This is your SolarWakeup for February 14th, 2017

Time for Corporations to lead. I’ve been a vocal advocate for the disaggregation of solar production and solar consumption. Community solar does a lot of that but always relies on the regulatory body to ensure the rules don’t change. Corporate offtakers through financial transactions like contracts for difference or energy hedges. Getting the markets to drive these segment is crucial to its longevity and investments, because companies making deals to make money is the best subsidy there is.

Digging deep on tax equity. Tax equity is the cheapest and most expensive money at the same time. It requires complicated structuring that takes advisors and cash from the sponsor. Without the ITC our industry would be suffering through a bad time right now so when I saw the announcement that SolarReserve was able to get $78million for a concentrating solar plant with molten salt storage, I was intrigued. Listen to my conversation with the financial advisor on the deal, CohnReznick, to hear about the complexities and how it got done.

20 Governors. Have sent a letter to the President urging to continue on a path for more solar and wind. One interesting mention is the value generated for land owners from rent for those power plants. Let’s watch this space and see where it goes.

Opinion

Have a great day!

Yann