Tag Archives: Daily Rundown

This is your SolarWakeup for April 10th, 2020

Sales Still Soft. The results from this week’s SolarWakeup tracking survey show a slight improvement in sales week to week, still down 39% from the pre-corona Q1 average. The variance from contractor to contractor was larger than prior weeks which makes me think that some contractors are doing better in the new sales environment and adapting software solutions to make homeowners comfortable enough to still go solar.

Zoom And Other. Venture capital has been most interested in solar by investing through proposal tools. When asked, the survey responses show that this market is still wide open and completely fragmented. More interestingly, many of you said that you use a custom or mixture of solutions. In this survey, no platform got more than 8% of the responses. Maybe you want to give me more insight on this, you can do so by clicking reply and just typing the name of the tool you use to create your solar proposal. On the positive side, 50% of you said you closed a sale via video conference last week!

Getting Approved. Necessity is the mother of invention and social distancing is the mother of all necessity. San Luis Obispo County has enabled their permit process to let micro inverter solar installations get an instant permit. It is possible, the proof is here and SolarAPP can’t come fast enough. At the same time, the capable team at CALSSA is working (from home) with building departments across California to make this more mainstream. If you have a building department contact, look out for the info coming from NREL. From the survey, 70% of the building departments postponed inspections and 37% have closed. This is going to slow down the process of moving the backlog and possible slowing payment installers receive from loan providers or homeowners. Improving from last week, 52% are now accepting no-touch permitting and 22% are doing remote inspections.

You Want (Need) PPP. 46% of the survey responses say that they have delayed payments to suppliers, vendors or service providers. More concerning is that 78% are worried about the working capital position which is healthy given the unknown but also alarming. This means you should be talking to your partners about what it’s going to take to weather the storm at least until PPP funds are actually in bank accounts across the Country. It’s best to be upfront about the concerns you have and people will work with each other. The solar industry didn’t cause this issue and will help see it through together.

A Congressional Showdown. The political negotiations of stimulus package 4 have begun. Now is the time to make your voice heard, work with your local trade groups, write a letter with some other community solar companies and tell your story to your member. There’s a good chance that ability to take the ITC will be depressed this year because of the slowdown so a grant could be helpful to the industry to help it rebuild and regain the momentum that we had.

Have a great weekend!

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for April 9th, 2020

Time Is Tight. Here are some things you can do in the absence of my commentary today. Not sure how you are faring in these insane times, but it’s starting to make my head spin.  Times are tough so I appreciate your donation of time, knowledge and resources.

Educate On Permits. SolarAPP is a project to get building departments to adopt instant and no-touch permitting for solar. Sign up for their mailing list to keep up to speed and get involved. Link

Join CALSSA. State policy is important and with events canceled across the board, your membership is more important than ever. Link

Donate To Vote Solar. Want to make sure that we don’t lose track of regulatory policies across the Country? Give $1 to Vote Solar. Link

Contact Your Member. Write a note to your representatives to let them know how your business and job in solar is doing. Ask (nicely) for things that could help like PPP, ITC extension, ITC grant or federal solar permitting policies. Link

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for April 8th, 2020

Publish Your Posts. I’d like to highlight your thoughts, changes and questions that you are writing about on your company pages. Times like these I find myself wondering what I’m missing and that’s why the survey has been a great tool to get information from the industry and merge it with my thoughts. If you posted any blogs, send them over and I’ll use them in the rundown.

Sales Decline May Have Bottomed. Keyword is may, if you look at the results from last week’s survey and I compare to the ongoing results of this week’s survey, it looks cautiously optimistic. If you are a residential installer, please add your responses so that we can gather this data point with more precision.

Working Capital Concerns Appear. More than 70% of this week’s responses are saying they are concerned about their working capital position. Concern isn’t the same thing as actually having issues but it measures the sentiment across the market. That being said, the overall ecosystem appears to be willing to work through these issues caused by outside circumstances.

Conf Call. For those of you that joined yesterday, I hope you were able to get good information from the panel discussion I held with Roth. We’ll host the next call on April 22nd. Hope you can join us.

Survey Link – Provide your input now, survey closes at noon today. 

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for April 7th, 2020

Paycheck Protection. Let’s do a quick rundown today, lots going on. By now most in solar have applied for the paycheck protection program, the $350billion SBA loan that forgives most of the uses you need the money for. The problem is that the money hasn’t started flowing, not even close because banks are accepting applications but aren’t clear on the underwriting or funding process. As all of this happens in real-time, please let me know when you are able to get a loan funded, this will help others get through this. 

Get Your Story Out. Speaking of getting through this. While there are positive data signals coming out of the market (selling remote, better than expected close rates, no touch permitting), the solar industry is struggling and it will get worse before it gets better. And that assumes that the consumer will be in a financial position to buy solar when the time comes. When the process of installing solar gets slower, installers find themselves in need of additional capital, everyone does. So when you combine the need for capital with the risk adjusted credit landscape that you are describing in the tracking survey, there is cause for concern. Your member of Congress needs to hear this from you and how the epidemic is impacting your business. Ideally they hear this from you through media not only from a call which you should make as well. Call your local business reporter or business journal and let them know how this is impacting the local solar economy. I wish there was a click here for outreach but you’ll have to do this one and it needs to be done. Absent a strong national cry for help, the local installers, developers and investors need to be in the news more than we are today. More on this below.

Better Data. We’re having an issue with data and estimates in the industry right now. Wood Mackenzie was out last week with their assessment of the solar market being down 30%+ and now Morgan Stanley says it could be almost 50% in Q2 alone. The data you are telling me, across dozens of companies paints a lighter picture that doesn’t drive the market as far down and a shorter duration than I’m reading about. Take part in this week’s survey to help make our case and highlight the business issues. You can then take this data to your reporter and tell your personal story with a data point behind it.

Getting The Data Out. Join me this morning as I discuss the state of the solar market with Phil Shen from Roth Capital. This is a free virtual town hall to learn about the marketplace and hear first hand information from other solar professionals in the market. 10am easter and 7am pacific. 

Selling Remotely. What success are you finding shifting your sales to virtual only? Is there anything that worked for you or you had to figure out because it wasn’t? I want to hear from you about the process, software that helped and other ways to make this work for the long term.

Oil Stories Rule The Day. Since Friday of last week, Axios’ energy section has 12 oil stories. 12. While it’s a big story, the oil industry is doing a great job keeping reporters filled with information. Imitation is the best form of flattery and we should be doing this too.

First Public Co Speaks Out. Yesterday, Sunrun published early financial information for Q1 and withdrew its guidance given the drastic change in the market. The company does spell out some of the changes to their sales process: drone, video calls and digital permitting amongst others. It also includes some views on what the future consumers may be looking for, helpful information available here. 

Opinion

Best, Yann