Tag Archives: Daily Rundown

This is your SolarWakeup for October 15th, 2020

Array Tech Prices Above. ARRY is pricing at $22, a bit above the range listed in the filing. Congrats to the New Mexico based team for what starts a great future as a public company. Note that most of the capital is going to shareholders selling shares.

CALSSA All-Member Meeting. Join us this Thursday for the largest membership meeting ever held by a solar trade association. If you’re not a member of CALSSA, it’s easy to join and I’m happy to help you do just that. Register here for the all-member meeting. 

Get The Power. Later this year, the residential solar market is going to get some major savings with most of their balance of systems when the shift to higher power solar modules really gets going. With power density going up more than 10%, those savings will trickle down to mounts, rails, inverters, labor and wire and hopefully into installers’ wallets. Make sure you are getting the best modules and pricing possible by joining the SolarWakeup Buyer’s Group. You can see the pricing on our price discovery page. 

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for October 14th, 2020

IPO Pricing Day Super Sized. Array Technologies, soon to be ARRY, increased the share sale that could reach nearly $1billion if underwriters exercise the options, which they are likely to do. Today we get the IPO pricing and expect the company to start trading on Thursday. Here’s a SolarWakeup prediction, with the success of Array’s IPO I think we will see Flex spin NexTracker out into its own public company.

I’m Not A Scientist. Louisiana Senator Kennedy asked the SCOTUS nominee if she believed in climate change, but she’s not a scientist and has no firm view on the issue.

New Lipstick, Same. PG&E headlines tend to repeat themselves. It seems like the wildfires may have overlapped with some equipment issues and a judge wants to hear more as regulators investigate. Governor Newsom will soon realize that the path forward means turning PG&E into a wires only company and letting CAISO expand its DER pricing signals.

Solar Policy Is Climate Policy. Axios’ Amy Harder has a thorough interview with BP’s CEO. Amongst many topics, he outlines the company’s focus on advocating for climate policy. Whether it’s BP or Amazon, it’s time to understand that the best way to drive climate policies forward is to invest in solar advocacy. Bloomberg understood this with the beyond coal campaign. This generation’s way forward is with solar advocates.

CALSSA All-Member Meeting. Join us this Thursday for the largest membership meeting ever held by a solar trade association. If you’re not a member of CALSSA, it’s easy to join and I’m happy to help you do just that. Register here for the all-member meeting. 

Get The Power. Later this year, the residential solar market is going to get some major savings with most of their balance of systems when the shift to higher power solar modules really gets going. With power density going up more than 10%, those savings will trickle down to mounts, rails, inverters, labor and wire and hopefully into installers’ wallets. Make sure you are getting the best modules and pricing possible by joining the SolarWakeup Buyer’s Group. You can see the pricing on our price discovery page.

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for October 13th, 2020

Solar Access Requires Regulators. Anti-solar advocates often attach solar for helping the rich only and not democratizing the benefits to everyone. This is especially aimed at low-income residents or renters that may not be the typical single family solar customer. The responsibility for this disparity mostly falls on regulators that do not open the market to all property types. Tools like community solar easily solves this, like is has done successfully in several markets. More importantly, regulators could take a new look at the excess production rate which is well below market value for energy costs. The problem with solar financing is the requirement for long term contracts secured by appropriate credit. For low-income or renters, it doesn’t match the solar financing. If regulators had a backup energy rate in case of default or vacancy, more competition over that market would follow.

The Work On Climate. Since it’s often lost on us that we are working on a bigger issue that affects everyone, I thought I would share an interesting realization I had over the weekend. Climate change sometimes seems too big for us to impact, what could one of us possibly do to help. The impacts from climate are serious and we have all felt them over the past few years. But, a few months ago when the national shelter in place was happening, we saw how fast the climate can change in a positive direction. We don’t have to believe a thesis, no cars on the road gave us the cleanest air we’ve seen in decades. We are so close to having a grid without coal and vehicle electrification on the way, it is possible that we will see immediate impacts from the positive gains our industries are making.

The Price And Compensation Signal. Grid operators and utility executives manage their work based on signals. Grid operators look at reserve margins within generation to match demand forecasts while utility executives look at the share price. On the technical side, we’re realizing that we cannot manage a grid only on the generation side, our reserve margin through demand shaping and demand response needs to be much closer to 20% or more. Same goes for executives, regulators have the opportunity to hold them to their climate goals and tie rate of return to achieving the decarbonization that is needed. If the utility profits drop when they fail to meet climate goals, executives will lose money because the share price will drop.

Diversity In Solar. Solar CEOs from several prominent companies are looking to improve the diversity in solar. The CEO collective has written the note linked below outlining their thoughts and actions.

Get The Power. Later this year, the residential solar market is going to get some major savings with most of their balance of systems when the shift to higher power solar modules really gets going. With power density going up more than 10%, those savings will trickle down to mounts, rails, inverters, labor and wire and hopefully into installers’ wallets. Make sure you are getting the best modules and pricing possible by joining the SolarWakeup Buyer’s Group. You can see the pricing on our price discovery page.

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for October 12th, 2020

Trump Still Anti-Solar. On Saturday, the White House released a proclamation signed by Trump (now we know what he signed at Walter Reed) pushing for the bifacial tariff exemption to be eliminated. He also called for the 201 tariff drop to not go to 15% but 18% instead. Taxing Americans access to solar continues to be his priority.

OakTree Shaking IPO Foliage. With Array Technologies about to have a monster IPO, it won’t be long before the best exhibitor at solar conferences, Shoals, follows suit. Take it from me, widgets have great margins. From racking to wire accessories, this part of the BOS ecosystem is ripe for investors.

Vehicle To Grid Auf Deutsch. In a German article, follow the twitter thread here to read the original article, the head of Volkswagen’s charging division talks about electrification and vehicle to grid capabilities in the future. In a DC coupled architecture, you could see a cable from the car to the stationary energy storage already installed at the home.

The Subsidy Of Crappy Deals. In a new analysis, MISO shows that uneconomic coal power plants ‘lost’ over $400million in a 4 year window. Lost is a big word, because it’s really a subsidy. Add this to the long list of subsidies that generators, utilities and incumbents have received when solar plus storage is already economically viable.

Laudato Si, Iterum. You may recall the Pope’s Laudato Si from several years ago. The Pope is once again calling for action on climate change. You could see Joe Biden, a practicing catholic, echo those words to make the case on this basis as well.

The Michigan Farmer. Last week’s news that Biden was releasing a climate change ad in Michigan is out. This has the potential to get traction in other states, like Iowa and North Carolina for example.

Energy Storage Gold. Check out these ERCOT market prices from this weekend, energy storage operators are paying their bills.

Bad Solar TikTok Dance. Now there is a solar TikTok. In this video, a man escapes a collapsing roof and you should watch til the end to discover the likely issue here.

Get The Power. Later this year, the residential solar market is going to get some major savings with most of their balance of systems when the shift to higher power solar modules really gets going. With power density going up more than 10%, those savings will trickle down to mounts, rails, inverters, labor and wire and hopefully into installers’ wallets. Make sure you are getting the best modules and pricing possible by joining the SolarWakeup Buyer’s Group. You can see the pricing on our price discovery page. 

Opinion

Best, Yann