This is your SolarWakeup for May 1st, 2017

Happy SGIP Day. For many contractors across California today is an exciting day. The first window for SGIP funding is opening today, assumed to be fully allocated within minutes. Legislators in California have gone big in funding the incentive and they have thought it about it logically, similar to the CSI, SGIP will step down quickly. You would assume that the quickly dropping battery costs will keep up with the drops in incentive. Here is my question to California contractors. How did you choose your partner? Once you chose the battery architecture, i.e. Lithium Ion, how did you pick the rest of the system. The software? The power electronics? The manufacturers? This is going to be a big market and I am contemplating a road trip through California to learn how storage is affecting your business. More on the road trip soon.
Was it up to Suniva? Suniva first got into trouble financially in 2015, when module pricing was much higher. That is when Shunfeng came in and acquired 63% of the company. More recently, as money was running out once again, Suniva had hired their former CFO, Jim Modak, as a consultant to raise more money. Modak had been the CFO for 8 years but left the company in March of 2016, staying on for 6 months as a consultant. Modak is now the CFO of SQN Capital Management. This is where it gets interesting. Shunfeng and Wanxiang were not willing to put in more capital into Suniva, forcing the company towards a Chapter 7 filing. One lender was willing to provide post-bankruptcy capital, SQN Capital, under certain conditions. The first condition was to file the 201 petition for a tariff. If Suniva wanted tariffs, they could have filed it a year ago, this seems to have been a requirement of SQN. I don’t know how much SQN is providing but it’s a financial play betting that Suniva assets are worth more if a minimum price is put into place.
Help support SolarWakeup. If you are looking for investors or buyers of your projects, hit reply to this email and let us help you. Our expansive network is always looking to partner with you and helps us pay the bills to keep the newsletter free to you, as it has been for the past 4 years.
The pension funds. Pension funds are playing in solar. They’ve long circled the wagons, waiting to see if scale is there to make an initial investment with enough room to follow on year after year. The consolidation of assets is also creating new market opportunities because unlike utilities, pension funds will likely outsource asset management, O&M and other functions. This also creates a nice value to investment bankers that specialize in the field like MVP Capital. Pension funds are lean operations and solar is likely to create outsized returns compared to asset classes like real estate.
Make sure you listen to the latest episodes of EnergyWakeup. Hear from solar entrepreneur, John Gurski, the founder of Energy Toolbase, a cloud based energy bill analytics and proposal tool. I also speak with Tony Clifford from Standard Solar about being acquired by Gaz Metro and his work at SEIA.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for April 28th, 2017

All about Suniva. Today, I want to explain the Suniva situation in a simple enough way that you can take it to your mother, child’s teacher or neighbor. With the request for a minimum price of $0.78 cents, Suniva is trying to hurt the solar industry in a way that is worse than if the ITC had not been extended. Depending on your volume, your price will more than double for solar panels. Projects in markets that compete for PURPA contracts, like NC, UT, and OR, will increase their costs by 40% or more rendering the markets null. Massachusetts may have to delay their benchmark pricing auction for the SMART program because a $0.40 cent delta in installed pricing will cost the consumers in MA more money.
The irony of Suniva. The EVP of Suniva said this, “Without today’s requested global safeguard, the U.S. solar manufacturing industry will die and we will not only lose solar manufacturing jobs today, but also those future jobs that will come from investing in the solar manufacturing industry of tomorrow.” Looking at the comment, you have to laugh at the irony behind it. Suniva took in tens of millions in SunShot and other grants to build their R&D. Moreover, when Suniva made the move to invest $12.5million into a manufacturing plant in Michigan, Saginaw offered up $2.5million in grants to do that. This is not a global safeguard, this is a company annoyed that they lost. Not building out a dealer network and selling to Sunpower dealers was bad business that had nothing to do with cheap solar modules.
Why Trump would agree. Easy answer, The Koch Brothers. A Georgia based company that opened manufacturing in Michigan is going out of business because of cheap Chinese goods. That would be the talking point pushed into the public but we all know that it is false. The real reason would be that this is about the disruption it would cause to the solar industry which would be helpful for the adversaries that wish the industry harm. It is rumored that a 201 filing typically starts with a nod from an administration prior to filing which may likely have happened here.
Help support SolarWakeup. If you are looking for investors or buyers of your projects, hit reply to this email and let us help you. Our expansive network is always looking to partner with you and helps us pay the bills to keep the newsletter free to you, as it has been for the past 4 years.
Why Trump could and should say no. Jobs and China. The argument to say no to Suniva is that it would cost the solar industry and incredible number of jobs. The industry would drastically slow and more companies would go out of business. Interestingly, Suniva would still be bankrupt and would have a hard time getting off the ground again in a slowing market where most customers would shun them. So the jobs President would have to choose to kill jobs. Second, China. China could make this a big point in the ongoing conversations between the President of both Countries. Does Trump really want to hurt American jobs while also angering a central industry in China while he is looking to get China to help with North Korea? China has seen the impact of a minimum price in Europe and repeating that in the US would be disastrous given the total capacity of manufacturing in the Country.
Make sure you listen to the latest episodes of EnergyWakeup. Hear from solar entrepreneur, John Gurski, the founder of Energy Toolbase, a cloud based energy bill analytics and proposal tool. I also speak with Tony Clifford from Standard Solar about being acquired by Gaz Metro and his work at SEIA.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for April 27th, 2017

Holy Shit, Suniva. Last week I told you I liked many of the folks at Suniva. So to my friends still at the company. GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE! Suniva made a bad business decision in opening a factory in Michigan at the wrong time. Keep in mind that Suniva has long been arguing that SolarWorld’s trade cases have impacted their module assembly in Asia. Now the company owned by Shunfeng, which also owns Suntech wants to destroy the US solar industry. In reality, Suniva just handed the Trump administration the perfect way to do just that. The Koch Brothers are popping champagne bottles right now, a ‘China is playing unfair’, talking point will be the populist agenda covering up the desire to hurt US energy consumers across the Country. Suniva should be ashamed of itself instead of this ridiculous attempt to take everyone else down with them.
Storage keeps moving. California is moving forward with energy storage. The State will lead once again as the customers transition to NEM 2.0 and most customers go to time of use with demand charge schedules. I will have some announcements about my work in this space soon. If you are involved in developing storage projects, let me know so I can let you know personally about the work I will be involved in.
Help support SolarWakeup. If you are looking for investors or buyers of your projects, hit reply to this email and let us help you. Our expansive network is always looking to partner with you and helps us pay the bills to keep the newsletter free to you, as it has been for the past 4 years.
My comments from yesterday. I feel pretty strongly about what I said yesterday. If you missed it, I said that BNEF should not have invited Rick Perry to speak at their summit. I heard from many of you, both agreeing and disagreeing with me. My point is simple, Perry had the solar delegation in his office a few weeks ago. This was a one-way conversation and not a pitch on what renewable energy can do for America. So why put him in a room that would groan and shake their heads at his comments. If we want to impact change, let’s get away from the politicians and focus on the people. That’s who we should be pitching and educating. People fire Congressman, not trade associations or conference participants. People have the power.
Make sure you listen to the latest episodes of EnergyWakeup. Hear from solar entrepreneur, John Gurski, the founder of Energy Toolbase, a cloud based energy bill analytics and proposal tool. I also speak with Tony Clifford from Standard Solar about being acquired by Gaz Metro and his work at SEIA.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for April 26th, 2017

Old Data, New Coverage. We’ve seen the DOE Energy Employment Report already, the data is positive and friendly to the energy sector. That being said, the New York Times is doing a nice infographic on the data given the President’s focus on the energy sector. It also needs to be repeated because the quantity of solar jobs doesn’t appear to really hit home with all politicians quite yet, many of them still consider solar jobs subsidized and temporary.
Flip it and reverse it. I can’t even, I don’t know, I mean, oops. I know Rick Perry is the Secretary of Energy but he has no business getting an audience at a conference like BNEF. It does nothing more than incite uncertainty and fear as opposed to real policy discussions. Renewables driving more coal? Nuclear weapons depend on new nuclear power plants? Give me a break. BNEF is better than this, and if they insist on having him speak, should counter program the speech with people that can rebut the nonsense immediately. ERCOT is showing the the Country how competitive RTOs drive the cost down and provide consumers with choice on source and price.
Help support SolarWakeup. If you are looking for investors or buyers of your projects, hit reply to this email and let us help you. Our expansive network is always looking to partner with you and helps us pay the bills to keep the newsletter free to you, as it has been for the past 4 years.
Lowering soft costs. What is the real soft cost of solar power? How much are you putting it into your estimates for non-hardware and non-labor costs? As we transition to time of use, energy storage and more complicated analysis, I am concerned to hear that most of the industry is still relying on excel files for rate analysis and production analysis. I heard this in my conversation with Energy Toolbase CEO and many of the CEOs at the asset management summit. Excel files are costing you money and projects, time to transition to software solutions and get more efficient.
Make sure you listen to the latest episodes of EnergyWakeup. Hear from solar entrepreneur, John Gurski, the founder of Energy Toolbase, a cloud based energy bill analytics and proposal tool. I also speak with Tony Clifford from Standard Solar about being acquired by Gaz Metro and his work at SEIA.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for April 25th, 2017

Using Data For Policy. One of the topics of conversation with John Gurski, the founder and CEO of Energy Toolbase, was policy. Given the database of utility rates and the ability to model savings based on a example demand structure, Energy Toolbase can and has shown what the potential impact on solar consumers is if a proposed rate design structure is implemented. This kind of simple, results oriented data point speaks to people in a way that rate design proceedings often misses. If you are involved in a policy debate, use the value of solar’s popularity by showing the results of policy.
Coal’s exes live in Texas. The City of Houston has signed a PPA to buy the energy from a 50MW solar farm in Texas. Let the reality of the oil capital going solar sink in and realize that this is purely an economic transaction. Engie, the developer, has its US headquarters there and used to be a large IPP in the US as well. Now, Engie has sold its assets and is focused on a diverse set of cleantech investments and retail energy. Competition works, and you can compare Florida and Texas as two ways to achieve that, one with an open market and one with monopolies.
Help support SolarWakeup. If you are looking for investors or buyers of your projects, hit reply to this email and let us help you. Our expansive network is always looking to partner with you and helps us pay the bills to keep the newsletter free to you, as it has been for the past 4 years.
No Comment from me, I want yours. I read the Bloomberg article about SEIA’s comments at BNEF with intrigue. I have some thoughts but I want to hear yours. Hit reply and let me know what you think.
Make sure you listen to the latest episodes of EnergyWakeup. Hear from solar entrepreneur, John Gurski, the founder of Energy Toolbase, a cloud based energy bill analytics and proposal tool. I also speak with Tony Clifford from Standard Solar about being acquired by Gaz Metro and his work at SEIA.

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Yann

John Gurski, Founder and CEO of Energy Toolbase, a solar startup creating a smarter proposal

This week I spent time with John Gurski, the young and hungry CEO of Energy Toolbase. While I was familiar with Energy Toolbase COO, Adam Gerza, I had not met John yet and was surprised to find out he was based in South Florida. So I made the drive to join him and some of his team at their offices. John has spent time as a solar developer, pitching clients and working on roofs. It was 2012 when he came up with the problem, how can you create a better proposal for customers without having to copy and paste inside an excel file. The only problem was, he didn’t know how to code. So like any reasonable solar developer, he taught himself. Launching in 2014, John convinced his fiancée, now his wife, and his father to man the startup alley booth for the newly founded Energy Toolbase booth at Intersolar NA. With initial clients signed up, the company was off to a big start. Now the team is over a dozen, 3 offices and revenue in the millions. Energy Toolbase has taken the proposal tool further by integrating sophisticated rate analysis and a robust database of utility rates. The team scours the utility rate schedules and updates them for their users on an ongoing basis. Coming soon is the complete overhaul of their storage analysis platform. With the ability to either upload 8760 data or create a simulated version based on energy bills, contractors and developers will be able to model demand reduction, demand shifting and demand arbitrage with the new release. I love spending time with startup founders that choose solar over other fields. Energy Toolbase is a success story and they have not raised any money, yet. 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='319165659' height='false']

This is your SolarWakeup for April 24th, 2017

Solar Innovation. I’m a startup guy at heart. It’s where I get most excited and I am always actively seeking out the companies in solar that are executing on innovation. Last week I had the pleasure of speaking with the CEO of Energy Toolbase, a startup that many of you know well. John and I spoke about what it takes to start a business in solar and where his customers are guiding the innovation. (Hint: more detail on energy storage) Energy Toolbase is offering a free trial, make sure you tell them you heard about it on SolarWakeup, they may even extend the trial for you if you ask nicely.
Help support SolarWakeup. If you are looking for investors or buyers of your projects, hit reply to this email and let us help you. Our expansive network is always looking to partner with you and helps us pay the bills to keep the newsletter free to you, as it has been for the past 4 years.
The solar spectrum. We already spoke about the acquisition of Sungevity last week. The owners are moving swiftly which makes it appear cautiously optimistic that a turnaround is being taken seriously. Sungevity is now Spectrum Solar, a new name and brand to wipe away the digital history. Unfortunately another 40 employees were let go, which happens in these situations. Once stabilized, I would assume the company to start hiring once again. This is likely a play to create a lead gen company, similar to the company that SolarCity acquired for over $100million a few years ago.
Make sure you listen to the latest episodes of EnergyWakeup. Hear from solar entrepreneur, John Gurski, the founder of Energy Toolbase, a cloud based energy bill analytics and proposal tool. I also speak with Tony Clifford from Standard Solar about being acquired by Gaz Metro and his work at SEIA.
March for Science. On Saturday, Earth Day, an amazing turn around for facts happened across America. My favorite part of the marches were the signs. Scientists are clever people and some have a great sense of humor. I did have an important takeaway. Here I saw thousands of people in the rain cheering on the speakers that spoke about the birds, the weather, the climate all around us. The problem was, who in that crowd needed to be convinced to be there? Who was wondering if scientific facts were indeed facts. We, as a solar industry, need to speak to regular people. Stop preaching and make solar mainstream. Making solar mainstream isn’t a price point, number of homes or total capacity. Mainstream is the moment when people in a deli don’t wonder how the industry works, but that it does.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for April 21st, 2017

A deal for Florida. Last year, voters in Florida overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment that reduced tax barriers for those that install solar. The Senate sponsor moved a clean bill while the House added industry oversight and consumer protection language to the bill. Some of the language was copied verbatim from Florida Power & Light. Now there is a deal that shows some of the issues Florida solar is dealing with. Vote Solar, SEIA and SACE have come out in favor of the deal but it seems that FlaSEIA is not happy. Somewhat protectionist, you can see some of the quotes from FlaSEIA President about overnight solar companies.
Help support SolarWakeup. If you are looking for investors or buyers of your projects, hit reply to this email and let us help you. Our expansive network is always looking to partner with you and helps us pay the bills to keep the newsletter free to you, as it has been for the past 4 years.
No soup for you. As we imagined, ARPA-E and other innovation funding channels are being put on hold. More newsworthy is the delaying of funding allocations for projects that were already approved and put into the budget in FY16. ARPA-E and programs like SunShot do the work that private sector won’t and anyone that has received money from them will tell you that it is very tightly managed. I hope the Secretary Perry is able to come through with his statements to the SEIA board and do right by the industry.
Make sure you listen to the latest episodes of EnergyWakeup. I speak with Tony Clifford about being acquired by Gaz Metro and his work at SEIA. Google is now at 100% renewables, how do they do it and what is next? Sam Arons talks to SolarWakeup.
VC are you with me? I vividly remember Abe Yokell speaking at one of my first conferences in the 2008/2009 timeframe and the crazy notion that he wanted 10x returns on his money. Now he is out with a new fund, having raised $50million to pursue more cleantech. I applaud him for sticking to the industry with a bit of jealousy given that I would absolutely love to do the same. I speak with many of you about your ideas and visions for the market. While not all have the ability to get big, so many of them could be if they are nurtured and helped along their way. Solar will not have a photo app exit but it very well could yield the 10x returns that investors look for.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for April 20th, 2017

Solar guy and coal miner walk into a Kentucky bar. No, this isn’t the start of a bad joke. A coal mine operator is working with EDF Renewable Energy to develop two 50-100MW solar farms on old coal mines. This isn’t a new concept, I personally know of projects in the UK and Canada that have worked on this but do it in the US, in Kentucky, and you have yourself an interesting concept. Question for the readers, have any of your received investment from or sold a project to a coal company?
Help support SolarWakeup. If you are looking for investors or buyers of your projects, hit reply to this email and let us help you. Our expansive network is always looking to partner with you and helps us pay the bills to keep the newsletter free to you, as it has been for the past 4 years.
Policy for Storage. Ten years ago, IREC was leading the charge to explain net metering to regulators. Yesterday they released a guide for energy storage policy to do the same for the next iteration of our market. Storage needs to learn lessons from solar and short circuit (no pun intended) the learning curve. Too many of the mistakes made in solar appear to be done again but we can learn on the policy side because with storage, there are even more benefits for consumers that can be added to the benefits of net metering.
Make sure you listen to the latest episodes of EnergyWakeup. I speak with Tony Clifford about being acquired by Gaz Metro and his work at SEIA. Google is now at 100% renewables, how do they do it and what is next? Sam Arons talks to SolarWakeup.
An answer for Perry. A few months ago, I did some research on potential DOE Secretaries and came across the name of James Conaughton who was part of the Bush administration. At a conference Conaughton made the case to open up the energy markets in more geographies similar to the PJM RTO. While Perry is worried about grid supply, MISO ran an auction and the market supplied the needed energy and power and cleared the pricing in a competitive process. Give the markets a pricing signal and markets will answer. Perry should know better because ERCOT clears pricing for energy and capacity every single day.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for April 19th, 2017

A Nevada update. I spoke with Assembly Brooks yesterday to get an update on solar policy in Nevada. He is the sponsor of and in the middle of the 3 key bills that are in play. AB 206, AB 270 and AB 405. Here are the takeaways:
-          AB206 is an increase of the RPS to 50% as discussed on the podcast
-          AB270 is return of net metering establishing a rate formula, removing the cap and minimum bill
-          AB405 is related to consumer protections and solar bill of rights
-          The bills have been granted a waiver, which means they are released from certain deadlines. This takes coordination and support from the leaders of the Assembly and Senate. This is a positive.
-          AB270 (NEM) and AB405 are essentially tied together, it will likely mean both pass or fail
-          The Governor has not commented on the bill which is not uncommon for him but he has been vocal when he does not like a bill, which could mean that he will likely not veto the bill if it passes.
-          NV Energy has been lobbying against the bills and the Gaming and Resort Association has come out against it as well. GRA is more surprising given that the casinos have been vocal advocate to leave the IOU for more access to RE.
-          Assemblyman Brooks is optimistic that all three bills will pass
Taking podcast inventory. If you haven’t yet, I would ask for your feedback about the EnergyWakeup podcast. You can see all the episodes on this page which include interviews with Google about their procurement of renewable energy, getting the insight from legislators on pending changes to State rules and hearing from SEIA and affiliated State chapters. In the coming weeks you will hear from entrepreneurs working on software to lower solar soft costs and more State leaders. We’ve got requests out to some big names, so the more you listen, rate and review, the more helpful it is for us.
Help support SolarWakeup. If you are looking for investors or buyers of your projects, hit reply to this email and let us help you. Our expansive network is always looking to partner with you and helps us pay the bills to keep the newsletter free to you, as it has been for the past 4 years.
Unfortunate news from Georgia. Suniva has filed for bankruptcy protection. The company was acquired by Shunfeng last year, which also owns Suntech. Module prices have plummeted recently, bids coming in at the low 30s which makes it very difficult for high efficiency modules that have to sell at a premium. Just look at Sunpower’s issues to see some of the similarities, except Suniva never entered the project business. I’m sure a turnaround is going to happen, let’s watch this space.
Make sure you listen to the latest episodes of EnergyWakeup. I speak with Tony Clifford about being acquired by Gaz Metro and his work at SEIA. Google is now at 100% renewables, how do they do it and what is next? Sam Arons talks to SolarWakeup.
Acquirer for Sungevity. Northern Pacific Group has received approval from the courts to acquire the Sungevity assets for $50million in addition to taking over the liabilities and assets. Expect the assets to be liquidated quickly to recapitalize the business. Good news for the company and the employees that received their unpaid wages. Making bad situations right is important, glad to see this going into the right direction. Now, does anyone know anything about Northern Pacific that would like to give me some background?

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Yann