Solar still has quite some learning to do when it comes to playing insider baseball. I actually think that we have taken a few steps back in the past year in this regard as we feel the need to ‘grow up’. Solar has won a lot of battles over the past few years primarily because we have been fighting with politicians that care about their image. In Florida things are different. We are in the middle of a nasty ballot fight. The ballot amendment is an anti-solar amendment masqueraded as pro-solar which barely passed the approval of the Supreme Court. However, after $20million+++ spent by the utilities to potentially tie the hands of the regulators. Net metering could well end as we know it after some wrangling at the PSC. But here is the interesting story of the day. One of the participants in the hoodwinking of the public went on a panel and told the insider’s story. A case of political jiu-jitsu as he referred to it and giving the utilities exactly what they want. Learn more about the lessons from Amendment 1 in a special edition #SolarChat this Thursday at 1pm Eastern Time where I will be joined on a panel to discuss these issues and more.

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Have a great day!
Yann

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A fact that I was unaware of and a victory lap for the Obama Administration with an exclamation point courtesy of the US Navy. In 2010, there wasn’t a single utility scale solar plant in the US. Utility scale is defined as over 100MW. In 2011, the loan guarantee program (yes, the Solyndra office) helped launch 5 projects with $4.6billion in loans. Keeping in mind that the loan guarantee program will end up bringing a profit to the taxpayers, today there are over 45 privately financed projects over 100MW and growing. The US Navy this week announced that it was buying through the output from the 150MW Mesquite 3 PV plant for 14 bases across California. Led by Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Dennis McGinn, who was the former President of ACORE.

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Have a great day!
Yann

An interesting study about the ‘duck curve’ in California is out over the weekend from consulting firm ScottMadden. The point that intrigued me was the impact on the duck curve came from utility scale solar and not distributed resources. The data that creates this conclusion is the difference between the system load and net load. The duck curve is clearly visible in the net load but the system load is far more in line with the total load. More analysis should be done on this but if there continue to be more reports to this effect, solar may have additional information to use during net metering debates.

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Have a great day!
Yann