Tag Archives: Daily Rundown

This is your SolarWakeup for September 21st, 2018

I hope you have a great weekend and safe travels to Anaheim. I will be there and should be at most of the nighttime activities. Please make sure to say hello. If you’re interested in meeting my Quick Mount team, you can reach out to them here.

Wheels On The Bus, Are Electric. Daimler and others are going all in on electrification of fleet vehicles. Frank has the breakdown but this story was important to me months ago when we interviewed Proterra CEO, Ryan Popple, on the SolarWakeup podcast. I remain sceptical that America wants to drive, ride or fly in Chinese transportation and that makes Proterra a vital part of the future of electric fleets in the US.

Your State Rundowns. 

Remember Hurricane Maria. Puerto Rico has come a long way and started to rebuild. Now the special interest groups are going to try and keep the island from a renewable future but I hope that won’t happen.

California. You’ll hear plenty of talk about NEM 3.0 and CALSSA needs your help to build an archest. Come to the Annual Dinner on October 12th, sponsor a few tables and bring your chequebook for the auction.

Massachusetts. Time for Baker to step in and get SMART done. The utilities have been allowed to drag this out long enough.

New York. The interesting value proposition for solar on Long Island, read the Bloomberg reporting.

Florida. See some of your friends interviewed by the Florida Channel about the Florida solar market. Good things are happening.

Indiana. AEP is out with an IRP to kill coal within 10 years, in Indiana. They must have failed to notify the Vice President of this.

Opinion

Have a great day!

Yann

 

This is your SolarWakeup for September 20th, 2018

SEIA Growing Support Through Diversity. Yesterday, SEIA announced an MOU with the HBCU action coalition to work to increase diversity in the solar industry. Solar does a good job of measuring its workforce statistics and this is a great way to acknowledge the need to improve on diversity. The broader piece is that solar is sometimes put into a rich suburban bucket and through community solar and low-income goals, SEIA is working to garner more support across the spectrum and that helps us all.

California Universities Go Solar. On the university topic, you may want to go back and see the story from Frank that the UC system is going all in on renewables. This isn’t a long-term goal either, this is 100% by 2025. You may recall my interview with UCLA great, Bill Walton, and our message to the PAC 12 attendees that universities should go all in on solar and do so quickly. Maybe they listened to us after all!

Argentina, Here’s The Thing. This doesn’t surprise me given that I had to deal with some projects in Brazil just a few years ago. In some markets, you have to make your investment decision based on the length of time that the current government is in power. Anything that overlaps multiple governments or has a longer-term payback, then you must be ready to gamble on stability in routinely unstable settings. That being said, when things don’t work, it’s a great time to take a jab and wait it out just like it happened in Brazil.

The Kids. Kids in Illinois get it. Solar is the future.

Hurricane Tested. We don’t have all the data yet but some installations are starting to look like they were engineered to withstand storms like Hurricane Florence. Having been involved in the installation of projects in North Carolina, I tend to be more worried about the flooding that is currently happening than the wind during the storm. While the storm water management plans for solar were difficult and thorough, the pictures I’ve seen may end up being worse than the code planned for. The Quartz report does highlight residential projects looking good after the storm.

Tickets. Have you gotten your ticket to SolarWakeup Live! yet? We are adding Thom Byrne, CEO of CleanCapital, to the agenda. This type of insight and learning can only be found at SolarWakeup events so get your ticket now at solarwakeuplive.com

Opinion

Have a great day!

Yann

 

This is your SolarWakeup for September 19th, 2018

Quick take on the tariff issue before taking the day off for some atonement. See you Thursday and let’s make sure to say hello at SPI. I’ll be tied up peddling the best mounts in solar but you should check out the private preview room by reaching out to your Quick Mount reps. I will be at several nighttime events and hope to see you at some of them to say hello.

SunPower Gets Relief. I know people will view this from a market standpoint and I understand if you stand on either fair/not fair side of the aisle. I do think it’s important that the Government saw the different in the IBC technology but would have liked to see it get relief across the board. SunPower markets itself in the trade case as the Apple of solar, doing R&D and corporate HQ in the US while manufacturing across the globe. The side effect of SunPower not being subject to the 201 tariff is what happens to the SolarWorld USA factory in Oregon. The transaction is not closed yet and no indication that it won’t close. It could also anger the Trump administration or Senator Wyden if SunPower didn’t proceed with the plant acquisition so I don’t expect any last second changes.

SolarWakeuplive.com. Register now, register often and share the event with your friends and colleagues. Then get your company to sponsor the event as well!

Opinion

Have a great day!

Yann

 

This is your SolarWakeup for September 18th, 2018

In Jersey We Grow. Policy certainty, policy guidance and willing market participants means a growing market. That’s what we have in New Jersey and why we picked it as the next SolarWakeup Live! event. Check out the growing agenda at solarwakeuplive.com and reach out if you want to be a sponsor.

EV You Missed It. It happened late last week and the coverage was weak. The final version of SB 1014, a California legislation by Senator Skinner, may not be as strong as the original version but it shows the path forward. The legislation pushes ridesharing companies to move towards electric vehicles. Ubers and Lyfts (and others) have a much higher utilization than personal cars so if we electrify those, you are electrifying more vehicle miles than you could imagine. This is the TPS (Transportation Portfolio Standard) where we measure the total vehicle miles driven by non-fossil powered motors. Merge a 100% RPS with a 100 TPS and you have an interesting future.

East Coast Storage Punch. Both of Frank’s stories yesterday are about energy storage, one story out of MA about big storage and another from New York about the continued push by Governor Cuomo. I think there is a reality in storage that people understand whereas solar seemed somewhat magical. I am keen to see real energy storage business models develop, this is one of many topics I will be discussing with Gabe Phillips of GP Renewables at our Jersey event.

Solar On Your Side. Sol Systems made a big portfolio purchase with their capital fund partnership with Nationwide. This is a transfer of assets from Cypress Creek and Sol Systems, two companies many in solar know well and have seen grow over the years.

Certainty In Pricing. What makes the community solar market in Minnesota bigger than other markets? I put the difference on the certainty in pricing from the regulator instead of the utility. While having a regulator in the process creates some risk, it makes the customer very clearly understand what their savings would be from a reliable source without having to read a complicated tariff schedule.

Opinion

Have a great day!

Yann