Put Another Solar Vote Into Congress: Sam Jammal, CA 39

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By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent It feels as if the solar industry talks a lot – a lot – about how important federal policy is to pushing the solar industry forward. Which is why, when you have the chance to vote for a strong solar advocate and add another voice to the Congress in favor of our industry, we should do it. Meet Sam Jammal, who is running for the soon-to-be-open California’s 39th District (CA-39) in north Orange County. Jammal comes from a solar background, having worked for Tesla/SolarCity, where he traveled the country speaking on solar issues. As he … Read More →

Vivint Files For A Declaratory Statement In Florida On Utility Rules

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent If it feels like deja vu, you’re not the only one. On Wednesday, Vivint Solar followed its fellow residential solar installer Sunrun in filing a petition with the Florida Public Service Commission (FPSC) for a declaratory statement assuring their customers they won’t be regulated as utilities if they install solar on their homes. [wds id=”3″] Sunrun broke the floodgates with the FPSC’s decision a little more than a month ago to issue, on a 5-0 vote, a statement declaring that neither Sunrun nor its customers would be considered regulated utilities once they had installed solar … Read More →

It’s Not Just Us: PRI Finds Trump’s Tariffs Are Tarnishing Solar’s Shine

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent It’s easy to say the solar-focused publications are making a mountain out of the molehill when it comes to the negative effects of the solar tariffs. But it’s a whole different ballgame when the mainstream press starts taking notice – and they’ve started taking notice. For example, Public Radio International (PRI) assigned reporter Jason Margolis to examine the issue for a five-minute segment that aired yesterday on public radio stations around the country. You can listen to the report, titled “The early impact of solar tariffs: Fewer American projects, fewer American jobs,” below. [wds id=”3″] … Read More →

This is your SolarWakeup for May 25th, 2018

As you enter this long weekend, make sure to think about how you and your business can help the veterans of our armed services. I know that our industry does quite a bit in the form of training and hiring veterans but let us all take a moment and see how we can do more.
Your Privacy, Our Privacy Policy. Take this as your official notification of our privacy policy, which is also the privacy policy of Mailchimp, our email service provider. As always, we appreciate your readership and hope that we are always providing content that you find valuable. Of course, you can always unsubscribe by clicking the link below. I promise that I only think less of you for just a few minutes.
Complicated C&I Projects. I wanted to make sure to point out some recent announcements of success for Black Bear Energy. Many of you know Drew from BBE and his work from Prologis and now Black Bear. He’s been working hard for a long time to get large property owners to do more solar and this set of relatively small projects in multiple States shows that the hard work is paying off.
Growth In Residential. Nice interview by Bloomberg with Sunnova’s CEO, John Berger, about the California residential market. It is becoming incredibly clear, as California slapped down an anti-solar piece of legislation this week, that residential solar advocates cannot stop fighting until retail rate net metering and retail choice for consumers is available in every State. Moreover, anyone that is in solar but not residential should advocate for those same exact rules. Because if you want solar to grow you need non-solar professionals to advocate for your issue.
Growth In Community Solar. See above, this is a perfect example of a jealous neighbor with his shaded roof wanting to get solar as well. If they can’t put the panels on the roof then they’ll sign up for community solar.
Have a great weekend, before you leave for your vacation please make sure your colleagues are reading SolarWakeup and book your ticket to visit us in Chicago for SolarWakeup Live! on June 21st.

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Have a great day!
Yann

See? New Jersey Is Already Seeing Benefits Of Solar Bills: Black Bear Energy Announces Cranberry, N.J., Project

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent That was fast. Within 24 hours of Governor Phil Murphy signing two bills to expand solar electricity in the state, Black Bear Energy announced a 2.4-MW solar project in Cranberry, N.J., in conjunction with USAA Real Estate and EnterSolar. OK, the two probably had nothing to do with each other, but the project is real and continues USAA’s longstanding commitment to sustainability, according to its website. [wds id=”3″] “We are pleased that this solar project will allow our site to generate clean, renewable energy,” said Jason McIntyre, director of real estate operations and sustainability at … Read More →

This is your SolarWakeup for May 24th, 2018

Solar Goes For Meghan Nutting! We are just a few weeks away from the June 26th primary election for Meghan Nutting. Meghan is running for Colorado’s 5th District in the State House and she is also the VP of Public Policy for Sunnova. She’s been a solar advocate to advance our industry and now is the time for all of us to come together and put Meghan into the State House to represent Denver. First, help her raise money and send $5, which you can do here. Second, if you have friends in Denver, you have to get them to help her knock on doors. This race gets decided in the primary so we have just a few weeks away. If you want to learn more about Meghan, you can listen to my interview with her.
Elon’s Twitter Rant, My 2 Cents. Elon went on a twitter rant yesterday about the media. One of his points was that much of the coverage is negative and when it comes to all things Tesla, negative headlines get a lot of clicks. How do I know? I have the unique vantage point of being able to compare many outlets and many headlines. Unlike publications that can only compare one headline over another through internal A/B testing, we have the ability to track headlines across publications. The truth is that headlines matter more to readers than the publication and any story that is about a bankruptcy, problem or negative issue gets significantly more traction than anything else. Case in point, the story this week about Cypress Creek cancelling projects was clicked by almost every person that clicked any story at all.
My First Solar Project. Hats off to Portland for going out for an RFP to drive the best deal possible for its customers. Two of my first solar projects were in Portland, one for Nike and one with Portland Gas and Electric. Fun times!
Value Of Solar, Infinite. $20k to go. $20k left to raise to help save over 200 babies over the next year in a single hospital in Sierra Leone. Because of unreliable power, almost half of the babies that go into the NICU in the hospital pass away. $20k is less than $5 per reader today, so skip the Starbucks and send the money. Please!
New Jersey Bills Signed. Frank has your coverage on the bill signing in NJ, keeps an important market going forward and creates a few new opportunities for solar to develop projects.
Big Oil + Storage + Solar. Another oil investment into storage, this time Shell into Sonnen. Keep watching the trend of auto, IPPs and oil converging around solar + storage. Sparkspread reported that a storage developer with pipeline went into market for acquisition yesterday, if you have info about that, let me know.

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Have a great day!
Yann

New Jersey Solar’s Nightmare Over As Governor Murphy Signs Bills

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent It took longer than many observers expected, but New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed into law bills that will boost clean energy production in his state, with solar playing a central role in this growth. Murphy also issued Executive Order No. 28, which formally recognized climate change as a threat to the state and has established a multi-departmental committee to establish a 2019 Energy Master Plan. The mandate specifically cites improving both wind and solar development as one of the key goals of the Master Plan moving forward. The governor had run on an aggressive … Read More →

Project Bo, Bringing Life And Power To Sierra Leone, Is Under Construction

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent In an industry with some tough stories to tell these days, sometimes it’s worth pausing and savoring a story that is undeniably and unalterably good – and such is the case with Project Bo. The project, designed to purchase, install and maintain a 20kW solar and battery system to provide an uninterrupted 24/7 power supply to the oxygen concentrators and baby warmers at Bo Government Hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, is finally under construction after raising 82% of the funds necessary to complete the project. They are currently around $20,000 away from reaching 100% of … Read More →

The Fight To Lower Solar Cost To Capital Continues: New Solar Finance Council Is Formed

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Financing is often the most difficult part of getting a solar deal done, and lower the costs of capital is one of the keys to unlocking solar’s full potential. To that end, one man with experience in researching the problem has created a new working group to address just those issues. Called the Solar Finance Council (SFC), the group is being headed by Mike Mendelsohn as executive director.Mendelsohn previously led the Solar Energy Industries Association’s (SEIA) work in project finance and capital markets. Prior to SEIA, he established the Solar Access to Public Capital (SAPC) … Read More →

This is your SolarWakeup for May 23rd, 2018

Strand My Assets, Not My Money. RMI is out with a report that outlines the long term investment thesis for new natural gas plants. Hint: it’s not good. The report finds that like many coal plants today, gas plants don’t provide the best financial return in the future and could find themselves pushed aside for financial reasons. This isn’t just a problem for private investors, consumers that finance these plants, guarantee their financial return, are the quasi investors within regulated monopoly areas. If this sounds familiar just look at the nuclear bailouts and requested coal bailouts in the news today.
Show Me The Wires. SEIA’s report on grid modernization makes the point that RMI found above. The future of energy will value the grid of the future. This means that more distributed generation will require a grid with less wires. Anything that ends up pushing energy from a central power plant to the loads will have a value that is significantly diminished. That future may be okay for solar and wind farms that have no exposure to fuel costs and volatility but it becomes harder for more traditional fuel. Distributed generation needs to be a central part of everything we do as a solar industry and that benefits even those that are not focused on DG.
Talk To Michael. There is a statement that comes up in some conversations with politicians. It doesn’t have to be said often because lobbyists get the process for political leaders very quickly. After a pitch on an issue with some politicians, emphasis on some, the elected will say something like, “that’s very interesting, I’d like to learn more, please talk to XYZ.” In Trump’s universe, it may have been “Talk to Michael.” At the very least, this is what one nuclear power plant was thinking and maybe solar should have been told to TTM. Of course I kid, mostly, I think.
Long Term Vision, Short Term Problems. 3 months go by very quickly and changing the energy market in 3 months increments is basically impossible. If access to capital is required in order to make that change work, then having to focus on the quarterly earnings makes that difficult. So how do we merge the desire for transparency in public companies with the hope to allow companies to change the norms.
Windy City, Sunny Market. Get your ticket for SolarWakeup Live! Chicago. Part of the event will be personal matchmaking between those that have projects or pipeline with those that have capital. The one day event you will not want to miss. solarwakeuplive.com

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Have a great day!
Yann