Tag Archives: Daily Rundown

This is your SolarWakeup for February 19th, 2020

ERCOT Known Knowns. Here are some things that you may not have known before this week that are important about the Texas grid. First, ERCOT doesn’t cover all of Texas, it leaves out the El Paso and Northern rectangle. You’ll find it interesting that neither of those sections were really impacted by outages. Why? That’s a great question and leads to the next thing you’d want to know which is that ERCOT is essentially an islanded grid. This means that Texas operates it’s electricity ‘market’ with true isolationism. They do this to avoid FERC oversight, I’m told, because in Texas they like things cheap. Cheap you ask? Yes, almost none of the infrastructure is build to withstand winter events and this year is not the first time it has happened. David Crane reminds us that on two previous occasions, NRG assets lost tens of millions of potential revenue because their power plants were not able to operate during winter events. So when wind developers ordered wind turbines, they did not spring for the heating elements for ice conditions which bodes well because neither did any of the thermal power plants.

The Solution? Sunrun and Freedom Solar send in their first images of how you can mitigate infrastructure problems in grid and gas. I am on the hunt for more pictures of a house with lights on because you installed solar with batteries next to neighbors without it. We can fight lies with facts, the visual kind. Send them my way please.

Texas Gas Embargo. Texas implemented a gas export ban, focusing on exporting only their Senators to Mexico instead. This impacted power markets nationally including California where electricity prices reached over $1,000/MWh but only during non-solar times. This price volatility is going to cause major hiccups throughout the Country and hopefully result in some changes to how markets react. 

Speaking of Markets. ERCOT, as you know, operates as an energy market and does not have a capacity market. In true free market philosophy, the thesis is that increasing the price will lower demand and therefore make sure that there is always enough electricity available. Texans learned this week, once again, that electricity alone do not make a resilient and flexible energy grid and that their market needs reform.

Why Texas? For everyone that is moving to Texas, I ask you why? Do you enjoy snowboarding on your Austin driveway while your power is out for 40+ hours? Join me in Florida instead, we eat hurricanes for breakfast with the lights on. (My brother is the best realtor in Fort Lauderdale, so he claims, so I’d be happy to intro you anytime) The best part of my neighborhood is that I see solar trucks everywhere I go now, and if you’re running one of them don’t be surprised if I mystery shop with your local branch to see if they are well trained.

Deal News. Sunnova has acquired SunStreet, Lennar’s solar installation business. This puts Sunnova in the origination game on a national level and one step closer to the vertical integration Sunrun has achieved over the years. Nuveen has acquired Greenworks Lending, the commercial PACE provider.

Save California Net Metering. Sign this petition if you want to see the largest solar market continue thriving. 

C&I PPA Webinar. My C&I solar friends at Sustainable Capital Finance (SCF) are hosting an exciting free webinar for EPCs and Installers on Feb 24th, demonstrating how their software users were able to improve PPA project conversions by 25% or more. Learn best practices in executing C&I solar & storage PPAs, helpful strategies for a remote sales process, industry insights, and more. You can sign up here or contact the SCF team at info@scf.com for more information.

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for February 18th, 2020

Solar Plus Storage Pictures. I am on the hunt for pictures of a house with lights on because you installed solar with batteries next to neighbors without it. We can fight lies with facts, the visual kind. Send them my way please.

Save California Net Metering. Sign this petition if you want to see the largest solar market continue thriving.

A Podcast To Listen To. I was pleased to join Freeing Energy’s Bill Nussey to talk about soft cost reduction by making solar permits instant and digital. You can listen to the discussion here.

C&I PPA Webinar. My C&I solar friends at Sustainable Capital Finance (SCF) are hosting an exciting free webinar for EPCs and Installers on Feb 24th, demonstrating how their software users were able to improve PPA project conversions by 25% or more. Learn best practices in executing C&I solar & storage PPAs, helpful strategies for a remote sales process, industry insights, and more. You can sign up here or contact the SCF team at info@scf.com for more information.

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for February 17th, 2020

Texas Power Struggle. With cold weather continuing to increase demand and reduce supply in the ERCOT energy markets, Texans are left struggling with power outages and rolling blackouts. This has been going on for several days now, in some ways similar to Hurricane Harvey that parked itself over the Houston area and never seemed to want to move on. Everyone is talking about this and the blame game. Not all of it, or really any of it, based on the truth, facts or data. Twitter accounts from Senator Cornyn, Congressman Crenshaw were amongst the highlights blaming Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez for the Texan power issues.

The PR Game. When it comes to the press game, count on natural gas communications executives to bring their A-game and in this case they did indeed. Even before the crisis, before I realized what was happening, the PR game was in full effect. On Monday, New York Times ran a headline blaming frozen wind turbines for the energy generation shortage. They did this because the natural gas industry knew that their power plants were going to fail in a massive and systemic fashion. Gas was being prioritized for heating consumption and wells were frozen, the irony of the day. That didn’t stop the WSJ editorial board to go all in on blaming renewables for the troubles.

All Others, Bring Data. Grid operations data show the better story. Jesse Jenkins, highlighted by Twitter’s corporate account, broke down how each generation source was executing against the plan. Wind was not relied on going into the crisis, only 6GW was planned for which created a shortfall of 4.4GW when only 1.6GW was able to get online. On the other hand, only about half of the Texas natural gas fleet was able to operate with over 25GW of capacity failing to operate. For the breakdown on the tweet thread, here’s Jesse’s twitter explanation.

Extreme Pressures. The reality is that engineering and operations is hard when you account for major anomalies. A multi day, deep freeze is almost all of Texas isn’t part of the design process. California doesn’t design for hurricanes and Florida doesn’t look at earthquake risk. The new climate has deeper pressure points that occur more often and we, as consumers, can either plan for the worst or be satisfied to hope for the best. What we need is more flexibility and ability to be resilient, and while wind and solar are comfortable in the variable nature of the energy production, we must also be truthful that natural gas can also be variable if fuel is not available because for Texans, the sun didn’t shine on their natural gas fleet.

Save California Net Metering. Sign this petition if you want to see the largest solar market continue thriving.

Hawaii RPS Signal. The RPS in Hawaii is going well and one of my favorite Senators, Brian Schatz, noticed.

Don’t Hallucinate. Strategy without execution is hallucination and corporate ESG goals without policy focus to back it up are just that. GreenBiz’s Heather Clancy highlights this in her column.

A Podcast To Listen To. I was pleased to join Freeing Energy’s Bill Nussey to talk about soft cost reduction by making solar permits instant and digital. You can listen to the discussion here.

C&I PPA Webinar. My C&I solar friends at Sustainable Capital Finance (SCF) are hosting an exciting free webinar for EPCs and Installers on Feb 24th, demonstrating how their software users were able to improve PPA project conversions by 25% or more. Learn best practices in executing C&I solar & storage PPAs, helpful strategies for a remote sales process, industry insights, and more. You can sign up here or contact the SCF team at info@scf.com for more information.

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for February 16th, 2020

It’s Cold Out There. Unless you were within a few miles of me in South Florida, you were wearing a sweater this weekend. I won’t rub it in but we had a cozy 85 degrees for the long weekend. Cold weather, especially where it is normally not expected, causes major pain in grid operations. You saw that Texas, with power plants coming off line and wind turbines needing to be deiced to continue turning, reached its peak power price of $9,000/MWh. Demand not only exceeded forecasts many times over but also happened simultaneously across major metro areas. Grid geeks debated the pros and cons of capacity markets, like PJM versus ERCOT, and I spent a lot of time thinking about the arbitrage opportunity between peaks for energy storage asset owners that were not contracted ahead of time.

A Central Grid, Decentralized. Two former state regulators including Sunrun’s VP of Policy, Anne Hoskins, write that it is shortsighted for regulators and grid planners to not proceed with major enhancements to the way distributed energy resources are dispatched and monetized. Look at the situation in Texas, if DERs had been included in the analysis and grid operations, the peak demand could have been shaved to some degree even though Texas is just getting started. California on the other hand, with over 1 million solar roofs plus a plan to get to a million solar with storage roofs can dramatically impact grid peaks. The dispatch ability for planners doesn’t come without a cost, it competes with other peaking or near peaking capacity but isn’t looked at by regulators as a solid asset just yet. California regulators are letting monopolies double down on peaking generation capacity contracts and more fossil fuel generators as a way to manage peak. But the CAISO CEO said it best once, we cannot simply manage peaks, we must also shape demand.

Gates Writes Book. Bill Gates has a new book about the energy transition, “How to avoid a climate disaster?” The CEO of Rocky Mountain Institute reviews the book and politico publishes an interview with Gates.

C&I PPA Webinar. My C&I solar friends at Sustainable Capital Finance (SCF) are hosting an exciting free webinar for EPCs and Installers on Feb 24th, demonstrating how their software users were able to improve PPA project conversions by 25% or more. Learn best practices in executing C&I solar & storage PPAs, helpful strategies for a remote sales process, industry insights, and more. You can sign up here or contact the SCF team at info@scf.com for more information.

Opinion

Best, Yann