This is your SolarWakeup for September 1st, 2016

One of the best places to get the news is through SEC filings by public companies. In our top two stories today, you get the behind the scenes view on employee matters (Terraform) and how the sausage is made in mergers (SolarCity & Tesla). As the merging companies put the motions in place to schedule their special shareholder meetings to get the needed approvals for the acquisitions, they also disclose how the talks on the acquisition got started. Interestingly, SolarCity ran somewhat of a process to see if other investors would be interested in acquiring the company or entering into another agreement. It’s rare that such a process can stay quiet in our space to hats off to Lazard for that. On the other hand, someone at Lazard apparently made a $400million error in their model. The filing for the Tesla acquisition of SolarCity is here and the employee items at Terraform is here.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for August 31st, 2016

The answer is yes! Floridians voted yesterday to fix an issue in the State constitution that will now exempt solar from commercial property taxes, this is in addition to the already existing residential property tax exemption. While commercial energy rates in the State are still low, as costs drop, the exemption should increase the amount of C&I solar that is built here. More importantly, this will exempt 3rd party owned solar in Florida from tangible property taxes and return north of 20% of potential revenues to third party owners. I don’t foresee a rush to solar by the residential companies because we have a credible issue on the ballot in November with a utility backed amendment that confuses voters into believing they are doing something good for solar. I look forward to seeing how this plays out, in the meantime IKEA in my County is going to get a pleasant tax break from their 1MW system. (NextEra also will save quite a bit of money on their 110MW solar farms they already have in place)

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for August 30th, 2016

The trend continues of having European utilities working to broaden their horizons and going solar. This time it is RWE, one of the largest utilities in Europe, buying Belectric Solar. Belectric had a US partnership with Smart Energy Capital before it was acquired by NextEra a few years ago but it also has a global platform. RWE and its main competitor, EON, announced last year that they would split the central generation from the consumer generation (read renewables) to let shareholders make their choices of business model to support. Innogy is that consumer centric unit for RWE and is the unit acquiring Belectric. EON already has partnerships and investments into Sungevity and Greensmith. They also announced the entry into Belgium with Sungevity yesterday.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for August 29th, 2016

Last week you were able to see what comes out of the solar industry. Through the United States of Solar podcast, solar pros are able to bring to life the current events in solar and show how it affects their work. On Friday, we published a fantastic interview with Julia Pyper which you have to make sure to listen to. The purpose of this podcast is to give you a channel to tell the rest of us your opinion on what is going on in your part of the industry. So if you have a story to tell, working on a great idea, or simply need to get your opinion on a current topic out, reach out by hitting reply or filling out the form online.

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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 August 26th, 2016

The Tesla acquisition of SolarCity was approved by the special committee on around August 1st. While the Federal Trade Commission has approved the deal for purposes of antitrust, there are still some other steps that I believe need to happen before the real deal gets consummated. First off, the special committee approved the deal including a 45 day ‘go-shop’ period which means that SolarCity should go to market and see if a better price was available to the shareholders. Which would put the final Tesla/SolarCity deal to the shareholders on or around September 15th assuming no better bid comes in. The real test is in the SEC approval of the deal, which may not have even started yet considering the ‘go-shop’ has not yet concluded. Also, the shareholders need to vote on the transaction. The SEC could be asking some questions, particularly because on the call to discuss the acquisition, Elon Musk said the reason for the acquisition was to clear conflicts in collaboration. More to come on the deal which I still believe to clear hurdles and get to the finish line.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for August 25th, 2016

Last week I told you about the new report from Nevada, this time with different results. Today you can read and hear all about rate design, in some cases with some utility driven cosmetic surgery. I like SEIA’s straight forward talk about the report, not only because I agree, but also because solar really does help all consumers. Tom Kimbis is showing what SEIA can be for our industry by speaking out for what is right. After all, solar doesn’t shift cost, it simply shifts the need for utilities to build more power plants which makes them less money. Net metering is simple and rate design is there for utilities to make solar savings calculations complicated. In today’s podcast you will hear how the solar industry is working to make it simpler for savings to be shown to consumers. Our industry is aligned on this. Complicated rate design is another attempt to stop the progress we have made.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for August 24th, 2016

The importance of solar on schools has always been high on my list. A question from a school board architect got me into solar and putting on schools project in New Orleans made me realize what kind of impact solar curriculum could have on kids. Think about it, how often do you get questions about solar from adults that should be taught to kids. How does it make energy? Does it go into a battery? It keeps the lights on if the power goes out, right? We all get the questions and we need to do more to teach kids about solar. A start would be to put it on every school in the Country, use the energy savings to buy more books and computers and make sure that every teacher can educate the next generation on how solar works. Since 2008, I have owned solaronschools.com but have never done anything with it. If you have a good idea, reach out and let’s put it to use.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for August 23rd, 2016

Arizona has been a big story for quite some time, mostly for how antagonistic the political atmosphere has been. It has also been a fight to push back the utility requests for $50/month fees and political fight for regulators that have to be elected. You may have seen in recent weeks the podcasts that Frank Andorka has been doing for SolarWakeup and he’s just getting going. This week he covered politics in Florida and today has the insider’s account for Arizona including the best story yet. APS, the large Arizona utility owned by Pinnacle West, is currently under investigation by the FBI for how they were involved in the election of the regulators that regulate them. They have been subpoenaed and a grand jury has been convened, which is rarely a small deal or done without good reason. The subpoenas are public because Pinnacle West had to disclose them to investors in their earnings release.  Listen to the podcast here and in today’s top story.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for August 22nd, 2016

Today’s first story is a topic I have been giving a lot of thought to recently and I am glad Zachary from CleanTechnica wrote it. Essentially the question I ask myself is whether all solar is good solar and if that’s true than is any solar just as good? For example, the last NV report said that large scale solar costs are so low that DG solar no longer has the same value. In the same light, you could say that utilities could own all of the solar and build the GW we need across the Country. This is a fundamental question we must face as an industry because when we discuss policy issues amongst ourselves, we must align on where we stand unified. The next President of SEIA will have to ask this question to the membership and industry and the answer is not very simple. For me, I have come down on the side of consumer choice. Consumers should be able to choose solar in any way they want; on their roofs, from their utility, through community solar or as a green choice from their retailer. That’s my vote and I think that when a policy comes up that requires a choice between path 1 or path 2, we should walk down the path that leads to the most options.

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Yann