This is your SolarWakeup for October 23rd, 2018
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Solar Roofs Are Better. I came across this video on Twitter showing the damage at the Tyndall Air Force Base housing community. After the drone pans across the worst damage there is a row of homes that have solar installed. The surprising images show roofs completely removed on the non-solar portions while the shingles are virtually intact on the solar areas. Not reading too much into this except to say that when solar is installed properly into the rafters with the right rail spans, they will withstand tremendous winds even when installed right near the ocean.
Facebook Must Do Better. It is good for solar that Facebook is using more of it, in this case adding a 100MW solar farm to its data center in New Mexico. Through its power and influence, Facebook was able to convince PNM to build the solar farm and sell it the clean solar energy through a special deal approved by regulators. The real way to drive change would be to require the utility to make the same available to local homeowners and businesses that don’t have the buying power and regulatory influence. What’s the advantage of Facebook being solar powered when the folks posting on the platform are doing so with fossil fuels.
NJ Market Worries. More sentiments of worry coming from the market in New Jersey. With the BPU docket open to create a new SREC program and the SREC program coming to an end, the market participants want to make sure the transition happens smoothly to avoid a Massachusetts situation. The market is correct to worry because these legislative changes take time and often they take longer than expected. The ups and downs of the solar market rules are sometimes the biggest obstacle to our market and it is important to be educated on the process.
Almost Sold Out. SolarWakeup Live! is almost sold out. With the regulatory changes and potential challenges, everyone active in the market is looking to get the upper hand or at least know what the competition does. Our interviews with the BPU President, SEIA CEO and power market traders will make sure you are up to speed. Head to SolarWakeuplive.com and get your registration today.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for October 22nd, 2018
Presented by PV Pros. PV Pros provides nationwide technical services for investors and asset managers. We manage your technical needs while you focus on the financial aspects of development, acquisition, and ownership. Our team of professionals offer technical due diligence, inspections and testing, subject matter experts for disputes, preventative maintenance, repairs, and monitoring across the United States.
Insider Access, PSC Importance. Arizona is going through a big fight around the 50% RPS ballot initiative. Surprising to me, but not to dinosaur thinking, APS (the Arizona utility) is strongly opposed to the proposition. What it has been doing, now documented by internal emails, is using the regulatory body (ACC) to push out their talking points. One former regulator called is “regulatory capture” but I call it the status quo. In States where the utility regulator is elected, the only party that cares to invest in those campaign is the utility the body has to regulate. If you want to be a regulator in Arizona, the easiest way to the office was to align yourself and make yourself available to the government affairs teams. This is dangerous and bad for consumers. As an aside, I do find APS’s position on the RPS to be corporate negligence. A rebuild of the grid and change of generation in 10 years offers in incredible opportunity to rate base investments and charges to all consumers while greening the grid.
Learning Lesson. Here is the counterpoint to the ‘regulatory capture’ above. You lose 100% of the battles you stay out of and regulators will care 0% of all the arguments you never make to them. Moreover, regulators will never know your issue if you don’t spend telling them the talking points. They will surely ignore you and often won’t respond, but you need to keep them reading your message. Much of this is based on my personal experience writing this newsletter. I may not always respond to your emails but I almost always read them or see the headline. Some PR agencies send me press releases with little result but some PR experts know the audience, tell me the message and attach the link to the article. But most of all, you’d be surprised at how many companies, startups and advocates never reach out at all.
Electric Transportation. I am fascinated by the traction that electric vehicles are getting, more specifically those vehicles in fleets. UPS and FedEx always jump to the top of the last mile list. Walmart and JB Hunt are the long distance challenge. Mass transit and school buses are the local routes. There will be hundreds of billions in transaction value and integration challenges but nonetheless this is really exciting to think about.
How Solar Bills Become Law. Part 2 of my discussion with Brad Klein of ELPC centers around how the Illinois solar policy came to life. Through the needs of the utility which wanted to get subsidies for ailing nuclear plants arised the opportunity for the solar and environmental advocacy groups to coalesce and make an ask. Get the details by listening to the unedited interview here and join us for more of this type of conversation in a few weeks in New Jersey.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for October 19th, 2018
Late newsletter today, thanks to the inflight wireless. Great to see so many of you last night!
Presented By Conti Solar. Conti Solar, a national EPC, O&M, and energy storage company. Our attention to detail, flawless execution and collaborative culture has enabled us to successfully develop and install over 500 MW of solar projects since our early initiatives in 2008. We leverage established partnerships with solar developers, IPPs, utilities, off-takers, suppliers and landowners to streamline project development, design, construction and operations; drive down project costs and create value across all project stakeholders. Majority-owned by Ares EIF with a minority position retained by the Conti Group, Conti Solar is well positioned with a diversified network of industry experts and the financial resources to be a trusted, long-term partner. Learn more at www.contisolar.com.
Recapping Illinois. Enjoy this episode of SolarWakeup Podcast with Brad Klein from ELPC, the environmental law and policy center. Brad and I spoke in Chicago about the policies that are starting to grow the Illinois solar market. ELPC and some solar representatives worked for years to advance energy policy in Illinois, one of the most political State capitols in the Country. This is a detailed discussion of what happened behind the scenes and how the policy became a bill. Check out the podcast here or find it by searching for SolarWakeup on your favorite podcast app.
Will Promises Made Be Kept. Part of how the Illinois solar policy was passed sits in the promises that were made during the legislative process. Many times, policy relies on promises from the industry to individual legislators instead of writing more constraint into the language of the bill. That is definitely true in Illinois and solar promised to include union labor and low income families/job seekers in the market. If this does not happen for the benefit of shortterm gain, expect pushback and missing allies next time the policy needs to be updated.
New Jersey Concerns. Here is a flashback to MA policy implementation for you and highlighting why SolarWakeup Live! is a crucial event for you to attend. NJ opened the docket for the SREC replacement program this week and people are concerned. Their primary concern today is that there is likely to be a gap of time where the market certainty is gone while a new program is put in place, just like we saw with SMART in 2018. Losing a year in a market this important hurts solar companies in a really big way and will cause layoffs and closures. If you attended SolarWakeup Live! in Boston last year, you would have heard the information from a State Senator and the Director of the SMART program. Both were hesitant about where solar could go in 2018, and attendees told me in person afterwards that they would take things with great caution. In Jersey City, expect my conversations with folks in the know and the NJ BPU President to cover how the process will play out. You may now get the information about the result at the show but you will be educated about the process and the timing. And being right at the wrong time is bad in solar.
Lowering Rooftop Solar Costs. This is your reminder that rooftop solar can still lower costs in a big way starting with getting the cost of capital closer to that of mortgages. Solar is still 10% or more higher than the mortgage on your home when you take a solar loan. Second, the permit costs and speed represent close to $1/watt in cost that should be on track to getting absorbed by better regulatory policies. Some smart folks are working on it but we need more people to raise their hands to implement this.
Vote Solar DC. Last night, 150+ solar pros got together in DC to celebrate the amazing year that Vote Solar had. Imagine if this advocacy organization led by the amazing Adam Browning had another $10 or $100million in the bank. Our market would skyrocket. If you know someone that supports solar and wants to support this great cause financially in a big way, this is the way to do it. Have a great weekend!
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for October 18th, 2018
Presented by Aten Solar. Your single source in adding value to your supply chain and procurement. Aten Solar is your go-to source for the best closeout pricing on new and surplus modules for your project needs.
Saudi Energy Story. Most speakers at the upcoming Saudi Future Investment Initiative conference have pulled out due to the disappearance of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Two speakers have notably not pulled out and they both have an energy connection including solar. EDF CEO, Jean-Bernard Levy, and Siemens CEO, Joe Kaeser, have not withdrawn from the event according to Axios/CNN. EDF has significant presence in the US solar market and while this is far upstream from the local business unit, this could pose questions for the local teams that they will have no good way of answering.
Who Stopped Coal. No question that coal has declined over the past few years and the war on coal waged by Obama is the political talking point. At the same time, Trump appears to be taking credit for the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions while also looking to bring back coal. The reality is neither Obama or Trump had anything to do with coal. Solar may also not have had much to do with it. Fracked natural gas dropped the price of the commodity 10 years ago and the replacement of coal plants expanded the gas portfolio in a massive way.
Lessons Learned, No Comparison. JEA, the Jacksonville utility that is often rumored to be considering an acquisition by NextEra, is signing new solar agreements. Part of the reporting appears to show a learning lesson from the utility operator that it will not put itself at risk as it did with the Vogtle nuclear plant. First, I doubt that JEA is coming out of pocket for the solar farms. Second, I am sure that the utility is only obligated to purchase the energy produced by the plant. I.e. it looks like every other PPA signed in the US by a utility. This is just a PR stunt to put solar on the same playing field with the ratepayer waste that is Vogtle.
DTE Playing Old School. DTE Energy filed a change to the net metering to remove the retail rate credit and exchange it for the wholesale rate. That’s the 2012 net metering fight and I’m surprised that DTE is playing that game 3 weeks before a Gubernatorial election that is pretty close. I hope that the folks at DTE realize the error in their strategy and come to the conclusion that net metering is not a threat and it helps defray millions in costs saving consumers plenty of rate increases.
DC. Vote Solar. Tonight. See you there! Raising a glass for a great cause.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for October 17th, 2018
Presented by PV Pros. PV Pros provides nationwide technical services for investors and asset managers. We manage your technical needs while you focus on the financial aspects of development, acquisition, and ownership. Our team of professionals offer technical due diligence, inspections and testing, subject matter experts for disputes, preventative maintenance, repairs, and monitoring across the United States.
Clean Energy Voter’s Guide. Two takeaways from the AEE guide to clean energy policies in the upcoming election. The first, obvious and sad is that the republican party candidates still feel like clean energy is bad politics for their donors. Two, it does appear that access to renewable energy is an issue that both sides are agreeing on. Especially in Florida, this is a topic that I first discovered in my interview with State Sentator Jeff Brandes.
States Matter. In case it isn’t obvious, State policy is disproportionally important when it comes to energy policy due to the State by State regulatory oversight. The politics of this get interesting because energy and climate change has become an issue in Congressional races even though those representatives don’t have much influence at the State. That’s why we, as a solar industry, need to do more to solarize the education of the electoral funnel. A county commissioner should know that voting solar is good for the race for State House and the votes in the House are good for the Senate and so forth. The opposite is also true, voting against solar should feel a campaign to stop the politician from moving up the ranks.
Bailing Out On Bail Out. It seems that the Trump administration is bailing out on the nuclear and coal bailout. Frank has the complete story but the note from PJM that coal and nuclear generation could shut down without issue must have played a role in the decision. It’s a good decision.
Rubio Digs Deeper. More on the interview from Sunday, Senator Rubio, whom I first met when he was the Speaker of the Florida House, said that moving to “all solar panels and did all that stuff, which is not realistic.” The message now is that climate change is too big to deal with and the assumption is that it would cost too much money and destroy the economy. Those are the talking points we need to educate the party with.
Pass On Gas. Vote Solar’s Adam Browning highlights the technical case for a future without natural gas in order to keep the planet from warming too much. This tweet storm courtesy of Jonathan Gaventa of E3G.
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This is your SolarWakeup for October 16th, 2018
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Solar And Taxes. SEIA is updating its popular tax guide. If one thing is for sure, its that solar investments will require a knowledge of the tax benefits associated with it. The more solar grows the more people get to invest in the medium so this resource becomes more widely read across the market. Just look at the impact the market has had in New York, with NYSERDA’s CEO, Alicia Barton saying: “Hot off the presses, the 2018 NY Clean Energy Industry Report is a good news reality check we need. Headline: Bold climate action feeds new jobs and economic growth. NY added 5,600 new clean energy jobs last year alone. Check out the full report! @NYGovCuomo#Rev4NY”
Lynn Jurich On Leadership. As the CEO of Sunrun, Lynn Jurich has plenty on her plate and she said down with Inc. to pass along some knowledge. One of the things that has separated Sunrun in my opinion is the value it places on policy. Others have dabbled and smaller companies find it hard to make a real impact. There are few events that I attend where an Sunrunner is not in attendance. Engie has picked up their regulatory presence as well which is always helpful to legislative outreach.
Helpful Tax Equity Info. The solar lendscape outlines the players of the capital stack most often found in solar project investments. Take a look at the 2nd edition of the lendscape showing you the 28 most prolific tax equity investors. Some folks that are applying to capital markets jobs will sound a whole lot smarter now and maybe navigate the annual Rancho Bernardo circus a bit easier.
Millennials See Solar Future. It doesn’t really matter what Vice said about solar, millennials saw the headline on Vox and are now all in on solar. Just kidding, we already had 100% of young people on our side. Combined with some of the internet ready content like this one from the Years Project, shortens the political argument to a tangible bite size.
Survey et al. Last chance to be included in the SolarWakeup Sentiment Survey. Please make sure to come to DC on Thursday for Vote Solar Equinox DC, because at the very least I want to make sure they keep me on the host committee for next year!
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for October 15th, 2018
Climate Change Shift. Climate change isn’t a topic that is too exciting to write about because it has been politicized as a topic. While I don’t understand how anyone can ignore it, I understand why political parties have taken the sides that they have. This week there was a shift however, IPCC started off with a dire warning and the President amplified it by not saying very much about it. At the same time, Hurricane Matthew ravaged the Florida panhandle. Matthew was originally expected to be a Tropical Storm but grew to a category 4 in the same waters that strengthened Hurricane Katrina. I see a society today that no longer wants to debate climate change, but maybe discuss what can be done about it. Spinning it to be a problem that is too big is bad, last year The Guardian wrote about the 100 companies that cause 70% of the global emissions. That type of viewpoint downplays the value of a 10kW home solar system or changing a single LED lightbulb. Both of this things are incredibly important and valuable to the energy economy.
17 F-22s. According to Lara Seligman of Foreign Policy, as many as 17 F-22 fighter jets may have been damaged or destroyed at Tyndall AFB in Florida. Each F-22 costs north of $300million and a single storm may have reduced the US inventory of F-22s by almost 10% at a cost of $5billion in addition to the cost of national security. This is a single line item in the cost of climate change, global warming and changing environmental landscapes. I did reach out to Coronal Energy, which operates a solar farm at Eglin AFB in Florida and they report a functioning solar farm on site with little to no damage.
Rubio Is Wrong. The IPCC report was big news on the Sunday shows and Marco Marco Rubio was asked about climate change and what he plans to do about it. “we’re going to have to do something about the impact on low-level coast areas...but I’m also not going to destroy our economy.” That is where Rubio gets it wrong because he is only hearing from the Koch side of the table. I hope that the folks at NextEra reading this make the call to Rubio to advise him on the financial benefits of solar and energy storage. Tell him where the future is for your billion dollar company, is it in coal, gas or renewables? This also shows the exact messaging we need to adapt for republican politicians. If we can’t argue the science or warnings, we need to argue the financial upside. The opportunity for bankers, lawyers, hedge fund managers and everyone else in the economy to make money saving the planet one solar panel at a time.
Orsted Joins Club. The Danish firm has been on a buying spree and taking its lessons learned across the globe. Being a clean energy major was originally coined by former Sunedison CEO, Ahmad Chatila, and GTM is bringing it back for their story on Orsted. They may be right, most of the other oil firms have dabbled but have yet to embrace the opportunity of the renewable future. It is more than a hedge on the core business units, its a full on replacement.
Coming Up. Thank you to everyone that joined me at the CALSSA dinner, it was a pleasure to see so many of you there. If you raised your hand to help raise money for the trade association that keeps the California market moving, thank you again! Next week I hope to see many of you at Vote Solar’s Equinox DC. As usual, if you spend more than $2,000 in tickets or sponsorships, you get to send me a paragraph to publish on this platform. Two weeks later, a big group of you has already registered to attend SolarWakeup Live! in Jersey City. The agenda is outstanding and the market is moving at breakneck speeds right now with new dockets starting almost every week. Solar is going to transition in NJ and if you want to learn how to make the appropriate changes, come and meet with us!
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for October 12th, 2018
We are entering the end of the year quarter and while we shoot to hit our numbers, we have to worry about what is coming up next. Based on seeing the first responses of the Solar Sentiment Survey makes me think that while you are optimistic, you need to be looking at what’s next. New Jersey is on track to replace the SREC program with something new while adding energy storage, innovating PJM markets and piloting community solar. That’s why we are heading the Jersey City next for SolarWakeup Live! the most influential event in solar. If you haven’t been to one yet, the event is a day of 1 on 1 interviews with the folks that drive the market. I do all of the interviews and get to the bottom of the issues that are important to your business. Head to SolarWakeuplive.com to get your ticket. Today only, you can get 20% off using code SWL20.
CALSSA Annual Dinner. See you there tonight! Make sure to place your bids for the auction products!
SolarEdge Buys Batteries, I Hate It. Yesterday, SolarEdge has acquired a high tech battery company called Kokam for about $88million. The premise I presume is that batteries will become as normal on a solar installation as the inverter meaning that another box will sit near the inverter with energy storage normalized into the system. That premise however creates a commodity out of the energy storage system which makes owning the battery manufacturing a bad place in my opinion. SolarEdge should have focused on acquiring a system integration and playing the commodity of the battery market to ride the cost curve down. We are in the very early stages of energy storage and I’m betting on the price declines of battery cells being very steep.
SRA > NRA. This isn’t a political post. This is a post about the funding mechanism for the NRA and the perception of the power that the NRA uses in political arenas. Everytime someone buys a gun, they join the NRA. They get a sticker and then they are on the NRA mailing list to continue supporting the association. In solar we don’t currently have a similar mechanism where every solar installation has a built in funding mechanism, until now (once you participate of course). The Solar Rights Alliance is looking to join every solar customer into an alliance and activate them during moments of advocacy across the Country. Check out the great program by seeing more about the information released in the CleanTechnica post.
NY Is In A Rush. Another $40 million from the New York State Government to spur C&I solar and storage in the State. While the money is appreciated, it would be great to see the VDER program fixed so that solar can work without the peaks and valleys created by incentive programs. VDER is too complicated today and doesn’t fully stack the value generated by generation. Moreover, the simplicity of a community solar type program could go a big way within the VDER framework. There are some signs that programs are getting more renewables in place, my friend Katie Ullman just went to work at Drift which works on the market side of greening consumers’ energy needs.
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This is your SolarWakeup for October 11th, 2018
Don’t Ignore The Argument. Op-eds from across the spectrum appear in publications that have the intention of turning the readers against solar. In politics the decision is often to shift off an issue instead of making an argument for the position. In solar the decision to shape an argument is helped by the fact that the reader has an 80% chance of being pro-solar. To be more specific, a Koch funded argument appeared in The Hill a few days ago attacking net metering. Today you have the response from Vote Solar’s Zadie Oleksiw rightly taking on the argument.
Distributed Solar Consolidation. Another acquisition yesterday on the development platform side, this time by Constellation. The East Coast based utility has purchased PFMG Solar from Spear Point Energy. The Southern California developer has been actively developing on the West Coast for many years. Interestingly side note, I signed in to a meeting at PFMG Solar, circa 2011, and as I walked in, the Constellation team was walking out. Now the name on the door will change, congrats to all involved.
Google Continues Their Plan. It’s been over a year since my conversation with then Google’s Sam Aarons who is now with Lyft. Back then the search giant had announced it had reached 100% renewable energy with two follow on goals. First, match the energy needs with renewable energy within the same geography and lastly, match the geography and the need with renewable energy at time of day. The post highlighted here shows the goal outlined a year ago and the ability to execute on it in certain locations in the near future.
Storage In Carolinas. Doesn’t look like Duke will be the driver to get to scale doing storage in the Carolinas. $500 million may sound good on a press release but over 15 years it’s borderline offensive. Energy storage will be tens of billions in scale all across the Country in a few years and one filing from a utility shows how out of tune the incumbents are with the energy market of the 21st century.
To Dos. If you haven’t done so yet, make sure to fill out the Solar Sentiment Survey for Q3. Also, check out the agenda for SolarWakeup Live! Jersey City, not only a great event to learn about the market movements but also get some deals done. All the top folks in the market will be there.
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This is your SolarWakeup for October 10th, 2018
NJ Utilities Commission. There are a lot of solar and storage topics on the docket in NJ. Recently the community solar rules for the pilot program came out. Coming up are the rules for the replacement to the SREC program and of course the studies on the energy storage implementation. That’s just on the solar front, there are topics regarding PSE&G’s proposals plus the offshore wind vision for New Jersey. This is a long way to say that the discussion with NJ BPU President Fiordaliso will be great. I look forward to getting the point of view from him about the clean energy future.
Solar Jobs Survey. The annual survey to count the solar jobs, it’s a big number, is available to be filled out. Make sure to take your time and pass it along to your human resource department so that we can get an accurate count. The link to the survey is in the post below.
Watch FERC. Montana may not be the hotbed for PURPA contracts but when it comes to FERC ruling on solar and storage with PURPA, this may be ground zero. PURPA has arguably been the best policy written decades ago with no assumption that it would help solar. Nonetheless it has been used in States across the Country to lower the cost of electricity for consumers and help utilities add a lot of solar with little friction.
SEIA Install White Paper. I see a lot of solar installations and most of them are well done. Of course that is a function of my work at Quick Mount PV but I also have seen some terrible installations that great installers have to fix for homeowners. Solar does have a small subset of ‘get rich quick’ installers. These are folks that could care less about the industry and are simply trying to cut corners and take money from homeowners. Our job as an industry is to make sure that competition elevates quality and does not race the quality to the bottom dollar. SEIA’s white paper on best practices for installations is a great start. It highlights the documentation that each party in the process should provide to the homeowner and it complements the education of homeowners and code officials. Send me more of your great pictures and solar wall of shame contestants, we need to highlight the good and bad!
Sentiment Survey. Don’t forget to take the SolarWakeup Solar Market Sentiment Survey. 30 seconds from start to finish and results will be released at solarwakeuplive.com
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Yann