This is your SolarWakeup for February 6th, 2023
Your Car As Backup. Consider me both, unsurprised and pessimistic, to the idea that cars are stationary power loads for your home and grid. Given the decades of work it has taken to connect rooftop solar to the grid, imagine the car based battery to become a connected load to the grid. So assume that bidirectional aspect of EV charging is to be a backup for your home, is that really the best way for you to use the cycles available in your car? How will auto OEMs change the terms of the warranty since mileage isn’t the totality of the use case of the car? Don’t get me wrong, I understand why it should be more common for your EV to be a grid DER, but what is the price signal to make a market out of it? Wait and see.
Big Batteries, Big Tenders. On the other side of the spectrum is the large scale energy storage market, also (in some markets) looking to find price signals for grid operators that are yet to discover the use case that energy storage can most valuably fill in the grid operations (we’re looking at you PJM). That hasn’t slowed the 100’s of GWh of tenders to hit the market around the world and the tens of billions of capital committed to this market. No more esoteric, capital formation got here rather quickly. Now folks are looking for that deal flow, platforms that know how to do batteries are getting some nice acquisition flow. Obviously, I’m a bit of an insider to this market so I can say that hardly a day goes by that capital isn’t calling to see what potential deal flow is out there for investment.
The Sunrun VPP Market. Sunrun picking Lunar Energy is not a headline you would typically see on this newsletter but this has so much inside baseball that I feel I need to point some of the obvious ones out to you. Lunar, by the description in the website, helps companies like Sunrun manage their virtual power plant contracts. It was hardly a secret that Autogrid (acquired by Schneider in 2022) was the platform that used to do this for Sunrun. Lunar came out of stealth last year and the interesting part is that Sunrun was a major investor in that venture funding, with Sunrun’s co-founder and Co-Chair (ex-CEO), Lynn Jurish, joining Lunar as the Chair. For extra inside deal, most of the founding team of Lunar comes from Tesla Energy.
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This is your SolarWakeup for February 3rd, 2023
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This is your SolarWakeup for February 2nd, 2023
Who’s NEXT? It looks promising that Nextracker’s IPO will come out and look pretty good. Pricing in the range of $20-$23 per share implies a relative discount to the tracker peers already in the public markets. The $500million IPO looks to provide the secondary (liquidity) to Flex, it’s current owner. The TPG Rise fund which invested last year, does not appear to be selling their shares according to analyst reports. As a profitable company, leading in it’s segment, Nextracker looks to unlock the public markets in what has been a dry (read closed) IPO market. This could be exactly what the clean tech markets needs to signal that the IRA is ready to unlock the trillions of project capital and that the companies supporting that investment are ready to be worth billions.
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This is your SolarWakeup for February 1, 2023
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This is your SolarWakeup for January 31st, 2023
The Coming EV Rush. This has the potential to upend the grid transition even faster than previously predicted. There are dozens of brand name models on the market now and a bit of a price war is breaking out. That will only make EV consumers more likely to make a jump over to instant torque. Many of the other barriers to entry have started to be eliminated: charging, range, societal norm and of course operating cost. The EV adoption in the US lags the EU by 3x or more, and this price decrease could become an accelerant. Once this happens, which isn’t a question of if, but when, what will the grid need in terms of build out of new generation and flexibility. We’ll see new rate schedules, pricing signals, infrastructure investments and more. Like I’ve said in the past, the energy transition isn’t about how energy is made but how it’s used.
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This is your SolarWakeup for January 30th, 2023
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This is your SolarWakeup for January 27th, 2023
Happy Friday. Wrapping up the week that started 2023 with an interesting, and timely, blog post from Bill Gates about the grid and transmission. With trillions of dollars looking to deploy into the transition, we need to get the interconnection and pricing signals done right. Have a great weekend and send me your top news and ideas for next week!
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This is your SolarWakeup for January 26th, 2023
Expansion, Contraction. You can read 5 different headlines and they all follow a certain theme. Consumers and businesses are using electricity more than they were before. That usage is consistent in volume but inconsistent on location, i.e. you’re working from home some days. Some of the energy you are using today is no longer liquid but electric, i.e. you now drive an electric car or ride an e-bike. More electricity is coming from wind and solar than ever (and growing). All of this results in a grid that needs to expand in some places at some times, and contract in some places at some times. Our grids today are basically in need of slinkies at every point of interconnection to allow for the flexibility that we all expect as consumers.
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This is your SolarWakeup for January 25th, 2023
InsureTech. Innovation in insurance isn’t seen often but my friends at kWh Analytics have done it again, launching a property insurance product. Congrats to Jason and team for the launch, definitely check that out.
Energy Transition For Fleets. EV Charging delivered is what it says on the side of the truck that carries a movile EV charger to those that need it. First, it does wonders for those that still feel range anxiety and second, have you ever seen an Amazon delivery truck at a gas station? Most fleets either fuel at a central repository or (get this) the fuel truck comes to them so that they don’t have to waste time doing that. With electrification clearly underway, mobile EV charging is on the way. Proving once again that my definition of the energy transition is correct, we’re swapping from molecules to electrons.
Cool Concept. Centrica is using legacy power infrastructure to replace it with 21st century technology. Development needs land, use permits and interconnection to get a project launched. Guess what every power plant in the US already has…
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This is your SolarWakeup for January 24th, 2023
OpenSolar Fundraise. Fresh on the back of a big year for the folks at OpenSolar, the company recently closed a series B $15m funding round. As you may recall form our prior interview with the CEO birchy, the company provides NREL validated, high quality sales and design software to installers. They rolled out new design automation and advanced new features in 2022 and have grown to over 10% of the US resi design market by their calculations. Now you can begin to see the vision for low cost digital sales in the US in residential solar.
New Fund, Longtime Investor. Congrats to Alokh Sindher on his jump to lead an infrastructure fund with Fifth Wall. Alokh has been a staple at DESRI for more than a decade which has been a behemoth in the market for most of that time.
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