This is your SolarWakeup for September 12th, 2018
SB700 Makes SB100 Possible. Don’t take it from me, when signing SB100 Governor Jerry Brown said that energy storage is crucial to the success of the goal of 100% clean energy by 2045. This sets the stage for SB700 to be the tool that the Governor backs to move forward. A 5-year plan to lower the cost of energy storage for the distributed market alongside the CAISO decisions to allow distributed assets to participate in a more meaningful way is exactly the type of leadership that California is executing on. The local solar industry is ready to take the baton and enable the market with volume and pricing declines.
Arizona Goes 3-2 For Solar. Some changes in the net metering rate, now called the net export rate, but overall the requests for more fees and anti-solar charges was denied. Vote Solar and Earthjustice have been working against the grid access charge for years and that hard work paid off. This allows the local market in Tucson to continue moving forward and add to the recent growth in the market.
The Unity In Solar. James Redford and Adam Browning bring the unity to talk about how clean energy brings Americans together in a Washington Post op-ed. This comes a week after we saw SEIA visiting the top 100 congressional offices with the top two coming from the Minority and Majority leaders’ offices. Unity also means support and that support is the political leverage that we need to use in political and regulatory outreach. I remind you that an important property tax exemption in Florida was shepherded by a State legislator that is listed as the top politician by ALEC.
Jinko Builds Out. The local paper has the permit data that shows that Jinko Solar is looking to spend $14million in addition to the interior structural buildout that has already started. It looks like Jinko is deep into their process to produce solar modules out of Jacksonville in their 270k sf warehouse.
Topics In NJ. We’ve got some great topics so far lined up in Jersey City on November 6th. What other topics do you want to hear about? The agenda and tickets can be seen here
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 11th, 2018
100 Ways To Clean. Remember September 2018 in your personal solar almanac. With SPI coming up in a few weeks, let me know what event I should attend, and the climate change action summit this week, Governor Brown is making the news. He signed SB 100 yesterday which drives California to a 100% clean energy future. Next up is SB700 which should be signed this week. Nothing in politics is done until it’s done so if you live in CA, please make sure to call the Governor to get it across the finish line. SB100 is aspirational and a counter program to a federal policy that lacks a goal. More importantly, this sends a signal beyond subsidies and regulatory policy that California is the solar market for years and decades to come.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 10th, 2018
Community Solar In NJ. Nice to see some big potential numbers associated with the 450MW community solar goal in New Jersey. Between the jobs created, local tax revenue and dollars invested, New Jersey solar is looking like it could add billions of dollars of economic benefit. With an already healthy market for solar, community solar will add more solar advocates to the roster since the benefit of solar will be available to many more people. We’ll be sure to talk about this in Jersey City in a few months.
90GWh, Let’s Talk TWh. LG Chem is increasing its 2020 output by 29% to get to 90GWh. Keep that number in your head and let’s talk about this again a year from now. 90GWh will be nothing compared to the manufacturing capacities that are coming up a few years from now, especially from China. For solar, the storage ecosystem still needs a lot of work before the market figures itself out between the spreadsheet you’re looking at and the companies like LG that are making the battery cells.
Big Win In NM. PNM had put in place a rather unsavory solar fee but it looks like that may have turned around in solar’s favor. This came at the same time as Facebook’s announcement of their new solar farms in New Mexico and reminded me of the conversation I had with a Google exec that told the story of corporations pushing for better solar access for the consumers while they pushed for their deals. Great job to the policy folks involved in this.
Big Week In CA. Everyone is watching Governor Brown this week as SB100 and SB700 sit on his desk awaiting his signature. With a global delegation of high ranking, government officials come to SF for the climate change summit, I would expect the Governor to make the announcements on these bills during a high profile event. At least that’s what I am hoping.
Are You Coming? solarwakeuplive.com Jersey City. November 6th.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 7th, 2018
Please have a great weekend and enjoy today’s solar news! If you haven’t recently, please let your friends and colleagues know about the newsletter and our events. Coming next to Jersey City on November 6th.
Powerhouse Growth! A great evening for the New Dawn, a fundraiser for solar’s most well known incubator, Powerhouse. Congrats to the team and thanks to all the sponsors for supporting the early stage companies that are a part of Powerhouse. I had a great time meeting many of you in Oakland last night and look forward to seeing many of you again at the CALSSA Annual Dinner.
Big Money In Sector. Energy Impact Partners has closed a fund to the tune of $681million. The original fund was mostly from utilities that were looking to have an investment into new energy technologies and companies. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed watching EIP grow and make their investments into the space.
Co-Op Report. Rocky Mountain Institute has a new report out that talks about the overlap of coal and renewables for cooperative utilities. This goes with the report from last week where co-ops were considering leaving their generating entities to have access to more renewables both for consumer demand as well as the price. These are interesting times for consumer led utilities and a job well done by RMI.
Murphy’s Vision. NJ’s Governor Murphy has a bold vision for solar and we’ll be talking about it on November 6th, check out the speakers and agenda at solarwakeuplive.com
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 6th, 2018
Political Solar Irony, Plus 100. An early morning press release from SEIA highlighted one of the great results of the solar industry we’ve all created. SEIA visited the representatives of the top 100 solar congressional districts which in itself is a great achievement and they did so without great pomp and circumstance. There is a great story in the top 2, the congressional district with the most solar jobs is Nancy Pelosi while the district with the most solar capacity is Kevin McCarthy. So here you have the House Majority and Minority Leaders with something as great as solar in common.
Interesting Acquisition. Centrica, the giant multi-national company with $28 billion in revenue, is buying the Bay Area installer Vista Solar. Vista Solar is well known in the local community but not beyond that give that it has installed 40MW for 160 customers over the past 10 years. Centrica does own Direct Energy which means that it could be making a play to aggregate top-tier regional commercial installers instead of making a single national acquisition.
A SC Deal In The Works. Solar advocates have reached a deal with Duke Energy in South Carolina to temporarily reinstate the net metering rules until the spring in the hopes that it will spur a long-term deal. Given where the legislative session ended, with a victory for Duke but sentiment on solar’s side, it may appear to Duke that a negotiated settlement is the best path forward.
Get Your Ticket, Early Bird. Thanks for the great support from those of you that have already bought their ticket, over 100 of you have already done so. Early bird will only go on for a few more days so get yours now. www.solarwakeuplive.com
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 5th, 2018
Reminder. Make sure to add @solarwakeup.com to your safe email list. Every now and then the email gets flagged due to the amount of emails that flow every month (it’s gotten much bigger than the original 37 recipients). If you haven’t received the email then make sure to check the safe list! While you’re at it, make sure to get your colleagues to take the leap and subscribe!
Memo To Utilities. Time to move past the net metering is a subsidy argument. Especially when reports show the value of distributed generation during congestion and high demand times. The argument should revolve around the impact that solar has on shareholder investment opportunities and the future of the grid when solar plus storage bring a ton of demand response value to the operations. All is not lost, focus the future on electric vehicles and the ability to manage the grid as a lines company.
Introducing Clearway. When NRG decided to sell NRG Renewables, which I think in retrospect is something that the NRG CEO will regret in the long run, I expected more of a household name to come after the assets. It appears now that GIP was looking at a platform to deploy capital, likely a virtually unlimited amount of LP money. GIP closed the transaction and created Clearway, quickly adding a massive SunPower portfolio to its assets. Make sure to familiarize yourself with the name.
Ohio’s Solar Potential. Ohio was on the way to being a great midwest solar market well before Illinois ever tried. But the politics of America’s swing state took the market into the gutter but it could have been great. Now a report by Repowering Ohio shows the potential for 2.2GW of renewables for Ohio and so many local jobs. It’s a great political strategy in my opinion for folks to show that renewables can work for everyone, whether you work on a roof, a factory or in an office tower.
Inside The Deals. We need more corporations to talk publicly about how they did their renewables procurement. Large companies have the internal expertise and time to figure it out, what the market really needs is large scale procurement by small and mid-sized companies that have to copy the format of those large entities. So enjoy this inside the deal article about Mars PPAs.
New Jersey Solar. Join me on November 6th and get your ticket now please! I’d appreciate the support. If you have topic recommendations, now is the time as the invitations are going out, these are 1 on 1 interviews where the audience actually gets to dig into a topic. Abby Hopper, SEIA’s CEO, will be joining us at SolarWakeup Live! Jersey City as the first announced speaker.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 4th, 2018
Welcome Back. Big news recap from this Labor Day Weekend. SolarWakeup Live! Jersey City is now live, we’ve got some great conversations on tap and as always a big focus on dealmaking. NJ has a bold solar agenda ahead and this is where you will want to be on November 6th. Get your tickets at solarwakeuplive.com as well as information on sponsorships.
Europe Moves Forward. The European version of the solar tariff was in the form of a minimum price. After several years of the counterintuitive tax, the EU is pulling the MIP. The UK took a brunt of the tax as it was the market that was the hottest during the time, but now many of the markets will be able to tackle unsubsidized solar within the global market dynamics.
Moniz Issues Approval. Since the CA Legislature sent SB100 to the Governor, much has been said about the pros and cons of the bill that would have California at zero carbon for 100% of its energy consumptions. The Governor has yet to sign the legislature but is widely to do so ahead of the Global Climate Action Summit happening in San Francisco. The former Secretary of Energy has chimed in, telling Axios’ Amy Harder that this is a ‘very big deal’.
Consumers Pay For Fire Damage. There was some sentiment that the California fires would cause the utilities to use shareholder money to pay for the damages, potentially causing a bankruptcy of an IOU. Given the system that we are in, where regulated monopolies have to take very little risk, I am not surprised that consumers will have to pay the tab. Whether it is fires in California or hurricanes in Florida, the regulated monopoly model is outdated and no longer works for consumers in my opinion. The shareholders and consumers need to be aligned in benefits of new investments and aligned with the regulations that both parties have to operate under.
Ain’t First, You’re Last. Many co-operative utilities (co-ops) are part of larger generating entities. This gives them some bulk buying power which was essential in larger power plant operations. Some of the entities have places caps on the co-ops regarding how much solar they could contract with individually which has angered many co-op boards that are run by the ratepayers. Some co-ops are now leaving the larger entities and finding their energy in the open market with a lot of renewable energy attached to it.
Thank Your Neighbor. If they have solar on their roofs, they save you a lot of money. This latest report shows how much solar saved the system within ISO-NE during a recent heat wave.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for August 31st, 2018
Be Heard On SolarWakeup Live. Now that I am fully installed in the hub of solar, the SolarWakeup Live studio is also in operation. After a short summer break, come back to check out the podcasts from this platform which cover that most interesting people in solar doing the most important work. Being on SolarWakeup Live means sitting on the orange chair and introducing your point of view on the most influential newsletter in solar. If you have a story to tell and want to join me in person, send your pitch the next time you are in the Bay Area.
SB700 Heads To Governor Brown. The Senate has approved SB700 in concurrence and it has made its way to Governor Brown. Further info on the Assembly vote, it passed 57-18 in a giant bipartisan victory. Lastly, the delay in the bill vote I mentioned yesterday was due to a floor speech being left behind and needed to be brought to the Assemblymember.
Lion Point Offers To Take CSIQ Private. Lion Point was part of the Suniva process when they tried to get into the debt stack during the original bankruptcy. The reason was likely due to the investment that Lion Point had in Canadian Solar. Now Lion Point sees the potential for more upside with Canadian Solar as a private company and has offered to take it private for $250million. That’s what some folks would consider, funding secured.
More Debt For Cheaper Cost. The team at kWh Analytics has been doing nice work over the past 5 years to get to this point. The work has been to figure out what makes better solar installations and creates less risk for capital providers. Once that information has been credibly gathered, asset owners can engage with kWh to put an insurance product on their debt placement and significantly increase the amount of debt that it can put on the project cash flows. In the latest round, kWh insured cash flows for a portfolio of 50MW in Oregon. I also had to pleasure to hosting the kWh team at the Quick Mount manufacturing facility for a tour last week, this type of connection making is the reason I moved to San Francisco so we could all be a lot closer together.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for August 30th, 2018
Two Days. Two Victories. Hot off the win on SB100, California keeps it coming with SB700 passing the Assembly. SB700 is a bill to extend the SGIP, the storage incentive, by 5 more years. This is an enormously important policy that allows storage to grow in the largest solar market and help consumers get solar with storage to offset the value they lost in the new time of use rate schedules. This isn’t just a victory for California however because when this market drives volume to residential and behind the meter storage locally, that means lower costs for everyone. This is part of the reason that even if you’re not doing business in California, you should consider joining CALSSA as a way of saying thank you. SB700 will head to the Senate for a concurrence vote before going to the Governor, no obstacles should come up however.
Policy Wins Take Hard Work. I was sitting in front of a computer when the votes were cast in favor of SB700 but behind the scenes, at the State, Capitol Bernadette Del Chiaro and her team at CALSSA were running around and whipping votes. They say you never want to watch sausage and laws being made and this was no different but we can recognize the work. About 15 minutes before the Assembly voted on SB700, the bill was skipped in the regular floor schedule. Most people in solar won’t ever know that and almost nobody knows, myself included, what happened in those 15 minutes. Two weeks ago 200+ solar professionals went to Sacramento to lobby for this bill and in the last year, hundreds of companies joined CALSSA to allow the lobbying to happen. My point is that none of this comes by accident or for free. If we want to succeed in this regulated business, we have to participate with our time and money.
What’s Next? There is another solar related bill on deck, AB893, which looks to increase the amount of renewable energy that California utilities have to source from developers. I’ll dig into that tomorrow to give you more insight on where that will go from here. I hope that this California edition gives hope to other States to follow suit. Governors Cuomo and Murphy should get the fear of missing out and urge their legislatures to make bold statements and grow solar in dramatic fashion.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for August 29th, 2018
The Big Deal, 100% For California. Let’s let this sink in. By a 2 vote margin, the 100% renewable energy future for California has passed the California Assembly. This isn’t a State saying, let’s aim for a carbon free electricity future, this is California, the 5th largest economy in the World. The economy that the world looks to for innovation and direction when all other things look like politics and rhetoric are ruining everything. Senator De Leon pushed hard for this policy last year and fell short, instead of letting it go, they went for it all once again with success. Governor Brown could sign the legislation by the end of the week just prior to the arrival of global dignitaries arrive in San Francisco for the Global Action Climate Summit. Hats off to the policy folks that worked overtime and the millions of people that pushed their legislators to get this done. Climate policy is moving in the wrong direction in many political arenas around the world and while Trump goes for all things coal, California stands up and gives us all hope! Go California and Go Solar!
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann