Can EVs Save The Utility Model?

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: Quartz Media reports that as distributed generation continues to peel off customers from utilities, they

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: Quartz Media reports that as distributed generation continues to peel off customers from utilities, they are increasingly turning to electric vehicles (EVs) as their business-model savior, and are designing incentives to get their current customers to purchase them. SolarWakeup’s View: The charts below are striking fear into the hearts of utilities everywhere – electricity demand is flatter than Interstate 70 through Kansas. So if you’re a regulated utility that has realized new generation will be hard to justify going forward, where do you turn to keep growing the ratebase? For many utilities, that life extension … Read More →

Is DC-Coupled Storage The Next Solar Boom Segment?

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By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: Our own Yann Brandt, the proprietor of this place, interviewed Josh Prueher, CEO of FlexGen, about the concept of DC-coupled energy storage and what it could mean for the solar industry. What are the major advantages of DC versus AC coupled energy storage for solar? How does solar start integrating storage in its projects? SolarWakeup’s View: As the race to unlock the solar+storage market heats up, the idea of DC-coupled storage is an intriguing one. In such a system, the storage devices are placed between the solar modules and the inverter, instead of the traditional … Read More →

This is your SolarWakeup for March 8th, 2018

SolarWakeup Live! San Francisco. The Bay Area is the center of the solar industry universe. Almost 20% of the readers of this newsletter are somewhere within an hour of San Francisco. So after a 3 city warmup, we are coming there. We are honing in on a venue and invite you to join us. One confirmed speaker is Danny Kennedy of CalCEF and formerly Sungevity and so much more. If you are looking for brand exposure on this platform, this is also a great opportunity to sponsor. As you’ve seen below, sponsors get on the newsletter, website, podcast in addition to the event. Send me an email at yann@solarwakeup.com to talk about sponsoring. See you there!

I Am Hopeful. David Hogg is one of the recognizable activists that has emerged post Parkland shooting. Through his activism he has amassed a platform and a following on social media. One of his comments last week was about the need for STEM education so that he and his generation can get jobs in wind and solar. It took me a few days to digest this and consider whether it was content important for this audience. Here is a 17 year old that just went through horror. He is speaking out on issues that matter to him and sees optimism in the future within our industry. I think that says something about the industry that we’ve built together and I, for one, welcome him and all of the next generation to join us in our mission.

You Get An EV. You Get An EV. No, this is no the next episode of the Oprah show. But it is likely coming to a utility near you. We’ve talked about it before. Utilities have flat demand growth and they need a catalyst and that means competing with gas stations as the source of fuel. This is not a small event in history, utilities have never competed with BP, Exxon, etc. They have each stayed in their own lane but now those worlds are converging.

Everyone Loves Tax Credits. GM wants to build more EVs. Every auto OEM is doing so and just in time for the EV tax credit to expire. Look for these giant companies, with rather large amounts of influence to head to DC and get the tax credit extended. Expect the utilities to help them do that, because of the point above. Wall Street may be on their side as well because someone has to finance all of those cars.

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Have a great day!
Yann

GE Latest Corporate To Go Big On Energy Storage

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: GE launched its Reservoir energy-storage system to augment their renewable energy product line. A 20′ container will house 1.2MW/4MWh. One of the megacorporation’s main talking points about why it decided to do this now was the importance it sees in integrating more renewable energy onto the grid. GE says Reservoir already has 20 MW / 80 MWh pre-launch commitment of projects. GE Ventures has been actively investing in storage startups, as discussed at SolarWakeup Live! SolarWakeup’s View: If GE is getting into the energy storage market, that’s a huge boost for everyone else already playing … Read More →

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 →