This is your SolarWakeup for November 2nd, 2017
Tax Reform. The House tax writers are working overtime trying to get the tax plan to the members. Some rumors are circling that the solar ITC could be on the block. Realistically, the tax plan has a lot of headwind and even if it gets to the President, it will be very unlikely that the ITC will be cut. The tax rate reductions would be the more important number to watch which will impact the supply of tax liability – and reduce value of the depreciation.
Just The Thought. Solar fails the basic power test. What is the repercussion to a politician for floating an anti solar idea, let alone vote against solar? The answer is – nothing. We don’t play politics, we’ve shunned solar advocates that play politics. The solar coaster will continue until we get off the bench and grow up. Our budgets are too small and we don’t do the hard work that would identify politicians that are willing to sell out on solar before they ever gain power. For example, my County commissioner voted in favor of a resolution that favored the utility against solar. He is now running for State Representative in a race where the margin is a couple thousand votes. A solar advocacy campaign can derail his political career right here and right now but we won’t be there to do it and in a few years he’ll be running for progress with no repercussions on his anti-solar vote.
NOPR #1. The root of the coal subsidy in the NOPR is having 90 days of fuel supply. Solar, especially with storage, would make sense to qualify. I didn’t ask the question to Jon Wellinghoff but we talk about the process that could impact the power markets you are working in. Podcast here.
NOPR #2. Join me on the 7th of November in DC at MDV SEIA’s Solar Focus Conference as I interview CleanChoice Energy’s CEO, Tom Matzzie. We’ll be discussing the impact of the NOPR on energy prices and some potentially fraudulent trades on gas capacity. If you’re not watching and learning about power markets, you are not realizing where your market is going.
Transcript. Most podcasts, including Episode 023, will not have a transcript in the post if you prefer to read the text of the conversation.
Read For Yourself. Are you confused about the different recommendations that the ITC commissioners voted on? Find the individual statements in the post below.
DC Happy Hour? As I mentioned before, the important next step in the 201 process is the trade representative hearing on the 6th, the same day as Live! DC. There will be a large contingent of the solar industry in town. I’ve been asked if I would plan and host a happy hour to get together after the hearing and after Live! DC. If you are interested in co-hosting and sponsoring this event, reach out.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for November 1st, 2017
Big Success In Boston. Nothing caught on fire at the sold-out inaugural SolarWakeup Live! event in Boston. All four conversations dove deep in to the content, some of which I give you some highlights of below. Recorded interviews will be released over the next month.
SMART RFP Coming. I spoke with Mike Judge from DOER who led the SMART regulation process which is currently at the DPU for tariff language. We spoke about the auction process to clear the initial block of projects and how the 201 process impacts the timeline and if the process can proceed without knowing the costs of development. DOER is party to the DPU proceedings and expects to comment in some ways on the creation of the tariff process.
NEM Cap In MA. S. 1824 increases the net metering cap in MA by 5% and is sponsored by Senator Boncore who joined us yesterday. While the bill is progressing through the Senate, current in the TUE committee, there is no timeline on reporting it out of committee or hearing it on the Senate floor. Most importantly, there was little understanding of how the House would view the bill. Result? Don’t expect quick work on the cap increase.
ITC Vote. The trade commission held a vote yesterday to recommend some tariffs on imported modules. For those keeping count that would be the third tariff. They are lower than what Suniva and SolarWorld asked for and analysts from Roth Capital view the resulting ASP in the low 40cent per watt. That being said, this doesn’t mean anything until the President decides what he wants to do about it. This is still a tax on American consumers but probably livable for the US solar market. Keep up the pressure and make sure to attend the USTR hearing on the 6th in DC if you can.
FERC Trouble. Jon Wellinghoff spent 8 years on the FERC board including 4 as the Chairman. He has spent his career on policy and I knew that is the voice I wanted to hear about the DOE NOPR. From now on, let’s call the NOPR what it is – a subsidy for coal plants in what should be open and free markets. There seems to be additional trouble brewing at FERC, which Jon describes at the end of the episode. Listen here.
DC Dec 6th. Join us in DC, already 50% sold out so make sure to get your tickets soon and get one for a friend. If you are interested in sponsoring, email me, you get on the website, newsletter and conference.
Sponsor Thank You! Please support our Live! Boston sponsors. EnterSolar is hiring. True Green Capital is buying projects. DGEP Management is investing in development. If you want a personal intro, let me know.
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Yann
E023: Impact of DOE’s NOPR and Next Steps At FERC with Former Chairman Jon Wellinghoff
In this episode I speak with Jon Wellinghoff, former FERC Chairman and Principal at Policy/DER consulting. We discuss the DOE NOPR and the FERC docket that is now open to review the proposal to subsidize coal and nuclear plants. Full transcript available below. Make sure to rate and review the podcast! Make sure to check out SolarWakeup Live! in D.C. on 12/6 and NYC late January. If you enjoyed this episode as much as I did, make sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform including iTunes, SoundCloud and Stitcher radio. Please subscribe and share with your friends how much EnergyWakeup is helping you. Transcript: YANN BRANDT: [00:00:01] Today I'd like to welcome Jon Wellinghoff to the show. Jon is the principal at policy DER consulting. He spent a year as a chief policy officer SolarCity but most importantly for this conversation was, he was a commissioner at FERC from 2006-2013 and the chairman for the last four years of his tenure. Welcome to the show Jon. JON WELLINGHOFF: [00:00:24] Thank you all. It’s great pleasure to be here. YANN BRANDT: [00.00.27] Absolutely so we wanted to have you on because on September 28th; energy secretary Perry proposed a rule for final action to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, as we will refer to it. Under the proposal and I quote “FERC will impose rules on the Commission-- will impose rules to the approved ISOs and RTOS to ensure that certain reliability and resilience attributed of electric generation resources are fully valued”. Can you translate this for us? JON WELLINGHOFF: [00.01.00] Well it's actually a mischaracterization and misinterpretation by the secretary of energy. I mean first of all he issued it in a letter as a directive to FERC. He directed FERC to issue the rule based upon the language that he submitted to them in his proposed notice of rulemaking NOPR and the thing that I guess the secretary forgot to read in the federal Power Act-- you know he was acting under. I'm going to forget the sections here. I think it was 403 at the federal Power Act Subsection B if you read subsection C, he finds that the jurisdiction for the determination of whether or not this rule goes forward-- what happens to this rule and whether it's appropriate is entirely within the purview of FERC. So, what that means is he issued in essence an extra-- what I would call an extra Vilas order. An extra Vilas order means that in essence he issued something that he had no authority to issue and direct it to FERC. The Secretary of Energy has no statutory authority whatsoever to issue a directive to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is an independent body, independent regulatory body with five commissioners who are all nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate and so as such; now the only authority that Secretary of Energy has is this extremely limited authority to propose a rule to FERC which he did do but again in language it seemed as if he was directing them to do something which he did not do which he does not have that authority. That is sort of procedural structure of it so once it goes over to FERC as a proposal then it's like any other proposal. That's like I could submit a proposal to FERC, you could submit proposal to FERC, anybody could and once FERC assumes jurisdiction by opening the docket, opening those proposed rulemaking which they did do; they did utilize the Secretary's language in that proposed rulemaking as the proposal that comments would be made up to. But once that is done FERC has the complete authority to reject it, to modify it, to amplify it, to do anything that they deem to be appropriate in the context of their rulemaking authority and their rulemaking authority of course is not unlimited. It's not without boundaries. FERC administrative a procedure act and in doing so they have to ensure that the rules that they promulgate are based upon substantial evidence of record. So, they have to take up evidence into the record which they're doing now based upon comments that are being submitted. I submitted comments along with the seven other former commissioners including I think three or four other former chairs of FERC asking the rule be rejected, the proposed rule be rejected basically but again FERC will take these comments in and then they'll make a decision as to what to do. So that's the whole procedural aspect but now the substantive part of it if we want to talk about the substance of what secretary Perry was proposing substantively, that gets a little bit more difficult because on its face what the (05.03) the secretary Perry said over says is that anything that has a 90-day fuel source and organized wholesale market and they were looking at nearly the ISOs and RTOs is not outside of those areas and there's only six of them that are under Burke's jurisdiction and there are large parts of the country that does not have an organized source of marketing including most of the western United States and most of the southeastern part— YANN BRANDT: [00.05.34] We're talking about mostly like ERCOT (05.36) and the Midwest ISO and PJM those examples— JON WELLINGHOFF: [00.05.42] ERCOT is not under full jurisdiction so this rule couldn't apply to ERCOT. You would hear we have no applicability to ERCOT whatsoever because ERCOT is not part of FERC’s jurisdictional Authority. They are not interconnected into the rest of United States and as such their transmission grid is not considered to be in interstate commerce and therefore they're not in their jurisdiction. So, we're only talking about PJM, (06.07), New England, New York, SPP in California; I think I got them all. Those are the only areas that this rule could potentially apply to if it was promulgated by FERC, if it was enacted so you have to have a 90-day supply and show the ninety days supply. Well, so number one I don't even know what that means. I mean first of all I'm sure there are multiple gas plants and natural gas plants in this country that could show that they have 90-day contracts and a contract for supply for over 90 days and I can tell you I don't have little weight in front of me; so, I'm not sure if there's any qualifying language about fuel has to be on site or something not sure if that's a requirement. But someone could argue that there may be instances where a gas plant has 90 days for the fuel or certainly could the extent that this rule was particularly economically advantageous. I'm sure there're a lot of gas plants to build on site and they did fuel on site so that would negate whatever the whole intent of the rule is really. YANN BRANDT: [00.07.27] One of the interesting things and we'll get into what the intent of this (07.36) or this request order from the secretary actually means; the comments came back and as far as I could— I mean layman's point of view a lot of negative responses including the letter that you wrote with your FERC former commissioners. This is what the Department of Energy's press secretary said about the comments that came back and it was said, “As intended, the proposal has jump-started a long overdue conversation about grid resiliency.” How would you respond to the comments that you've seen and kind of characterize those and what makes up a resilient grid? I mean what—there is this new word that we've been studying and you know what is the resilient grid? JON WELLINGHOFF: [00.08.34] First of all I don't think the comments did jumpstart any conversation about clearly resiliency. I think they jump-started a conversation about whether or not it makes any sense to subsidize nuclear power plants in this country because that's really what the entire intended rule seemed to be. It was to provide rate based constant service treatment that is out of market, subsidy payments to plants that are no longer competitive in the markets so you're going to prop up plants that can't make in the markets and you're going to give them billions of dollars. I think the last estimate I saw was 10 billion dollars annually—you’re going to give these plants 10 billion dollars annually out of our pockets, out of consumers’ pockets so these plants can continue to run where there are a more cost competitive, more cost-effective ways to produce power in this country. So, it had nothing to do with resilience. You only want to talk about resilience; resilience really is all about how you deliver that last mile of power. There's nothing to do with the Central Station power plant that may be located 50, 100, 200 miles away. That's to do with whether or not you're going to have a tree touch the last mile or two miles away because we have a windstorm in Santa Rosa, we have a hurricane in Puerto Rico and all the plants in Puerto Rico that were the Central Station plants there are still operable but you can't get the power to anybody because the resilience was not there in the system in the sense that the distribution systems were too brittle to maintain the ability to deliver and distribute power to residents and businesses in the last mile. So, you have to start looking now at how you make that system more resilient and the most effective way to make them system resilient in my opinion is to start looking at micro grids, start looking at island beam systems in regional grid areas where you can pull apart systems more quickly that have substantial outage problems because of either chronological event, high-impact weather events or other events that may impact the ability of the grid at a local level to deliver power to customers. YANN BRANDT: [00.11.01] Right, so I hear where you're going with this and having-- I mean I lost power for a week from hurricane (11.09) and it had nothing to do with generation but everything to do with my tree falling down— JON WELLINGHOFF: [00:11:15] [chuckles] Exactly. YANN BRANDT: [00:11:16] And a pole snapping a half but-- so if the secretary were to call you and said, “Jon, what's the biggest threat to grid resiliency? Is it not enough base load? Is it too much solar? Is it stronger weather or really has it come down to the fact that we have a bunch of wood poles across this country that are susceptible to breaking, falling etcetera and then you can't get the power that you're generating to the consumer.” JON WELLINGHOFF: [00:11:46] Yeah, it's the latter. If you do analyses of the reasons for grid outages 99%-- now the outages in this country are at the distribution level and I'm not suggesting that we bulk up the distribution system so that we have steel poles, where we underground the whole thing. I mean I think there's much cheaper ways to do it and those cheaper ways to do it are in essence provide for Island beam and separating of systems from each other and allowing for, within those islands, self-sufficiency in aggregated distributed energy resources; rooftop solar, demand response, battery storage, improved levels efficiency and control systems that can sense these outages and in sensing them virtually instantaneously separate from that area that has been out, been put out by the weather (12.48) maybe and ensure that other parts that are not affected can stay up. I mean ultimately that's what we need to do. The military is going to figure this out. The military is not stupid. They are doing whatever they can to build micro grids with every-- on continent military facility in the US and certainly foreign facilities as well to ensure that they have micro grid sustainable systems. They don't have to rely on an out-power source from some utility company that relies on wooden poles put up 40 years ago that may or may not be maintained that could be subject to all kinds of damage and destruction based upon the kinds of weather events that were saying now; the fires the Hurricanes and the other things that we're all experiencing throughout this country. YANN BRANDT: [00:13:49] Would you say that the word resiliency is being overused given the fact that the US generally speaking has, as you and I would describe it, probably the most resilient grid in the world? JON WELLINGHOFF: [00:14:08] Well, not entirely true. From an outing standpoint, the outages in Europe are much, much less than the outages in the US so in my opinion almost the order of mileages so— YANN BRANDT: [00:14:21] But would you describe that as a-- I mean yeah, I lost power for a week because of a hurricane but I hadn't lost power in ten years for more than 30 minutes and maybe someone like me in Europe would have lost power for five minutes. We are not talking about a— JON WELLINGHOFF: [00:14:41] Yeah now that's true. It's not long-duration outages. It’s a minute here, two minutes here, five minutes their kind of saying over a year period and how do we stack up against Europe? Europe does much better than we do but overall if you're looking in the larger context of things like the level of outages of power that they have in developing countries, in Sub-Saharan African countries, in Southeast Asia etcetera you certainly have a much, much stable resilient reliable grid in this country and in Europe than you do anywhere else in the world. There's no question about that. YANN BRANDT: [00:15:32] So I mean at the end of the day I want to talk about this letter you wrote because you wrote-- you and seven others wrote an 11-page memo so these are former FERC commissioners and many of you were chairs. I want to read a couple of things from the letter. You write, “One critical aspect of competitive wholesale markets is that the risk of generation investments has been shifted from captive customers to market participants who could better manage the risk and some who have not been successful doing so.” The some who have not been successful doing so, is that who this proposed rule is really for that they're “Seeking some sort of market subsidy bail out”? JON WELLINGHOFF: [00:16:22] That is what market is all about. That you’re supposed-- everybody talks about we're not supposed to pick winners and losers; that's right. We're not supposed to. The markets are supposed to do that. Ultimately what the markets are about; the markets are supposed to determine who can compete and who can't compete and in our capitalist system which we utilize markets to drive down prices and drive in innovation. We should be embracing that rather than rejecting it. It seems to me that this Republican administration is rejecting markets and rejecting the ability of those markets to successfully choose those technologies and those companies who can be the most efficient, the most effective and delivering services to the end-user. YANN BRANDT: [00:17:15] But we've also seen this-- I mean you also write in a letter about the power plant industrial fuel use act of ‘78 which then under Reagan was repealed that talks about being fuel agnostic and refraining from favoring one fuel over another but haven't we also seen in New York, in Illinois with the use of nuclear or Xerox the bailout of nuclear power plants. Why do you think states and now the administration-- what do you think they're afraid of If these power plants were to actually close because they just don't make economic sense? JON WELLINGHOFF: [00:17:51] Well that's a good question because if the ultimate fear is the lights are going to go out because the plant closed, that's never happened yet. We've never seen a situation where because of markets working correctly above market participant that could not effectively compete and therefore had to close their facility resulting in the lights going out and there is market fix for that problem. If in fact a plant that is going to shut down is essential for reliability, FERC has in the past and on a regular basis authorized the independent system operators in these markets to put in place what we call reliability (18.44) RMR units that are recognized for short term reliability purposes; they need to continue to stay in the market and they're allowed to but that's for identified reliability problem. There's no blanket problem at any one of these or ISOs and RTOs with respect to reliability or resilience. It's never been identified and there's no evidence of any blanket problem that would justify doing this for the massive amounts of coal and nuclear power plants that would be covered under the (19.26) as proposed by secretary Perry. So again, even if-- the worst-case scenario i.e. a plant going out of business would result in some of these lights going off were about to happen. There's a mechanism to take care of that and that mechanism has worked for many, many years so we don't need a rule. We don't need any changes in the rules to ensure that we can maintain reliability in the system. There is a method to do that (19.58) got it covered, the markets have got it covered; we don't need to change the rules to worry about that. YANN BRANDT: [00:20:06] Just a few years ago Rick Perry was the governor of Texas and just last week Texas utility that's I believe now owned by Vistra called Luminant announced that they were going to close. In the next few months we're going to close two coal plants one in Houston and one between Dallas and Houston. Assuming if Rick Perry was governor of Texas and (20.39) comes to CNN and says, “Listen, you know I got to shut these things down because the markets tell-- I'm just not getting my return on this and I'm better off closing these plants.” From a political standpoint, what kind of reaction would Governor Rick Perry have to that compared to what he's having as a reaction as a secretary of energy today? JON WELLINGHOFF: [00:21:04] His reaction should be that, “(21.08) if you have to close your plants I'm sorry but if in fact those plants can't produce energy at market rates and can't provide services to Texans within the market then that's what the markets for me.” He should be supportive of the market that was the whole point of the 8-page letter that we sent to FERC was that FERC has a long-standing tradition; 25 plus years of developing and supporting markets in this country we shouldn't start turning our backs on that now. So, Secretary Perry as governor in Texas should be extremely supportive of those markets as market to work very effectively (21.53) Texas as one of the robust, most robust wholesale and retail electric markets in the entire United States. They went to a restructured retail market back in the early 2000s or maybe it might even be in 1999 and that's been very successful. We're now in Texas. You can choose among 25 retail providers in most areas except for (22.20) like Houston and in San Antonio and in addition they've been extremely successful in driving innovation into their wholesale market by encouraging wind energy to site in that market because in fact Texas was a lot of the four states that had a renewed portfolio standard and as such had very high levels of wind energy. And then as those higher levels of wind energy came into the market, the ERCOT team at the operator level has been extremely competent in integrating that wind in a very smart way. They've done that by becoming much more sophisticated as Dallas. We will cast those very low resources forecasted in a timely fashion and ensuring that there are adequate resources to support the entire market at times when that wind energy may not be available now or seen in Texas because of prices again coming down on the overall prices of solar energy; as you're seeing people starting to come in and build solar plants. In fact, we’ve even seen people build merchants solar plants in Texas for the first time YANN BRANDT: [00:23:46] And that's happening because they're able to go to market traders and get enough of a hedge price by them that is able to pay for the construction and some of the financing for the solar plant. Is that not correct? JON WELLINGHOFF: [00:24:04] That's correct— YANN BRANDT: [00:24:07] The market’s working incentivizing really the lowest cost solution available in the marketplace— JON WELLINGHOFF: [00:24:15] Yes and I wouldn't use the word incentivizing. I'd say compensating. They're compensating the lowest cost provider toward the value that those providers are providing to the market for the market products that you're able to provide. It’s adequately compensating them and enabling them to be able to develop those resources in those fully competitive markets that are working extremely well in Texas. YANN BRANDT: [00:24:43] We're seeing a two different Rick Perry's these days so if-- you mentioned that this would have astronomical cost to consumers because it's shifting really bad business decisions on to consumers. Define how bad this would be for customers in picking sub-economic power plants as market winners. JON WELLINGHOFF: [00:25:17] Well, again we know the preliminary estimates are at least ten billion dollars a year in higher market costs in those markets where these plants would be supported. What we don't know when you talk about really bad as we don't know what the unintended consequences would be of setting up the room with this 90-day provision and as I said, there may be at a market gas plant so all of a sudden you decide well it makes sense for me to build this diesel tank along the side my gas plant. I may never use it. The diesel may just sit there and it may never be of any real use whatsoever but what it does allows me to get all these above market rates for this clamp is really now is that connect inoperable to run in the market so I'm going to throw that one into the mix as well; and so, you don't know how much additional flak and (26.17) could come into this whole system based upon this distortion that Perry's trying to impose upon us and we don't know the full consequences of that. The cost, the consumers could be much, much higher than this initial estimate that these 10 billion dollars a year. YANN BRANDT: [00:26:36] I can think of a few ways that that money is better spent in terms of creating a more— JON WELLINGHOFF: [00:26:44] But we all have to remember; we’ve talked about Rick Perry in Texas, you all have to remember Enron thought they were the smartest guy in the room and so if somebody develops a market distortion and embraces that market distortion, there's going to be a whole group of other people who going to figure out how to take advantage of that market distortion. They're going to be people. We're going to figure out how to milk that for every single dollar the best work. YANN BRANDT: [00:27:14] Yeah, I can imagine. I want to talk to you because just about as much as anyone about grids. Americans in Puerto Rico are without power I mean just a vast majority of them; we're talking about a tropical climate, no air-conditioning, no-- many of them without access to clean water which is tied to not having access to energy. It's an islanded grid and a lot of sort of regulatory issues around PREPA but potentially the largest rebuilding in terms of capacity of a power market that at least in the last 30, 40 years in a developed nation. What the path forward for Puerto Rico today and how do we help them? JON WELLINGHOFF: [00:28:08] Well certainly we have to get power up and delivered as quickly as possible and in part that is going to require sort of rebuilding the archaic systems they have there now in somewhat of a parallel manner; certainly, it is now built but hopefully we can do that in some mechanism it's somewhat temporary so that also in parallel we go alongside of that and start putting in the grid 3.0 that they really should have because they have an opportunity to rebuild it overall again. I'm not sure that we're going to get there. I see that there's conflicting activities that the solar energy association is very involved doing things there; there's Tesla's, there’s (29.04), there’s Sunrun, there so a lot of renewable. FERC are trying to do everything they can to help with the sort of modernization process and put in place more robust and more innovative and advanced systems but at the same time I'm not sure those systems can be put in place quick enough to defer or alleviate the need to build up the old system sort of in a similar manner to its previous infrastructure being Central Station plants with though I understand one on the south side of the island, most of the population’s on the north side of the island with these transmission lines in between and all the distribution lines as well. If there's some way we can circumvent then do an extensive parallel process, it would be ideal but I don't see a path forward. I'm doing that right now and hopefully we can give as much support and as much financial assistance to those entities who are trying to do the sort of a grid 3.0 part of it right now but you kind of do that like one facility at a time and it's really slow going. I think Tesla just completed a hospital. If they get down there I saw— YANN BRANDT: [00:30:44] We've seen hospitals and we've seen fire stations. I agree with you there's-- we're juggling grid 3.0 with people that just want to be able to turn their air conditioning on the grid looks like and— JON WELLINGHOFF: [00:31:04] Exactly, they just want it done today whatever it is. They don't care what it looks like. Whether it's the old system or the new system; they don't care and waiting for that newest best latest thing to be put in place is not an option, is not a realistic option. So we hopefully can put in enough of the new stuff to show people what the potential and possibilities are because up to this point I'm for whatever reason I also was the management of prep up. If it was some other issues related to prep-up of the utility, Municipal utility that oversees Puerto Rico or was some other factor but less than 2% of I understand of the island was powered by renewable energy which just seems ridiculous to me given its location and level of resources available to natural resources, renewable resources that would be available to it. So we need to somehow unleash from these people the potential and possibilities of a distributed, more advanced cleaner, locally sourced grid system that can provide them with a sustainable future but now it seems like there's no question sort of both systems. We're going to be moving forward. YANN BRANDT: [00:32:32] Jon there are two seats open at the FERC, you going back? JON WELLINGHOFF: [00:32:38] Actually that's not true. Those seats have been taken [laughter]. YANN BRANDT: [00:32:43] Have never been confirmed? JON WELLINGHOFF: [00:32:45] They have. Well, I'm not sure the Senate is actually voted on their confirmations yet but the Senate Energy Committee has voted them out of committee. I know that I’m sure. I don't know— YANN BRANDT: [00:33:01] They're not on the website in my defense. JON WELLINGHOFF: [00:33:03] Yeah McIntyre and I can't remember the other gentleman's name but McIntyre's from Jones Day he's sort of the new chairman designee although he doesn't become chairman until the president says he is. Right now, Neil Chatterjee is a chairman of FERC. I had a great opportunity to meet with Neil on the west coast here a couple of weeks ago in fact we gave him a tour of the Tesla factory and also gave him a full briefing on all that Tesla had done with battery storage in Australia and in Hawaii and some of the other places where we've done large-scale protests and done large-scale battery work. He seemed to be very interested and engaged and that was very encouraging but no; I haven't seen the other two get confirmed yet I don't think. YANN BRANDT: [00:34:01] We're going to hold out hope. When you were on the Commission so speaking in terms of next steps on this proposed rule in this FERC docket, how political is the process? Is there a lot of political influence that's coming your way as a commissioner or are you left alone to do what's best and then figure out the intent of regulations? JON WELLINGHOFF: [00:34:23] When I was there at zero, there was no political influence— YANN BRANDT: [00:34:28] I mean you were originally appointed by the Bush White House, correct? JON WELLINGHOFF: [00:34:32] I was nominated by George W Bush twice and so I served two terms and for both of those terms I was nominated by Bush and confirmed by the Senate but I was designated by President Obama as chairman. The president designates the chairman among the exceeding commissioners and that's not a position that needs to be confirmed. You are not confirmed as chairman, you're only confirmed as a commissioner and I went as a commissioner then the president sites who of the commissioners gets to be the chair of the Commission. So, I served under both administrations; both the Bush administration and the Obama administration. I never got called by the White House about anything ever. I went over to the White House to talk to them about things on occasion that relate more to federal agencies helping us out with sighting of transmission lines and the natural gas lines that kind of thing but we never ever had any political influence whatsoever and it was bipartisan Commission. I served initially with three Republicans and two Democrats and then Obama came in that flipped over to three Democrats and two Republicans. That whole time with the bipartisan Commission, there was no partisanship within the Commission either within the Commission itself. There was none which is good although the existing FERC I have some concerns about, not about the commissioner. I think the commissioners are all good and decent people ones that I know and have had interactions with but it's my understanding that the Trump administration actually designated and chose for the chairman of FERC the person who's going to be the chief of staff at FERC and the person who is going to be the general counsel at FERC. That's never ever happened. I don't know why there is wider reporting on that but that has never happened in my knowledge of the last 25,30 years at FERC. The chairman at FERC always, always got to choose their chief of staff and their general counsel. YANN BRANDT: [00:37:07] That's definitely concerning. Let's leave it at that and we'll see how these progresses. We would love to have you on again; always interested in having conversations about energy markets. Maybe next time we'll talk about the role of utility monopolies and how that looks into the future. Jon, we appreciate you coming on and sharing your experiences and your expertise with us today. JON WELLINGHOFF: [00:37:32] My pleasure; you're on anytime. Thank you very much.
In this episode I speak with Jon Wellinghoff, former FERC Chairman and Principal at Policy/DER consulting. We discuss the DOE NOPR and the FERC docket that is now open to review the proposal to subsidize coal and nuclear plants. Full transcript available below. Make sure to rate and review the podcast! Make sure to check out SolarWakeup Live! in D.C. on 12/6 and NYC late January. If you enjoyed this episode as much as I did, make sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform including iTunes, SoundCloud and Stitcher radio. Please subscribe and share with your friends how much … Read More
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 yields more expertise that leads to great policy. You can help Meghan win her primary. She's been raising money and you can donate on her website, here. You can also lend your time and energy by contacting friends that live in Denver or make phone calls for her campaign. Follow her on twitter @meghannutting Donate to the campaign www.meghannutting.com Make sure to rate and review the podcast! Make sure to check out SolarWakeup Live! in Boston on 10/31 and D.C. on 12/6. If you enjoyed this episode as much as I did, make sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform including iTunes, SoundCloud and Stitcher radio. Please subscribe and share with your friends how much EnergyWakeup is helping you. [soundcloud id='348577646' height='false']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