Report: New Jersey Community Solar Program Could Spur $800 Million In Economic Benefits
By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Vote Solar released the results of its analysis of New Jersey’s planned 450 MW community solar program, in which it found the program could spur as much as $800 million in economic development. Specifically, the report says the community solar program will create: 1,778 sustained full-time jobs during construction and an additional 41 sustained full time jobs associated with operations and maintenance. $414.7 million in earnings for those employed. $797.9 million in local economic benefits for the state, excepting local tax revenues. $3.3 million from property tax revenues in the first year alone. [wds id=”3″] … Read More
New Mexico Relieves Its Solar Consumers From Unfair, Untenable Fee
By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Saying the fees were arrived at using flawed studies and without taking into account the advantages that solar customers bring to the grid, the New Mexico Public Resources Commission eliminated Rate 59, a fee previously charged only to solar customers and cost them, on average, $300 per year. The New Mexico PRC also said it would start a rulemaking proceeding to ensure that the state law concerning solar surcharges was followed in future. At issue was the charge levied by Southwestern Public Service, the state’s largest regulated utility. [wds id=”3″] As Vote Solar reported: In … Read More
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
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Yann
Duke Energy Requests Temporary Retail Net Metering Revival In South Carolina
By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Duke Energy is asking the South Carolina Public Services Commission to reinstate retail net metering until a compromise can be reached on raising the current 2% cap, an issue that has roiled the South Carolina solar industry over the past 12 months. The utility has joined a group of solar stakeholders to extend the net metering program through March 15, which they allow time for the development of long-term recommendations through the ORS-led collaborative process and for legislative consideration of any consensus recommendations, including any recommendations related to future net metering policies or programs. [wds … Read More
Private Equity Firm Raises Nearly $1 Billion For Clean Tech Investements
By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent A hundred million here, a hundred million there, and suddenly you’re talking real money. And that’s the kind of real money that Energy Impact Partners, a utility-backed investment fund, has raised to invest in clean tech. $681 million, to be exact. Bloomberg reports that Energy Impact Partners, backed by such utility giants as Southern Company and National Grid, are looking to invest the money in startups that are doing clean tech research, looking for the next big breakthrough. This is in addition to the the $200 million the fund has already invested in companies like … Read More
The Energy Show: Solar Monitoring – the Most Common Solar Problem
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The Energy Show: By Barry Cinnamon This week’s Energy Show is for solar power customers, contractors and inverter manufacturers who appreciate the need for reliable solar power systems. Surprising as it may seem, most solar monitoring systems are simply not up to the reliability standards of the panels and inverters they support. The good news is that solar monitoring problems almost never affect system performance. Monitoring failures may indicate an inverter problem, but the panels and inverters are almost always working properly. In reality, the problem is with the communications somewhere along the chain – including the inverter, inverter gateway, … Read More
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
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Yann
Pelosi, McCarthy Top Solar Representatives As SEIA Brings Its Summer Advocacy Blitz To A Close
By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent If there’s one thing Republicans and Democrats can agree on, it’s the increasing political power of solar energy. Just ask the more than 100 representatives the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) visited this summer during what it called its Summer Advocacy Blitz. And solar is a bipartisan power source. After all, the representative with the most solar jobs in her district is none other than Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. And the representative with the most actual installed solar capacity in his district is Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Those two don’t agree … Read More
C-PACE Financing Comes To Delaware, Opening New Financing Option For Commercial Clean Energy
By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing is one of the most successful mechanisms for funding clean energy improvements in commercial properties. It allows businesses and other commercial enterprises to make energy efficiency and renewable energy projects to their properties with no money up front. Instead, they pay off those investments through their property taxes. Currently 35 states have C-PACE enabling legislation, and 20 have full-blown functioning programs. What’s that? (Holds hand to ear.) I’m being told that number is now 36, after Delaware Governor John Carney signed Senate Bill 113 into law, enabling C-PACE … Read More
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.
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Yann