This is your SolarWakeup for September 24, 2019
Best Headline Of The Year. American farmers are pivoting to solar power to pay the bills.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 23, 2019
Welcome to SPI 2019. Let’s set some realistic expectations this week. Unlike prior years the column will be limited this week. Why? I have a day job and I am going to try and take a step back throughout the week to digest what is happening. If there are important news or events, I’ll make note of them.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 20th, 2019
Renewable Prime Day. Within 10 years, Amazon will be getting 100% of its energy from renewable sources. I’ll predict right now that this will happen in 5 or less years. By 2040, Amazon expects to be carbon neutral which is a bold goal given the massive number of miles the retailers moves every day.
The Scale Expands. Rivian is the EV startup you’ve seen driving around with their electric SUV. Earlier this year they got an investment from Amazon and now you know why. Amazon will be ordering 100,000 electric vans that should start delivering in 2021 which means Rivian needs to learn to manufacture at Tesla scale tomorrow. This also makes the Amazon electrification effort more interesting.
1.6 GW. Google entered into massive solar and wind contracts, continuing the trend for corporates into renewable procurement.
What’s Next. If Google and Amazon want to have a network effect for renewables, they should double down on renewable policy. The billionaires have the ability to see and sustain a massive policy campaign to get to 100RE for everyone including their employees, vendor’s employees and customers. Today is Climate Strike day and is the right time for the Beyond Coal campaign to be duplicated in solar.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 19th, 2019
No column today, sorry. Take joy in the fact that Trump is about to learn the name, Mary Nichols. Mary is California’s Air Resources Board Chair and not one you want to mess with. Those who know, know.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 18th, 2019
Come On Bill Gates. Bill Gates wants to shift the ITC and PTC to new energy solutions, a fair trade since solar and wind no longer need it I guess. I have an idea, why don’t we start with removing the incentives from oil and gas? Or charge flared off-gas a methane tax that is used to fund new technology development? O&G have permanent tax credits that are exempt from active/passive rules and not based on percentages while solar has dropped more than 90% in cost causing the ITC to get more than 10x the output it once paid for. Gates seems to continue the trend that solar and wind are not worth fighting for even though they are the key to fighting against climate change. I wish he would see that his words matter and choose them more carefully.
Big Pipeline. The era of braggawatts is strong, the pipeline has reached an all-time high.
Go Blue Jays. I always hoped to be the one that developed a solar deal with Johns Hopkins but I am still glad they did a deal.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 17th, 2019
Are You Carbon Neutral? Aside working in solar, what do you do to reduce or eliminate your carbon footprint? I thought about this question a lot yesterday and realized that the little I do, is not enough. Tell me your biggest tricks and habits you use to lower your footprint and how you calculate it.
Would You? Ikea is a retailer that does solar in a big way. On every roof and as an investment. Here’s a question for you and them, if they calculated the carbon cost of each product and imposed their own carbon tax, would you pay for it? This is the thought behind my carbon adjusted margin analysis. More to come.
Tesla’s C&I Offer. On the heels of the residential solar rental, Tesla is releasing their offer for C& I sites. Fixing commercial solar is my Achilles heel and this is about as close to what I would have liked to do as possible. The offer is either cash or ‘subscription’ (PPA) with the PPA only available in PGE and SDG& E-service areas. Three standard sizes are offered with 240kW on the large end, definitely skewing to the lower size spectrum than you would expect from C&I installers.
What It Solves. It’s cheap, 240kW for under $1.50 or 9.9cents per kWh with caveats for a standard install. That’s lower than most installers would propose. Let’s focus on the PPA though. First, no term, you can cancel anytime with a removal fee. Second, it doesn’t appear to have credit criteria (thank you!). Last and most importantly, it makes it super simple, building owners are consistently frustrated with their solar process.
Obvious Issues. I’d like to see the contracts to understand what they are really doing. There is an obvious concern for tax equity on the PPA, what happens if the cancellation happens in the first 5 years? What is the company going to do with the modules that get returned, clearly this will happen as customers look to upgrade some time down the road but within 10 years?
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 16th, 2019
More Software Acquisitions. Congrats to the great team at Energy Toolbase for successfully getting acquired. On Friday afternoon, news broke that Pason Power was taking majority ownership of ETB to build out the next era of the software. I first met John a few years ago when someone told me there was a software startup in Florida working on solar and I didn’t quite believe it so I drove up to his office and recorded one of my first podcasts. They’ve come a long way and look forward to seeing what they do next!
PURPA Deal In Michigan. There’s been a pipeline of solar brewing in Michigan and last week the MPSC struck a deal with developers and Consumers Energy to open up that funnel. Starting in 2020 and through 2024, 584MW of solar will be connected. We’re a long way from the vision that former Governor Granholm had for Michigan as the solar leader in America but this is a step in the right direction.
No Deal In Louisiana. I can’t say that I am surprised that solar lost this fight and net metering is going to have to pay for lost revenues to the utilities. Maybe they will be paying EV owners for the extra energy they buy? This perpetuates the nonsense that southern States believe in free markets because this is just the monopoly man jumping into a gold-filled pool.
Wrong Headline. Bloomberg (is all about the paywall now) has an in-depth look at what caused the boom in the renewables markets and their answer is (wrong) capitalism. Before I get into my reasons for not buying it, let me say that I understand why they say it. Capitalism, i.e. the ability to make a profit from investing, plays a big role in the growth off the renewables market, mainly the ability for investors to develop, buy and hold long term physical assets with creditworthy revenue streams for decades. The flaw is that it wasn’t capitalism that created the opportunity or the growth. It was policy and regulators, i.e. politics. If it weren’t for Germany’s feed-in tariffs, those that followed and the RPS mandates in the US, capitalists would never have found the opportunities. This market is rooted in politics and it’s sad to see so many shirks the importance of the policies in their businesses.
Wind ITC Math Doesn’t Compute. I didn’t write this on Friday but I hated the headline about the Wind market being worried about the solar ITC being extended. It’s sad and flawed (if true). If solar ITC goes away, much like net metering going away, then the policies that drive the wind market will go away as well. This is a rising tides market, solar needs wind and wind needs solar. And both need the ITC/PTC, just ask our cousin, energy storage.
Infrastructure Argument. Look for more talk today about oil infrastructure as Trump releases strategic oil reserves after the oil attack in Saudi Arabia. I also would like to hear some talk about the diversity of power generation including distributed generation as a defensive strategy.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 13th, 2019
Have a great weekend! Hats off to Powerhouse for a great fundraising event last night!
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 12th, 2019
Quick rundown on this sunny Thursday!
Big Money. Goldman Sachs has put together the capital needed to deploy $4billion levered, unclear if that includes tax equity which would increase it to over $6billion.
Sunny Deliciousness. If you don’t know Wawa then ignore this post and review your life choices. The rest of you, you can stop wondering how awesome it would be to have solar on those huge tilted roofs at Wawa.
Covering The Lead. NOAA got into the middle of an Alabamian political storm but the real story is that when climate science gets covered, solar tax credits cover the headline.
Speaking Of ITC. Following up on the oped by SEIA CEO, Abby Hopper, in GTM yesterday, SEIA exec Sean Gallagher is giving you some behind the scenes views on the politics of climate change. When it comes to the reality of the ITC having a chance to pass it comes down to Congressional leaders seeing the ITC as a path to fight climate change.
Module Money. The all-black module manufacturer, Solaria, raised $40million to double capacity. I’m impressed with the company being able to do that but given the team, Solaria has put together, I am not surprised.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 11th, 2019
LA Solar Wins. After some hiccups with union representatives, the Eland solar project developed by 8minute Solar is moving forward to the City Council. There was an unsigned labor agreement with the IBEW union in Kern County which has now been rectified. The giant solar plus storage project will deliver dispatchable (time to add this word to spell checks) solar energy to LADWP. Consider this the new norm!
Rivian’s Cash Haul. Building a car company is hard work and expensive too. Especially if the CEO isn’t a marketing engine that never needs to spend a dime on marketing. Rivian has raised another $350million to make the future come to reality and has been driving the prototype vehicles across the Americas. I really hope these cars hit the road and are as awesome as they appear to be!
Recapping Big News. In case you missed it, and because it’s exciting to repeat, the company I work for Quick Mount PV has been acquired. For the past 13 years, being founded in 2006, Quick Mount PV has been leading the charge to make the best mounts possible for installers and selling them through the distribution channel. Through the acquisition by Esdec, alongside the acquisitions of Ironridge and EcoFasten, we are forming the largest racking and mounting group of companies in the US. Why? As a group, each company operating independently, we can provide you better products, better service and more certainty in your supply chain. This also highlights the maturity of the marketplace, where a warranty has to mean something and the products you sell to homeowners making an investment need to match up with the promises you make.
Think Progress. I’ve been meaning to comment about the end of the Think Progress website. Having accessed it almost daily to look for interesting solar related news, I am saddened to see the site go dormant. It highlights a broader issue in solar. The collective ‘we’ need to create an ecosystem where solar publications are able to operate sustainably. If they websites/publications can’t make money then they won’t cover the space. Believe me, if I was publishing UtilityWakeup instead, I’d be doing it full time and living in waterfront accommodations. Solar websites can’t run on advertising alone and that’s why we need their side projects to flourish whether those are events, research or marketing services.
Environmental Fundraising. Axios had a great article yesterday about the upside of the Trump White House for environmental organizations. Sierra Club raised $130million in 2017, up 30%. NRDC got to $178million. Makes me wonder why the solar groups can’t get fundraising off the ground to those levels. I keep dreaming about the day where Vote Solar has a $100million budget.
Tweet of the Day. Sunrun’s Lynn Jurich had a great comeback to the Forbes list of most innovative leaders given that 99 men and 1 woman made the list.
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Yann