This is your SolarWakeup for December 20th, 2016

Can Rex represent us all? We covered it in the EnergyWakeup podcast, Rex Tillerson may be the most qualified person in the US to be Secretary of State. He has only ever worked for one company and that is Exxon. As CEO and region President, he has traveled the world and made deals with many heads of state. The problem is that he represented Exxon for 41 years. An oil company that never even faked an interest in renewables, quite the opposite, they are under investigation for covering up their scientific knowledge of climate change. So after 41 years, can Rex Tillerson change his views?
The rural coops lead the pack. We have seen this across the country, coops that are governed by members, i.e. consumers. When shareholders are the consumers there is sometimes a bit more flexibility to change the status quo. This one example is from a smaller coop in New Mexico but with today’s pricing everything is modular.
Will the Paris agreement stand? One positive note on the Paris agreement is that even Bill O’Reilly said the new administration should leave it alone. It also seems to make little sense to unravel it because what would be gained given that the goals will most likely be met regardless due to economic conditions. The biggest problem with the article is that it highlights Rick Perry as Secretary of Energy and not Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, because it was an accord negotiated through the State department.
America made a choice in solar. It was SPI in Orlando, circa 2012 when Bill Clinton spoke as the Keynote. He said America needed to make a choice, do we want to have the development, legal, finance jobs or do we want the manufacturing. At that point this was already decided, China would drive the global price of solar down while the 200k+ jobs in the US would be high end install, development and professional services. So I disagree with the premise that China is dominating. This is a global market and we all benefit from each other’s expertise.
SolarWakeup gets Political Cartoon. The idea came and I couldn’t resist. Hope you like it, feel free to download and share amongst your networks.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for December 19th, 2016

Storage is upon us. I agree with Julie Blunden that storage is coming, and it is coming fast. While storage players are making many of the same mistakes solar did, i.e. selling hardware, expensive money, confusing pitches and strange executive choices, the learning curve will go much faster than solar. It took us about 10-11 years to get to 10GW. Storage has the cumulative installed solar capacity to go work with and is waiting in line to see regulatory changes that may or may not come. I’m looking at storage in depth currently on a personal level, and you will see much more storage coverage here.
Omnibus energy bills, tis the season. It was Michigan’s turn this time and again distributed generation faired well. The attempt to eliminate net metering failed and the RPS was increased by 50%. It was one of the first open attempts to increase retail energy choice which has long been an interesting catch-22 for republican legislatures across the Country. Utilities are big donors and require monopolies for access to super cheap money but take away competition from the market. The GOP loves free market capitalism, how much longer can they fight consumer choice without a political price?
Take your PURPA somewhere else. This shouldn’t be that surprising given that the complaint from FLS came in the middle of a lame duck Presidential transition. Why start Federal fight on PURPA now given that some members of Congress have been wanting to get back into the legislation. I’ve said it before, any reopening of PURPA is going to be a huge can of worms with power plants across the Country basing contracts on the rules governed by this. FLS could proceed to take the issue to Court but at what cost?
Take your Value of Solar back to the PUC. Apparently legislators don’t want to feel the wrath of the solar wars in their political campaigns. It seems that a trend is starting where legislation keeps NEM in place and instead asking the PUC to create a docket to calculate the value of solar for NEMish type policies. These dockets are going to overlay politics, mathematics and valuations in the next battle in the solar wars.

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Yann

These are the top 10 most read solar articles by your peers this week!

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for December 16th, 2016

Sorry. Couldn’t get the column together in time while on vacation with my kids but keep a lookout on some news from California. It seems that PG&E has hit the NEM cap and transitioning to 2.0. Also, FERC ruled in favor of PURPA contracts for solar in a case between FLS and Montana. See you Monday!

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for December 15th, 2016

Join me, Mr. Musk. Elon Musk has joined the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum, chaired by Blackson CEO Stephen Schwarzman. This comes after the tech meeting with President Elect Trump that included most of the who’s who from Silicon Valley. Musk runs companies that have taken State help and have contracts with the Federal government. It would have been ill-advised to draw the Twire (Twitter Ire) of the President Elect.
In Texas we see our future. Though intellectually it lacks some stimulation, some pundits were pointing out today that Rick Perry was somewhat open minded on renewables. Essentially leaving the ERCOT market to figure itself out and in some cases helping the wind sector get set up. Many utility CEOs got their internal start in wind or are deploying billions into the segment. Solar is also doing well with the open market approach in Texas, in all segments, so let’s have some faith.
Reaction to the data.  As the press covered the positive high level results from Q3, they did dig into some of the issues we highlighted yesterday. SEIA’s Interim President, Tom Kimbis, came out with some positivity and reasons why there may have been a blip in residential. Unrelatedly, I continue to be really impressed with the work that Tom is doing at SEIA. He jumped into the role and has given SEIA a voice and brand it has not had before. I don’t know if he will be selected as the next CEO on a full time basis but he’s definitely giving the search group a lot of reasons to pick him.
EIA-EI-O, no we did it again, wrong. GTM took a single paragraph to absolutely demolish the data on 3^rd party solar from the EIA. And it didn’t even require fancy analytics or research, just some reading. It goes to the point that EIA not only collects data poorly, it has trouble publishing data that can be considered reliable. We need EIA data to be available for our businesses in a way that it can be referenced, so that investments follow accurate market conditions.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for December 14th, 2016

Subscribe on iTunes! EnergyWakeup is now available on iTunes and Stitcher radio, so no matter what your podcast app of choice is we are available for you. This week is shaping up to have some great commentary.
Should we be worried? Q3 2016 was the biggest quarter for solar ever. It was always going to be because this was the safe placed in service quarter before ITC sunset. The issue is in the details because residential had the first quarter over quarter since 2014 and it doesn’t appear to be small. Interconnection data from CA looks less than appealing but a positive is that Q3 numbers from the big 3 didn’t show the slowdown in their numbers but we should keep our eyes on this.
We have a Secretary of Energy. Former Governor Perry will be the next Secretary of Energy as it is doubtful that the Senate would fail to confirm him. Perry is famous for thinking or rather forgetting the name of the Department of Energy, renaming it instead ‘Department of OOPS'. He has a college degree in animal science and will be overseeing the nuclear arsenal of the United States, weapons, waste and all that comes with it.
Not so fast Thomas Pyle. The Department of Energy has responded to the Trump transition team and they will not be giving individual names of staffers. The transition team had requested the names of staffers that worked on climate change issues. DOE will be sending otherwise public information in the request for transition planning, most interesting in the request was on how nuclear power plants could be saved.
Mr. Interior from Montana. I don’t know much about Ryan Zinke, the only congressman from Montana who will be the next Secretary of Interior. A couple of thoughts. This is much better than Harold Hamm, Sarah Palin or Mary Fallin. Zinke had a 20+ year career in the Navy Seals including Seal Team Six before entering politics. He stood up against the GOP platform when they wanted to advocate for moving land from Federal to State control.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for December 13th, 2016

What did you think? Bryan and I want to hear from you.What did you think after listening to the episode of EnergyWakeup ? As we clean up some of the technical items, we want to know what you want to hear us discuss next.
Elon is going to see Trump. The President-Elect has invited tech leaders to visit with him. Invited guests include Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, and Larry Page. It was not clear earlier if Musk would accept but reports say that he will be in attendance. This is likely a way to bring the tech leaders into the ‘circle’ and push out potential criticism. Remember our lesson from last week when Gore and DiCaprio went to get some coffee at Trump Tower.
Obama gets a new office. I’ve actually been in the WWF building in DC where Obama is leasing office space for when he returns to civilian life early next year. Since we are in the business of reading into things that could be nothing (see above), let’s make a SolarWakeup prediction. Bill Gates, alongside other billionaires and democratic philanthropists, announce a massing clean energy fund over the weekend. Yesterday Obama signs a lease at WWF and has been saying that venture capital is of interest to him. Maybe a new Partner is coming to Breakthrough Energy Ventures? I sure hope so.
Coming to America. Besides being a great movie, the money is also coming. An Australian firm is taking a bite out of the US solar market and buying 135MW from SunPower after having bought 90MW earlier. For SunPower, this is a departure from the utilization of 8point3, the yieldco that was created with First Solar.
A power plant map. The University of Texas has a map that shows the potential LCOE of different power plants across America. A few points to take away. It is nearly impossible to build an economically viable coal plant in America. Nuclear power plants needs to reduce their costs in order to be more viable, which we know thanks to the subsidies they have gotten from NY and IL. One solution would be the carbon tax, which would definitely help nuclear go further. But the renewables map expands so drastically in a carbon tax scenario that it is likely not to happen.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for December 12th, 2016

Introducing EnergyWakeup! The big day is here, the first episode of EnergyWakeup is now available for you to listen to. America is entering a difficult and confusing landscape, especially when it comes to energy policy. Hosted by Bryan Miller and myself, we take you behind the headlines on what is really going on. In the first episode we talk about the Trump transition, the witch hunt at the Department of Energy and what the nominees mean to our industry. At the end of the podcast we talk about the potential of Tillerson being Secretary of State. Please let us know your thoughts.
Quiet from Gore and DiCaprio. Where is the comment from Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio? They met with Trump and his team early in the week but then get Scott Pruitt and Rex Tillerson which goes counter to what they requested. Why have they been so quiet? That is a question that should be answered because maybe something else was discussed at the meeting?
$150mm for Sunrun, Unicorns for the rest of us.  Last week Sunrun closed an investment for $150 million of tax equity. A worthy announcement by itself but this money was different, better in fact. We spoke to Jonathan Silver to find out how he was able to convince a Fortune 500 company to invest a total of $400 million for solar tax equity. A direct investment from a corporate at that level, now that is exciting news for our sector.
At least it’s not communism. If you were an energy staffer tasked with working on the UN Climate Change policies, your name is going on a list. The Trump transition landing team went into the DOE this week and asked for the names of staffers involved. Not clear what they plan on doing with the list but I am sure that an early Christmas gift isn’t in the plans.

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Yann

Tax Equity Unicorns – New Fund Invests $150 million From A Fortune 500 To SunRun

Large tax equity announcements usually include US Bank, State Street, Goldman Sachs, or Bank of America and not a boutique advisory firm. These tax equity providers are syndicating pools of investments into the solar market. But it seems that things are changing with a new $150 million investment for a Sunrun fund by a new firm, Tax Equity Advisors (TEA). The biggest difference is that the capital is coming from an unnamed Fortune 500 corporation, making a direct investment into tax equity for solar. In other words, tax equity supply may have just gotten the early adopter, the unicorn that … Read More →

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