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.

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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 →

FERC Order Tips Scales Towards Fossil Fuels (Shocked, Not Shocked)

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) passed a rule by a vote of 2-3 (no, we’re not sure how that’s a thing either) that Tries to usurp the rights of states to set their own clean-energy goals. Privileges fossil fuels over renewable electricity sources by not accounting for the full value of energies like wind and solar. SolarWakeup’s View:  For the moment, let’s set aside the issue of the Republicans’ mythical support of “states’ rights,” which they largely ignore when inconvenient on a multitude of issues, to which you can now add electricity generation. … Read More →

This is your SolarWakeup for March 14th, 2018

COSEIA. Join me tomorrow in Denver as I interview the team behind the Clean Energy Federal Credit Union, a project years in the making. What questions do you want to hear answers to? How can the lending community help your business?

Taxes and Tariffs. We will be talking a lot more about tariffs this week but it’s clear that tax reform and tariffs had a huge effect on the year solar had in 2017. Now that those things are figured out, people are back to putting their heads down and getting stuff done. Question for you, what is it going to take for C&I to get into the multi-MW scale?

Semis and Buses. I am intrigued by the business opportunities that electric vehicles present in our energy future. Made more interesting by the deployment of electric semis and buses in fleets of the future. First, electric vehicles are simply better. Second, we have a lot of work to do to enable the fleets to not be affected by long duration charging. My guess is we are a few years from energy demand growing in the US.

He Is Back. Arnold, man of many accomplishments, has a major task ahead of him. He is suing the oil companies for their failure to disclose the health risks of climate change. Comparing it to the tobacco companies, he wants to use civil litigation to drive some change. I wonder if he’s been approached to help the solar space.

San Francisco. We will have some big news including another speaker for Wakeup Live SF this week, mark April 10th on your calendar to join your colleagues.

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Have a great day!
Yann

5 GW of Solar And Wind In Virginia? Yes, Please.

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed a sweeping electricity bill yesterday that had been championed by the state’s largest utility, Dominion Energy. The bill declares 5 GW of solar and wind development as being in the public interest. It also discusses how adding renewable resources will also modernize the grid. SolarWakeup’s View:  This bill shouldn’t surprise anyone. Shortly before he left office, former Governor Terry McAuliffe signed a raft of legislation to offer support for the solar industry across every segment, designed to encourage solar development in the state. From yesterday’s signing of Senate Bill … Read More →

Is DG Solar Cost Competitive With Utility-Scale Solar? One Analysis Says Yes

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: The Minnesota-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance, who employs one of the best DG analysts in the industry in John Farrell, have released a study that Proves that distributed generation is now cost competitive with utility-scale solar. The sweet-spot for project size is between 10 MW and 20 MW. SolarWakeup’s View:  The common narrative in the solar industry is that DG solar is still more expensive utility-scale. But an analysis by the Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR) says that a full analysis shows that narrative is simply wrong. Farrell’s analysis is worth reading for … Read More →

This is your SolarWakeup for March 13th, 2018

Old Grid, New Energy. Some of today’s best stories are on Twitter when an expert gives his take in the snippet format. Sometimes that information gets covered by our Frank Andorka (reminder: you can send anonymous tips from solarwakeup.com or email him or myself). In this case, he covered the responses by the various ISOs to FERC’s request for information about resiliency. This is part of the NOPR process we saw a few months ago. The takeaway, our grid isn’t made for new energy generation and wires are the weakest link. His story here.

Big Time Virginia Legislation. A big utility bill that passed the Virginia legislature and has now been signed by Governor Northam. Amongst the many issues this bill tackles, it declares 5GW of solar and wind development in the public interest. Bills like this take years to accomplish and solar’s role was in the weeds for much of that time. One of the people that I know was deeply involved in this is Scott Thomasson of Vote Solar. If you plan on doing business in Virginia, come say thank you in person at Equinox 2018. More coverage on this coming shortly, check solarwakeup.com in a few hours.

Overhyping Bad News. Yesterday there was an article about solar taking a break in California. It was the top story you clicked on and therefore we covered it. First, top gravitating to the bad headlines. Second, most of these articles are clickbait based on misread data. So we set the record straight in our afternoon story so that you get the complete picture.

RPS Ballot Initiatives. 2018 is going to be a big year for ballot initiatives. Amongst the many issues across the Country are three RPS questions being posed in Arizona, Nevada and Michigan. I’m optimistic that these questions will do well at the polls not only because of a wave but because people like the idea of more clean energy in the wake of closing power plants.

See You There? I am waiting for two confirmations of great interviews to join two already great solar leaders, Bernadette Del Chiaro and Danny Kennedy. The venue selection is going on now so if you expect to attend, get your tickets now. Event is on April 10th.

News

Have a great day!
Yann

Reports Of A Pause In The California Solar Market Are Greatly Exaggerated

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: Quartz Media’s Michael Coren read a Greentech Media report and pronounced that solar in California is overbuilt. At the same time, Coren contends there is plenty of solar in the pipeline. And the residential and commercial markets are still moving ahead. SolarWakeup’s View: What happens when writers who aren’t steeped in the inner workings of solar try to write about it? Bad information gets spewed out into the atmosphere and undoes whatever pollution control solar has done in the first place. Now, I’m sure sure Michael Coren can write rings around around me when it … Read More →