SunPower Fights Back, Challenges Their Inclusion In Tariffs

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: Earlier this morning, SunPower filed its formal request to be excluded from the Trump Administration’s 30% tariff on imported solar modules, specifically Exclude solar cells based on copper-plated, IBC technology. Exclude solar modules based on copper-plated, IBC technology. Make the product exclusions described above retroactive to Feb. 7, 2018 (when the tariffs went into effect) and direct U.S. Customs and Border Protection to refund any tariffs paid on the above-described products. SolarWakeup’s View:  All we can say is that it’s about time. SunPower, a module manufacturer and one of the staunchest opponents of tariffs … Read More →

Microsoft Turns Singapore Into Its Own Solar Central

  By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: Microsoft, in an interview with Greentech Media, explained why it was turning to approximately 60 MW of distributed solar to power its data centers in Singapore. Essentially: The company said it had been burned before when it tried to build utility-scale solar projects in other countries, thanks to permitting issues and other local constrictions. The limited land in Singapore to build a large-scale solar plant left them with one option that the city-state has in abundance: rooftop space. SolarWakeup’s View: Microsoft, which doesn’t even appear on the Top 10 Businesses for solar … Read More →

Zombie Lie Informs Kentucky’s Attempt To Kill Its Solar Industry

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: Controversial Kentucky House Bill (HB) 227 passed the House by four votes yesterday. Now the bill moves on to the Senate. It would

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: Controversial Kentucky House Bill (HB) 227 passed the House by four votes yesterday. Now the bill moves on to the Senate. It would Reduce the amount future Kentucky solar customers are paid under its net metering plan, based on A mythical cost shift from solar users to non-solar users (or, as I refer to it, the “lie that won’t die.” SolarWakeup’s View:  This damn thing again? If you’ve been paying any attention to the broader solar news cycle, you’ve heard of Kentucky HB 227. It’s the latest attempt by utilities to kill an emerging … Read More →

This is your SolarWakeup for March 16th, 2018

Solar Messaging. This morning, most media outlets released their coverage of the 2017 solar market data which showed headlines of a 30% overall drop and drop in residential solar sector. So if your editor wants an Elon Musk failed or Trump kills solar headline, you could have written it with that focus. Coverage from Axios and CNBC, which don’t tend to have an anti-solar tweak didn’t come out with the most positive headlines. At SolarWakeup, I see what gets clicks and bad headlines are adored by readers so that’s part of the story but the other part of it was the messaging. 2016 was a banner year for political reasons and 2017 had 201 headwinds throughout the year. You’d have to get to the bottom of the press release to see that so while no-one in solar was surprised when I spoke with them, the non-solar worker reading mainstream headlines would think this space is struggling.

Scary Grid Stuff. Utility execs stay awake at night thinking about cyber attacks against the grid. Now the Trump administration is making he known unknown visible to the masses. Personally I don’t know what to do with the information except add it to the bullets on the slide of why the energy system needs more distributed generation and flexibility.

Trade And Manufacturing. China hawk Peter Navarro is telling Wall Street to ‘just relax’ regarding the tariffs. Saying that our trade deficits need to be stood up against. I have a question for Navarro. What would you say to the American worker that takes raw aluminum that is imported to the US and makes patented US manufactured solar racking products? Just relax? What do you say to the banker, lawyer and solar developer that just dropped a 20MW deal in Texas because of a solar module tariff? Just relax? Now that 201 manufacturing hype is coming back to reality, the cheerleaders of ‘new manufacturing’ are nowhere to be found because they are wrong, as wrong as most of them have been over the years on most things solar.

Weekend, Next Week. For the readers that joined our March Madness bracket, most of you are rooting big for UVA. For the two of you that picked Arizona to win it all, you will not be writing a SolarWakeup paragraph this year. Next week we will all get together with our friends from Vote Solar. It’s not too late for you to join me in San Francisco and lots of your solar friends. Reminder, if you spend $1,000 or more on tickets you get a space in this opening text. Just send me the receipt.

WAKEUP20. In 4 weeks, many of you will be with me as we bring SolarWakeup Live! to San Francisco to hear from leaders in venture capital, policy and CCA energy procurement. I’d love for your to join me as well, take 20% off an already very cheap ticket.

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Have a great day!
Yann

The Motley Fool Emphasizes The “Fool” Part In Solar Manufacturing Report

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: The Motley Fool, a stock analysis website, wrote an article with the headline - Solar-Manufacturing Renaissance Already Falling Apart, which then went on to

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: The Motley Fool, a stock analysis website, wrote an article with the headline – Solar-Manufacturing Renaissance Already Falling Apart, which then went on to Express surprise that the Trump 30% tariffs on solar modules hasn’t had module companies flocking to the United States in droves. Come to the shocking (not shocking) conclusion that maybe the tariffs won’t drive an American module renaissance, let alone a manufacturing renaissance. SolarWakeup’s View:  There’s a larger question here, sparked by the odd headline: Can something fall apart if it was almost entirely mythical to begin with? When Trump … Read More →

Hey, California Utility: John Grisham Would Like His Latest Plot Back

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: If you’ve ever doubted whether utilities fear that solar will put them out of business, read Sammy Roth’s excellent report in The Desert Sun, in which he

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: If you’ve ever doubted whether utilities fear that solar will put them out of business, read Sammy Roth’s excellent report in The Desert Sun, in which he Discovered that a public utility had an “oppo research” department to find dirt on the owner of Renova Energy, an outspoken critic of the utility, and Used ratepayer money to hire private investigators for this fishing expedition. SolarWakeup’s View: Let’s get this out of the way first: If you’re not reading Sammy Roth in The Desert Sun regularly, what the heck is wrong with you? He covers solar … Read More →

Are The Russians Trying To Hack Our Grid? Trump Thinks So

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: At 10:55 am, Trump Administration officials told assembled reporters that the intelligence community

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: At 10:55 am, Trump Administration officials told assembled reporters that the intelligence community Has determined Russia is behind attempts to penetrate our electricity grid and have done so successfully. The U.S. is sending an alert to energy companies to raise threat awareness. SolarWakeup’s View:  It’s not enough that the Russians may have hacked our elections in 2016. Now they’re trying to take down our electrical grid. The Associated Press first reported the story and is slowly being picked up by other media outlets. The information is scarce at this point, but according to national … Read More →

This is your SolarWakeup for March 15th, 2018

2017 Solar Market Data Is Out. Frank has the details for you on the 2017 data that is out fresh this morning. 2016 kicked 2017’s a$$ but we knew that was coming. 2016 had two big advantages on 2017, the ITC pull forward and the 201 fight in 2017. As an industry we still surpassed 10GW in total capacity with utility scale leading the way once again. Resi retracted but non-residential made some gains. We’ve got the reaction from across the solar industry for you to judge against your own thoughts. One thing to consider is that solar came in behind natural gas but just yesterday the Arizona regulators put a halt on all new natural gas in Arizona unless the utilities request a waiver and show that solar plus storage is not a better choice. (Hint: this may be the start of the end for new gas) Here’s the full story.

Things You’ll Find On Twitter. Having the ability to report on original content is giving me a new look on Twitter, especially as I sit in airports across the Country. This time I ran across a tweet storm from an NRDC attorney, Miles Farmer, who was giving the play by play on a new FERC filing. It’s worth a read and consideration when you realize that our market is still subject to so many different levels of regulation that many of us never think of.

The Koch Re-Education. Last year we spoke about the moves by utilities and Koch backed groups to pay for community leaders to preach anti-solar in churches across the solar belt. The gig appears to be over as new economic opportunities are shown in our industry and community leaders are pushing back. Misleading education is apparent across the country and anytime it falls flat is a good day.

Larry Kudlow. Is going to be the next Gary Cohn, aka #1 economic advisor to Trump. Kudlow loves Reagan and Art Laffer. For Kudlow, the free market will solve all problems. Which means that all tariffs will be gone by the end of next week! Well, that is unlikely to happen because Kudlow is going to realize that he will either have played a free market capitalist on TV or his stay in the White House will be short lived. This is a reminder that Scaramucci also spent a lot of time on the CNBC air over the years.

3 Million EVs. Volkswagen is planning on building 3 million EVs in 2025. That’s only 6 years from now and I wouldn’t be surprised if they beat that. Energy demand growth curves may be flat over the past decade but don’t expect that trend to stay the same. With announcements like these, I am not surprised that companies like EVgo are making big executive moves in anticipation of growth.

Wakeup San Francisco. New speaker announcement! Joining the discussion is Lindsay Saxby of Marin Clean Energy, a CCA that has been an active buyer for solar energy. Lindsay is the Power Supply Contracts Manager for MCE and will be a great discussion about how CCAs operate in the grid and the role they could play for our sector. You can get your tickets here for the event just 4 weeks from now.

March Madness Bracket. SolarWakeup is having the 1st annual March Madnessbracket challenge and it’s free. Go to ESPN Tournament Challenge and search for SolarWakeup group. The password is GoSolar. The more folks we have, the more fun we will have. The winner gets to write the opening paragraph and promote their agenda, company or cause. You must fill out your brackets today, before the first game starts.

News

Have a great day!
Yann

Solar Adds 10.6 GW To Capacity In 2017, Defying All Logic And Reason

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: SEIA and GTM Research finally closed the book on 2017 with the release of their U.S. Solar Market Insight report, which indicated the following (quoting directly from the release) In 2017, the U.S. market installed 10.6 GW-DC of solar PV, a 30% decrease year-over-year from 2016. In 2017, 30% of all new electric generating capacity brought online in the U.S. came from solar, ranking second during that period only to natural gas. Q4 2017 saw price increases in most PV market segments stemming from increases in module costs. This was due to a global … Read More →

Tesla Is Speeding Up The Building Of Its 70MW PV System In Nevada

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: Teslarati got hold of aerial photos of Tesla’s Gigafactory near Reno, Nevada, which show Significant progress in the past few weeks on constructing what Elon Musk has said will be a 70 MW system on its roof. Plenty of work still needs to be done to make the system operational. SolarWakeup’s View:  Elon Musk is one of the best showmen in the world. His ability to get earned media (as opposed to media he pays for) is uncanny and (I say this jealously) brilliant. Take, for example, his Reno, Nevada, Gigafactory (GF1), which will … Read More →