOP loves free market capitalism, how much longer can they fight consumer choice without a political price?
Take your PURPA somewhere else. This shouldn’t be that surprising given that the complaint from FLS came in the middle of a lame duck Presidential transition. Why start Federal fight on PURPA now given that some members of Congress have been wanting to get back into the legislation. I’ve said it before, any reopening of PURPA is going to be a huge can of worms with power plants across the Country basing contracts on the rules governed by this. FLS could proceed to take the issue to Court but at what cost?
Take your Value of Solar back to the PUC. Apparently legislators don’t want to feel the wrath of the solar wars in their political campaigns. It seems that a trend is starting where legislation keeps NEM in place and instead asking the PUC to create a docket to calculate the value of solar for NEMish type policies. These dockets are going to overlay politics, mathematics and valuations in the next battle in the solar wars.
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These are the top 10 most read solar articles by your peers this week!
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The Top 10 is ranked by the number of SolarWakeup.com readers that clicked on the news article during the previous week. It is the poll of the most relevant solar news of the week as judged by your colleagues and competitors.
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Sorry. Couldn’t get the column together in time while on vacation with my kids but keep a lookout on some news from California. It seems that PG&E has hit the NEM cap and transitioning to 2.0. Also, FERC ruled in favor of PURPA contracts for solar in a case between FLS and Montana. See you Monday!
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