Tag Archives: Daily Rundown

This is your SolarWakeup for May 29th, 2018

A Solar Pro In Congress! On Friday I interviewed SolarCity alum, Sam Jammal. Sam is running for Congress in California 39th district and has a primary election coming up. Sam is imminently qualified and I can’t help but think of the opportunities the solar industry would have to leverage a solar pros influence in Congress. Check out my podcast interview with Sam.

The Tariff Impact. The reality of the tariffs is that our industry would be able to grow much faster without them. I’ve spoken to countless solar companies and one of my questions is always, what does your business look like if solar panels were low 30’s. I’d love to see an import license fee that is distributed to US manufacturers.

The Florida Market. We covered the Sunrun request to the Florida PSC in detail last month. Now VIvint Solar is going for their own approval by the PSC in Florida. The reason may be an abundance of caution given that Sunrun received the approval, not the lease in general. In detail, the two documents may be different in some form.

Midwest Interconnection Rules. IREC, ELPC and Fresh Energy have pushed Minnesota for better interconnection rules and have gotten some of the way there. These updates always remind me there are quiet warriors fighting for the rules and regulations that allow the solar industry to exist.

Illinois Deals. Illinois is going to be a multi 100MW market next year and there is some of it available to you. From residential and C&I behind the meter to large scale and community solar, the market rules are being finalized. At SolarWakeup Live! you will hear from ELPC’s Brad Klein and Illinois Power Authority’s Anthony Star amongst many industry participants. This amazing one-day event is a must attend if you want to play in Illinois.

Opinion

 

Have a great day!

Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for May 25th, 2018

As you enter this long weekend, make sure to think about how you and your business can help the veterans of our armed services. I know that our industry does quite a bit in the form of training and hiring veterans but let us all take a moment and see how we can do more.

Your Privacy, Our Privacy Policy. Take this as your official notification of our privacy policy, which is also the privacy policy of Mailchimp, our email service provider. As always, we appreciate your readership and hope that we are always providing content that you find valuable. Of course, you can always unsubscribe by clicking the link below. I promise that I only think less of you for just a few minutes.

Complicated C&I Projects. I wanted to make sure to point out some recent announcements of success for Black Bear Energy. Many of you know Drew from BBE and his work from Prologis and now Black Bear. He’s been working hard for a long time to get large property owners to do more solar and this set of relatively small projects in multiple States shows that the hard work is paying off.

Growth In Residential. Nice interview by Bloomberg with Sunnova’s CEO, John Berger, about the California residential market. It is becoming incredibly clear, as California slapped down an anti-solar piece of legislation this week, that residential solar advocates cannot stop fighting until retail rate net metering and retail choice for consumers is available in every State. Moreover, anyone that is in solar but not residential should advocate for those same exact rules. Because if you want solar to grow you need non-solar professionals to advocate for your issue.

Growth In Community Solar. See above, this is a perfect example of a jealous neighbor with his shaded roof wanting to get solar as well. If they can’t put the panels on the roof then they’ll sign up for community solar.

Have a great weekend, before you leave for your vacation please make sure your colleagues are reading SolarWakeup and book your ticket to visit us in Chicago for SolarWakeup Live! on June 21st.

Opinion

Have a great day!

Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for May 24th, 2018

Solar Goes For Meghan Nutting! We are just a few weeks away from the June 26th primary election for Meghan Nutting. Meghan is running for Colorado’s 5th District in the State House and she is also the VP of Public Policy for Sunnova. She’s been a solar advocate to advance our industry and now is the time for all of us to come together and put Meghan into the State House to represent Denver. First, help her raise money and send $5, which you can do here. Second, if you have friends in Denver, you have to get them to help her knock on doors. This race gets decided in the primary so we have just a few weeks away. If you want to learn more about Meghan, you can listen to my interview with her.

Elon’s Twitter Rant, My 2 Cents. Elon went on a twitter rant yesterday about the media. One of his points was that much of the coverage is negative and when it comes to all things Tesla, negative headlines get a lot of clicks. How do I know? I have the unique vantage point of being able to compare many outlets and many headlines. Unlike publications that can only compare one headline over another through internal A/B testing, we have the ability to track headlines across publications. The truth is that headlines matter more to readers than the publication and any story that is about a bankruptcy, problem or negative issue gets significantly more traction than anything else. Case in point, the story this week about Cypress Creek cancelling projects was clicked by almost every person that clicked any story at all.

My First Solar Project. Hats off to Portland for going out for an RFP to drive the best deal possible for its customers. Two of my first solar projects were in Portland, one for Nike and one with Portland Gas and Electric. Fun times!

Value Of Solar, Infinite. $20k to go. $20k left to raise to help save over 200 babies over the next year in a single hospital in Sierra Leone. Because of unreliable power, almost half of the babies that go into the NICU in the hospital pass away. $20k is less than $5 per reader today, so skip the Starbucks and send the money. Please!

New Jersey Bills Signed. Frank has your coverage on the bill signing in NJ, keeps an important market going forward and creates a few new opportunities for solar to develop projects.

Big Oil + Storage + Solar. Another oil investment into storage, this time Shell into Sonnen. Keep watching the trend of auto, IPPs and oil converging around solar + storage. Sparkspread reported that a storage developer with pipeline went into market for acquisition yesterday, if you have info about that, let me know.

Opinion

Have a great day!

Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for May 23rd, 2018

Strand My Assets, Not My Money. RMI is out with a report that outlines the long term investment thesis for new natural gas plants. Hint: it’s not good. The report finds that like many coal plants today, gas plants don’t provide the best financial return in the future and could find themselves pushed aside for financial reasons. This isn’t just a problem for private investors, consumers that finance these plants, guarantee their financial return, are the quasi investors within regulated monopoly areas. If this sounds familiar just look at the nuclear bailouts and requested coal bailouts in the news today.

Show Me The Wires. SEIA’s report on grid modernization makes the point that RMI found above. The future of energy will value the grid of the future. This means that more distributed generation will require a grid with less wires. Anything that ends up pushing energy from a central power plant to the loads will have a value that is significantly diminished. That future may be okay for solar and wind farms that have no exposure to fuel costs and volatility but it becomes harder for more traditional fuel. Distributed generation needs to be a central part of everything we do as a solar industry and that benefits even those that are not focused on DG.

Talk To Michael. There is a statement that comes up in some conversations with politicians. It doesn’t have to be said often because lobbyists get the process for political leaders very quickly. After a pitch on an issue with some politicians, emphasis on some, the elected will say something like, “that’s very interesting, I’d like to learn more, please talk to XYZ.” In Trump’s universe, it may have been “Talk to Michael.” At the very least, this is what one nuclear power plant was thinking and maybe solar should have been told to TTM. Of course I kid, mostly, I think.

Long Term Vision, Short Term Problems. 3 months go by very quickly and changing the energy market in 3 months increments is basically impossible. If access to capital is required in order to make that change work, then having to focus on the quarterly earnings makes that difficult. So how do we merge the desire for transparency in public companies with the hope to allow companies to change the norms.

Windy City, Sunny Market. Get your ticket for SolarWakeup Live! Chicago. Part of the event will be personal matchmaking between those that have projects or pipeline with those that have capital. The one day event you will not want to miss. solarwakeuplive.com

Opinion

Have a great day!

Yann