It’s The Friday Rundown. We’re heading into the tail end of the year, everyone is doing budgets and ready for the 2024 that 2023 was supposed to give us. Don’t forget to budget your policy spend in time and money!

Upgrades, You Need To Plan For. This hasn’t affected your solar plants but it will affect your battery plants within the first few years of operation and then many times throughout the life. You’ll need to regularly comply with regulatory specifications and upgrade your plant to take advantage of more revenue streams. Read today’s top story to see who’s doing this well and doing it now.

Utility Capital Stockage. Utilities are getting their balance sheets into shape for a massive deployment of capital in the coming years. This is causing some pain in the stock prices but ultimately should be seen as a positive for future investments being made towards the energy transition. Of course, there are trillions in external investments ready to be made for utilities as an offtaker, a path that some utilities without the needed capital will have to take if needed.

Managing Installer Cash Flow. Interest rates are the highest in 22 years, increasing solar financing costs and softening consumer demand for loan products. Businesses are feeling the pain of strained cash flows, labor costs and profitability pressures. Palmetto, a B2B technology company accelerating the adoption of clean energy, has announced a new partnership offering for solar installers to help stabilize cash flows and grow faster in today’s market. Built on top of Palmetto’s Clean Energy Operating Platform, this is a comprehensive suite of tools and services enabling installers to streamline operations, optimize performance, and increase profitability. Visit https://www.palmetto.com/finance or contact capital@palmetto.com for more.

• Solar Builder: FlexGen streamlines energy storage site upgrade process to meet regulatory standards
• Utility Dive: Utilities likely to continue selling non-core assets amid $745B in planned spending – Moody’s
• New York Times: In a U.S. First, a Commercial Plant Starts Pulling Carbon From the Air
• Axios: A setback for small nuclear reactors as Idaho plan scrapped
• Reuters: Wind woe opens door for alternative green ideas: podcast
• PV-Tech: ‘Massive increase’ in solar module defects poses ‘significant risk’ to PV industry – CEA
• Renewable Energy World: Electricity markets may need to change to support the clean energy transition
• Canary Media: Mainers reject historic bid to make for-profit utilities publicly owned

Opinion

• PV-Magazine: California rooftop solar policy struggles serve as warning to nation

Best, Yann

Managing Installer Cash Flow. Interest rates are the highest in 22 years, increasing solar financing costs and softening consumer demand for loan products. Businesses are feeling the pain of strained cash flows, labor costs and profitability pressures. Palmetto, a B2B technology company accelerating the adoption of clean energy, has announced a new partnership offering for solar installers to help stabilize cash flows and grow faster in today’s market. Built on top of Palmetto’s Clean Energy Operating Platform, this is a comprehensive suite of tools and services enabling installers to streamline operations, optimize performance, and increase profitability. Visit https://www.palmetto.com/finance or contact capital@palmetto.com for more.

• PV-Tech: US DOE picks three solar companies to install rooftop solar and batteries in Puerto Rico
• Axios: Major UN report blasts “doubling down” on oil, gas and coal ahead of COP28
• New York Times: A Package of Bold Laws Puts Michigan on a Fast Track to Renewable Energy
• Bloomberg: EQT Buys Battery Storage Firm Statera in £500 Million Deal
• Utility Dive: Texas voters approve $10B energy fund, with most going to build gas-fired power plants
• Solar Power World: New database maps large-scale solar projects across the country
• Energy Storage News: CATL, Quinbrook partner to deploy over 10GWh of battery storage in the next five years

Opinion

• PV-Magazine: Analysis finds 10 GW of solar could have dropped unserved load by 15% during Winter Storm Uri

Best, Yann

The Grid Needs. Let’s keep it simple, in order to accelerate the deployment of capital we need: improved interconnection process, faster permitting and more price signals.

Interconnections. No deal can get to ready to build and certainly not to notice to proceed without access to the grid connection. This isn’t a simple process to fix but removing the complexity with a bunch of baby steps would come a long way.

Permitting. I’m not advocating for today’s story from Germany but too much home rule may be a problem. Land owners want to monetize their land but being stopped to do so by third parties that slow the development of solar farms. Solar farms don’t impact the neighbourhood with traffic nor change the vista, instead they create new tax revenues and jobs. Permitting and zoning for solar farms ends up being just as important as interconnections but far more arbitrary.

Price Signals. If project cost X, the revenue must be X + Y in order to make an investable return. The higher that the certainty on Y is, the lower the return has to be in order to get an investment committees approval. Solar development has to negotiate decades long revenue certainty in order to get past this step, which isn’t easy while storage is often left working on merchant revenue streams that weren’t really signaled for storage specific reasons. Power markets could create a solar plus storage rate price signal that would drive faster paths to construction for one example or could create storage specific price signals for faster deployment as well.

Managing Installer Cash Flow. Interest rates are the highest in 22 years, increasing solar financing costs and softening consumer demand for loan products. Businesses are feeling the pain of strained cash flows, labor costs and profitability pressures. Palmetto, a B2B technology company accelerating the adoption of clean energy, has announced a new partnership offering for solar installers to help stabilize cash flows and grow faster in today’s market. Built on top of Palmetto’s Clean Energy Operating Platform, this is a comprehensive suite of tools and services enabling installers to streamline operations, optimize performance, and increase profitability. Visit https://www.palmetto.com/finance or contact capital@palmetto.com for more.

• Bloomberg: Germany to Force Landowners to Accept New Renewables Infrastructure
• New York Times: Lavish Tax Credits and Trade Protections Lure Solar Firms to U.S.
• Utility Dive: ISO New England proposes 1-year delay to 2025 forward capacity auction
• Axios: EVs are driven less than gas-powered models – study
• Reuters: China will dominate solar supply chain for years -Wood Mackenzie
• PV-Tech: Madison Energy Infrastructure buys Pro-Tech Energy Solutions to develop C&I solar operations
• Renewable Energy World: Orsted wants out of $300M forfeiture for scrapped New Jersey offshore wind farms
• Energy Storage News: Georgia Power updated IRP ups targets for renewable energy, battery storage
• Canary Media: Kauai became a clean energy leader. Its secret? A publicly owned grid

Opinion

• PV-Magazine: U.S. solar electricity generation to surpass hydropower in 2024

Best, Yann

Solar And Storage Finance. If you’re in New York for the conference, let me know, I will be here for the event as well.

Getting IEs Up To Speed. Technical views on the entire tech stack of your solar and storage projects. Much is made of asset performance especially now that decade plus of historicals are in the books. For solar it’s all about the technical performance based on the measured sunlight at the site. With batteries the upside is much greater given that power markets can move with volatility while having to match the market opportunity with the asset’s availability. As the asset classes come together, independent engineers will learn more about the parts and pieces that make good projects good.

Managing Installer Cash Flow. Interest rates are the highest in 22 years, increasing solar financing costs and softening consumer demand for loan products. Businesses are feeling the pain of strained cash flows, labor costs and profitability pressures. Palmetto, a B2B technology company accelerating the adoption of clean energy, has announced a new partnership offering for solar installers to help stabilize cash flows and grow faster in today’s market. Built on top of Palmetto’s Clean Energy Operating Platform, this is a comprehensive suite of tools and services enabling installers to streamline operations, optimize performance, and increase profitability. Visit https://www.palmetto.com/finance or contact capital@palmetto.com for more.

• Canary Media: BP buys $100M of Tesla chargers as oil majors prep for a post-gas future
• Utility Dive: Duke, others leverage new IRA rules to finance clean energy, but cost, complexity are hurdles
• Bloomberg: UK Fast Tracks 10 Gigawatts of Batteries to Ease Grid Logjam
• New York Times: Biden Administration, After Setbacks, Talks Up Renewable Power Gains
• Axios: Report – Corporate net zero targets jump, but only 4% meet UN climate goals
• Reuters: New England grid seeks to postpone 2025 power auction to reassess capacity
• Renewable Energy World: Here are the highlights from MISO’s interconnection reform plan
• PV-Magazine: NREL anticipates rising utility-scale costs, decreasing residential costs

Opinion

• Energy Storage News: Sunrun ‘rapidly transitioning to a storage-first company’, CEO says

Best, Yann