Tag Archives: Daily Rundown

This is your SolarWakeup for April 6th, 2018

Here’s your rapid fire rundown of the top news. Enjoy your weekend!

SC Shifts To Solar. Great job to all fighting in South Carolina and getting a legislative victory. Had the sentiment of old school Arizona and Nevada. Look for coverage from Frank later today.

Consumer Choice In Solar. CleanChoice Energy isn’t the biggest retail energy provider but it gets solar better than most. Don’t underestimate this team. Here’s my interview with CEO, Tom Matzzie, from a few months ago.

LePage Needs To Go. Unable to overturn Governor’s veto once again, solar is stagnant in Maine. I guess we’ll need LePage to go away to fix this.

Really? It’s Not Necessary. Nuclear is a no emission source of energy but to think it’s still needed in the next phase of the energy transition is misguided. Time to plan a future without it, California is.

Go Forth Nevada. The legislature tried to increase the RPS last year but fell a bit short. We talked to Assemblyman Brooks about this, time to try again!

Offtaker Credit Issues. With First Energy’s bankruptcy filings, some of their off take agreements are also in jeopardy. This is unfortunate and stranded assets will have to be considered going forward in other off take arrangements.

Google Energy Update. Another improvement on the 100% renewable energy by the search giant. We talked to their energy director last year, Sam recently left Google and joined Lyft as the Head of Sustainability.

No More Tariffs! Please? The back and forth on trade way is continuing and it’s not good for anyone. Congress needs to step in and do something.

Unlimited Private Jets. We’ll see if Pruitt makes it to Monday but did you know that you can get unlimited jet flights for $100k per month? Who’s in on this with me?

Opinion

Have a great day!

Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for April 5th, 2018

SEIA Responds. After our reporting from yesterday, SEIA responded to its Board of Directors. We felt that it was relevant for the solar industry to understand the reasoning SEIA states and are showing it to you verbatim. The key is that this topic is not finished, and the questions appears to remain on the table. While we see ourselves as more than just a copy and paste publication, we’d like to show what the solar industry thinks. If you have a view on this, please send us a comment that we could share.

Play It Out. Some of the biggest participants in the solar industry are solar groups within utilities and I heard from quite a few of you yesterday. I understand the dilemma and empathize, you are active in solar, benefit from policies like net metering and share similar frustrations as the rest of the industry. When utilities take too long to interconnect, it doesn’t benefit you and if you can’t net-meter, you can’t do the deal. But here is the problem with allowing an IOU into the fold. Take the ongoing debate in Michigan. What if DTE had a solar unit which was a member of SEIA and SEIA participated vigorously in the debate to do more solar and less rate based natural gas? What kind of pressure could DTE exert on SEIA to stay out of the proceedings and how would we ever know that it exerted this pressure? The simplest way forward for membership would be a non-voting segment for utilities but what if they are paying $100k a year to be a member? $200k?

What Do You Stand For? SEIA published goals earlier this year, albeit very modest and easily achievable. From our point of view it is time for SEIA to stand for something, much like our Solar Pledge did during the ITC extension (very effectively). The values should include all or some of the following ideals: advocating for full rate net metering without advantages given to incumbent participants, fair and equal interconnection access for solar, rate based solar should be given equal access for competitive solar proposals to ensure lowest cost. These are just some ideas but we should not be the source of those values. The SEIA membership base should set those values and use those as their advocacy constitution. More money in the revenue base should not be the only goal, and potentially blurring the lines on values is never worth the price of admission.

Trump Taxes Grow. The Trump trade war continues, this time sparing most of solar but the side effects will come into the space. Hopefully Congress will step in and stop a trade back and forth that doesn’t help American consumers.

Elections Matter. Especially at the local level if you have a utility coop board. SRP in Arizona had an election and added 2 more pro-solar members to the board, with 2 other solar supporters losing their seats. The more people run, the more support we will have at the regulatory level when possible.

Opinion

Have a great day!

Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for April 4th, 2018

Moves At SEIA Misguided. Earlier this year, SEIA approached members of their board, many of whom pay for the privilege, on the idea of inviting utilities to join SEIA as members. Many of the board members that were approached called in a non-starter but the idea went high enough at SEIA leadership that it was considered worth floating. The money has become more important to the association than the mission or its values in my opinion. I had to ponder what it meant to have the idea get enough support from leaders to discuss. In line with this new line of thought was the extension of the SEPA joint venture which produces SPI and in 2015 generated over $3.5million in profits to the owners. SEPA is focused on making utilities smarter with their energy systems, it’s not a solar association and in my opinion the values between the two entities no longer align enough to have the joint venture continue, alas it was renewed by the board. What’s next for SEIA in its search for what it stands for and what does that mean for you and its mission going forward? Here is Frank’s exclusive look inside. If you have an opinion on this, I’d love to hear it, please reply to this email and let us know what you think.

SC Solar Push. Hundreds of solar advocates took the fight in South Carolina to the Statehouse steps yesterday. Being this is South Carolina, this was not a partisan fight and focused on the jobs. You could have taken the signs from the protestors in Nevada and used them here which speaks to our message and focus. With the failed nuclear power plants plaguing the political discussion, solar could be the ideal outlet for economic development.

Solar In 2008. Do you remember solar in 2008? What information and advice do you wish you had then that you have today? Storage is like solar in 2008 is the trendiest buzzword in storage conversations but much of that is true. Financing products, innovation for consumers and lead gen are all topics. This article does a good job of going through some of the important issues.

Small Solar In Africa. Africa is such a great opportunity for solar and for the people to enjoy greater access to energy. Small solar upstarts have done a tremendous job growing their companies and deploying with great impact. The other side of that is large scale solar which displaces some of the most ingrained industries in the market and requires offtakers and regulators to work hand in hand, presenting new and different investment issues. I hope Africa does it all, small and large while also doing things like solar power street lights to improve the infrastructure.

SolarWakeup Live! Less than 1 week before we meet in San Francisco. There are some seats left for you to hear from some of the Bay area solar leaders. I hope you will join us for the afternoon. Reserve Your Seat.

Opinion

Have a great day!

Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for April 3rd, 2018

CCAs Go Solar Shopping. I am looking forward to interviewing Lindsay Saxby from Marin Clean Energy. Marin Clean Energy is one of the largest CCAs and they are currently looking for more solar as part of their RFP. They are also looking for energy storage. These are some of the topics I plan on getting information on. If you want to hear the answers to these things, you need to be at SolarWakeup Live! in person because the recording will not be posted until after the RFP is due. Use APRIL40 for 40% off your ticket to our exclusive event in San Francisco. There’s a single sponsor interview slot left if you are looking to reach the SolarWakeup audience with your message. As anyone that has come to our previous events will say, this isn’t the biggest crowd but its the most influential. Again, use APRIL40 to get 40% off your tickets.

SolarWakeup Bracket Challenge. Congrats to the winner of the SolarWakeup March Madness bracket. Nathan Arbitman of DSM Advanced Solar takes the victory with the correct Villanova prediction. In second place comes Tom Matzzie of CleanChoice Energy who was just a few points behind. Hats off to the Allie Detrio of Engie for a correct championship game but picked the wrong victor. Thank you to all for playing.

Jacksonville Stunts Solar. Jacksonville enjoys the double entendre, spending millions to bring Jinko’s factory to the City while at the same time killing its net metering policy. So the 50 jobs at the factory will be lost 6x in the market. The Jacksonville area has 347 solar jobs according to The Solar Foundation which will be at risk. It also shows that the regulatory uncertainty may have caused Jinko to lower its employment estimates. This whole situation is indicative of Florida’s solar market where allowing competition could  create 10’s of thousands of jobs but instead the focus is on leaving solar to a monopoly.

What Consumers Want. A poll has hit the all-time low of consumers worrying about the cost of energy while wanting the best environmental benefits from their electricity at much higher rates. That means consumers are willing to pay more to get cleaner energy sources in a market where cheapest today often wins the race. I am surprised that in a head to head, republicans still split 51/49 on renewables versus fossil, likely in a poll shift based on what the respondent feels they should answer.

What Consumers Get. Now that we see what consumers want, it’s good to see that they are getting some of that. With the ramp up of clean energy, US carbon emissions are coming down. These are positive notes but we can do so much more, let’s keep pushing and accelerate!

DTE Fights Back. This could be an interesting start to the Vote Solar tactic of opposing the natural gas power plant. Now DTE is proposing a renewables plan likely in a way to win over the opposition. Keep watching to see how much farther it can go.

Opinion

Have a great day!

Yann