This is your SolarWakeup for October 31st, 2017
SolarWakeup Live! Boston. Later today! If you have specific questions for the speakers, email them over. Remember that you will be able to hear the recordings in a few weeks, barring any technical issues. Those in the live audience will likely have some more market intelligence than you but no need to be jealous. You’ll have the chance to catch the next event in DC.
State of Energy. Yesterday, GTM Research’s Shayle Kann announced his soon to happen departure from GTM. He’s been a well known part of the solar research that has made it to events such as Obama’s State of the Union address. In his parting words, he gives a State of the Energy market similar to the presentation he was known to give at the Solar Summits. No word yet on his next move.
Learning 201 As We Go. The ITC is meeting once again today to vote on remedies. From the testimony we’ve seen, and since 201 is an old petition that isn’t used much, the remedy will have to cause greater good than harm. That being said, the rules of engagement are not well understood and somewhat up to interpretation by the commissioners. We may get some information tomorrow on which way this goes, but the President can come up with his own remedy so it may not matter what the ITC does.
Whitefish Released, Investigation. An insider deal to screw over the Americans in Puerto Rico gets some sunshine from journalists. Now the FBI is investigating and it could get ugly. Red fish, blue fish, white fish, no fish.
MA Net Metering. At 1pm I am interviewing the sponsor of S. 1824, a MA Senate bill to increase the NEM cap by 5%. I’m interested to understand the political part of this work by the State Senator. I’ve been giving some thought on the political rewards reaped by politicians that help solar while also wondering if there are political ramifications for voting against solar. If no, why not?
MA SMART, Tariff Filing. At 4pm, I speak with the person in charge of creating the new SMART program in Mass which is now in front of the DPU to create the tariff language. I’ve got some questions on the process, most importantly on when we will see the benchmark auction that will set the clearing price. If it happens before 201 is resolved, how would it take that into account?
New York. With the success of Live! events in Boston and DC, I am announcing the next location in New York in late January. Likely the last week of the month. More to come.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for October 30th, 2017
New Format. Headlines are vague so today you will find a highlight and one-sentence summary instead of the article title. It’s time consumer so this may not happen every day but I want to know what you think and if you prefer this over the former format.
Boston! I am on my way to Boston as you receive this for the first (of many) SolarWakeup Live! events. A sold out event (thank you) with great speakers( thank you) should show that solar conversations can be done in a better way. We’ll keep adjusting until it’s better than the nauseous solar circuit that is currently plaguing the solar industry. You’ll be able to listen to the conversations in a few weeks, complete with transcripts. Please support the sponsors and considering sponsoring so this experiment continues.
ITC Tomorrow. Tomorrow, the trade commissioners will meet to discuss and vote on remedy proposals that will be transmitted to the President in a few weeks. I’ve been told that more than one proposal could be transmitted. Note that after the proposal goes to the White House, the trade representative will host a hearing on December 6th, the day of SolarWakeup Live! DC.
WSJ Adds On. The editorial board at the Wall Street Journal came out against the 201 tariffs yesterday. Their support is appreciated but from the first paragraph available for public consumption, their facts and editorializing of the case seems off. Onward, message remains the same.
100% Missouri. What is the backdrop for the political shift that allows St. Louis to vote for 100% renewable energy? Cities like Fort Lauderdale and Miami have yet to pass, let alone vote for the worthy goal.
Sunny News LV. If politicians are rewarded with positive feedback for passing solar policy, you can imagine that more politicians look to be pro-solar. The opposite should be true as well, if you vote against solar, you should see political risk. More on this soon.
Watch EVs. 32% of the Norwegian car market is electric. If the US market were to see something along these numbers, you would see 4million new EVs on the road that year. Assuming Volt level usage, that’s 40GWh per DAY of new energy need. In solar terms, we’re talking over 10GW of solar per year to power this growth. Just saying!
Jon Wellinghoff. On Wednesday, a new episode of EnergyWakeup will be released. I spoke with former FERC Chairman, Jon Wellinghoff, about the DOE NOPR and how it would impact the energy markets. In the meantime, catch up on my conversation with Meghan Nutting, who is running for State Assembly in Colorado.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for October 27th, 2017
December 6th. Next Tuesday the trade commission will vote on one or more remedies to submit to the President. Those proposals will be submitted on the 13th of November. The new event is a US Trade Representative hearing on December 6th in DC, same day as our Live! Event. This is important because the trade representative is in the oval office talking tariffs. You will not want to miss this piece of the 201 process. Here is the meeting notice.
Senator #2. Maryland Senator Van Hollen joins Senator Heinrich to speak up against the trade case. He speaks up for the 2,500 resident of Maryland that would lose their jobs to prop up a bankrupt company and an offshore hedge fund. This speaks to the requirement that the remedy result in more good than bad. Van Hollen’s letter.
MN Legislature. Minnesota, with a rapidly growing solar market centered around community solar, has spoken out as well. A group of State legislators from both houses has come out to protect the Canadian exemption from the remedy, saying the economies of Canada and Minnesota are closely tied. Two legislators spoke at the original ITC hearing against the injury proceeding. MN letter to ITC.
Puerto Rico Senate. To start, this is a reminder that a majority of Americans in Puerto Rico are living without power. It’s 80 plus degrees and they have no air conditioning and many don’t have access to clean water. A member of the Senate, who was the former President of the PR Senate, speaks from the heart about the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria. “From this devastation, Puerto Rico has an opportunity to rebuild with clean energy resources like solar.” His letter here.
China Trip. On November 3rd, Trump heads to Asia, starting his trip in Japan before heading to South Korea and China before ending at the ASEAN meetings. The agenda is packed and while I am hopefully optimistic that the Chinese parties bring up the solar trade case, it is becoming increasingly possible that it does not get discussed. This leaves for lobbying on the trade remedy to happen locally, ideally through a special report from Sean Hannity while the President is watching.
DC Tickets. Now that you see what’s going on in DC, make sure to join us for Live! DC on the 6th of December. Tickets here.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for October 26th, 2017
Solar Pro Running For Office. Today’s podcast is with Meghan Nutting. You may know her because she’s been working in solar policy for the better part of a decade working on State policy in over 20 States. Now she is running for State House in Colorado, representing the Denver area. Great conversation about what it takes to run and how more solar people should be doing it.
Donate. What would be better than having a solar professional in the Colorado State Assembly? Chip in what you can and pass the hat in your office. $25 or more is super helpful, let’s show Meghan the power of SolarWakeup. Maximum donation is $400 and no corporate checks. Donate Here.
Puerto Rico. A 2 person shop from Whitefish Montana is bragging about having 40 workers in San Juan and we may be looking at US citizens staying without power for a year if this continues. This looks ripe for Federal intervention given the bureaucracy and the strange contracts to unqualified contractors. At least the solar industry appears to be making headway in building some systems.
Privatization. PREPA is not a shining example of how you run a utility. With ideas and interest being floated on privatizing parts of the utility market, with PREPA retaining the wires. This could remove PREPA’s credit from the equation and allow generation to trade in the island market. The problem about Government credit would remain since public entities represent a large part of the market and unpaid bills. As a smart person in the utility space told me, after all this, “who makes the decision on making a change?”
Acquisitions. Yesterday it was all about raising money, today we have a group of acquisitions. Cypress Creek sold more projects to Australia’s New Energy, which has been on a buying spree. On the power front, TransCanada is unloading solar assets and Vistra is looking to acquire Dynegy. I’m a bit confused about the Vistra acquisition given the recent announcements to close ERCOT plants.
Live! DC. Early bird tickets for SolarWakeup Live! DC are now available. The room is small, just 50 people will be able to be there live and if it goes like Boston, it will sell out in advance of the event, reserve your tickets now.
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Yann
E022: Meghan Nutting, A Solar Policy Pro Running For State Legislature In Colorado’s 5th District
In this episode I speak with Meghan Nutting, a solar veteran that has worked in policy roles at SolarCity and Sunnova over the past decade. Meghan is running for the State Legislature in the very powerful 5th district. The current legislator in this district is the Speaker of the House, Crisanta Duran. This is a safe democratic seat which leads the winner of the primary to likely take general election. As an advocate, I see a big need for more solar pros like Meghan to run for office, electric coop boards and other appointments. Having solar leaders in the discussion … Read More
This is your SolarWakeup for October 25th, 2017
Sold Out! SolarWakeup Live! Boston is now sold out. If you were planning on buying a ticket, a waitlist is now online, first come, first served. Thank you to everyone for your support!
Grid Ops. I’m spending quite a bit of time talking with grid planners trying to understand what dispatchable solar assets, centralized and distributed, mean to a utility operation. Mainly, trying to ascertain what type of value is generated in addition to the value of energy and how to monetize the power. If you work at a utility and want to have this conversation, on a purely hypothetical basis, I want to talk to you and your colleagues. There is no doubt in my mind that all solar in the next decade will be dispatchable in some way with storage, just a matter of when and how it is executed.
$. Sunrun announced a new debt facility of $244.5million.
$$. Tesla is securitizing $340million in contracts.
$$$. Brookfield is refinancing $300million in Terraform debt.
$$$$. Hannon Armstrong is raising $164million in green bonds.
Show Me The $. That’s just what some of the news had about solar companies raising money for projects today, and it’s not everything. There is a desire and need to deploy capital into infrastructure and the scale is larger than most had expected a decade ago. Money available, projects needed. Except of course complicated distributed projects, that’s still a mess.
New EnergyWakeup Tomorrow. I had a fantastic conversation with Meghan Nutting today that will be released tomorrow during the day so make sure to subscribe to EnergyWakeup on your favorite podcast platform. Meghan has been working in solar for a decade, currently with Sunnova, and she is running for the State House in Colorado to represent downtown Denver. More on how you can get involved and help elect a solar leader coming soon.
Presented By DGEP Management. DGEP’s Co-Development Program provides equity to our development partners for early to mid-stage assets. Our years of expertise facilitate an efficient development process and enable our partners to maximize profits upon transaction exit.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for October 24th, 2017
One Week Away! SolarWakeup Live! Boston is here, coming up next Tuesday the 31st. The goal of this event is to show that solar conferences don’t need to be big or fancy to create value. Much like this newsletter, the point was do it better. I look forward to your feedback and growing the Live! Series from here. I need your help though, I have 10 more tickets to sell and I want to fill the room for the speakers. Could you send this to 2 partners, colleagues or friends in the Boston area? Live! DC is coming up in 5 weeks too!
Role Of Monopoly. My view on the utility in the energy market continues to evolve every time I see a utility get a rate increase or put solar in its ratebase. At its core, utilities provide a wires and poles to energy service providers – generators and retailers. There can’t be any competition in wires because nobody wants two sets of poles on their street. Power plants and energy trading offer a great deal of value to consumers when there is competition. Let’s evaluate.
Reimagine The Utility. Responsibility to serve means more than making sure that the lights turn on when you flip the switch. This also means making sure that utilities are doing it in the best, most efficient way possible. Markets that don’t allow competition should study how it would look if they did allow it and how to make that transition. I’ve said it before, Connecticut and Texas don’t agree on much but they agree on this.
Ideal Role. We’ve seen this already, we see utilities creating largest solar asset portfolios in the market. More importantly, utilities are becoming diversified energy companies investing in and acquiring companies. There is room for growth here, however – look at Stem’s investors as an example. When the dealflow isn’t coming in properly, because energy startups tend to be under capitalized, utility corporate development groups don’t see many deals so they all pounce on the deals that have the attractiveness of having other utilities in them. Making utilities invest through other funds as LPs is one way to solve this or making themselves more visible in the market.
Customer’s Want Change. According to SEPA, there are 171 active community solar programs across the Country – room for more for sure. While 80% of all Americans want more solar, they want it for a variety of reasons. Some want it for cleaner air and cleaner water. Some want to benefit from the natural resources. Some want to make money. That’s why having options is so important.
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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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for October 23rd, 2017
Why Did I Talk To SunPower’s CEO. In the latest podcast, I spoke with Tom Werner, SunPower’s CEO. I was curious about SunPower’s role in the 201 case. If you read the filings, they lead the SEIA filing and at the same time file their own responses. SunPower has been standing not only in their corner, but all of solar’s corner. They’ve been a part of policy fights, public and private, that help amongst other things their dealers compete in a bigger market.
Stion Owes $75mm. The State of Mississippi is contemplating a lawsuit against Stion to recoup its loan. A few years ago, the State loaned Stion $75mm to build a factory. This supplemented $225mm in venture capital investments that Stion received. Stion told reporters that they were hoping a buyer would keep the factory running - don’t hold your breath because nothing is worse for a solar manufacturer than a lack of bankability.
Subsidy Irony. Stion, a largely unkown company, made its way on many radar screens when I pointed out their support of the Suniva/SolarWorld 201 petition. You have to enjoy the irony - arguing for crystalling technology to be punished so they could have an unlevel playing field by saying that other Countries were giving too much money to manufacturers. Subisidies for jobs are part of the global economy. Stion was also given tax deductions, infrastructure and workforce training that all US companies enjoy that other Countries do not.
More On Hannity. Axios has published more information about Solar Powers America, which I had kept to myself because the message was better without the background. If you like palace intrigue, the article is here. This makes a good point that SolarWakeup is the best place to get news out because I support our industry I make my living in it. If you want to stay anonymous, there is a tips link on the front page of solarwakeup.com, use it often or call me to let me know about things you are working on.
Purpose Of 501(c)4. SPA is a 501(c)4 which means it’s a non-profit but has a mission that it supports. You may also know them as Super PACs because donor(s) can stay private and nobody will ever know who they are. Have a billionaire friend that wants to flood facebook with solar supporting news? Start a 501(c)4 and have yourself a field day. Not all advocacy groups are (c)4, some incorporate as a company and end the year without profit.
Presented By EnterSolar. EnterSolar is a leading provider of solar photovoltaic solutions to the commercial marketplace that is ranked the #1 solar developer in New York State and in the top 10 nationally. We are currently hiring at our growing company.
Join Us in Boston 10/31. Tickets for SolarWakeup Live! Boston are available here, just $75 for four in-depth interviews about net metering, SMART, venture capital and startups.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for October 20th, 2017
Interviewing SunPower CEO. Yesterday I interviewed Tom Werner, SunPower’s CEO, to talk about the 201 petition and how difficult it is to drive cost out of technology. I ask him about SunPower’s request to be excluded from the tariff. Tom questions how SunPower, which sells a premium product, could possible cause harm to modules that sell at a discount to SunPower. Listen to the full interview here.
Excluded But On Offensive. SunPower and First Solar are partners in 8point3 and compete head to head on utility projects. But when it comes to the 201 case, First Solar is excluded through “arcane” regulations and I asked Tom how he felt about that. I would have to ask First Solar, Tom said, about why First Solar would go on the offensive while being excluded.
Solar Powers America. The Hannity audio was actually a radio ad that has been running in South Carolina for a few weeks including on Hannity’s radio show. What isn’t on the youtube clip is the disclaimer that the ad was paid for by Solar Powers America, a 501(c)4 registered in Florida. I tracked down a few people behind the group which is focused on the message and not the messenger, which I will respect. The group is spending big money on pushing the ad out and we could see more with this strategy.
A Southern Strategy. Solar Powers America was formed by Solar industry executives across the Southeast to educate Southeastern states on the jobs and low cost electricity solar energy can deliver to small towns and rural communities. The falling cost of solar equipment has been the key driver of both affordable electricity and manufacturing employment in factories producing the steel foundation of solar farms throughout the country. Looking at it from a political perspective, Southern states have different politics and needed a different approach. The group has been focusing on outreach grassroots advocacy by highlighting the jobs created by solar. I well done effort in my opinion.
201 Pivot. The original intent of SPA was not the 201 case, it hadn’t been filed yet. The 201 petition unfairly impacts Southern states where tariffs can kill an entire market. Just look at South Carolina which is tight as it is, but a tariff would eliminate it altogether. With a focus on manufacturing jobs already in place, the pivot happened and Solar Powers America used its platform to educate America about jobs that could be lost if offshore hedge funds have their way.
Bezos Badass. Christening a wind farm while standing on top of it? Badass.
Boston Ticket Release. We just opened some more seats for SolarWakeup Live! Boston. This isn’t your typical solar conference, just 4 hours long and no panels. I am personally interviewing Senator Boncore about net metering legislation, Michael Judge from MA DOER about SMART and private sector players Daniel Hullah and Jon Abe. Tickets will not be available at the door but you can get them here.
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Yann
SunPower CEO, Tom Werner, On Asking For 201 Exclusion and Leading The Fight Since 2003
Tom Werner joined SunPower as employee number 35 and became the CEO in 2003. Since going public in 2005, Tom has led the company through the solar industry to where it is today. With 1,100 employees in the US and operations around the world. With the 201 petition at the top of mind, I ask Tom about the exclusion SunPower is asking the ITC for and why he thinks First Solar asked for tariffs to be implemented when they were aleady exempt. It’s difficult to get public company CEOs to open up but I saw a long term vision come … Read More