By Yann Brandt; I am a pragmatic person. On Tuesday night before it was called I went to bed knowing I would make up to the news that Donald Trump would become the Country's next President. I hold the office in high regard and though I differ on many policies, I will respect the office.

Jobs census needs you NOW! It’s that time of the year once again and this year it is more important than ever before. When solar goes to the Hill or a State Capitol, it touts first and foremost the number of jobs our industry has created. Fill out the census, pass it on to your friends. Click here and click the link to get the survey done!
Time for time of use. Xcel in Colorado got its settlement approval from the utility regulators. The solar grid charge is out, another victory for solar. A test of a time of use structure will be piloted in its place with some demand charges. Another 400MW of solar in various segments is also approved moving Colorado forward once again.
Tag, you’re it. A few weeks ago D.E. Shaw made the offer to take over the sponsor position for SunEdison in the Terraform projects. Now, Brookfield which owns about 12% of the company is offering to do the same but also offering to buy the shares from all the other owners for cash; i.e. Brookfield is making an offer to buy Terraform.
Regulators go distributed. The most exciting ballroom in the Country next week will be in California. NARUC, the national regulators association, is having their meeting and top of their agenda is distributed energy resources. If you go, bring your redbull and espresso.
RUN don’t walk. All the main solar players have put their earnings for the 3^rd quarter out. Sunrun went yesterday and had a better than forecasted quarter. Their sales and marketing costs are higher than the competition but that is likely due to their high end customer focus. New interconnect requests in California are trending lower so keep watching that.

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Have a great day!
Yann

 I need your help! Please get this information to your executives and HR departments. we need everyone around the Country to fill out the jobs survey. The importance cannot be understated especially now. Solar is a unifying issue in politics but we need more information to ensure the politicians are aware of the magnitude that this is reality.

My two cents. The pity party won’t be covered here much beyond today. The politics of energy are such that the President has great powers especially with a Senate and House from the same party. That being said, don’t expect solar to advance from a policy standpoint in the future. You can expect that the predictable cuts in policies will be put into effect, namely Clean Power Plan, Paris agreement and Keystone XL. Tax reform could render the tax equity markets non-existent, assuming the economy holds. But note this. Trump voters agree with Clinton voters that more solar is good. Mining jobs in Ohio won’t be coming back because Trump is in the White House because they weren’t lost because Obama was. Solar jobs aren’t growing in Ohio because Kasich did anything positive, quite the opposite, he froze the RPS. Andrew Winston said it right, follow the money. The administration will be coal and oil heavy but as long as their CEOs are billionaires, our government will always be influenced by the sector. Focus on the States, focus on your business and your people.
Buying votes and influence. While FP&L and other Florida utilities were not able to pass horrible anti-solar policy with $26 million. In Arizona the result was different for an entry fee of $3.5 million spent by APS, their picks for the regulatory body won. Imagine that, a corporation that is supposed to work for the welfare of their customers, entrusted with a monopoly, is able to spend unlimited money to campaign for the people that will regulate them.
Free markets should be free. In Nevada, voters were asked if they wanted to end the electric utility monopoly. Dubbed question 3, backed by Switch and Las Vegas Sands, voters agreed to start the process to open the market to other suppliers. The next step is another vote in 2018 to fully implement the policy. I wonder if more of this is coming, just last week the Florida Speaker of the House said, “Free markets are either free or they are not.”
A (carbon) tax too small? I-732 in Washington was a true carbon tax of $25/ton. A tax that would go to the State and used to offset other State costs. We’ve already discussed that this policy was not supported by all environmental groups which put some groups like the Environmental Council and Sierra Club on the same side as the fossil fuel interests. It failed, so there will be no carbon tax, however small and uninspiring some felt this one was.
Earnings and market coverage. SolarCity and SunPower both had earnings yesterday after market close. With all solar companies on edge from the election, the public company struggle is real. More detailed coverage to come but expect that the SolarCity quarter was good enough to get a positive vote from the shareholders on the 17^th of November and become part of Tesla.

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Have a great day!
Yann