This is your SolarWakeup for November 29th, 2017
MA NEM Cap. In this episode of EnergyWakeup I am joined by Senator Boncore, the Massachusetts State Senator representing a large part of Boston and Cambridge. He is the sponsor of the net metering cap increase bill that would raise the cap by 5% across the board, clearing a large amount of backlog for SREC II projects. What did he have to say about the chance to get the cap increased? Listen here.
Senator Merkley. Spoke with a measured tone about how to handle the resolution of the 201 petition. Following the SEIA proposal of a revenue stream to US manufacturers instead of tariffs, Merkley urged the President to weigh in softly through incentives and not harm financial detriments that would cost many jobs. This is a stark contrast to the reactionary comments from Senator Wyden or the use of taxpayer dollars by the Hillsboro Mayor to represent SolarWorld at the ITC.
Bernie’s Puerto Rico Plan. A bold proposal by Bernie Sanders to revitalize the infrastructure in Puerto Rico. Part of the plan is to fix the credit rating by wiping out the existing debt. It may cost $150billion, but imagine living without power for 2 months and no end in sight.
Your December 6th Options. If you live on the east coast, you should be in DC next week on Wednesday. Hundreds of people will be in front of the USTR hearing, at the SEIA rally while a second crowd will be gathered at SolarWakeup Live! Some unfortunate timing because most people would want to do both but solar never sleeps. Keep in mind that you will not be able to get into the USTR hearing due to lack of space. There are a few seats left for Live!, that you can get here.
Schools With Solar. Another great report from The Solar Foundation on Schools going solar, this is released this morning and worth a read. Great roof space, wonderful message to students and excellent credit ratings – every solar should end up with solar on its roofs.
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E026: Future of Net Metering In Massachusetts with Senator Boncore, sponsor of the NEM Cap Bill
In this episode of energywakeup Yann is joined by Senator Boncore, the Massachusetts State Senator representing a large part of Boston and Cambridge. He is the sponsor of the net metering cap increase bill that would raise the cap by 5% across the board, clearing a large amount of backlog for SREC II projects. Senator Boncore provides valuable insights on where the policy is going and how it may or may not progress. This interview was recorded at SolarWakeup Live Boston, which means that your competition that attended the event already has this valuable information. Make sure to catch previous … Read More
This is your SolarWakeup for November 28th, 2017
Moving Puerto Rico Forward. As Puerto Rico continues its recovery from Hurricane Maria, it is undoubtedly planning for the next step in recovery. There are less eyes and ears focused on the initial emergency response but as a solar industry, there are still great people with knowledge and resources helping create the next grid. A network of interconnected microgrids with a grid system made to maximize the distributed generation.
Join Representative Gonzalez-Colon. To further this conversation, I will be joined by Congresswoman Gonzalez Colon. She represents the Americans of Puerto Rico in the US House of Representatives. Gonzalez-Colon spent time in the Puerto Rico legislature with a clear understanding of the many factor that impact the energy market. She will be at SolarWakeup Live! DC to tell the solar industry about the current state of relief in Puerto Rico and how solar can continue to work on the effort.
Rural Utility Co-Ops. Some of the best solar deals in America will happen in co-ops that you’ve never heard of. Co-ops have boards made up by customers and don’t share the need to deploy capital for a return to a 3rd party. Given the circumstances, co-ops make sure that any transaction has long term benefit to customers. Keep your eyes on this space.
Run For Something. We focus a lot on congressional seats and utility commissions but we rarely talk about the need to run for the boards at utility companies that serve you. If you live in a co-op served geography, think about finding your way into that board room. If you need to run for a seat, make sure to let the solar industry know so we can be supportive.
Solar World Without SolarWorld. SolarWorld is spending some of its remaining capital buying ads on solar publication platforms. I’m disappointed to see publications take their money, I wouldn’t take their money because the success of SolarWorld in the 201 petition would mean a smaller solar industry and a negative market for you, the readers. As a reader, you have a choice on where to get your news, which I recognize with every new subscriber. My frustration sits with the fact that this is the 3rd time SolarWorld has come back to the trough and keeps wanting more. The solar industry is united in its opposition because this case is bad for solar and has already caused drastic impacts on business planning.
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This is your SolarWakeup for November 27th, 2017
8 Days Out. Next Wednesday, December 6th, is a big day for solar. If you aren’t going to DC, you will be missing the coordinated efforts to move solar forward. More below.
Live! DC. Tickets are about half gone but you can still get in with a 50% off black Friday special. Join me as I speak with Andrea Luecke, Amy Harder and Lidija Sekaric. We’ll have a few more speakers to announce through this week but rest assured, the conversations will be worthwhile. So, if you are not waving signs in front of the USTR hearing, you should be here. I look forward to seeing you.
USTR. The public comment period has ended and now the trade representative will hear testimony from relevant parties about the case. This appears to be less about the case law, as it was in the 201 proceedings, but about the politics and real life impacts that a tariff would cause on the industry. I know that Trump’s comments of “I want tariffs” is in the back of everyone’s mind but jobs and foreign policy is also in play. Senators are also legitimately involved in this process and nobody wants a trade war with China over solar panels, that would be a lose/lose.
Solar Happy Hour. At the top of this email you will find a link to a solar happy hour for December 6th. After attending SolarWakeup Live and the USTR hearing, join Vote Solar, SEIA and SolarWakeup as we host a happy hour. Short notice means limited space available, send me an email to get on the list.
Michigan Solar. PURPA tariffs for solar are looking good in Michigan. While limited to 2MW projects, the contracts are 20 years which are attractive for any solar investor. Will this be the next North Carolina?
Equal Time Is Flawed. You won’t find it here and it restates the same tired arguments. Matt Card from Suniva has an op-ed out and the Washington Post ran it as some sort of equal time contribution. When an argument is 99% to 1%, the 1% doesn’t get equal time but journalists feel the need to provide equal coverage. Not here, especially not when you are paid to lie.
Big Storage. Australia is leading the charge on big storage. As I’ve mentioned in the past, this is where I have been spending a large amount of my non-SolarWakeup time. The value of large storage is more than move energy from one time period to another especially when coupled with a solar farm. You can’t just co-locate storage with a solar farm, two inverters means two systems. What you want is energy storage behind the solar inverter, moving energy in and out of a single point of interconnect.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for November 21st, 2017
Happy Thanksgiving. 50/50 shot at a newsletter coming your way so I am taking the time to thank you for your continued readership and support for our Live! events. Interacting and learning from you makes this a path worth undertaking. If you buy tickets for DC and sell out the event this week, I’ll be even more thankful.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for November 20th, 2017
Short Week. I will be off for Thanksgiving and the Wednesday edition is up in the air depending on if there are enough articles to send your way. Enjoy your holiday and make sure to do something that we can all be thankful for – starting with the 1st item on the rundown.
Your Comment? Have you taken a few minutes to send comments to the trade representative ahead of the December 6th hearing? You can use this script from SEIA and send the comments on this page. Make sure to have your entire office do this as well.
Tesla’s Rig and Roadster. No doubt, Elon puts on a show. Electrification of transportation is the leap we need for climate change. At 500 miles per charge, I am also interested in the impact to the grid for the electrification of freight. With an 8-pin charger (and a dose of real-life needs), some engineers are theorizing that the “mega-charger” could be up to 1.6MW of power to charge the semi in 30 minutes. Power density times massive scale (3.5 million trucks in America) means having to re-rethink the energy grid, mostly around our highway system. Best of all, this will get financed through non-dilutive funding from 1,000 rich people that want to go fast – placing $250k payments for the new roadster. If the money were in my account, it would no longer be there either because this thing is sick.
Public Manufacturers. As JA Solar goes private with its manufacturing, I wonder how long it will take for all of them to be off the public markets. In relation to Renesola, taking the manufacturing private while keeping the public vehicle to focus on owning assets, it comes across as an internal reverse merger. This strategy makes sense to me, I wouldn’t be surprised if it is replicated again.
Another Great Speaker. I’m excited to have Amy Harder from Axios join us at SolarWakeup Live! DC. Amy has been covering energy for years and was in Bonn for COP23 last week. Axios has an incredible insight to the DC ecosystem and was the publication that brought us Trump’s “I want tariffs, bring me tariffs.” I look forward to speaking with Amy about the news of energy. Get your tickets here.
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This is your SolarWakeup for November 17th, 2017
A Nuclear Mea Culpa? Citing customer frustrations, South Carolina’s SCE&G will be canceling a set of rate increases stemming from the construction of the failed VC Summer nuclear plant. The shareholders of the utility will be ‘paying’ for $2.2billion in construction costs in what appears to be future reduced ratepayer earnings over the next 50 years. In short, it seems like the ratepayers are lending the write down of the losses. While the reporting appears to show a utility showing ‘remorse’ over its business actions – utility monopolies continue to operate in a dreamland far away from reality.
In Murphy We Trust. With the election of Phil Murphy, who ran strong on the solar issues, New Jersey is looking to reinvigorate its market. While projects are happening, it is nowhere near the scale as previous eras in the New Jersey solar market. David Crane has been named to the transition team which bodes well for us looking at markets for a long term sustainable sector. I look forward to seeing how that plays out as he takes the Governor’s mansion.
Subsidy Prescription. The DOE NOPR is looking like FERC is open to the idea, Commissioner Chatterjee is quoted wondering why anyone would consider it controversial. The article also goes into the concept of resiliency and focusing on the power plant as opposed the distribution lines. When I was in Boston a few weeks ago, a million customers lost power – some for as long as a week. They didn’t lose power because generators went down, they lost power because trees and wind took down the transmission infrastructure. In my mind the controversy is based in the cost to consumers. If ISOs offered $10billion in incentives for resiliency, I doubt a single coal plant would be offered. My interview with Jon Wellinghoff covers much of this.
MA NEM Cap. If you haven’t listened to or read the latest podcast (there is a full transcript on the page) you are missing on vital information for your business or understanding the impacts to your customers’ business. The other interview that will come out next week is with Senator Boncore about the NEM cap in Mass. While the takeaway is muted, there are a bunch of crumbs that would make me look hard to ignoring NEM caps for my business. More to come on this.
Kentucky Coal. Even in coal country with what I would assume to be a utility friendly regulatory body, PPL is shutting two coal plants that are old (~50 years) and would cost too much to make compliant with environmental standards. These aren’t the first and far from the last coal plants to close – this is purely a consumer induced move since customers want cheaper energy and clean air & water.
Live! DC. The event will now feature Congresswoman Gonzalez-Colon, the resident representative of Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is more than a goodwill story, it has been one of the most enticing solar markets plagued with external issues. Now that the grid is torn apart and people have no energy, it represents a challenge to rebuild the grid in a 21st century way. I look forward to having this discussion and finding the path to the opportunity that it represents for the solar industry to help.Get your tickets now.
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This is your SolarWakeup for November 16th, 2017
DC Tickets. 4 of the speakers are almost confirmed, as soon as they are, you will be told their names. Andrea Luecke and Dr. Lidija Sekaric are confirmed and two more have signaled their availability. Solar Foundation is doing great work including the ongoing jobs census, analyzing diversity in solar and now their leadership on helping rebuild Puerto Rico. Dr. Sekaric spent the entire Obama tenure working on solar related issues including as the director of the SunShot initiative. She is now at Siemens working on innovation in energy including how microgrids are put together. I will be talking to her about the City that gets 100% of its power and energy from renewable energy – what does that look like and what would it cost? Get your tickets now, early bird pricing only goes until Thanksgiving.
Bourbon With Your Whine. The WTO is likely to allow retaliatory tariffs against US goods if Trump goes forward with 201 tariffs. The threat now looks to target bourbon and cheese, neither of which have really anything to do with solar except for their lobbying impact on two important individuals – Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. Maybe someone needs to get Duterte from the Philippines to target US investment into local real estate, that could get some attention.
CAISO Projects. Advisory work – I am looking for a few projects that have CAISO interconnection but no offtakers. If you have this or know where I could find it, please let me know. My advisory work keeps the SolarWakeup lights on for everyone.
Puerto Rico Update. An interesting pro and con take on the topic of how to rebuild the grid in Puerto Rico. Meanwhile, as Bernie Sanders points out, more than 50% of the Americans in PR still don’t have power after two months. Imagine that happening anywhere in the US – it would never happen.
On To Emissions. The finish line isn’t at 100% renewable energy for operations after all. Microsoft is out with a goal to drop emissions 75% by 2030. Google had previously outlined its energy goals to not only match geography but also time of use. It may seem like corporations were close to finished, but it seems like they are just getting started.
Solar On Coal Mines. Solar should have a quiet goal of getting Senators Capito and Joe Manchin to be as avid of solar supporters as they are coal today. Part of that is showing the value of land is greater with solar and the second would be to switch the economy into a solar focused one. There are great teams on the ground in West Virginia looking at this and doing some ‘greenfield’ development. Rocky Mountain Institute also published a report appropriately titled ‘A Second Life For Legacy Mining Sites.’
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This is your SolarWakeup for November 15th, 2017
We’ve Got You Covered On SMART. If you were to look around other publications you would be hard pressed to find information about the SMART program release in Massachusetts even though it’s the most important topic in the State in years. Not to worry, we’ve got you covered with information that you need to figure out your bidding strategy. Not to shorten it to a few words, you have a 40 minute information filled interview with the person in charge of the program. This platform isn’t about covering news, instead looking to give you exactly the facts you need to run your business.
The Point of Live! Events. It’s been two weeks since SolarWakeup Live! in Boston. The people that attended that event already knew what you are only reading today. They also know more information about NEM caps than you. My reason for creating the events and asking for your trust in the content is to change the way you have experienced conferences. Right now, you go to conferences for networking, not content. You go for several days and spend thousands on a badge. While I look forward to having people travel to SolarWakeup Live! events, I trust that you believe in the content you’ve been reading for 5 years on this site. Live! DC is coming up in a few weeks and there are still tickets available. If you live on the East Coast you should either be at Live! DC or waving signs in front of the USTR hearing on December 6th.
When, Not If. This is a unanimous assumption in the solar industry, storage is coming. It may not pencil everywhere today, neither does solar but it will grow like a hockey stick similar to the solar growth from 2007 to today. It may actually happen faster than solar since the solar penetration aids in the market growth. In the near future, I will share with you my upcoming venture which involves energy storage with a value proposition aimed at the solar industry.
Terminate That Language. Schwarzenegger is right, stop talking about climate change especially to people outside of your echo chamber. Clean air, clean water and solar energy. All of these things poll at over 70%. Monopoly utilities poll at well below 50% so play the spread between those two issues and you will win people over. Great coverage from Amy Harder at Axios from COP23 in Bonn.
Micro And MacroGrids. This may be the 2017 buzzword of the year, microgrids. Really what we are talking about is power generation and power controls inside a disconnect switch. If the grid shuts off, the home/building/network can continue to function within the designated panel loads. The trick comes with multiple power generation sources on the inside of the disconnect switch. When you look at it this way, I’ve come to learn that there are less suppliers able to participate than you would expect. Backup power may be a better way to sell this, it also allows a homeowner to buy emotionally as opposed to asking for payback numbers.
Who Is Terence Stewart? Making the case for 201 tariffs is always tricky, you have to lie to yourself and the people you are speaking to. I don’t know who this lawyer is that got to write for the WSJ on behalf of the 201 petitioners, but he did a poor job. It took GTM’s Shayle Kann more than 140 characters but less than 280 to destroy the case he was making.
Presented By True Green Capital. Our current partnership, Fund III, is actively seeking investment opportunities and channel partners to deploy capital in a scalable focused on DG and small utility scale projects. Fund III has ~$350million in equity commitments to build out a ~$1billion solar portfolio.
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E025: SMART Program In Massachusetts and How Regulators View 201 Petition Risk with Mike Judge
On the 14th of November, DOER released the RFP for the initial block of the much anticipated SMART program. The timing of the release was cause of many questions considering the shadows of the 201 petition which could affect the price of solar in Massachusetts. SolarWakeup covered many of these questions with Mike Judge, Director of Renewable Energy at DOER, during last month’s SolarWakeup Live! in Boston. Full Transcript Below. (While we attempt to make it verbatim, it may miss a few words) Make sure to rate and review the podcast! Make sure to check out SolarWakeup Live! in D.C. on … Read More