Tag Archives: Daily Rundown

This is your SolarWakeup for April 6th, 2020

Survey #4. The policy discussions for the next stimulus package are in full force. With the paycheck protection plan bound to be oversubscribed in the coming weeks, Congress will come back to do more. The information you provide in the SolarWakeup survey helps us tell the story of the resilient industry that we are, even in the face of adversity. All of your responses are confidential and you get to see last week’s result when you fill it out. Please participate by clicking here and share this LinkedIn post with your network.

Market Impact Conference Call. Tomorrow morning you can join me and Roth’s Philip Shen on a conference call to discuss the survey results and the depth and duration of the COVID impact on the solar industry. If you want information about the call, contact Phil at pshen@roth.com. He also publishes great analysis on some of the publicly traded solar companies, ask him to be added to his list when you email him.

A Tweet Tells The Story. Congressional leaders have soured on the idea that the next stimulus bill will include infrastructure. Yesterday, Trump gave some comments foreshadowing more support for the oil and gas industry. The oil and gas industry has been doing a good job on the public relations front, making Americans feel bad about their pending financial troubles. I know that solar tries hard to put on a brave face but we should be honest and out front about the cash flow issues solar is facing during this pandemic affecting us all. Americans can’t empathize with issues they are not aware of.

An Impossible Experiment. We can actually see the positive coming out as many of us sit on our front porch working from home. The air is cleaner everywhere in the world, sights are being seen for the first time in centuries. Snowy mountaintops in India, clean water across the world and emissions from cars are down almost entirely. The political discussion was whether humans impact emissions and we could have theorized about the impact cars have but taking them off the road for weeks/months was never feasible. Now we have the results and it is undeniable that we have to get to electric cars without delay. We can’t make EVs the fun project between GM and Honda, they have to be charged up to take each other on. Trillions of revenues are on the line and the future of the world population.

Fill out the survey, share it far and wide. 

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for April 3rd, 2020

The Survey Results. The pandemic is starting to hit the solar industry, big increases in furloughs and terminations as well as delayed payables in the overall ecosystem. Thanks again for participating in the survey and passing the newsletter on to your colleagues. If anyone has success getting approved for the SBA paycheck protection program, please let me know.

New Sales Down. For the 3rd week in a row, new sales last week dropped 50% when compared to the average sales volume from Q1 pre-COVID. This is a further reduction from the 33% drop we saw in last week’s survey.

Building Departments Adjusting. While over 75% of you said that building departments had closed or delayed inspections, 42% are now seeing no-touch permitting and FaceTime inspections. Please share this data with your local trade group as they aggregate this information.

Adjusting Expenses. Some (43%) have had to lay off or furlough employees and more (36%) are seeing potential for more in April or May. This could be stemmed with the SBA payroll protection loan that is supposed to launch today (but likely isn’t)

Your Question. I asked what question you wanted to see in next week’s survey and over 50% of you asked about the ITC extension. In my conversation with you, it is clear that you want to see it in the next stimulus bill and want to know what strategy is being used to push this. You and I can do our part by contacting our member of Congress. If an actual call to action crosses my desk, I assure you that I will pass it on. I was saddened to see the ITC left out of package 3 and it worries me to see the administration trying to bail out the oil industry without further legislation but I shall keep my optimism alive.

Have a great weekend! Stay healthy!

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for April 2nd, 2020

Call Me Commish. Yesterday was the best April fools joke of my life. No, I will not be a PSC commissioner and yes I will continue to do this newsletter, you are stuck with me! I woke up in a panic, I live in California which means that a lot of you get this newsletter at 4am my time. Your texts and hundreds of emails made me realize that for some reason you thought I would be nominated by the Governor AND be able to get confirmed. I would actually love to be a PSC commissioner at some point but that time is not now. The panic came from the realization that maybe I overstepped the time we are living in and taking advantage of days blending together, but I got to see what an exit would look like and thank you! So next year, know that an April fools is coming again but this will be hard to top.

If You Need. If you used my announcement and by chance forwarded it to your boss or colleagues without fact checking, I’m sorry. If you want me to call your boss and explain just let me know! If you wrote analysis on the opportunity of solar because I’m on the PSC, please let me read it. I want to see how far in the pocket of solar you all think I am!

Back To Business. Things are really bad in the oil markets especially in Texas. Tens of thousands of oil jobs are at risk of being lost by the double black swan events coming together in corona and the Saudi/Russia collision. WTI traded below $20/barrel yesterday and global consumption is down bigly. With oil CEOs coming to the White House I would expect the White House to go big on a bailout. Look at CNBC’s Jim Cramer calling this a major economic risk.

What This Means For Solar. Trump tweeted about the impending infrastructure week and the current low interest rates. He’s also right that infrastructure spending would be vital to keep business flowing across the Country. Chamath Palihapatiya was on Kara Swisher’s Recode Decode and said it best, “right now, everyone gets everything they want.” From a political standpoint, I think oil execs should hug solar to stop the positioning that the Senate GOP is taking that package 4 isn’t required and ‘green’ topics shouldn’t be included. Oil doesn’t care if solar gets something or everything, they are in dire need of help and don’t care about the quo to their quid. 

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for April 1st, 2020

Market Data. Yesterday I joined Roth capital to talk about the survey results, which you can see for yourself by going here after you participate. I am glad to see that this platform has been helpful to others in making business decisions, moving forward with their business plans and getting through the pandemic. We will do this again in a few weeks, with the intention to track the depth and duration of the slowdown as governments continue to work through their local plans. Please pass the survey along your network and it is important to participate each week, I promise we will stop doing this when we are back to normal. Link

SolarAPP Is Rolling. I caught up with Birchy from OpenSolar (ex Sungevity CEO), who’s been championing SolarAPP for the past 2 years, as the solution to reduce solar costs in the US.  Following up from my editorial on Friday that we need SolarAPP faster given that many solar jobs are on hold or stalled, Birchy shared some positive news.  Work started last week to accelerate the deployment of SolarAPP as a response to COVID driven restrictions in permit approvals.  The SolarAPP consortium is going to expand the pilot to many more communities than planned, to provide a solution for AHJs to approve solar system permits without office based processing.  If systems are installed by accredited installers using certified systems and installing to code, they would be eligible for automated permitting, subject to spot-checking and quality assurance by the AHJ.  In the near-term emails and video call efforts are still necessary to keep projects moving, but the automated permitting tool will be released in beta as a solution for AHJs to grant permits of solar systems in the next few months – and this will be the new nationwide ‘best-practice’ process created by NREL in consultation with the code and safety organizations representing key stakeholders.  NREL has just launched the new solarAPP web page and I encourage you to sign up to stay in touch for this key initiative.  You can stay informed about progress of this project, and register for an up-coming webinar that will discuss how communities can get involved in testing.  Solar installers should encourage their AHJs to attend the webinar as well.  This could be a real solution that can address a critical COVID response needed over the coming months, but also be a path to solving the bigger cost reductions achieved in all other international markets where residential solar installs at under $1.50/W largely due to non-existent soft costs.

No-Touch In The Meantime. I am excited and wish that SolarAPP would happen overnight but in the meantime let us help our State associations with information and outreach to AHJs. If you are in California, you can check out the CALSSA AHJ database on their current status, update it if you find different information and educate your teams on this. Then you should participate in and ask your building department contacts to join in a webinar on how building departments can enable no-touch permitting and remote inspections.

Tracking Current Permits. It is also time to see this week’s update on permit issuance for solar from across the Country. While the SolarWakeup survey tracks sentiment, sales and business strategy, our friends at Ohm Analytics are doing amazing work (temporarily for free) on showing you permits in major metros. Here’s my takeaway, building departments are either dipping to zero or close to it but then bouncing back, which tells me that they are creating a new process for processing the backlog. I’ll be watching to see what stays at zero and how close to the former average it bounces back to.

Payroll Protection. In case you were looking for it, SBA released the draft application for the payroll protection program.

Last Word. And now some bittersweet news. Next week will be the last week for the SolarWakeup daily newsletter, at least in this format. After 8 years, I have finally been tapped for a work assignment that doesn’t allow me to continue on. It is with great pleasure that I want to tell you that I’ve been nominated to join the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC) as its newest commissioner. More on this soon and I hope you will join me in thanking the community we’ve built together over almost 3,000 newsletters. 

Opinion

Best, Yann