This is your SolarWakeup for May 20th, 2019
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for May 17th, 2019
Weekend! Enjoy your weekend. If this email was forwarded to you please subscribe.
8 Million Jobs. 10 Years. Read the full Inslee plan to create 8 million clean energy jobs in 10 years.
Goldman Finds Their Solar Groove. Big deals are falling to Goldman Sachs. DG portfolio with SunPower, structured deal with South Jersey Industries and now the super sized CCA deal in CA.
A Note Worth Reading. Solar’s Tor Valenza is out with an open letter to fossil fuel workers. I like the idea of speaking to the worker instead of about them.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for May 16th, 2019
Fire Liability Established. Cal Fire has made the expected, official. PG&E equipment caused the deadly and tragic Camp Fires last year. The bankruptcy filing and much of the regulatory and legislative chess that brings us to today. PG&E shareholders need the indemnification and ratepayers need a monopoly that has access to a credit rating to contract for 20 plus years. You can not expect to build the utility of the future without the ability to backstop the most risky contracts. Legislators will have their hands full this summer. Again, what is the ask in the legislative process for the solar industry?
Fighting For Energy Demand. Engie, which not too long ago was a traditional coal owning IPP, now owns no fossil power plant and has quietly built one of the largest behind the meter energy savings companies. In a podcast you will hear next week, I talk with Engie Storage CCO about their work to monetize capacity. Yesterday, Engie NA acquired Genbright to match up with the Engie Storage business and get into DER monetization. Interesting moves for the French giant.
Looking for Potential Ratebase? Nevada passed a pilot bill that will allow schools to move to electric buses by letting the utility pay up to 75% of the cost. This subsidy is coming from existing charges and will not yield additional rate base. It would be interesting to see if utilities pursue this avenue for rate base. I can foresee quite the gold mine in this channel.
Sounds Good, False Premise. I’ll be blunt. The Bloomberg headline is crap. First of all, the ITC was extended in a deal to lift the oil embargo and Paul Ryan approved it in the House. Democrats never wanted to let the ITC die and definitely not with the bulk of the years focused on trade wars and a ridiculous 201 case that lost almost two years of momentum. We also didn’t have the IPCC report warning us that we need to get to 100% renewable energy ASAP. Bloomberg knows this and should report that facts. Oil and gas get the best subsidy of all, tax credits that can be invested in with active income. And those credits don’t expire.
If You Look At It Closely. David Roberts from Vox gives you his secret for passing climate legislation. You have to scroll all the way down to get to it.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for May 15th, 2019
The ITC Talking Points. While the Solar Summit is going on in Arizona, the talk about the future of solar is coming back to the ITC. Across the board the response is that the ITC should be extended but we will survive if the ITC declines by the 4%. The industry is coming together on the need for the extension, which is a positive step in the right direction. More on this to come soon but I do want you to be more optimistic than 10-15% for the ITC extension.
Ignoring Solar and Storage. Virginia utility Dominion has ignored solar and storage for their planning process. This has spectators including large energy customers up in arms about the short sightedness for the solar purpose of trying to build more natural gas power. But if they were watching Indiana, even there the regulators have said no to new gas power.
Race In Oil Majors. The headline says it all. While Shell has been quite busy, as have the European IPPs, some shareholders are BP are wondering what the leadership is thinking. Part of the strategy is unknown to those of us outside of the boardroom but surely some analysis is going to the displacement of fuel based transportation and how to make up the customer erosion from those that go to electric vehicles. BP is likely to make some plays including the generation of the fuel that will fuel their customers’ future transportation. They’ve got the cash and have been here before.
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Yann
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