Tag Archives: Daily Rundown

This is your SolarWakeup for October 5th, 2020

Vote Save Solar. On Friday’s episode of Pod Save America podcast, former Obama official Dan Pfeiffer commented that the first person to knock on his Bay Area door since the pandemic started was a solar salesperson. Sometimes I get my market data in the strangest places and for those wondering, he was not interested to talk to anyone at his door. Anyone know whose salesperson is door knocking in San Francisco?

To Clean Or Not To Clean. NextEra is celebrating the news of their new market cap surpassing Exxon’s by spinning themselves as a clean energy company. NextEra is first and foremost a monopoly that is primarily gas. Being a monopoly has enabled the company to invest in many gigawatts of wind and solar across the Country which gives them the ability to make the clean energy headline. Fundamentally, NextEra would build anything that makes them money regardless of its cleanliness. For years, their CEO was loud and proud that solar wouldn’t work, even spinning Florida too cloudy for PV. I think the Florida consumers that subsidize NextEra should be beneficiary of the company’s success, but obviously I am just dreaming.

What’s The Legislative Forecast? For the next 30 days, we will cover the what ifs of various election results, maybe even look at certain states that have flippable legislatures. Looking at polling, the options ahead for DC tend to expect a Biden White House, Blue House and toss up in the Senate. The Senate toss up has layers given how the institution operates and the unknown about the filibuster. Tomorrow, we’ll look at the blue wave scenario with removal of the filibuster and how energy policy would look in that scenario.

Solar On Schools. Every school in America should be covered in solar and now should have a microgrid as well. Schools are at the center of every community and in many cases the source of safety for natural disasters or emergency events. This is just common sense at this point. 

A Recap Pod. How many of your are podcast listeners and would like to have a weekly solar market recap podcast from this platform? We’re looking into format options and whether people are interested. Shoot us a note, hit reply and let us know. If any companies like the idea and would like to sponsor that, give us a ring.

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 2nd, 2020

Weekend. Have a great weekend. If you have any market insight that’s worthy of updating capital markets in a few hours hit me up. 

Solar Market Update Call. The solar market can be considered complex and fast moving but if you join this monthly market call you can make sense of it. Register for the next Roth Capital solar market call happening at 10am Eastern today.

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 1st, 2020

Monopoly Overreach And Insanity. This got my blood pressure up early yesterday when Twitter started circulating the news that NextEra approached Duke with the intention to acquire the Carolina utility. Even though Duke is based in Charlotte, it has operations in North and South Carolina as well as Florida. NextEra which already has well over 50% of Florida’s consumers can’t get enough when it comes to a regulated non-competitive market. Imagine the power that such a utility would have across the Southeast, politicians would have to allow them to do anything because what other choice would they have? This is incredibly dangerous but entirely plausible.

Nonstationary Power. When Tesla first released the power wall they called that division stationary power. I publicly opined on this platform years ago that stationary power implies non-stationary power to be on the auto side of the company. Delaware had done a vehicle to grid pilot a few years ago and Enel has been showing off their programs in Italy online. With the CPUC enabling some testing of V2G we’ll look a bit into how that overlaps with the solar industry. Homes with EVs often have 70kWh plus in their driveway, it makes sense to have the ability to use that energy in certain situations.

Speaking Of EVs. Do any SolarWakeup readers know anything about ev conversions for internal combustion vehicles? Please reach out and share your tips.

Solar Market Update Call. The solar market can be considered complex and fast moving but if you join this monthly market call you can make sense of it. Register for the next Roth Capital solar market call on October 2nd at 10am Eastern.

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 September 30th, 2020

First In 12. Much to my surprise and many others, Chris Wallace went off script last night (there wasn’t much of a script at this point anyways) and asked a climate change question to Trump and Biden. This was the first climate change question in 12 years according to Grist reporting in a presidential debate. I won’t cover the answers, it ranged from raking the forest to weatherizing buildings and regulating methane. Biden did call out the SunShot success in lowering the cost of solar to record levels, a nice mention of our industry.

The Role of Labor. We don’t talk about this often, our industry is different, but it should also be part of the discussion. Many of the utility and oil infrastructure jobs are part of major labor unions. Labor has been one of the major political forces fighting solar policies in State capitols. The crush on oil, COVID aside, has very little to do with our industry that would fall more on the EV infrastructure and utility sector. The utility sector tends to take a very strong position fighting against labor unions. Solar on the other hand is largely silent but we shouldn’t be. I believe that I would be directionally correct in saying that 50% of solar capacity is installed in partnership with labor unions including large scale solar in California, many public projects across the country as well as DG projects in states like NJ, MA, NY and IL. I would love to hear your view on this, including data that may support or refute my thoughts.

No Congressional Acts Likely. Senator Whitehouse is holding out hope for the Senate to take up climate legislation. As much as I would love for the Senator to be right, he may have thought this to be true before last night’s debate.

EPA, SCOTUS, and What If. In the week’s leading up to and after the selection of Kamala Harris as the VP, we wrote about how she could lead the fight against climate change by taking on polluters with laws like the clean air and water acts. In reality, these laws are on more nuanced standing after the passing of Justice Ginsberg who wrote the opinion giving the EPA the power to regulate emissions. The case for regulatory overreach was often argued by Justice Scalia including as recently in 2015 in Michigan v EPA where Scalia wrote the opinion for the 5-4 majority. If you recall, I quoted Justice Ginsburg’s 6-2 majority opinion from the EPA v EME Homer City in 2014 which gave the EPA more ability to regulate emissions across the Country. With the balance of the court changing, based on Judge Coney Barrett’s comments that Scalia’s views are her views, you can imagine some ability for a Biden/Harris administration having more difficulty executing on the pollution enforcement strategy I outlined just a few weeks ago.

Solar Market Update Call. The solar market can be considered complex and fast moving but if you join this monthly market call you can make sense of it. Register for the next Roth Capital solar market call on October 2nd at 10am Eastern.

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