The Slaughter Precedent. I made some of my viewpoints known about the impacts of the Slaughter decision a few weeks back but now you have the view of a particular expert, the former FERC chair that also happens to work in the solar industry. Worth a read. 

Inverter Supply Chain. What happens if Chinese inverters get banned? What happens to how interconnection pipeline gets reviewed if unbuilt systems are being studied with banned inverters, do they go back into a study? Do you need to supply a new engineering report? What happens if an inverter on a site needs replacement, do you use what you have in inventory or do you need to use new options? Policy wise there is an interesting thing happening. It’s actually good policy in my opinion, but it’s also a lobbied position, likely by a newcomer that’s private equity backed and wants to sell and doesn’t have the ability to supply the gap in the market. The largest non-Chinese supplier doesn’t appear to really be involved in this and the second and third level ramifications haven’t fully been better in my opinion. My biggest concern is what happens if there is a different rule set up by each utility and RTO and even worse would be if some areas issue ‘rip and replace’ requirements, which would completely backlog the supply chain. Lots of thoughts, not a lot of answers at this point but worthy of your consideration. 

• Utility Dive: Former FERC officials concerned about Supreme Court Slaughter decision impacts
• PV-Tech: EU’s Chinese inverter ban could affect 14% of future solar demand, Wood Mackenzie says
• PV-Magazine: Palmetto launches standalone residential battery subscription plan
• Bloomberg: China’s Top Solar Firm Makes Switch From Silver to Copper
• Axios: Microsoft’s AI boom collides with its climate goals
• Reuters: From curiosity to cornerstone – how batteries went mainstream
• Energy Storage News: In the age of AI data centres and electrification, the grid is the real bottleneck
• Canary Media: Trump’s clean energy attacks are costing the US jobs

Opinion

• New York Times: Energy Abundance Is Here. Can the U.S. Catch Up?

Best, Yann