This is your SolarWakeup for May 14th, 2019
The News You Need. It’s been a long time coming but it used to be hard to find solar news every day. These days, there are one of a few dozen presidential candidates talking about solar and climate change policy. There are also market changes happening in States across the Country. What used to be niche is now a newsletter that covers the mainstream topic of the day.
415PPM. For the first time in human history we’ve reached 415PPM. Solar has never been more relevant or important than right now.
Hiring In Coal Country. A serious question, how does the solar industry make a coordinated effort to grow and hire in coal country? What would it take and if you are hiring affected ex-coal workers, how do we get the word out?
PG&E Hostage Play. PG&E is spending $50million per month in bankruptcy and has a laundry list of legal troubles. Like any good utility, all trouble needs to be passed on to consumers and PG&E is taking ratepayers hostage until it gets what it wants, indemnity. It is also taking the entire Bay Area economy hostage at the same time. If it gets windy this summer in PG&E is saying they may shut off the power for millions of consumers as a ‘safety’ mechanism. Imagine the power getting shut off for 2-3 days in the San Francisco area? Complete nonsense and legislators need to act before the utility goes full Hans Gruber on us.
Case For Inslee? Interesting view from Vox’s Ezra Klein on the case for Jay Inslee.
Money For Renewables. Next time you worry about the cost of the ITC and policies that have a “cost”, point out this report from the IMF. Some will say that much of the dollar amount is from externalities and if they do, just let them know that solar has a side effect too, job creation.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for May 13th, 2019
Biden’s Climate Plan. Late last week it was released that the upcoming Biden climate plan had a side of compromise in it. This was not received kindly by party activists nor the Vice President’s energy advisor who refuted the claim. There is still a political concern that purple state voters, in States like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, want moderate climate action, something they doesn’t scare their economic outlook. Biden, a political pragmatist, is looking to win the election before he governs and this leak was to test the blowback in my opinion.
Is This Mainstream? Climate policy plans are playing ping pong across presidential campaigns and it’s a central topic voters are judging their choices on how bold they want to be. Climate policy is also still considered to be expensive which is what generates pause amongst the voters and politicians. Clean air, clean water, clean energy and jobs are do well with voters but giving up on the other side, the economic side, is still a media narrative that scares them.
Keeping Your Credentials. The climate advisor for Biden, Heather Zichal, is a former aide to the Obama White House on Climate Change. She has also argued that the Reuters report is wrong. When Michael left the White House in 2013 she joined the board of Cheniere, which obviously doesn’t do much to help solve climate change or pollution in general. While profitable, this causes Biden to lose serious credibility with industry professionals that are interested in understanding who is giving him the kind of advise that will lead to the action many of us want. Biden has never been know to be moved by energy issues so I am particularly interested on the advisors around him.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for May 10th, 2019
Going Big On Resi Solar. 2 million solar roofs and counting which will double over the next 4 years. It took forever to get here and the curve has us shooting straight up. That’s something like 75million mounts which I know each reader here is using exclusively Quick Mount for! Enjoy your weekend!
SunPower Continues Trend. More DG solar for SunPower which is now leading the market with their 415W module. I see good things in the company future once the focus is isolated on the distributed market segments.
Tariffs. In case you are interested, here is the Federal Register posting on the tariffs that went live this morning at midnight. Let’s hope that the negotiators find a deal today in DC.
Racking and Mounting Update. With module power increasing and volumes driving up the manufacturing levels for mounting supply, residential racking for shingle roofs can sometimes be sub 8 cents per watt. If you haven’t priced your supply chain lately, you should now. If you need some help with quotes, hit reply and let me know!
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for May 9th, 2019
Palmetto State Sunrise. All the parties seem to have come to an agreement. The Senate passed the bill and it goes to the House for reconciliation and then the Governor. This is expected to happen and open the market.
Rating For California CCAs. Peninsula Clean Energy got the first credit rating for a CCA. This is big news and signals a positive future for non-IOU utilities in the State. More to come.
Sunrun Earnings Out. Typical Q1 drop in deployments but a strong quarter by Sunrun. It’s still expensive to sell solar to 242,000 homeowners but lower pricing isn’t going to stop the market share growth according to CEO Lynn Jurich. My take is that residential solar is growing rapidly and everyone should focus on what they are strongest at and we all win.
20% Go 100%. 1 in 5 Americans live in a State that has a 100% RPS. That’s a big number.
More Climate Disaster Ironies. The UN extinction report came out and buried in the flurry of Congressional news. Sad state of the environment for sure which creates a more stark background for Pompeo’s comments on the ice cap melt.
Walmart Adds More Solar. 40MW of solar on 46 locations were signed by the retailer with solar firm, C2 Energy Capital. Projects will be in 5 States and signals an ongoing commitment to add solar by corporations for the expressed purpose of saving money.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for May 8th, 2019
Cooperative Gets Regulated. Cooperative and municipal utilities are largely unregulated even within regulated utility markets. They make the rules in line with their members and member companies instead of in line with the regulator body. Colorado is looking to make a change based on the fact that Sri-State is losing many members and may not be in a position to do the best thing for consumers if left unchecked.
Bizarre Comment Of The Day. Pompeo says that melting ice caps open new opportunities for trade. Which is like saying that the view of the stars is better when your house burns down. Next….
IPP Is A Hard Business. I spent a good part of my day looking at the first quarter results for the two micro inverter companies, partly to learn about how they are placing themselves strategically within the residential supply chain and partly with jealousy. SolarEdge and Enphase had strong quarters as distributors build back stock, adding cash to their balance sheets and making great margins. On the other hand, I’m not so sure that being a public IPP is such a great idea. To do IPP right, you have to buy the right assets which means sometimes it’s more profitable to say no to a deal. Someone once said that SunEdison can’t go wrong buying any deal even if it negative IRR because their stock price increase every time they buy. That didn’t work out and my hope is that IPPs stay under the radar and just own great long term assets in private.
Doing More To Do It Right. Big news for Quick Mount and a note about bringing more quality to homeowners that go solar. You may be surprised to hear that most solar lenders have an approved list for modules and inverters but not for racking and mounting. It opens up the change and very real likelihood that a leak will happen within 5 years of the system install. That’s why I’m happy to see Sunnova add mounting to their approved vendor list and ensure that homeowners are getting quality systems from their installers. My hope and daily work includes asking other lenders to do the same so that homeowners are protected. I would also like to see more from the trade associations on the topic of waterproofing for solar installations, it’s an important issue that we can no longer ignore.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for May 7th, 2019
Tariff Details Coming Today. Lighthizer announced yesterday that the new tariff list will go on the federal register later this morning and will go into effect first thing on Friday. Once the register is populated then the analysis can start whether this has an impact on the solar industry. Don’t discount the impact this has on domestic supply chains and the local costs.
Big Quarter At SolarEdge. The public inverter company had a massive quarter and growing both year over year and quarter over quarter. This is the benefit of being a global company so you can flatten the solar coaster’s seasonality. New revenues from non-inverter business units is starting to impact the company as well.
Senator Wyden Tax Fix. Senator Wyden, who was on the wrong side of the 201 trade fight, is on the right side of clean energy tax incentives. His plan calls for the rebalancing of tax incentives for energy generators and includes PTC and ITC aspects. For solar it calls for the permanent 30% ITC and pays for the policy with the removal of the fossil fuel subsidies.
Climate Change On Campus. Part of the election discussion around climate change is a generational one. Axios goes onto the college campus to talk about the need for climate change policy with the next generation.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for May 6th, 2019
More Tariff Trouble. My day was going fine, enjoying a nice weekend in Florida visiting my new nephew, when Trump comes across the Twitter and lets America know that he’s raising tariffs on more imported goods. This is potentially a big deal for solar if it actually goes into effect and gets worse. Remember, the negotiations were close to complete according to reports when he sent the tweet. Now China is thinking about calling off the talks altogether. We all know he likely sent the tweet with a wink, playing foreign policy chicken with American jobs. The reality is that American factories rely on robust supply chains that include on and offshore suppliers. Less offshore supply increases the price on domestic supply and therefore slows factory operations. Let’s hope this doesn’t drag solar down more, this may be tariff number 5 or 6 on our industry.
Inslee Goes 100. A big release by the Governor Inslee presidential campaign. His plan is called 100% Clean Energy For America and it knocks the roof off every State 100% RPS plan that’s been passed. I want you to read the highlights yourself by clicking here, but here is a teaser. No more coal pollution by 2030, 100% clean electricity by 2035 and a focus on front line and low income Americans impacted by climate change. This is the type of plan that we’ve been talking about in back rooms that we said we needed. We wanted the campaign that elevated climate change to the Presidential debate stage and make it an issue. We are there now and we need to grab the opportunity by the horns and turn it into action.
Tesla’s Vision To Standardize Solar. There is some out of the box thinking coming out of Tesla these days. Most of us that live solar every day would argue that it’s very difficult to standardize solar given that every house is different. Tesla seems to be saying that that want homeowners to buy solar in prepackaged quantities so that the logistics of the trucks and costs are repetitive in nature. You can go through the sales cycle on their website which gets millions of hits per month and may be a great sales funnel if they can figure out how to get those visitors to transact.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for May 3rd, 2019
Spruce Comes Back. After having been taken over by their senior lender and stopping the loan business, Spruce is back in the market with a bit of a twist. Spruce will be buying solar portfolios based on the knowledge that the company has in operating the assets. I wouldn’t be surprised if this leads to also managing portfolios for institutional capital when the solar market grows to beyond 1million new homes going solar per year.
South Carolina Dealmaking. Legislators and the utility are closer to a deal that would uncap the net metering rule for a period of 2 years. The ‘cost’ is that PURPA projects that need contracts over 10 years would have to create some sort of guarantee that the rate stays below the avoided cost. Hard to read the fine print on that and think that the contract isn’t really a contract but I will speak to some developers and try to understand what it means. Good news for residential though and I’m sure homeowners will be making sure their roof warranty stay intact by asking for Quick Mount.
A Climate Emergency. The UK parliament has agreed on Brexit, just not from the EU but instead from carbon emissions. The parliament wants the UK to be net-zero by 2050 and urged the Committee on Climate Change to adopt a resolution stating that fact.
Down To $5.3Billion. The oil companies have had a tough quarter, Shell’s profits were down year over year and only achieved $5.3billion for the quarter. The others were down as well and the total profits barely surpassed $10billion for the quarter in total. Hard to imagine that the consolidation between solar/EVs/storage and the oil majors doesn’t continue into the next decade.
Presented By RayTray. RayTray is a solar wire management system. Designed for commercial ballasted flat or standing seam roof projects. It was created by commercial solar installers for commercial installers. It is a great, cost-effective solution for managing home runs, quicker and easier to install than conduit. RayTray is listed to conform to UL Standard 870. It is highly customizable with no grounding needed and no roof attachment. It can hold up to thirty 10 gauge wires per tray. RayTray also simplifies O&M, giving quick access to wires, all at a cost of less than a penny per watt.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for May 2nd, 2019
More updates tomorrow as I am on the road and out of time!
Presented By RayTray. RayTray is a solar wire management system. Designed for commercial ballasted flat or standing seam roof projects. It was created by commercial solar installers for commercial installers. It is a great, cost-effective solution for managing home runs, quicker and easier to install than conduit. RayTray is listed to conform to UL Standard 870. It is highly customizable with no grounding needed and no roof attachment. It can hold up to thirty 10 gage wires per tray. RayTray also simplifies O&M, giving quick access to wires, all at a cost of less than a penny per watt.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for May 1st, 2019
This Is Mainstream. Imagine if I told you last year, let alone 5 years ago, that a national poll would rank climate change as the most important issue for primary voters. That happened in the latest CNN poll, where 96% of respondents said it was very important. Climate change beat out healthcare and gun control in this poll. See the detail below and you can see the entire poll here.
The Counter Point. If climate change were the top issue, why is Governor Jay Inslee, who only talks about climate change, only polling at 1%? Is it purely a name ID issue and that he needs more people to hear him say the words?
The Counter Counter Point. The day before the poll went out, which was released prior to today on embargo (which means the press got it earlier), Beto O’Rourke released his $5trillion climate plan. While this is one poll, candidates are taking it seriously enough to lead with the issue.
Who’s Advising The Teams? I don’t know anyone in solar embedded with the teams and that worries me. There should be industry insight going into the campaigns and at the very least data being fed to the campaigns so they know our talking points. An example would be when President Obama used the Solar Market Insight data in the State of the Union speech.
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Yann