Tag Archives: Daily Rundown

This is your SolarWakeup for March 13th, 2020

Pre-Corona Survey. Here are the highlights of the market survey released this week, answers coming between March 10th-11th. Respondents ranged from installers (35%), manufacturers (15%) and developers (25%). You covered every market in the Country with half of you doing business in California but MA (45%), NJ (38%), CT (31%), FL (27%) and AZ (27%) were also represented.

Q1 Improvement. While 25% of you saw no improvement in Q1 over last year, 55% of respondents were up in the first quarter over last year.

The Corona First Take. This is where timing of the survey is important. All of the responses came before March Madness, NBA, NHL, MLS and little league games were canceled due to the pandemic. 62% of the answers said that coronavirus had no impact on your Q1 sales and 48% said that you are not adjusting the Q2 forecast. My assumption is that a survey next week would have different numbers. 39% of you are adjusting the forecast by 0-20% downward.

What You’re Doing. Many of you shared with your actions in anticipation of which the most two most common were: no travel and work from home. Some also highlighted that society will now learn to wash hands once again. I’m interested to learn what companies are doing across the industry to manage their business through the crisis and if there are any changes to the economic business model of the sector. Please take your time to send your ideas and concerns to yann@solarwakeup.com, together we will manage through this.

Looking Ahead. There are going to be more questions than answers over the next week while the world settles into the reality that the virus is spreading everywhere. Without being hysteric, the way to solve the spread or flatten the curve is to isolate for as long as possible. Expect companies to have as many people as possible working from home while doing their best to keep moving business forward. I will circulate another survey next week and check the pulse of the industry. Typically I look to have podcast interviews that have some longevity to them but I will likely do a few interviews on this topic in the coming weeks to give you critical information for your business.

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for March 12th, 2020

Market Survey Pre-Read. As we get through the many responses here are some early data points. 90% of you are somewhat or very concerned about coronavirus and more than 50% of you are adjusting your Q2 forecast downward. The survey appears to have come too early to find measurable change in consumer behavior or changes to pricing in systems, modules or other hardware. More data from the survey coming tomorrow including what steps respondents are taking to keep their business operational.

DC Quick Read. The bill of bi-partisan bills in the Senate was soaked in mediocrity that it failed to get the 60 votes it needed to get out of filibuster. We now wait to see what happens with the bailout, stimulus legislation that is circulating between the White House and Congress. The White House is floating headlines for oil and gas stimulus to see where the public gets excited including a payroll tax cut that moved the markets up on Tuesday while the House is floating a paid sick leave bill before their weeklong recess coming up. Apparently we don’t know what we don’t know so let’s wait and see.

A Trade Letter. Yesterday 140 companies signed on to another letter to the White House asking for tariff related relief, read the letter in the link in the 3rd story today. 

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for March 11th, 2020

Don’t Forget The Survey. One more day to get your survey response in, it takes 3 minutes and helps the entire industry. Here is the link

Solar Power Power. DC is going to pass a stimulus bill in the coming weeks to deal with the economic effects of corona and the oil price wars. Focusing on the second one, oil producers across the US will either stop production or lose money with the low oil price that’s now in the market. The White House is floating and the Senate will try to push into the stimulus bill a bailout or tax credit for oil companies. This is going to be the moment of truth for solar advocates in DC, does solar have any political influence that translates into results? The analysis of that question will be black and white, either the ITC returns and gets extended or solar is left out of the bill. There will be a bill and the answer will be yes or no when it comes to solar.

The Network Effect. The dealer network is a new battleground in residential solar. Module OEMs and financing companies are battling for the primary value creator for solar installers across the Country. At the same time, those that should have a bigger dealer network are underestimating the value that they can provide and in return receive from the dealers.

The Battle Is On. The original dealer network came from SunPower, so powerful that the company’s partners rebranded to SunPower by. Loan companies followed suit, Mosaic taking the lead and Sunnova quickly joining the network creation which made sense given the financial relationship that exists between the installer, homeowner and loan provider. Module OEMs have a network of platinum or elite installers but the relationship is a bit looser at this point, but don’t sleep on this.

Control Of Sales Levers. Yesterday after market close, Vivint Solar released their fourth quarter earnings and held their conference call. The quote of the call was “we like the control of sales” referring to the company’s direct to consumer sales force that allows the company to decide where and how to sell solar. While Vivint believes that they can grow faster, they don’t want to grow for growth’s sake and keep their focus on markets where they can make money and grow faster than the rest of the market calling out MA, NJ and CA. How do you control your sales levers?

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for March 10th, 2020

The Market Survey (Click Here). This is your opportunity to participate in a community survey about the current state of solar. While many of us came into Q1 with great anticipation for a record 2020, there have been a few curveballs thrown at us including a global public health crisis that will likely impact us personally in many ways. At the same time we are left with many questions and few answers on what to do. My hope is that we share our individual viewpoints and try to find the best way to move forward. Please share openly so that your industry colleagues can learn and collaborate. Your answers are confidential. Results of the survey will be shared as early as Friday if enough people respond right away, time is of the essence so please take 5 minutes now.

Climate Change Blinders. One of the feelings I’ve been having about coronavirus is that I just want to fast forward and come out with the best possible outcome on the other end. In some ways it reminds me of hurricane preparation, should you put up shutters, buy food and water for two weeks, get a generator, evacuate; and when you are finished with the preparations the hurricane turns and goes another way. With corona it has a similar feeling because what type of preparation should you do, especially when you don’t understand why there is no rice left on the grocery store shelves. Climate change has the opposite problem, we know what to do and what the catastrophic results of inaction could be but we don’t have the ability to grasp the scale of our needed action. The political and personal willpower doesn’t exist today because we assume that the catastrophe is beyond our time span of discretion.

Innovation Among Us. Much like the solar roads project, I like when companies push the envelope into a contrarian perspective. GAF Energy has a thesis that solar will be installed in a BIPV method at the same time as the new roof so that the roofer sells both systems at the same time at a much smaller acquisition cost than solar has today. As an executive in the racking industry, this obviously pushes my thinking in a way that is uncomfortable today. That being said, this is clearly a 20 year transition from one to the other that will get us all to innovate together.

The ISO-NE Queue. 95% of the 21GW in the ISO-NE queue are wind, solar and battery projects. From a grid operation standpoint, it would be crucial to move projects to NTP even if that means putting an operating date out into the future. Developers need time and resources to start construction and ISO-NE needs to get itself acquainted with the process. From my standpoint I would love to see a process that lets developers future bid NTP dates, how great would it be to see a solar plus 8 hours of storage offer (with collateral) for a 2026 placed in service date?

Fill Out Your Survey

Opinion

Best, Yann