Russian Hackers: The Reason We Need A More Distributed Electrical Grid (Duh.)

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Because I need another thing to keep me up at night…. The Department of Homeland Security this week revealed that Russian hackers attacked our electrical grid last year and could have created electricity blackouts throughout the United States, thanks to our overreliance on a centralized grid. You’d think we’d have taken the hint by now. [wds id=”3″] But no. In Washington, the geniuses at the Department of Energy are still trying to figure out how to bailout economically untenable coal and nuclear plants. Cool. Newsweek reporter Jason Murdock has the terrifying details: Hackers working for … Read More →

This is your SolarWakeup for July 25th, 2018

Duke Aims At Full Monopoly. Just after taking a victory lap for no longer allowing homeowners the ability to put solar on their homes, Duke Energy in South Carolina is giving homeowners that can’t install solar on their homes the ability to join their community solar projects. In this episode of up is down, Duke hopes that solar doesn’t work for people becomes a message that gets homeowners to stop trying to put solar on their homes. Folks in South Carolina, especially solar workers, should be on the phone all day long to their local news outlets and tell the real story, your jobs are on the line. The broader question about public opinion is something that was prompted by BNEF’s Jenny Chase’s tweet. I agree that we do our work but rarely talk about climate change in our work. A
What Michigan Could Have Been. Michigan was the manufacturing leader for solar and the ecosystem of raw materials about 10 years ago. Since then, it has essentially reversed on most of the policies and now is focused on destroying net metering and replace it with something that is nowhere near net metering. Quite the opposite this new policy would result in residential and distributed solar to essentially stop. Politicians should feel a political reality for this kind of policy and those running races should use the issue to make that decision be a bad one politically.
EV Benefits Everyone In Kansas City. KCP&L is making an interesting point about electric vehicles that have a funny similarity to the solar argument. I don’t disagree with KCP&L when they say that they should be able to rate base electric vehicle charging stations because it is a good thing for everyone including the utility shareholders by growing demand. The part that I find intriguing is that solar doesn’t get the same benefit when they argue about net metering and the benefit to all, instead arguing the cost-shift which isn’t real.  
Get Active And Win More. I am bringing this back up for discussion since it is relevant with this data point. Every single solar company should be doing legislative outreach at every level, including the local City and County level. In Riverside County, the utility didn’t want to increase net metering caps even when the County passed a ordinance to do so. Now a local company is helping the company put some pressure to enable the market to grow again which all started with local outreach. Job well done in this case. Are you doing any local outreach that I can highlight?
SEIA Feedback. Nice to see the outreach from many of you about the changes made in SEIA’s C-suite. The general consensus I agree with, why now and what happened. The trade cases and tariffs didn’t happen last week and it seems like an odd time to make the moves but we have to hope that the board has a strategy in mind to meet the strategic vision. As the changes at FERC enable a potential bailout for nuclear and coal plants, maybe the concept is to drive some victory for solar so that more distributed generation can be built at the same time to help the grid stability that FERC could be looking for. I look forward to seeing what’s next for Tom Kimbis and really hope that it is in solar, his voice and advocacy has been great for a long time and hope this continues.

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Have a great day!
Yann

Isn’t That Convenient? Duke Energy Launches Community Solar After Net Metering Cap Hit

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Last week during Intersolar North America, Duke Carolinas announced it had hit its 2% net metering cap in South Carolina for residential solar installations, meaning anyone that installs after August 1 will be compensated under less generous net metering rules. And low and behold, a week later, Duke Energy opens its first community solar farm in the state. Fancy that. [wds id=”3″] I’m sure you can see my two minds fighting with themselves over here. On the one hand, I’m all about community solar. As someone whose house is not optimally oriented to have solar … Read More →

Michigan Advocates Decry Utility’s Net Metering Successor

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent DTE Energy has a love-hate relationship with renewable energy. On the one hand, they’ve pledged to be coal-free by 2040, at least in part through investments in wind and solar. On the other hand, they’ve suggested a replacement for retail net metering that has solar advocates screaming “Foul!” from the rooftops. [wds id=”3″] Midwest Energy News reports that DTE Energy has suggested a new reimbursement scheme that would compensate its solar customers at the lower – often significantly lower – wholesale rate of power. In addition, they have discussed imposing fixed fees on solar customers … Read More →

This is your SolarWakeup for July 24th, 2018

SEIA Makes Big Changes. And they’re not good. I woke up to the news yesterday that SEIA had told longtime executive Tom Kimbis that they are moving forward without him. Tom, if you recall, was the interim president at SEIA when Rhone Resch resigned about 2 years ago. He did such a great job during his tenure that I thought he had earned the credentials to keep the job. In recent months, I was worried that Tom would move on from SEIA and had told people that I hope this wouldn’t happen. So imagine my shock (and it takes a lot) when I heard SEIA had laid him off as well as Christopher Mansour. The changes, according to Abby Hopper, are to better align resources with the strategic vision of SEIA. I’ll have more thoughts about this move soon, hoping to sleep on it a bit. For SEIA’s side of the news, make sure to read our coverage. More to come.
Get My Kids An EV Bus. A couple of points I’d like to make here. First, when I spoke to Proterra’s CEO, Ryan Propple, a few months ago, I never considered the inefficiency of buses idling all day why waiting, stopping and sitting in traffic. I also failed to think through the pollution that kids across America are subjected to while riding the Blue Bird. So it is no surprise to me that electric buses make sense everywhere in America. The second point, I am impressed by the idea that ‘friend of the pod’ Jigar Shah and his team had to do a sale-leaseback with BYD to provide electric buses to jurisdictions the entry into an ’offtake’ agreement. Only one major downfall here, I can’t name a single Chinese mode of transportation that I ride. Not my car, not my plane nor my bicycle. When it comes to moving people from point A to point B, Americans don’t ride Made in China. So I’d like to see Proterra electrify Blue Birds across America in a similar transaction. Many reasons why school buses are a great place to start.
Ballot Fights Continue. In Arizona, the ballot initiative to ask voters about expanding the RPS is being challenged. The challenge isn’t in the form of data or arguments on the issue but instead to attack the ballot initiative by claiming that 75% of the signatures are invalid. This is the stuff that bothers me about the legislative process. Argue the issue, not the process, because we all know that a higher RPS is good for the residents of Arizona but the incumbent utilities just can’t handle so much goodness. The Mr. Burns in them won’t allow it.
Take This To Another Branch. While I admit to have been cheering on the lawsuits against oil companies about their disregard for climate change, specifically their knowledge of it decades ago, an NY judge has politely asked the petitioners to take this to the legislature. Maybe it would have been nice to get to more discovery in the judicial process, the judge is right that the legislature should do its job.
Big Storage Sector. Much has been made around battery prices declining over the next few years but the parts and pieces that make energy storage a system are getting attention. The power conversion, both ac-coupled and dc-coupled, is getting manufacturers to design and build some of those system. This is a nice look inside the future of storage from the system level.

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Have a great day!
Yann

SEIA Shakeup Ousts Former Interim CEO Tom Kimbis, Long-Time Lobbyist Christopher Mansour

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) Friday ousted long-time executives Tom Kimbis and Christopher Mansour in a shakeup executives say has nothing to do with the financial soundness of the organization. Abigail Ross Hopper, SEIA’s president and CEO, said revisions to its overall strategic vision required a realignment of resources and rendered Kimbis and Mansour expendable. [wds id=”3″] Hopper said SEIA would replace Mansour, who had served as SEIA’s vice president of federal affairs since 2013. She did not say if it would replace Kimbis, who had served as the organization’s interim president and CEO … Read More →

APS-Backed Lawsuit Challenges 75% Of The Signatures For Arizona RPS Initiative

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Wow….The fight over the Arizona renewable portfolio standard (RPS) just got ugly. Arizonans for Affordable Energy, a political action committee backed by Arizona Public Service (APS) – the state’s largest utility – has alleged in a lawsuit that 75% of the signatures gathered to put a ballot initiative to raise the Arizona RPS are fraudulent. The action comes as a competing proposal to raise the Arizona RPS, put forth by the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) (which oversees APS), moves its way through the process. [wds id=”3″] To review: The Arizona RPS ballot initiative is backed … Read More →

This is your SolarWakeup for July 23rd, 2018

$10 Billion Question. “If someone said, ‘Here’s $10 billion to invest in renewables,’ we wouldn’t know how to do it,” Dudley said. That’s a recent statement from the CEO of BP, Robert Dudley. As crazy as this sounds, he’s not wrong. He doesn’t have the cheapest capital and even if he did, it takes a lot of work to properly invest that kind of money into renewables. Just ask any solar developer what they would consider a good year, even if they disregard the hurdle rate of their private equity capital. Even if an oil company came to the US with an energy trading desk willing to take merchant exposure to solar projects, deploying $10 billion or even $1 billion would difficult to do year over year. That’s the scale problem in our industry that is often distributed and fragmented.
Going 100% Solar. What is it going to take to connect large corporate users with solar generation at the solar sites? That’s the question that could be the key in opening up markets like Texas, Pennsylvania or Virginia. Finding off takers is too expensive for individual developers in low energy value markets so if there is a demand created at the corporate level, solar developers will be able to focus on the work they already know.
Subsidies, Bailouts And The ITC. There is no doubt that all energy sources are still getting multiples of the incentives and non-monetary benefits compared to solar. While the big newspapers wonder how incumbent power and utility companies ready themselves for solar’s growth, I wonder how our industry should look forward the next time they want a subsidy, export change or bailout. At the State level, solar does this week (see Illinois and NJ) but what happens at the Federal level now?
Net Metering Fights. Curious to see a utility ‘pondering’ solar growth in a State that has 500% growth when it goes from 10 systems to 50. The opportunity utilities to be different is so great but the mentality of what worked 20 years ago is deeply ingrained into the utility boardroom. Now expect more fights in low solar penetration States like Arkansas, Michigan, etc and the industry needs to step up.
I’m Hiring. If you or someone you know are looking for an inside or outside sales position for a great company in Quick Mount PV, send me an email. We are doing great things including manufacturing right here in Walnut Creek in the Bay Area.
Resi Highlights Continue. As we enter the first residential solar advisory council survey, I will continue to post images of your installs. Just send your with your logo and location and yours can be highlighted as well.

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Have a great day!
Yann

Coal, Nuke Bailout Could Reach $34 Billion, New Study Says

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent So apparently the bailout of nuclear and coal plants is still a thing that is under consideration, so I have to keep writing about it. This time, there’s a new study out that says the new bailout is going to cost $34 billion – that’s B-illion, with a “b” – to implement. When there are more competitive solutions like solar and wind on the open market. Are we tired of all the winning yet? [wds id=”3″] The Houston Chronicle reported today on the study, which was prepared for pro-solar advocacy group Advanced Energy Economy by … Read More →

Washington D.C. Could Move To 100% Clean Energy By 2032

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Washington D.C. is a city full of symbols. Monuments to leaders of the past abound, and as the seat of our national government it carries great symbolic power for the rest of the country. Which is why the fact that it’s considering a resolution to move to a 100% renewable energy future as soon as 2032 could provide tangible gravity to the cause and encourage other cities to follow its lead, according to various local and national reports. [wds id=”3″] Tony Clifford, chief development officer for Standard Solar, a D.C.-area national solar company, is thrilled … Read More →