This is your SolarWakeup for January 8th, 2019
Newsom Takes Over, Prediction. The 5th largest economy in the world now has a new Governor, California is now led by Gavin Newsom. Under the leadership of his predecessor, Jerry Brown, CA signed SB100 with the goal to get to 100% carbon free electricity in the next 30 years. Newsom has campaigned on an aggressive continuation to fight climate change, showing his agenda in a series of tweets yesterday. I’m excited to see how the agenda plays out and the support he gets from the legislature. Starting this year, Newsom will have to take a position on the future of PG&E given the horrible wild fires likely caused by power lines. I predict that PG&E will have to pay a steep price if there is a bailout by the ratepayers for a second year in a row. This is the political leverage that Newsom and the legislature could use to push a giant climate agenda.
GOP On The Sidelines. SEIA solar champion, Carlos Curbelo, participated in Meet The Press’s climate change episode and retired GOP congressman, Ryan Costello, is back in DC advocating for a carbon tax. This comes the week that SEIA government relations pro, Brandon Audap, moved to Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions to continue the push for “commonsense solutions for reliable energy while preserving the environment.” The shift could show that there is a future for bipartisan legislation that passes Congress to move clean energy markets forward.
GreenBiz Outlooks. I enjoy reading prediction pieces in the beginning of the year because you get different perspectives. GreenBiz publishes some of the most relevant stories that are deep on topic and the editor’s view of 2019 does show some things that make you ponder the future. From nuclear energy to non-lithium energy storage, the upcoming year may provide some interesting ideas. I do hope that more folks, especially tech billionaires hoping to reverse climate change, would put some focus on the development that the solar market has been able to achieve.
Hear Some Changes. GTM’s Stephen Lacey announced yesterday that he would be pursuing a new venture, a podcast production company called Post Script. Stephen will continue to produce and host The Energy Gang and The Interchange but will leave his post as Editor in Chief. All the best in the new venture and it will be great to hear more clean energy thoughts coming out of this platform.
Help SolarWakeup. SolarWakeup has been running for 6 and a half years, longer than I ever expected and I appreciate you giving me a few weeks off. The newsletter goes out over 125,000 times per month and is a great platform to gain visibility for your business. If you provide a service to the solar industry, I guarantee that your potential customers are readers. Consider advertising here and on the SolarWakeup Live! podcast for your business so that the newsletter keeps coming.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for January 7th, 2019
Welcome To 2019. By a big margin, we are in the best solar market in history. With low costs, high demand and expanding markets around the Country, your business will thrive this year if you run your business correctly. I appreciate the time that you take to educate yourself and engage in discussion on the issues with me and others on the SolarWakeup platform. If there are topics you want covered and see in the news, please send them to yann@solarwakeup.com. You can also send tips and company updates to me.
Recapping 2018. In case you missed it, check out my annual recap of the solar news in 2018 with some predictions dropped in. From the legislative victories in California and the 201 tariffs that kicked off the year, you’ll want to make sure you catch the news. It’s available here if you accidentally deleted it. This is a good moment to get your friends and co-workers to subscribe to the most read newsletter in solar with a single click
Stories Shaping 2019. Starting where we left off at the end of the year, Meet The Press spent an entire episode talking about climate change from a political perspective while 60 Minutes covered the Green New Deal just last night. I said it a month ago, the political dynamics and the public opinion on our industry has shifted from next big thing to why don’t we have more of it.
Big 2019 Prediction. The ITC will be made permanent at 30% this year. Instead of stepping down from the 30% mark, it will be negotiated as a permanent rate. The politics around this work for everyone, including republicans that can take a climate victory with a mechanism they support, the wind and solar tax credits will be used as a negotiated item during some spending bill this year. While I don’t think this will happen, I hope that our trade associations will argue for the solar ITC to be eligible on active income as well for all investors.
Storage Play For Solar. Storage will become part of solar and stand next to the inverters. Solar with 4 hours of storage in Hawaii is now in single digit cents per kWh following on the sub 5 cents per kWh on the mainland. With BNEF revising the storage cost estimates to below $200/kWh, the market will need to get ready for the future of sub $100 and $50/kWh for the battery packs in the next 10 years.
Get Aggressive But Be Better. This is your year, regardless of the segment you focus on. Execute and get aggressive on the growth that is ahead for you. You have years of stability ahead for the business and you can think in that timeframe. Keep that future in mind when you make decisions on the type of work you provide your customers today. As an industry we have to do better for our customers that are making a 25year+ commitment to solar, whether it be the homeowner that doesn’t know about a roof leak 5 years from now or the corporation that expects a certain level of production from the solar farm they are buying energy from.
Housekeeping. SolarWakeup has been running for 6 and a half years, longer than I ever expected and I appreciate you giving me a few weeks off. The newsletter goes out over 125,000 times per month and is a great platform to gain visibility for your business. If you provide a service to the solar industry, I guarantee that your potential customers are readers. Consider advertising here and on the SolarWakeup Live! podcast for your business so that the newsletter keeps coming.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for December 21st, 2018
Have a great weekend and Merry Christmas! We’ll be off Monday and Tuesday for the holiday.
What’s Happening DC. Check out the Q&A with Mike Healy about DC’s 100% RPS.
Top To Bottom Green New Deal. The push and pull of the climate/clean energy legislation in Congress is quite interesting. While the green new deal is gaining traction with co-sponsors, it still poses no danger of becoming law with McConnell in charge of the Senate. It does appear to have caused the Select Committee on Climate Change to become the Select Committee on Clean Energy and Global Warming and some are pushing for the Committee to gain access to subpoena power as well.
The New Jersey Details. New Jersey will transition off the decade old SREC program in the near future, with some expecting the cap to be hit in the first quarter of 2019. This has prompted some in the industry to ask for help to alleviate a potential cliff. I asked the person responsible to avert this problem, the President of the NJ BPU, what he thought about his and what could be done. Listen to my interview with Joseph Fiordaliso, the President of the BPU.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for December 20th, 2018
Happy Birthday. My daughter turns 7 today, where does the time go?
Catch Up. On the SolarWakeup Live! Podcast series. Subscribe and rate (please)
Senator Jeff Flake. Revenue neutral carbon tax from the Arizona GOP Senator.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for December 19th, 2018
Holiday Schedule. Starting tomorrow I will be winding down for the holidays. You will still receive a newsletter most days as long as there is coverage but the column will be shortened or non-existent. I want to thank you for an amazing 2018, the support through my move to San Francisco and another year of engagement. The SolarWakeup Live! events have taken off and we are all advancing solar together through great conversations. As always I appreciate the relationships we have going and I’m always grateful to connect with you in person.
Would You Like This Apple? There is a place for several tech giants to take a leadership position in solar. Google went into it with Sunroof but other than that, the initiatives have remained focused on the supply of electricity. This article asks an interesting question of what it would look like if Apple took on the hard work of clean tech hardware by acquiring Tesla. I find the combination interesting and realistic.
Resi Solar Power. 2018 has been a great year for residential solar and this story about Freedom Forever is a sign of the sector. More importantly, companies that focused on making customers happy with high quality installs were able to grow drastically. On the other hand, bad installs led to bad reviews and declining sales. I’m excited to be part of this segment right now, moving beyond incentives and subsidies to grow the part of solar that consumers love to take part of.
Jim Rogers. Ten years ago, I had the pleasure of talking about solar to a group of Governors with Duke CEO, Jim Rogers. We weren’t quite on the same page on what solar could provide but he was respectful of this arrogant 25 year old’s comments. We gave our presentations and shared a few words afterwards and that was my interaction with Rogers. My condolences to Jim’s family and I leave you with these words, said after his retirement from Duke to EnergBiz in 2014. “I'd want the solar on the rooftop. I'd want to run that. I'd want the ability to deploy new technologies that lead to productivity gains to the use of electricity in homes and businesses. I would go after the monopoly that I see weakened over the last 25 years. My goal would be to take customers away from utilities as fast as I could, because I think they're vulnerable. Regulations will not be changed fast enough to protect them. The business model will not be changed fast enough.”
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for December 18th, 2018
Selling The Green New Deal. A recent poll about he Green New Deal revealed that almost nobody knows about the bill or what is in it. When the surveyor provided some of the details, 100% renewable energy in 10 years, clean energy job training and money for energy efficiency and renewable energy, the respondent came out in favor of the Green New Deal. This included 75% of moderate republicans and 57% of conservative members of the GOP. This is one step off from Fox News running a trailer for the inconvenient truth! The takeaway is simple, don’t sell the issue, sell the solutions. But make sure to sell it nonetheless, explain what is in it for the voter and they’ll be in favor!
All About New York. Governor Cuomo had a big day when it comes to big goals. The NY PSC rolled out the goal to reach 3GW of energy storage by 2030 (it will be higher). During the Governor’s speech on his 2019 legislative priorities, Cuomo outlined the goal to get to 100% renewable energy by 2040, 5 years before the goal set by California. This is a big goal for one of the largest energy users in the Country but more important is that the State needs to move to execution. Time for talk is over and the Governor needs to enable the execution of the development that will allow the work to start.
Offshore Wind Farming. 3 developers bid into a Department of Interior auction to lease Federal lands. The bids were for $135million PER ENTITY and they were to build offshore wind. One person that would know about this is Abby Hopper, who before joining SEIA was the Director of BOEM, the government entity in charge of the auction that enabled $405million in leasing fees to be paid for the ability to generate this electricity.
Get Your Podcast Conversations. Three new podcast recordings have been released in the past week, NJ BPU President Fiordaliso, SEIA CEO Abby Hopper, and Gabe Philips of GP Energy Management. Please share the podcast with your friends and colleagues and help spread the word about them. A lot of work goes into recording and editing them so it would be appreciated to get the listen count up. Stay tuned for more coming up, make sure to subscribe to the podcast to stay in the loop on everything SolarWakeup Live!
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for December 17th, 2018
Creating Known Unknowns. In the latest SolarWakeup Live! conversation I speak with Gabe Philips, a college classmate of mine and an experienced energy trader. In fact, he traded electricity generated from a solar farm I developed and built in the past. We hear about power markets with corporate offtake all the time and deals in PJM, ERCOT and CAISO are announced all the time. There is a lot to these transactions and that is what Gabe and I spoke about in this Live! conversation.
The Electric Fleet Mobilized. California is taking the solar home mandate and passed the similar version of this for transit buses. 25% of buses purchased in 2023 will have to be zero emissions and 100% of those purchased after 2029 will have to follow suit. This means that within about 20 years, all transit buses will be electric. I like when mandates are slower than what the market will do. Much like solar, electrification of fleets isn’t just something that users want, it also means a deployment of capital. Much like selling solar PPAs to schools, you’ll see companies like Proterra offering electric fleet as a service contracts to school districts across the Country. All of that load will have to be serviced and generation will have to be available, more solar will have to be built.
Cheeeeap Solar. Texas will be the first State to drop PPAs under 2 cents in a big way. First, because storage is harder to pencil with no capacity market and second because it’s so damn cheap to build there. Land is flat and abundant while permitting will be much simpler than other areas.
Consumers Matter. Long Island’s utility (LIPA) is taking up a similar consumer protection policy as the State oversight board. This follows many other States that have also done this. The problem with the policy isn’t that solar can’t meet it, it’s that nobody is paying attention to actually making solar companies follow the rules. I continue to be amazed at some of the junk that is put on people’s roofs and buildings just hoping that a problem 3 or 5 years from now is someone else’s mess to deal with. There are still many homes that have racking installed with no desire to meet roofing best practices or even code compliance, taking advantage of the local inspectors lack of solar knowledge. The industry must do more to protect homeowners and keep bad solar from hurting the industry.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for December 14th, 2018
Tariff Slowdown. Here’s a hot take. A slowdown doesn’t require the market to actually go down in size. The tariffs can have an impact that drags the market in the negative direction while still allowing the market to grow because solar is doing very well. On the other hand if tariffs weren’t in play, AD/CVD tariffs were gone, and the trade war wasn’t happening, solar would be growing much larger and faster. Anytime these things happen, make sure to listen to people that are actually in the market doing things. Punditry is fun and all but being a full time pundit doesn’t help you with your business. Tariffs are causing executives to have to spend time and money on changing manufacturing locations, figure out new supply chain logistics and dealing with new partners in new places. This drags the market in a direction that none of us like. On the upside, this is the first December that I don’t see a cliff on December 31st. No NEM cap, incentive pool or other regulatory barrier ahead that would hurt a big market right now and that is a positive sign for everyone.
Live! Rewind, Abby Hopper. How much is the right amount of budget for SEIA to do everything they would like to do? Abby answers this and more. Full episode here
Live! Rewind, President Fiordaliso. The New Jersey SREC cap is going to reach the goal sometime in the first quarter of 2019. What does the BPU think is the right approach as the market heads to a brick wall? Fiordaliso answers my question and makes a bold statement. The Conversation Starts Here.
SMA Job Cuts. SMA continues the corporate restructuring including 100 job cuts in Germany, 300 in foreign locations and the sale of the China business unit to the local team. The consolidation in inverters is real and I worry a bit about the market over consolidating while still sustaining massive price pressures.
Weekend. We’ll be heading to the aquarium this weekend, I hope you enjoy your weekend as well! Keep calm and solar on!
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for December 13th, 2018
Hopper On SolarWakeup Live! Abby Hopper is the CEO of SEIA and she joined me on SolarWakeup Live! to talk about the state of the solar industry. She’s been the CEO for an entire solar year, SPI to SPI, and it all started with tariffs. In this conversation we talk about where we are today, what States will take off and how SEIA negotiates for all members, regardless of the segment they operate in. We also talk about the reality of a split government in DC. Listen to the full interview here and make sure to leave a review on iTunes.
Message To Federal Regulators. Don’t miss the conversation with New Jersey’s BPU President, Joseph Fiordaliso. He has a strong message for the federal regulators and we discuss the role that PJM plays within the NJ solar market. I ask about the reality of New Jersey leaving the PJM system. Full conversation available here, hit reply to let me know your thoughts and pass it on to your colleagues.
Elon Continues Charm Offensive. I enjoy Elon on the shows, whether it is Joe Rogan or 60 minutes. He is the right amount of real while staying true to the overarching reasons for his businesses. Every CEO knows that if they fail to execute they will die, even the Walmart CEO keeps a list of the top retailers on his phone (hello Sears!). On the other hand, most CEOs would never tell millions of people that the failure would result in the company failing. 60 minutes is under fire for creative editing to release the full interview, this comes from the fact that Elon drama gets many clicks and views. I did enjoy Jay Leno’s 60 second pitch for supporting Tesla.
UPS Spends To Lead. This may be the first sponsored post that I rebroadcasting but it is interesting and notable for UPS to spend money to talk about their fleet electrification. Transportation is one of the largest sources of emissions by segment and electrifying fleets across the globe would do great things if solar and wind are there to supply the needed generation.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for December 12th, 2018
Regulator Talks Policy and Climate Change. Here is the first of the conversations from our sold out event in New Jersey with the President of the BPU, Joseph Fiordaliso. In a conversation that was expected to focus on the regulatory activity in New Jersey (They are busy, and hiring), President Fiordaliso threw me a curveball by speaking in great detail about the reasons behind the important work he is undertaking, climate change. Moreover, he provides some feedback to the folks at DOE and FERC trying to prop up coal and nuclear power plants. Listen to the entire conversation here or on your favorite podcast streaming app.
Q&A With Governor Inslee. The Governor of Washington, Jay Inslee, is proposing a 100% RPS by 2045 and sees it as a legislative priority for the next legislative session. Frank had the opportunity to get some of the most relevant questions answered about the latest initiative to go 100% renewable.
Big Day For Big Name. 8minuteenergy is one of the most well known names in solar development. From the day I started in solar, 8minute was out in California developing these unfathomably large solar projects. As the company puts together a new $200million fund with JP Morgan, I’d like to congratulate Martin Hermann for exiting from the company. His partner announced over the weekend that Martin has been bought out. When people ask me what I wish I’d done in 2006 when I entered solar, I look back at the things Martin was saying at solar conferences because he was more right than anyone else.
Opening Energy Storage. FERC is receiving the filings from grid operators about the Order 841 filed early this year. ISOs and RTOs had to file their plans to implement the order which asked for the enablement of market participation by energy storage systems. More work needs to be done but you can see how this plays out over the next few years.
Explorer, Escalade. Yes, an electric Ford Explorer would be great. Yes, I know that GM doesn’t own Ford. Yes, I got it wrong yesterday, I am sorry! I am glad to see many of you reading the column emailed me to point out my error. I would recommend GM to make an electric Escalade or Tahoe though!
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Yann