This is your SolarWakeup for June 22nd, 2017
Come see me in Sacramento next Monday at 11:30am at the PAC-12 Sustainability Conference. Bill Walton and I will preach the solar gospel, hopefully driving campuses and students to be leaders and consumers of solar energy.
The Businesses Lead the Way. I’ve always said that our most important and most unserved advocate is the customer. When was the last time that you spoke to a customer for 2 or more years ago? Activate them to help push a policy or sell them some upgrade? We have to think outside the box on this because we have over a million customers nationally, that is a powerful target audience to help us all, including to refer more business to our industry.
Oak Tree Is Making Moves. I don’t know if Oak Tree is really into wire harnesses or the investment partner was hoping to wear cargo shorts more often. The key question for this deal is obvious, what was Dean wearing in the investment meeting??? Congrats to the whole Shoals team!
Turn the LePage. Maine needs to keep working on its policy. Every State matters and every year matters but as State fights go, sessions start and end but the education on solar policy never stops.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for June 21st, 2017
Long day in California which ended in Sacramento for a day of meetings surrounding the AEE conference.
PAC-12 Sustainability. Come see me on Monday the 26th in Sacramento at the PAC-12 Sustainability Conference. I’ll be talking with Bill Walton about the important work students and universities play in our markets. I hope to see you there.
Solar Foundation Solstice. This Thursday, anyone in the DC area should be at the Solar Foundation Summer Solstice event. Now, more than ever, we need to support the important work that the Solar Foundation does for our industry. Get your tickets here!
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for June 20th, 2017
Great first day in the Bay Area to talk about how the solar industry is entering and integrating energy storage. What is your top issue when studying storage for your solar project?
Solar Wins In Africa. Just a few years ago there was a conversation about the need to energize Africa using central power and transmission. The data now shows that solar is doing the job needed to electrify many areas without the need for costly transmission. Add hybrid power systems in microgrids to high power demand areas and you can create an entirely distributed grid.
100% Renewables? Can we get to a grid with 100% renewables by the middle of the century? In my mind, it is absolutely feasible if we have the right price signals.
Are Corporates Getting Smarter? From a development standpoint, corporates and other C&I customers have so many tools at their disposal to control their energy costs. Islanded and behind the meter microgrids can be built to their needs with the power inputs that the client wants. With steep declines in energy storage costs and new technologies, distributed power will not only be distributed but also potentially a microgrid that is smarter than we have been accustomed to.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for June 19th, 2017
I am on the way to San Francisco as I spend the last week of the Energy Storage Road Show in the Bay Area with a quick stop in Sacramento on Wednesday.
Sandoval Goes Back To Politics. The legislature in Nevada crafted really forward thinking policy for its constituents this year. The Governor was quiet throughout the process and after signing the net metering bill on Thursday, vetoed 2 bills related to solar on Friday. The first would have created a community solar market in Nevada which would have brought solar to renters and homeowners with bad roofs for solar. He also stopped the bill that would have increased the RPS to 40%. Much of this was in response to opposition by ‘the boulevard’ and his continued hope to move to Washington. A missed opportunity in my opinion for the Governor to play politics by supporting solar.
Faces To Political Issues. Mainstream news outlets are doing a good job to see who is affected by the changing economy. This isn’t a good/bad economy problem, but a old/new job opportunity issue. As part of this, I would like to hear from you about interesting career paths on your teams. There is a political connotation to this and I want to show that people from all sorts of backgrounds found work in solar. Did they come from oil or coal? Laid off from another trade contractor? Anything interesting and appeals to mainstream America, please send me an email.
Florida Hates Taxes. We don’t have an income tax and now commercial solar will get a large property tax reduction thanks to the leadership of Senator Jeff Brandes and Vote Solar. Vote Solar’s team pushed for this years back and stuck through the process by getting a legislative push to bring it to the voters. Well done by all.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for June 16th, 2017
Presented by T-Top Buddy, Thanks For Your Support This Week
Enjoy your weekend. See you all in the Bay Area next week.
The Good News. After years of fighting, lawsuits, protests and PR fights, Nevada’s solar market is once again open for business. Arguably biggest turn around in solar policy fights where a win actually followed a loss. Most other State battles settle before the complete demise. That’s the untold story about policy in solar, we win a lot. Teams in Nevada saw an opportunity to turn this around and fought the long game to get this done. Congrats to all.
The Bad News. As everyone in solar knows, bankruptcy lenders for Suniva are trying to hurt American families from lowering energy costs and providing jobs to hardworking Americans. The 201 petition to increase the price of modules to $0.78/watt would cost 88,000 solar professionals their jobs. That is the opposite of what we should all want and what we need as a Country. It is indefensible at all levels and politicians need to be educated about this.
Annual Energy Report. BNEF has published their annual energy report that estimates clean energy taking a 7.4trillion dollar share of the 10trillion power market in the next 22 years. 74% of all power investment will be clean energy! That’s a stunning statistic.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for June 15th, 2017
Last call to join me in the energy storage conversation next week in San Francisco. The focus is on speaking with IPPs and operators of solar farms, primarily in Western States. I want to see how energy storage plays with your portfolio, operating and in-development. I look forward to meeting with many of you.
Getting into double digits. Solar and wind reached 10% of energy production in April. This is the first time that it reached double digits and got to 7% in 2016. That’s a long way from the less than 1% talking point we had just a few years ago. Note that this information typically leaves out distributed solar which could skew the data to the lower band of reality.
Cost of Money Winner. I want to be Apple’s solar buyer. Give me that cost of money and access to the capital and let me create an IPP of solar assets. With the green bond capital, Apple could probably get solar to match its usage across most markets using energy storage and other renewable sources. We all thought pension funds were the cheap capital, it seems that they were the long term capital.
Corporate Outreach. Amazon going solar isn’t a big deal, they’ve done much bigger solar for their web services business. However, Bezos talking about solar is a big deal. He’s currently the richest man in the world and runs a company that lives in almost all of our lives. Bezos thinking about and talking about the company’s solar goals means a lot to reaching solar supporters outside of our industry.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for June 14th, 2017
Presented by T-Top Buddy, a product I created
Peak Coal? Production. Down. Consumption. Down. Globally, coal looks like it has hit its peak. Production is down over 6% globally and consumption is down almost 2%. New power plants are virtually non-existent, which can’t be good news for coal industry.
Appealing to the Base. Oil fell off the $100+ levels and settles at or below $50 per barrel. That didn’t bode well for some parts of the oil drilling sector especially in Texas. The Houston Chronicle looks at how solar saved the day for some hardworking Americans that are going from the oil fields to the solar farms. This comes right behind solar hiring hundreds in Virginia with no experience required. This is the argument that needs to come out in the 201 petition argument. Raise the cost of modules by any amount and hardworking families will suffer. SEIA needs to head down to Texas right now and make an ad, the Houston Chronicle did the hard work for you. If you want, you can hire me to do it for you.
CEOs want it, CFOs approve it. A lesson many of us learn very early in our solar careers and it’s never a bad idea to repeat it. Educating CFOs is part of the mission that we must all focus on every day. Nice message from GreenBiz as they head to Verge in Hawaii next week.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for June 13th, 2017
Presented by T-Top Buddy, a perfect gift for Father’s Day.
Power loses to Healthcare. When the CEO of GE steps down, it has repercussions throughtout the giant company. It also creates some noise outside of the company to determine where the board, vis a vis shareholder value, sees the value coming from. Immelt’s largest acquisition was Alstom Power so there was some rumor that the energy unit could make its way to the corner office but it was not to be, the head of GE Healthcare will take the reigns. I can only imagine that GE saw a changing energy sector to a distributed grid at the same time GE Current wasn’t necessarily a huge success.
Research carries some weight. Research dollars often get a black eye when it comes to government spending. But with Trump’s new budget proposal (which isn’t going anywhere), big name CEOs have come out to protect the research money. I am most surprised by the US Chamber being on the list though the signatories are quite eclectic.
Regulators Rule The Day. When it comes to making an impact, we should focus on congressional seats first. The reason is because State Reps want to become members of Congress. You control a portion of that vote and you can control an issue. On the other hand, members of the regulatory body have an outsized ability to shape a State’s leadership or lack thereof when it comes to clean energy growth. The Northeast has quite the regulatory conferencing going on right now between NECPUC and the EEI conference. But more on EEI tomorrow perhaps.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for June 12th, 2017
Presented by T-Top Buddy, a perfect gift for Father’s Day
Two weeks into the energy storage road show and we are learning a lot of things. I’d like to thank the many people that met with us and shared your experiences. There are big things happening in energy storage for sure, but things are still nuanced. More to come as we head to the Bay Area next week.
Market Segmentation Is In Focus. With the bankruptcy filing from American Solar Direct, you have to wonder where the market focus is going to be now. Growth is slowing, yes, but residential solar will continue forward. From my perspective, as a solar strategist, I would take a single market segment and make that profitable. It goes against most executive’s grain to have a single revenue stream but lack of focus lacks profits.
Judging Solar On Jobs, Alone. The trap is being set, I can see it coming. If the solar industry is only successful by growing the total number of jobs, then eventually we will have a year of decline. We do have hyper growth right now and 2016 was the ITC sunset year. Solar isn’t successful because we have the jobs, that’s only part of the story. Solar is good for consumers and ratepayers as well. Fixing the cost of energy for decades benefits businesses that don’t like the unkown of operating expenses and ratepayers on fixed income. If you budget $100 for electricity, wouldn’t it be nice to know that you can get the same amount for your money next year than you do right now?
The Solar Eclipse Debate. A few years ago there was a debate about how Germany would handle a solar eclipse while solar production was in peak output. California has enough solar to have a similar impact, a side effect of success I guess. The point is that a grid with the right pricing signals can manage energy needs, capacity forecasts and regulate frequency in any condition.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for June 9th, 2017
Growth of Community Solar. There is a lot of value from a development standpoint for community solar. First it separates offtaker from the solar farm location. The geographical separation enables the second value generated by community solar, credit risk mitigation. If an offtaker defaults, moves or otherwise decides to stop paying, the solar farm can put in a new offtaker. Additionally, you can make a play to shorten the offtaker contracts or even go month to month like a cable bill. You lose the distributed network value but solar doesn’t really benefit from that anyways in most cases. If you can get your investors around the regulatory pricing risk, then we should continue to see a growth in this market.
Q1 US Solar Market. Always interesting to see the headlines from one publication to another even though they all got the same data the day before. 2017 will be smaller than 2016 and Q1 was smaller than Q4, no real surprises here. Cost of solar continues to drop in price and we will see how that impacts the future of the market, even in the circumstance of a minimum price situation.
Last night I came back from Los Angeles and will be in San Francisco the week of the 19th to talk more energy storage in a solar market. Looking forward to hearing from many of you.
Is Perry Going Rogue? The comments from nomination hearings to the current comments, Rick Perry seems to be continuously leaving the door open for training for job replacements from coal to renewables. I don’t think it means much nor do I read too much into it except perhaps placating the critics enough to keep doing what he really wants, prolonging the market for incumbent entities.
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Yann