And The Next Generation Will Lead Us

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: David Hogg, one of the public faces of the Parkland High School student activists, tweeted out an intriguing idea Instead of investing money in arming teachers, use the money to fund more STEM education. Specifically, Hogg said such an investment would allow his generation “to create jobs in renewable, clean and independent American energy like wind and solar.” SolarWakeup’s View: Look, this tweet shouldn’t be controversial. China has invested in solar for years, including investing $329 billion in clean energy in 2016. The United States, on the other hand, has been Scrooge-like with its … Read More →

This is your SolarWakeup for March 7th, 2018

Crossing 1GWh. GTM sees energy storage crossing 1GWh in 2018. Trivia for you. Name the year that solar crossed 1GW of installed capacity for the year….any guesses? It was 2011, just 7 years ago. Storage is going to find it’s path relatively quickly given the cost curve aided by scale provided by the EV sector and increasing need for more solar which needs to be made more flexible with storage. The question for you is what price per kWh on storage gets your projects into the solar + storage category? $400? $350? $300? Let me know

That’s A Huge Solar Spill. I didn’t have to wait long for my point above to prove correct. California, not counting distributed generation, was powered 49.95% with solar energy on March 4th. It’s the combination of mild weather that left A/C’s turned off and sunny skies for great production. What needs to happen next is a lot of storage on the existing solar plants, a bit of dispatch capability will go a long way.

Sunrun Goes To The Top. These rankings are a bit antiquated and a far cry from the ramp up at the height of the lease races a few years ago. I’m hopeful that future earnings will show return on cash with positive earnings instead of NPV created. I understand the complication of deploying capital in a publicly traded company but many investors don’t get it.

Monopoly In A Red State. A republican legislator in Florida’s capital once told me that the utility monopoly is the hardest issue to square for republican elected officials. Free markets and monopolies aren’t the match made in heaven especially when the free market can do it for cheaper when it comes to solar. This is playing out in South Carolina, where a conservative leaning solar advocacy group is making this pitch to State legislators.

Top Story. Your top story yesterday was about the PLR for retrofitting solar with energy storage. Here is our coverage. New podcast on storage coming today, an interview with the CEO of FlexGen.

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Have a great day!
Yann

IRS Makes Case For More Storage To Be Added To Solar

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: In response to a letter from a couple who wanted to know if they could claim the battery with which they retrofitted their solar system as part of the 30% investment tax credit (ITC), the IRS Provided an extraordinarily narrow “yes” answer to the question; but While not a blanket yes to all cases, likely opens market for retrofits Provides a captured market for energy storage, rapidly declining in costs SolarWakeup’s View: Truth is, many people in the distributed solar space have assumed that this was already the case. What is the news here, however, … Read More →

This is your SolarWakeup for March 6th, 2018

SunPower Goes Big On Storage. In exclusive pictures obtained by SolarWakeup, SunPower unveiled the addition of Sonnen and Tesla residential battery systems to their dealer product line. In San Diego for a dealer meeting, 150 installers represented by 500 people heard CEO Tom Werner go through their business offerings. SolarCity used to be SunPower dealers’ biggest competition but that is water under the bridge for SunPower at this point. Joining with both Tesla and Sonnen means that SunPower isn’t going to take a risk on supply chain. Slides showing the entire product line and storage offerings are inside the story.

The C&I Goldmine. Engie continues the buying spree adding Socore, the solar developer, to its roster. This comes just a few weeks after the acquisition of Infinity Renewables, the wind developer. Socore has been known for its C&I development adding community solar and other segments in recent years. The challenge for Engie going forward will be integrating the various companies into the umbrella and leveraging the capabilities across the value chain. Go back and listen to my interview with Engie’s VP of Innovation, Thierry Lepercq.

Let The Kids Save Us. Kids turning 18 and voting can’t come soon enough. Even on climate change, an issue that is polarizing in the polls, both sides of the millennial aisle believe that it’s happening. What our industry needs to do however, is stop talking about climate change. We need to change the conversation on solar energy, jobs and monopolies. Every question about energy, about job growth needs to show our talking point while explaining that incumbent market participants are against us and using consumer’s money to fight solar.

Storage Retrofits. Big news for residential solar as a private letter ruling comes out stating that storage can be added while qualifying for the ITC. This PLR is only for this one case but is often used across markets with similar situations but don’t rely on that PLR or my comments for tax advice! Homeowners will want to make sure they install proper hardware and software so only solar energy charges the batteries.

CO SEIA. Next Wednesday, I will be interviewing the team behind the nation’s first clean energy federal credit union at the Colorado SEIA conference. If you would like your company to partner with us and sponsor this episode, please reach out.

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Have a great day!
Yann

Breaking: SunPower Adds Tesla, sonnen to Equinox Home Solar Systems (W/Slides)

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: SunPower Corp. told a meeting of its authorized dealers, Monday afternoon in San Diego, that it would be adding two storage solutions to its Equinox home solar system. A spokesperson for SunPower said, "SunPower has been exploring storage offerings and capabilities for our residential customers. One example is our recent partnership with Sonnen. SunPower dealers can choose to work with Sonnen to offer residential customers the best storage and solar combination solutions to fit their specific energy needs."

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: SunPower Corp. told a meeting of its authorized dealers, Monday afternoon in San Diego, that it would be adding two storage solutions to its Equinox home solar system. A spokesperson for SunPower said, “SunPower has been exploring storage offerings and capabilities for our residential customers. One example is our recent partnership with Sonnen. SunPower dealers can choose to work with Sonnen to offer residential customers the best storage and solar combination solutions to fit their specific energy needs.” sonnen, a German manufacturer of a sleek, residential  stand-alone battery system Tesla, with its Powerwall product … Read More →

Water, Wet: 80% Of U.S. Electricity Could Be Produced By Renewables

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: Researchers at the University of California at Irvine (UCI) report that the United States could produce 80% of its electricity needs with solar and wind power, as long as the nation commits to building the grid to accommodate them, including up to 12 hours of battery storage. Someone should tell Rick Perry and the president, because they seem to have missed a memo somewhere along the line. SolarWakeup’s View: Honestly, this isn’t news to anyone in the solar industry, is it? Or the wind industry? After all, employees wouldn’t be flocking to an industry … Read More →

More Tariffs, And The Entire World (No, Really) Freaks Out

200,000 Americans lost their jobs, representing approximately $4 billion in lost wages from February to November 2002.

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: President Tariffs…er….Trump announced last week his plans to impose 25% tariffs on imported steel and 10% on aluminum. And we are not kidding: The entire world appears to be gearing up for a trade war of epic proportions. The European Union is threatening to impose billions (yes, with a “b”) of retaliatory tariffs. Canada (yes, Canada) is threatening to retaliate. Then there’s China, of course, which has probably had tariff plans in its pocket for years and is thrilled it may get a chance to finally use them. And the WTO can’t process … Read More →

This is your SolarWakeup for March 5th, 2018

SEIA Board Meeting. The solar industry is looking to turn a corner after 2017 filled with tax reform, trade cases and projects pulled into 2016 because of the ITC cliff. SEIA, fresh off a leadership change, is trying to do the same. Without the ability to define itself during the trade case, the board convened last week to do just that. We covered some of the highlights of the vision, here.

Your Top Story. 5 hours after the daily newsletter goes out to the solar industry, we have a great view of what you consider the most important story of the day. There is no science to knowing the top story, it can come from anywhere in the rundown but it is the daily solar choice award. At noon eastern, we will take the top story and review the news for you and give you a better understanding of this article and for those of you that missed it, give you that link once again. This type of data is only available on SolarWakeup, no other place in solar curates the top news in solar as we have done for the past 6 years. I hope you enjoy this new feature. Friday’s top story was about a conservative that advocates for solar, Debbie Dooley.

Steel And Aluminum Tariff. Hard to know what’s really going on here but assuming what Trump said is going to happen, steel and aluminum will be getting taxed 25% and 10% respectively. Having seen skilled workers taking raw aluminum last week and create finished products, I am shocked at the short sightedness of this. Creating more jobs in making the commodity fails to think of the exponentially more jobs that take a commodity and makes finished goods like cars, buildings and solar racking systems. I hope that this gets walked back as some sort of negotiation tactic because it’s not good.

NEM Representation. Net metering continues to be under attack in the States you know and those you don’t think about. The problem is that if we want new markets to develop, rules like interconnection and net metering have to exist in order to get them off the ground. Of course, this means that markets where no-one benefits from the rules yet, has to be covered by advocates. That is exactly what Vote Solar does and they need your money to do more of it. Applause and retweets only go so far to putting people into State Capitols. On March 22nd, join Vote Solar for their fundraiser, Equinox, in San Francisco.

Wakeup San Francisco. Less than 40 days until SolarWakeup Live! on April 10th in San Francisco. Join me and your solar colleagues in a lively discussion on the important topics that drive our industry. Tickets available here and sponsorships available by hitting reply.

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Have a great day!
Yann

New York Times SHOCKED To Uncover Debbie Dooley, A Conservative Who Supports Solar

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: This story isn’t so much a “what” as much as it is a “who.”The New York Times uncovered someone you’ve never heard of (if you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade): Debbie Dooley, a Tea Party founder who believes utility monopolies are stifling rooftop solar across the United States. Her stance on solar, which she says is completely consistent with both her free-market principles and her commitment to save the world “God created,” appears to puzzle The New York Times reporter who wrote the profile on her. SolarWakeup’s View: Sometimes … Read More →

SEIA Rolls Out New Vision – But Will It Stick?

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA)rolled out an aggressive four-point plan to broaden its base and launch a new era within the association. Their plans, according the website, include: Ensure that existing solar markets remain open and robust, while opening new ones; Reform electricity markets to better enable solar use at highest values; Represent solar nationally, including as the voice of and market research center for the industry; and Ensure SEIA continually evolves to offer value to its members and grow revenue to support its activities. “The solar industry is going on the … Read More →