This is your SolarWakeup for August 3rd, 2016

In a few weeks it will have been 4 years since I sent the very first SolarWakeup newsletter to about 350 of you, now it’s the widest read daily newsletter in the industry. What has been a volatile policy and innovation environment has given me plenty to talk about each morning. Now that we have over 250 thousand solar professionals, there is more to talk about and more content to bring you. In the next few weeks and months you will see more media from SolarWakeup, in the form of audio and video, starting with the podcast series you can find on the homepage (to the right) with correspondent Frank Andorka. Soon, I will soon start video interviews primarily focused on solar startups and other innovators shaking up our sector. There are many exciting interviews already in the works and I hope you join me in the excitement about this addition to the platform.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for August 2nd, 2016

Pending a shareholder vote and approval from regulators, SolarCity will become Tesla Solar, or at least part of Tesla. Solar power has always been part of the complete sustainability picture for Elon Musk and letting the nuances of a solar balance sheet stop that goal wasn’t going to happen. SolarCity also preannounced better than expected install numbers for Q2 and lowered guidance for 2016 to 900-1000MW. While lower than expected, let that settle in for a second. 1GW, of solar, primarily on households is a boatload of solar energy. The Silevo modules are now shown in a picture and expect them to be at 22% or about 350W which should help with MW goals given that Wall Street doesn’t understand efficiencies. The worry for the solar industry continues, Trina is going private and some wondered why Tesla was stepping in for SolarCity. Sunrun CEO, Lynn Jurich, blogged about the great deal Tesla is getting, perhaps in the hopes of getting her own deal for Sunrun?

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for August 1st, 2016

Assume for the moment that over the next few years, that utilities and solar come together and negotiate something in the center. Something between full retail rate net metering and no net metering at all. You could foresee something along the lines of a minimum bill, time of use pricing and non-bypassable charges. NARUC, the association of regulatory commissioners, is writing a manual about good rate design. I’d be interested to see the lobbying and education that the solar sector is doing for this manual. Not because it will become ‘law’ but because things like this can be used as tool if the manual is particularly friendly to incumbents. What I am trying to say is that little things matter and the foreseeable future requires that we lead on crafting the tools going forward.

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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 July 29th, 2016

How many times have legislators said that solar must compete on price. Not based on an RPS or carbon price or special carve outs. Now that solar costs have dropped 90% over 10 years and is doubling in market every year and a half, it’s normal for incumbent market participants to push back. Nuclear provides some important base load but let me be clear that power in open markets needs to be priced with market dynamic pricing. If the grid needs the baseload power that nuclear provides than the costs should reflect that. That pricing dynamic will undoubtedly cause more storage to be put in place because solar plus storage is renewable nuclear fusion bottled into a battery. The timing is right because in a few years, the storage sector would have policy staff that would make this exact case but that investment is not yet in the cards. So in the meantime, utilities will get what they can to keep the assets from being stranded.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for July 28th, 2016

Packed news day so make sure you keep up. To recap the story we talked about yesterday in the NY Times. I spoke with dozens of you about how this happened and while the article may have been strong in its wording the issue is based on the timeframe and the peak times are starting later in the afternoon. As solar companies pull back the policy fight and trade associations lack desire to get into the fight, these things will happen. More importantly policy and PR are related and it is VERY telling that no solar company was quoted in the story. Speaking of policy, look at the story about Nevada. The solar industry sometimes thinks we can negotiate from a position of pleasure in the middle. That fighting the fight isn’t ugly and getting rid of a single person can fix the issue. Well, you are wrong and now you have proof. NV Energy and the anti-solar commissioners are now attacking the other players in the fight to bring solar back to Nevada. Don’t get pitched by what people are selling without understanding their motive, that’s my message for reporters in solar today.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for July 27th, 2016

A few notes for you this morning. Hemlock, after winning a summary judgement over SolarWorld, has submitted the financial claims. The losses amount to over $793million which is far more than the cash on the balance sheet of the module manufacturer. The question is, will the brazen CEO fight more, ask for another bailout from Qatar or make a deal to drop the trade cases in US and China. This is a simplified version but a deal should be possible at this point. On another note, please take a moment to read and discuss the NY Times story. I don’t have all of the details yet, but I am fairly sure that the information listed in the story is either wrong or severely misleading. It may be possible that the homeowner was in a specific rate schedule from the start that was changed but the NEM 1.0 policies did not change in CA and the NEM 2.0 policies still offer a significant benefit to CA homeowners, especially in PG&E territory. Someone pitched this to NY Times and we should all be concerned about how they were able to push this story on a great reporter.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for July 26th, 2016

SunEdison is looking to offload its class B shares of Terraform Power. This may not be completely voluntary but due to significant holdings by Appaloosa and Brookfield of the stock. The question I have about this is more nuanced than just selling the shares. Keep in mind that SunEdison probably had to make some deals in order to create the yieldco in the first place. The class B shares had something to do with that including making sure the a knowledgeable asset manager was taking care of the projects. With new ownership trying to take that responsibility over, what leverage will the offtakers and other contractual counterparties have over the transfer which could be construed as a change of control requiring some consents.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for July 25th, 2016

Selling solar based on aesthetics? Elon Musk seems to think that the Silevo modules will give SolarCity a leg up on the competition. All things being equal, especially price, I am sure that aesthetics can play a role in the decisions made in the residential market. That being said, manufacturers like LG, Suniva and Sunpower make their claim to residential market share on efficiency as opposed to price so maybe aesthetics can play a role for a buyer that is deciding between multiple vendors. Musk is reaching out for a different aspect of consumers though. He wants to create something that people want, but they don’t know it yet. Henry Ford once said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

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Yann

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

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Have a great day!
Yann