This is your SolarWakeup for April 14th, 2020
Making Virginia Official. Governor Northam has signed the Virginia Clean Economy Act into law. The 100% clean energy by 2050 bill also accomplishes several other clean energy goals between now and 2050. Just a few years ago this would have been hard to imagine but when a few elections ushered in new leadership, Virginia’s clean tech policy advocates had the ability to see their hard work pay off. Advocates had been working on this well before the politics seemed possible and there is a lesson learned. In politics, the education and advocacy never stops even when things seem unlikely. Same is true in your state and in DC, it may seem far fetched right now to see how we move our ball forward but we need to keep trying and working it.
Negotiating Package 4. Speaking of politics, it appears that while negotiations have broken down in the Senate they have reappeared elsewhere. Speaker Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin look to be negotiating the next package. Before you get too excited, most of the public discussion are said to be around economic issues like expansion of the PPP and more stimulus. And that is where my hope is, solar has the unique opportunity to create economic growth for the oil sector and others hurt by the pandemic.
Oil’s Postcard From The Future. Over the weekend, OPEC+ announced a major cut to product at almost 10million barrels per day. The pandemic has created a bigger problem than drilling though, nobody is using oil quite like they were before. Airplanes are grounded and cars are sitting in driveways which has reduced consumption by somewhere around 25million barrels per day. The Texas oil sector still needs support and will likely be looking for that help in DC in the coming weeks. With the House set to return on May 4th, expect dealmaking to happen between now and then.
How Are You Adapting? What are you doing different now that you expect to continue well past the current work restrictions? If you have a unique process that you care to share, I’m interested to see how the rest of you are adapting to the reality that meeting face to face will not be happening for the foreseeable future. I am still hopeful that things return to somewhat normal by this summer, meaning we all get to meet again at SPI but I know that hope is not a strategy.
Solar Stimulus $0 Year 1 PPA. My friends over at Sustainable Capital Finance are offering an extremely beneficial financing option for businesses & non-profits looking to adopt solar. Their Solar Stimulus PPA offers a $0 solar energy spend for the first year of operation, helping organizations redirect those dollars towards payroll and other critical operating expenses. If you are a solar installer or developer whose potential clients have voiced concerns over COVID-19 in relation to adopting solar, this is a great solution for you.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for April 13th, 2020
Learning The Lessons of 2008. I’ve heard from some of you and see it online from many. Now is not the time to ask for things like the ITC extension or the grant. Especially when the headlines from the weekend read that democrats are holding up additional aid for PPP. The truth is that good policy doesn’t come around until the politics allow for it and right now is when the politics work. Solar doesn’t just want policies like automatic permitting, we need them to rebound but other than now, getting that done would be almost impossible. A year from now, all we would hear is that we shouldn’t pick winners and losers or the need for balanced budgets. The politics allow for solar to see a future where every roof in America can have it and every new power plant is solar with storage, let’s give it our shot.
Pollution Is A Cost. A new Harvard study found that the death rate was higher in counties where long term exposure to pollution was more prevalent. This isn’t the first correlation between quality of life being worse off when pollution is a part of it. So why haven’t regulators been able to include societal benefits when utilities file for new power plants? Well, politics tend to prevail when money talks, even when lives are at stake. Like I said last week, we now have exact data on the cost of pollution, regulators should use it.
WFH vs Traffic vs ICE. There is an interesting problem developing all over the country. With everyone working from home and no longer commuting, you see the impact it has on pollution. While they are at home, energy consumption in commercial buildings is also down. So now the technical problem is what if working from home isn’t temporary. If companies are getting used to the remote nature of workers how does that impact the solar industry. Overlay the natural progression to electric vehicles, you now have the reverse charging that we were anticipating which was a commuter charging their EV at their work. Less cars on the road means less traffic which means less pollution. More people working from home means energy consumption trends change. The working technical papers for utilities probably wasn’t anticipating this, let’s see what they and the solar industry come up with.
New Survey Next Week. We are taking the week off from the tracking survey. There are too many open ends in the market and we had the last four weeks to summarize. It will come back next week. A free copy of the summary is available to any residential solar installer, just hit reply and ask for it.
Solar Stimulus $0 Year 1 PPA. My friends over at Sustainable Capital Finance are offering an extremely beneficial financing option for businesses & non-profits looking to adopt solar. Their Solar Stimulus PPA offers a $0 solar energy spend for the first year of operation, helping organizations redirect those dollars towards payroll and other critical operating expenses. If you are a solar installer or developer whose potential clients have voiced concerns over COVID-19 in relation to adopting solar, this is a great solution for you.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for April 10th, 2020
Sales Still Soft. The results from this week’s SolarWakeup tracking survey show a slight improvement in sales week to week, still down 39% from the pre-corona Q1 average. The variance from contractor to contractor was larger than prior weeks which makes me think that some contractors are doing better in the new sales environment and adapting software solutions to make homeowners comfortable enough to still go solar.
Zoom And Other. Venture capital has been most interested in solar by investing through proposal tools. When asked, the survey responses show that this market is still wide open and completely fragmented. More interestingly, many of you said that you use a custom or mixture of solutions. In this survey, no platform got more than 8% of the responses. Maybe you want to give me more insight on this, you can do so by clicking reply and just typing the name of the tool you use to create your solar proposal. On the positive side, 50% of you said you closed a sale via video conference last week!
Getting Approved. Necessity is the mother of invention and social distancing is the mother of all necessity. San Luis Obispo County has enabled their permit process to let micro inverter solar installations get an instant permit. It is possible, the proof is here and SolarAPP can’t come fast enough. At the same time, the capable team at CALSSA is working (from home) with building departments across California to make this more mainstream. If you have a building department contact, look out for the info coming from NREL. From the survey, 70% of the building departments postponed inspections and 37% have closed. This is going to slow down the process of moving the backlog and possible slowing payment installers receive from loan providers or homeowners. Improving from last week, 52% are now accepting no-touch permitting and 22% are doing remote inspections.
You Want (Need) PPP. 46% of the survey responses say that they have delayed payments to suppliers, vendors or service providers. More concerning is that 78% are worried about the working capital position which is healthy given the unknown but also alarming. This means you should be talking to your partners about what it’s going to take to weather the storm at least until PPP funds are actually in bank accounts across the Country. It’s best to be upfront about the concerns you have and people will work with each other. The solar industry didn’t cause this issue and will help see it through together.
A Congressional Showdown. The political negotiations of stimulus package 4 have begun. Now is the time to make your voice heard, work with your local trade groups, write a letter with some other community solar companies and tell your story to your member. There’s a good chance that ability to take the ITC will be depressed this year because of the slowdown so a grant could be helpful to the industry to help it rebuild and regain the momentum that we had.
Have a great weekend!
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for April 9th, 2020
Time Is Tight. Here are some things you can do in the absence of my commentary today. Not sure how you are faring in these insane times, but it’s starting to make my head spin. Times are tough so I appreciate your donation of time, knowledge and resources.
Educate On Permits. SolarAPP is a project to get building departments to adopt instant and no-touch permitting for solar. Sign up for their mailing list to keep up to speed and get involved. Link
Join CALSSA. State policy is important and with events canceled across the board, your membership is more important than ever. Link
Donate To Vote Solar. Want to make sure that we don’t lose track of regulatory policies across the Country? Give $1 to Vote Solar. Link
Contact Your Member. Write a note to your representatives to let them know how your business and job in solar is doing. Ask (nicely) for things that could help like PPP, ITC extension, ITC grant or federal solar permitting policies. Link
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for April 8th, 2020
Publish Your Posts. I’d like to highlight your thoughts, changes and questions that you are writing about on your company pages. Times like these I find myself wondering what I’m missing and that’s why the survey has been a great tool to get information from the industry and merge it with my thoughts. If you posted any blogs, send them over and I’ll use them in the rundown.
Sales Decline May Have Bottomed. Keyword is may, if you look at the results from last week’s survey and I compare to the ongoing results of this week’s survey, it looks cautiously optimistic. If you are a residential installer, please add your responses so that we can gather this data point with more precision.
Working Capital Concerns Appear. More than 70% of this week’s responses are saying they are concerned about their working capital position. Concern isn’t the same thing as actually having issues but it measures the sentiment across the market. That being said, the overall ecosystem appears to be willing to work through these issues caused by outside circumstances.
Conf Call. For those of you that joined yesterday, I hope you were able to get good information from the panel discussion I held with Roth. We’ll host the next call on April 22nd. Hope you can join us.
Survey Link - Provide your input now, survey closes at noon today.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for April 7th, 2020
Paycheck Protection. Let’s do a quick rundown today, lots going on. By now most in solar have applied for the paycheck protection program, the $350billion SBA loan that forgives most of the uses you need the money for. The problem is that the money hasn’t started flowing, not even close because banks are accepting applications but aren’t clear on the underwriting or funding process. As all of this happens in real-time, please let me know when you are able to get a loan funded, this will help others get through this.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for April 6th, 2020
Survey #4. The policy discussions for the next stimulus package are in full force. With the paycheck protection plan bound to be oversubscribed in the coming weeks, Congress will come back to do more. The information you provide in the SolarWakeup survey helps us tell the story of the resilient industry that we are, even in the face of adversity. All of your responses are confidential and you get to see last week’s result when you fill it out. Please participate by clicking here and share this LinkedIn post with your network.
Market Impact Conference Call. Tomorrow morning you can join me and Roth’s Philip Shen on a conference call to discuss the survey results and the depth and duration of the COVID impact on the solar industry. If you want information about the call, contact Phil at pshen@roth.com. He also publishes great analysis on some of the publicly traded solar companies, ask him to be added to his list when you email him.
A Tweet Tells The Story. Congressional leaders have soured on the idea that the next stimulus bill will include infrastructure. Yesterday, Trump gave some comments foreshadowing more support for the oil and gas industry. The oil and gas industry has been doing a good job on the public relations front, making Americans feel bad about their pending financial troubles. I know that solar tries hard to put on a brave face but we should be honest and out front about the cash flow issues solar is facing during this pandemic affecting us all. Americans can’t empathize with issues they are not aware of.
An Impossible Experiment. We can actually see the positive coming out as many of us sit on our front porch working from home. The air is cleaner everywhere in the world, sights are being seen for the first time in centuries. Snowy mountaintops in India, clean water across the world and emissions from cars are down almost entirely. The political discussion was whether humans impact emissions and we could have theorized about the impact cars have but taking them off the road for weeks/months was never feasible. Now we have the results and it is undeniable that we have to get to electric cars without delay. We can’t make EVs the fun project between GM and Honda, they have to be charged up to take each other on. Trillions of revenues are on the line and the future of the world population.
Fill out the survey, share it far and wide.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for April 3rd, 2020
The Survey Results. The pandemic is starting to hit the solar industry, big increases in furloughs and terminations as well as delayed payables in the overall ecosystem. Thanks again for participating in the survey and passing the newsletter on to your colleagues. If anyone has success getting approved for the SBA paycheck protection program, please let me know.
New Sales Down. For the 3rd week in a row, new sales last week dropped 50% when compared to the average sales volume from Q1 pre-COVID. This is a further reduction from the 33% drop we saw in last week’s survey.
Building Departments Adjusting. While over 75% of you said that building departments had closed or delayed inspections, 42% are now seeing no-touch permitting and FaceTime inspections. Please share this data with your local trade group as they aggregate this information.
Adjusting Expenses. Some (43%) have had to lay off or furlough employees and more (36%) are seeing potential for more in April or May. This could be stemmed with the SBA payroll protection loan that is supposed to launch today (but likely isn’t)
Your Question. I asked what question you wanted to see in next week’s survey and over 50% of you asked about the ITC extension. In my conversation with you, it is clear that you want to see it in the next stimulus bill and want to know what strategy is being used to push this. You and I can do our part by contacting our member of Congress. If an actual call to action crosses my desk, I assure you that I will pass it on. I was saddened to see the ITC left out of package 3 and it worries me to see the administration trying to bail out the oil industry without further legislation but I shall keep my optimism alive.
Have a great weekend! Stay healthy!
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for April 2nd, 2020
Call Me Commish. Yesterday was the best April fools joke of my life. No, I will not be a PSC commissioner and yes I will continue to do this newsletter, you are stuck with me! I woke up in a panic, I live in California which means that a lot of you get this newsletter at 4am my time. Your texts and hundreds of emails made me realize that for some reason you thought I would be nominated by the Governor AND be able to get confirmed. I would actually love to be a PSC commissioner at some point but that time is not now. The panic came from the realization that maybe I overstepped the time we are living in and taking advantage of days blending together, but I got to see what an exit would look like and thank you! So next year, know that an April fools is coming again but this will be hard to top.
If You Need. If you used my announcement and by chance forwarded it to your boss or colleagues without fact checking, I’m sorry. If you want me to call your boss and explain just let me know! If you wrote analysis on the opportunity of solar because I’m on the PSC, please let me read it. I want to see how far in the pocket of solar you all think I am!
Back To Business. Things are really bad in the oil markets especially in Texas. Tens of thousands of oil jobs are at risk of being lost by the double black swan events coming together in corona and the Saudi/Russia collision. WTI traded below $20/barrel yesterday and global consumption is down bigly. With oil CEOs coming to the White House I would expect the White House to go big on a bailout. Look at CNBC’s Jim Cramer calling this a major economic risk.
What This Means For Solar. Trump tweeted about the impending infrastructure week and the current low interest rates. He’s also right that infrastructure spending would be vital to keep business flowing across the Country. Chamath Palihapatiya was on Kara Swisher’s Recode Decode and said it best, “right now, everyone gets everything they want.” From a political standpoint, I think oil execs should hug solar to stop the positioning that the Senate GOP is taking that package 4 isn’t required and ‘green’ topics shouldn’t be included. Oil doesn’t care if solar gets something or everything, they are in dire need of help and don’t care about the quo to their quid.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for April 1st, 2020
Market Data. Yesterday I joined Roth capital to talk about the survey results, which you can see for yourself by going here after you participate. I am glad to see that this platform has been helpful to others in making business decisions, moving forward with their business plans and getting through the pandemic. We will do this again in a few weeks, with the intention to track the depth and duration of the slowdown as governments continue to work through their local plans. Please pass the survey along your network and it is important to participate each week, I promise we will stop doing this when we are back to normal. Link
SolarAPP Is Rolling. I caught up with Birchy from OpenSolar (ex Sungevity CEO), who’s been championing SolarAPP for the past 2 years, as the solution to reduce solar costs in the US. Following up from my editorial on Friday that we need SolarAPP faster given that many solar jobs are on hold or stalled, Birchy shared some positive news. Work started last week to accelerate the deployment of SolarAPP as a response to COVID driven restrictions in permit approvals. The SolarAPP consortium is going to expand the pilot to many more communities than planned, to provide a solution for AHJs to approve solar system permits without office based processing. If systems are installed by accredited installers using certified systems and installing to code, they would be eligible for automated permitting, subject to spot-checking and quality assurance by the AHJ. In the near-term emails and video call efforts are still necessary to keep projects moving, but the automated permitting tool will be released in beta as a solution for AHJs to grant permits of solar systems in the next few months - and this will be the new nationwide 'best-practice’ process created by NREL in consultation with the code and safety organizations representing key stakeholders. NREL has just launched the new solarAPP web page and I encourage you to sign up to stay in touch for this key initiative. You can stay informed about progress of this project, and register for an up-coming webinar that will discuss how communities can get involved in testing. Solar installers should encourage their AHJs to attend the webinar as well. This could be a real solution that can address a critical COVID response needed over the coming months, but also be a path to solving the bigger cost reductions achieved in all other international markets where residential solar installs at under $1.50/W largely due to non-existent soft costs.
No-Touch In The Meantime. I am excited and wish that SolarAPP would happen overnight but in the meantime let us help our State associations with information and outreach to AHJs. If you are in California, you can check out the CALSSA AHJ database on their current status, update it if you find different information and educate your teams on this. Then you should participate in and ask your building department contacts to join in a webinar on how building departments can enable no-touch permitting and remote inspections.
Tracking Current Permits. It is also time to see this week’s update on permit issuance for solar from across the Country. While the SolarWakeup survey tracks sentiment, sales and business strategy, our friends at Ohm Analytics are doing amazing work (temporarily for free) on showing you permits in major metros. Here’s my takeaway, building departments are either dipping to zero or close to it but then bouncing back, which tells me that they are creating a new process for processing the backlog. I’ll be watching to see what stays at zero and how close to the former average it bounces back to.
Payroll Protection. In case you were looking for it, SBA released the draft application for the payroll protection program.
Last Word. And now some bittersweet news. Next week will be the last week for the SolarWakeup daily newsletter, at least in this format. After 8 years, I have finally been tapped for a work assignment that doesn’t allow me to continue on. It is with great pleasure that I want to tell you that I’ve been nominated to join the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC) as its newest commissioner. More on this soon and I hope you will join me in thanking the community we’ve built together over almost 3,000 newsletters.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann