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.
Have a great day!
Yann
Good news from Trump world. When Hillary Clinton was asked to compliment PEOTUS, she went for the kids. Namely Ivanka, who has been the soft spoken leader of Trump’s children, is said to be making a move into some policy issues. While she is not moving to DC, insider sources say that climate change will be a key issue area for her family lobbying efforts. Let’s see who she hires as the Chief of Staff to see the impact she will be able to have.
Welcome to Florida! You all know that I reside here and while in my 10 years in solar have done little business here, am intrigued that the market could become more relevant. Vivint announced an entrance earlier this year but now SolarCity is opening a warehouse in Central Florida and hiring 300 jobs. Emergency meeting at the Governor’s Club tonight
More data for solar. We’ve covered this in the past and even wrote about the overlap of support that solar has from both sides of the aisle. A republican polling agency came out, yet again, that 75% of Trump voters support ‘action to accelerate deployment of clean energy.’ The question is, does the support from the GOP voters translate into legislation for policy from the GOP. We surely have not seen it at the State or Federal levels but optimism ahead.
Illinois Energy Bill goes to the Governor. A nuclear power bailout bill that was stacked with energy topics over several hundred pages. Most importantly the solar topics on changes to net metering and ‘insane’ demand charges were removed from the final version. The power of the grassroots continues to show in these policy debates.
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Yann
The hardware race. It’s no secret that pricing for hardware keeps coming down. String and central inverters are now into the single digit pennies per watt which made entry into the market for microinverters that much harder. That pricing is coming down as well now and market share going up. Microinverters are coming in a timely situation because storage will play a much bigger role going forward, module level data will be helpful with time of use rate design and value is starting to outweigh price.
Freemium utility markets. After spending nearly $10 million on an attempt to stop solar in Florida, FPL (the largest monopoly in the State) is getting an additional $800 million to put into ratebase on which they will get a double digit guaranteed return. On the positive side, customer bills will be going up an average of 13% which makes solar more attractive.
Baseload gets support from above. New York went first, now Illinois, to keep nuclear power plants open. Many States before these gave special early cost recovery for nuclear power plants that were in development, and of course the biggest loan guarantees went to nuclear power plants. Utilities have found support from legislators to work together to make these plants more profitable, or at least break even. Someone should run a side by side analysis of solar+storage and nuclear incentives and let me know the results.
Off the grid but on the balance sheet. Not really but I am really happy to see the for profit social impact solar companies doing well. Companies like SunFunder have been able to put together the channels to deploy capital into hard to reach areas. Many times the challenge isn’t in the product or the need for it but the distribution network. Breaking through, at scale, drives economic growth much bigger than just solar.
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Yann
Unqualified facilities? The avoided cost contracts under PURPA for qualifying facilities have been a large part of the solar pipeline. It was just in the past few years that solar could be financed with the low prices offered by these PURPA contracts, only because of the 15 year terms is it even possible. There are some open lawsuits by FLS Energy and Vote Solar in front of FERC on the recent attempts by utilities to shorten the contract terms. With a few open seats at FERC, you could expect some push by utilities to have the shorter contracts approved, putting at risk the pipeline.
Guaranteed loan guarantee office. One of solar’s favorite topics is the loan guarantee program because as an industry we are tied to it, even though it has been a minor part of the overall capital that has flowed to the sector. As much as Trump may dislike Solyndra, the program is a big winner for taxpayers and only legislation can close the office. Hats off to the former directors of the office that worked hard to make the program a success, both are quoted in the article.
Islands go to storage. We all saw the advanced microgrid project in American Samoa but now to a smaller project on a bigger island. Hawaii changed the net metering program to push homeowners to add storage in a self supply program. In a slow start, with no applications as of 6 months ago, hundreds have applied since. If this program gets fine-tuned, expect storage developers to get excited about the prospects to expand it to the continental US.
In god we trust, all others bring data. When it comes changing rate structure, the national association for regulators says that changes to rate structure must be deliberate and data driven. What experts have been saying for sometime, rate design may be an overstated necessity. Net metering has been an unbalanced but fair mechanism to ensure solar customers receive the benefit that they provide to other consumers. If you disagree, bring data.
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Have a great day!
Yann