This is your SolarWakeup for September 25th, 2020

It’s Friday. Have a great weekend! On Monday we will cover what it takes to get to 100% clean energy by 2030 with no ICE cars by 2035 and when it has to start.

Solar Market Update Call. Register for the next Roth Capital solar market call on October 2nd at 10am Eastern. The past calls have exposed the first highlight of major market trends.

Launch of the SCF Suite 2.0. My friends over at Sustainable Capital Finance continue to innovate in the fast-growing C&I sector. They just launched their newly revamped software, the SCF Suite 2.0. The platform offers solar developers and EPC’s an efficient, centralized dashboard to receive indicative PPA pricing, download proposals, and populate & execute term sheets, EPC agreements & PPAs. The SCF Suite has been retooled with a fresh new look and the addition of many highly requested features. If you’re interested in learning more about how this software can speed up your transaction process, as well as increase your sales conversion rates through automated agreement population and e-signature features, feel free to check out their info page.

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for September 24th, 2020

California’s Car Forecast. Newsom is picking fights by banning combustion engine cars by 2035. This is a good goal and likely a reality anyways. Tomorrow, Newsom has the ability to enable the path for the clean energy economy to be ready for those electric cars to be fueled accordingly.

GE’s Coal Regret. GE is ending its time in the coal business. One must ask what the point of the Alstom acquisition to the tune of more than $12billion was.

More Solaredge Money. The inverter (and more) manufacturer is raising $500 million in the form of debt. The company has made mention of desired increases to R&D spending.

China’s Energy Transition. China is increasing its renewable energy targets and more specifically shifting peak emission targets to before 2030. This comes from a speech to the UN General Assembly by Xi Jinping.

NBA’s Energy Politics. If you watched last night’s Miami Heat victory of the Celtics, Go Heat!, you saw an NRG logo. On Miami’s ‘home court’ in the Florida bubble, it was great to see a retail energy choice provider’s logo. Executives from NextEra watching the game were probably annoyed given their opposition for NRG to ever provide consumers any choice in the state.

Solar Market Update Call. Register for the next Roth Capital solar market call on October 2nd at 10am Eastern. The past calls have exposed the first highlight of major market trends.

MDV-SEIA’s Solar Focus Conference. With events going virtual, it’s important for companies to support their state chapters and allows for out of state companies to participate in the virtual events. Register for MDV-SEIA’s conference.

Launch of the SCF Suite 2.0. My friends over at Sustainable Capital Finance continue to innovate in the fast-growing C&I sector. They just launched their newly revamped software, the SCF Suite 2.0. The platform offers solar developers and EPC’s an efficient, centralized dashboard to receive indicative PPA pricing, download proposals, and populate & execute term sheets, EPC agreements & PPAs. The SCF Suite has been retooled with a fresh new look and the addition of many highly requested features. If you’re interested in learning more about how this software can speed up your transaction process, as well as increase your sales conversion rates through automated agreement population and e-signature features, feel free to check out their info page.

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for September 23rd, 2020

Deal Day, IPO Coming. Array Technologies filed for their IPO yesterday, looking to raise an easy $100million. With over $1billion in sales and EBITDA somewhere in the 15% range, Array is going to have no problem raising the capital. The question is how big will the valuation be. Couple of interesting points. First, they should have done a direct listing. The market will value them much higher than the IPO will yield for shareholders in my opinion. Second, I’m surprised a SPAC didn’t make a big bid for this real business. Last, don’t be surprised if there is a last minute acquisition of the business instead of the IPO.

Battery Day Highlight. Tesla hosted its battery day yesterday. Here’s the three things you’re going to want to know. Tesla will seek to eliminate cobalt from its chemistry. The company will seek to make cathodes in-house and in the United States, Tesla continues to be a major creator of manufacturing jobs in the US. Doing so will aim to lower battery costs by 50% allowing for a $25,000 car to be sold. We will cover the impacts of a mass market electric vehicle another day.

The Case For Power Markets. In my latest podcast we talk about the pros and cons of monopolies versus power markets. One key difference between the two is how much gas is built one way or another, because the free markets basically eliminate any new natural gas plants from being built. This makes one wonder why IOUs feel the need to continue doing so when it’s not the best path forward.

Solar Market Update Call. Register for the next Roth Capital solar market call on October 2nd at 10am Eastern. The past calls have exposed the first highlight of major market trends.

MDV-SEIA’s Solar Focus Conference. With events going virtual, it’s important for companies to support their state chapters and allows for out of state companies to participate in the virtual events. Register for MDV-SEIA’s conference.

Launch of the SCF Suite 2.0. My friends over at Sustainable Capital Finance continue to innovate in the fast-growing C&I sector. They just launched their newly revamped software, the SCF Suite 2.0. The platform offers solar developers and EPC’s an efficient, centralized dashboard to receive indicative PPA pricing, download proposals, and populate & execute term sheets, EPC agreements & PPAs. The SCF Suite has been retooled with a fresh new look and the addition of many highly requested features. If you’re interested in learning more about how this software can speed up your transaction process, as well as increase your sales conversion rates through automated agreement population and e-signature features, feel free to check out their info page.

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for September 22nd, 2020

The Power Of Markets. There’s a new report from Deloitte that talks about the cost, feasibility and timing of the utility decarbonization goals. I don’t want to judge the conflicts of the report but it’s important to note that Deloitte makes a significant market working with utilities. Deloitte measure the feasibility as doable with significant cost and need for innovation for success. The counterpoint isn’t that it’s not feasible, it’s that the market needs to change and be competitive.

The New Pod. In anticipation of the report, SolarWakeup’s latest podcast looks at the energy market in the Southeast US and what it would look like if it was competitive. I talk with Mike O’Boyle from Energy Innovation who wrote the study. Without spoiling the report, consumers would save billions of dollars and get cleaner electricity while the States would create jobs.

RBG Environmental Opinions. Environmental laws have not had the airtime nor headlines at the Supreme Court until recently. Politico does a nice job of describing RBG’s role in the opinions, especially around the EPA’s jurisdiction over bodies of water and pollution. When the EPA runs into jurisdictional battles with States that aren’t interested in following federal rules, you can thank Ginsburg for the opinion that gave EPA jurisdiction writing, “When Con­gress elected to make EPA’s input a prerequisite to state action under the act, it did so expressly.”

It’s Battery Day. Tesla is holding its annual shareholder meeting and battery day. Watch for big headlines about battery production and the price roadmap ahead.

Corporate (Virtual) PPAs. We’ve seen several gigawatts of solar transacted between solar farm and corporate off taker. Some call them virtual, corporate or remote arrangements. What we need is for those transactions to be open-sourced, so if you are a counsel, financier, developer, owner or customer in one of those transactions it would be great for the market for that to be explained to the market and made less esoteric.

Launch of the SCF Suite 2.0. My friends over at Sustainable Capital Finance continue to innovate in the fast-growing C&I sector. They just launched their newly revamped software, the SCF Suite 2.0. The platform offers solar developers and EPC’s an efficient, centralized dashboard to receive indicative PPA pricing, download proposals, and populate & execute term sheets, EPC agreements & PPAs. The SCF Suite has been retooled with a fresh new look and the addition of many highly requested features. If you’re interested in learning more about how this software can speed up your transaction process, as well as increase your sales conversion rates through automated agreement population and e-signature features, feel free to check out their info page.

Opinion

Best, Yann