Senate Bill 2814 introduced during the regular session came back during the latest special session with a new amendment, House Amendment 2. This amendment had multiple objectives but the primary one is a mechanism to keep two nuclear power plants in operation. The two plants, Clinton Power and Quad Cities, were announced to be closed on June1st 2017 and 2018, respectively.
SCTY is delisted. It is official, SolarCity shareholders are now owners of Tesla shares. The stock has stopped trading and will be delisted as the merger is complete. Congratulations to all involved that overcame what seemed like long odds throughout the process. The official document here.
Solar communities. Community solar is clearly on the rise, but still some ways away from residential solar. NREL is out with a report outlining that community solar now works in a vast majority of States. Community solar has advantages, being able to overcome contract length and credit issues and at the same time giving flexibility for people that sell their home or are renters.
Downward module pressure. Canadian Solar is the latest solar company to announce its issues with pricing expectations over the next year. While large, the market is also softening in some areas and is also well supplied by module manufacturing capacity. Canadian is no stranger to getting into other channels like development. Expect all module manufacturers to look for ways to get into the US market even with the pressures.
The Enel Yieldco. It is known but not often advertised the Enel has a drop-down vehicle with GE. Now GE is acquiring the 1% of the JV that will make it a 50/50 venture which already holds 1.2GW of various power assets, namely solar, wind, and hydro. No other financial terms were released.
NC market woes. Duke Energy, which controls the vast majority of the State’s energy supply, wants some changes to the rules. These requests have been made in the past but this time they are in the shadows of the longest list of interconnection requests the company has ever had. Rules for those interconnection requests also appear to be changing on the fly. A large player in the State, FLS which was recently acquired by Cypress Creek, is currently suing a Montana Utility through FERC for changing PURPA rules. Watch this trend.
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Yann
The deal is done. Tesla has officially acquired SolarCity. After months of speculation, Wall Street questions and doubts that this day would come, it is done. SolarCity will stop trading and the ticker symbol SCTY is gone, delisted from the exchange.
Tesla’s roofing dreams. We all saw the presentation about Tesla’s solar shingles and the solar industry answered with great skepticism. The roofing industry doesn’t seem too eager to weigh in quite yet. DOW recently pulled the plug on its solar shingle probably writing down a good amount of investment. Musk makes a new goal public; the solar tile will be cheaper than a non-solar roof even without the energy production. Unless he is comparing to French slate material, he is clearly mistaken because it is doubtful that there is a technical potential for solar to be cheaper than asphalt shingles.
Taking the Terraforms. Brookfield and Appaloosa have upped their pressure to take over Terraform Power and potentially Terraform Global. They proposed to acquire the shares at $13/share which is near their current value. If TERP enters into the agreement before December 6th, they yieldco will not have to make another creditor payment.
FERC goes for storage. A new proposed rulemaking process was started by FERC that focuses on storage and demand response. Public comment is now open but the goal is to allow storage to participate in wholesale energy markets. Another market for storage is positive, now is time to create more wholesale markets.
Illinois goes Christmas shopping. Apparently, legislators call 500 page bills a Christmas list because there is something for everyone. One legislator called this bill a $24billion rate hike because it goes to save the nuclear power plants similar to New York. The solar industry is united behind the opposition for this bill because of the indiscriminate demand charges placed on solar customer’s bills.
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Yann