Solar Growing Up. Florida has the strictest building codes in the Country and part of that is testing your product in Florida test labs and having the State approve them. Solar has never done that in the past but now that is changed. The second biggest residential solar market in the Country is getting the solar market to grow up and I’m glad Quick Mount was able to be a part of that.

Pushing Your HOA. A state rule preventing HOAs from limiting solar is key, but not all states have done that. Know your rights and fight for them at the legislative level if you need to.

Attacking The C&I Market. One fund is saying good bye to PURPA deals and replacing them with C&I. As we see installed projects trading in the secondary market, I wonder what effect this will have on the expansion of the development funnel for projects and how they’ll be financed. Open Energy is working on a new tool that prices C&I projects for developers to allow them to get deals moving forward without having to go through an entire underwriting process.

Farewell, Again. Rick Perry is out. Officially.

If Only. I had a dollar for everytime I said years ago that we should go all in on ERCOT development. Shoulda coulda woulda.

CALSSA, Vote Solar, MDV-SEIA. For the next 6 weeks there are some of the biggest events in the Country to help your business. See you there!

• PV-Magazine: Solar power racking for where the hurricanes blow
• Solar Power World: How to get HOA solar approval: Tips for success
• PV-Tech: Greenbacker acquires 31.33MW of C&I assets from Sky Solar and IGS Solar
• Axios: Energy Secretary Rick Perry offers Trump his resignation
• Utility Dive: As PPA price drops slow for wind and solar, developers see PJM, ERCOT as top markets
• Greentech Media: Leyline Renewable Capital Raises $150M to Support Early-Stage Solar and Biogas
• Bloomberg: Long Island City Will Soon Be Home to New York’s Biggest Battery

 Opinion

• GreenBiz: What businesses need to know about Berkeley’s historic natural gas ban

Best, Yann

More tomorrow. Don’t forget to get your tickets for next week’s Equinox DC hosted by Vote Solar. If you donate, spend or sponsor for more than $1,000, you get to write a paragraph on SolarWakeup.

• Axios: U.S. green economy generates $1.3 trillion and sustains 9.5 million full-time jobs
• PV-Tech: Cubico closes finance on 162MW Texas solar project to power Starbucks
• Vox: California’s deliberate blackouts were outrageous and harmful. They’re going to happen again.
• Bloomberg: Subsidy-Free Solar Arrives in Germany’s Biggest Panel Farm Yet
• Greentech Media: Google Promises $150M for Renewables to Green Manufacturing Footprint
• Grist: 2020 candidates have answers to the climate questions debate moderators didn’t ask
• Utility Dive: Electric revolution: As EV demand increases, can utilities and cities keep up?

 Opinion

• GreenBiz: How the U.S. power grid is evolving to handle solar and wind

Best, Yann

Why Not 1%? What would it take for you to allocate 1% of your revenue to policy spend, either internal FTE or supporting trade groups? I’ve given this some thought and think that most of it has to do that the business didn’t have the spend automatically ingrained in the business plan. The funny upside is that everyone’s revenue would grow by more than 1% if we all did it but nobody wants to be the only one doing it. Maybe 1% isn’t the right number but what if it was 0.5%? Can a $1million business afford $5k? Can a $100,000,000 afford $500k? 

Getting Pricing Signals. Pricing signals are naturally imperfect until the market adapts to the inputs that drive the signal. If the market driving that pricing is large enough, than the value would be high enough to drive the market scale, just look at any SREC market. Limit the demand and have too much supply, the pricing would be too low to make a difference. For energy storage there is even more value, you don’t need to create a legislative demand. All we need is for the power markets to value things like speed, stability and flexibility and operators will be able to monetize. This is especially important for the solar market because it allows solar farms to pop up without off takers, just through the time flexibility provided by storage with the right signals.

Educating Consumers. I want to know how your sales pitches went in the past week. How much demand did you get for batteries and what did you say? Did your close rate go up or down? What amount of information did they give that showed misinformation and what was the biggest misunderstanding?

• Bloomberg: America’s ‘Green Economy’ Is Now Worth $1.3 Trillion
• Utility Dive: California’s new reliability requirements create short-term opportunity for storage, CAISO says
• Greentech Media: Can Solar and Batteries Outlast an Extended Power Outage?
• Los Angeles Times: What will the next heavy winds bring? Assessing the great power shut-off of 2019
• PV-Magazine: Coal lobby group drafted state utility commissioners’ letters to FERC
• Axios: The risky business of electric vehicles
• PV-Tech: 900MW tranche of Dubai’s MBR solar park sees bid of $0.0175/kWh
• Grist: Elizabeth Warren wants green trade deals. What does that mean?

 Opinion

• GreenBiz: Leading (and managing) the charge to electric fleets

Best, Yann

Looking At Colleges. Colleges still represent the most untapped off taker portfolio in the solar market today. As a group, they have the largest combination of energy consumption and bankable credit. College institutions also have a will to be 100% renewable and now is time for the solar industry to solve this problem for them. There have been examples of how this has worked, see Stanford and Hopkins, but I’d love to hear other ways that you’re solving this market opportunity.

Newsom Speaks Out. Here is the twitter thread from the California Governor on PG&E. This is the strongest statement thus far but falls short from calling for something specific, likely due to the process that the CPUC must enter into as the regulatory body where his demands may come out.

RWE Setting The Stage. RWE clearly doesn’t want out of its coal plants ahead of schedule. This doesn’t really mean they don’t want to close them, it just means that they want something in return for closing them ahead of time. Shareholders strike again…

CALSSA Auction Dinner. Join me on Friday night in Berkeley for the annual auction dinner hosted by CALSSA. This raises funds to keep the largest market in the US running which is key for most of you. Get your tickets here

Vote Solar Equinox DC. One week later on October 24th, join me in DC for Vote Solar Equinox DC. There will be some amazing speakers, as always, and help Vote Solar raise funds to keep markets open all over America. If you don’t think funding this event is for you, the beverage sponsor for Equinox DC is Vinyasun, a local Florida installer. Justin Hoysradt understands that funding policy means more business opportunity for his small business. If you donate, sponsor or buy $1,000 worth of tickets, you get to write a paragraph for this newsletter. Send me the receipt to get the reward. If you’re more interested in a $100,000 donation, hit reply and I’ll make the appropriate introduction. 

• Utility Dive: Plugging In – Colleges seek partners to help reach energy goals
• Bloomberg: RWE Will Resist Pressure for Quicker Shutdown of Coal Capacity
• Axios: Renewable energy outpaces fossil fuels in U.K. for first time since 1800s
• Yale: How power purchase agreements can help wind and solar get on the grid
• Renew Economy: AEMC proposes complex new market signals for wind and solar networks
• PV-Magazine: Solar + storage to survive disasters
• Los Angeles Times: Lithium will fuel the clean energy boom. This company may have a breakthrough

 Opinion

• GreenBiz: Want the real deal for a New Deal on climate? Look to the states

Best, Yann