This is your SolarWakeup for January 17th, 2025
Much Ado About Hearings. Let’s start by saying what should be obvious, nominating hearings are not an indication of policy to come. At best they give you a glimpse of what a nominee thinks at the top of mind but it is left without influence and policy staff having vetted the intention. Governor Burgum made for an interesting hearing for the solar industry which he called intermittent, true but false with the side of batteries. But then he went to the problem, America needs more energy (1), in order to win the AI race (2), for national security (3), the grid is stretched and at a breaking point of instability (4) and permitting reform has to happen (5). "We've got to get to work in permitting reform and speeding permitting right now." I personally think he listened to my podcast episode of Good Energy with SEIA’s Stephanie Bosh and Colin Silver where I kind of (exactly) said these things.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for January 16th, 2025
Chris Wright Goes To Washington. Liberty CEO met the Senate yesterday as he goes through the nomination process to become the next Secretary of Energy. Mr. Wright went with the all of the above energy talking point and recognized the enormous need for power that our Country has. Wright was introduced by Senator Hickenlooper of Colorado with the caveat that while the nominee is a zealous advocate for oil and gas, he is also a scientist that is open to discussion. My take is that the best thing that could happen is a bit of the inverse of the Biden era. Vocal support for oil and gas while regulations and demand fuel the solar market. If you remember, oil and gas production is at an all-time high as we speak.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for January 15th, 2025
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for January14th, 2025
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for January13th, 2025
The Mega Power. Constellation is acquiring Calpine for $16billion to create a portfolio of 60GW and adds quite a bit of thermal power to Constellation’s fleet. There’s an expectation that regulators will want some divestiture to limit concentration but with the demand for power, regulators will likely also be sensitive to the pushback on anything limiting power generation.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for January10th, 2025
Is Texas Right? It’s always been a wind state, now at 42GW, but the past few years it’s been the sunny star of solar and storage with 22GW and 6.5GW respectively. Is it the development process? The ERCOT mechanics? Lack of capacity markets? Or just the growth of demand for energy. We know it’s not the politics so it’s something else, what is that and can we replicate it?
LA Fires. My thoughts go out to any of you affected by the fires in the LA area, it is an unimaginable horror to see how devastating those fires have been. If you know of legitimate aid or fundraising efforts that I can pass along to the SolarWakeup community, please reach out to me
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for January 9th, 2025
Taking Inventory. Imagine for a moment that we don’t all work in solar and/or storage and we need to assess the rising need for energy by the hyper scaling data center build out. There is a need for energy, power, density, and reliability while solving for clean and cheap. Now do it as fast as possible. The exercise is a bit like the old adage about wanting it cheap, fast and high quality. You can only have 2 of the 3. That’s how I think about the data center need, the pipeline of generation is easily tilted towards solar with cheap and clean a clear winner. With batteries, reliability also takes a victory on this front but density can be challenging. Will there be a mix? For sure, gas will likely play a role but speed of execution is a key aspect of this exercise and also the opportunity where regulation could make a giant impact if government wants to get involved to win the AI data center dominance on the global scale.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for January 8th, 2025
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Rising Rates. Electricity rates are rising at a pace faster than the most absurd models I saw back 20 years ago. With the demand continuing to increase and the economy thirsty for growth underpinned by that demand, i.e. data centers. There is also a renaissance for manufacturing which requires new energy access with high capacity which translates into new utility capex, all of which is made more expensive given where today’s cost of money is. In some ways, utilities are like banks, they front the capital for infrastructure and generation (mostly infrastructure) which is then recouped by selling electrons and power via demand charges. The problem is that the total capex is spread across the board and consumers, which are largely reducing their demand, are also paying for the infrastructure investments for the corporate growth load. Solar net metering gets a knock for costing consumers money, but in reality solar has reduced the need for distribution investments.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for January 7th, 2025
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The Carter Panels. Establishing American Energy Dominance (a SEIA 2025 policy priority) has some roots in the Carter era and decade of oil turmoil. During the Carter administration, the White House installed solar thermal panels over the White House pool and then the Reagan admin pulled them off. A decade ago I received a tip that the Obama White House had installed PV panels on the actual White House roof but I never asked what happened to the original Carter panels. So today’s story about their provenance is quite a nice break from the usual noise coming from DC.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for January 6th, 2025
Station Identification. Welcome to 2025, the 13th year running SolarWakeup for me. For those of that joined us in the past year, you may not know what this is all about or who I am. My name is Yann Brandt and for the better part of my solar career I have started my day by publishing this newsletter. The first newsletter went out to 37 people, and today’s will go to nearly 8,000. In the world of email newsletters that’s not a big number but the SolarWakeup community has grown to be its own phenomenon for which I’m grateful. While I love doing this, I have a day job and get to interact with many of you and help each other find successes. That job today is as CEO of FTC Solar, the tracker manufacturer serving many utility scale solar farms, so if there’s a way for me to be helpful to you, just hit reply on any of these emails and it comes directly to me. Cheers to an amazing 2025 and keep cleaning up that solar spill!
The 2025 Outlook. As I think about 2025 and what it brings, I can only think of some version of uncertainty. Don’t view that as a negative sentiment, on the positive side there is lots to do with regulation and bureaucracy in interconnections, permitting and development approvals that would provide more projects. The President’s desire to lower the cost of capital could also play a big role in solar’s year. On the other hand we don’t know what we will see with the solar portion of the IRA, I say we don’t know because solar is incredibly popular and the margins in DC are razor thin. Solar was a $60billion market last year and the appetite for solar energy is at an all-time high especially with the Silicon Valley execs that are running many portions of the DC ecosystem now. Microsoft wants to build $80billion worth of data centers and I’d assume that most of their energy will come from solar. Of course the solar and now the battery market will have to deal with trade issues, how those play out is to be determined as well, hence uncertain what it means for us. So at the end of the day, I’m optimistic that there are known risks on the horizon that are being advocated thoroughly by well funded trade associations so as along as the solar industry works intelligently and focuses on smart business decisions, we’ll be in a good spot come the end of the year.
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Yann