This is your SolarWakeup for April 28th, 2017

All about Suniva. Today, I want to explain the Suniva situation in a simple enough way that you can take it to your mother, child’s teacher or neighbor. With the request for a minimum price of $0.78 cents, Suniva is trying to hurt the solar industry in a way that is worse than if the ITC had not been extended. Depending on your volume, your price will more than double for solar panels. Projects in markets that compete for PURPA contracts, like NC, UT, and OR, will increase their costs by 40% or more rendering the markets null. Massachusetts may have to delay their benchmark pricing auction for the SMART program because a $0.40 cent delta in installed pricing will cost the consumers in MA more money.

The irony of Suniva. The EVP of Suniva said this, “Without today’s requested global safeguard, the U.S. solar manufacturing industry will die and we will not only lose solar manufacturing jobs today, but also those future jobs that will come from investing in the solar manufacturing industry of tomorrow.” Looking at the comment, you have to laugh at the irony behind it. Suniva took in tens of millions in SunShot and other grants to build their R&D. Moreover, when Suniva made the move to invest $12.5million into a manufacturing plant in Michigan, Saginaw offered up $2.5million in grants to do that. This is not a global safeguard, this is a company annoyed that they lost. Not building out a dealer network and selling to Sunpower dealers was bad business that had nothing to do with cheap solar modules.

Why Trump would agree. Easy answer, The Koch Brothers. A Georgia based company that opened manufacturing in Michigan is going out of business because of cheap Chinese goods. That would be the talking point pushed into the public but we all know that it is false. The real reason would be that this is about the disruption it would cause to the solar industry which would be helpful for the adversaries that wish the industry harm. It is rumored that a 201 filing typically starts with a nod from an administration prior to filing which may likely have happened here.

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Why Trump could and should say no. Jobs and China. The argument to say no to Suniva is that it would cost the solar industry and incredible number of jobs. The industry would drastically slow and more companies would go out of business. Interestingly, Suniva would still be bankrupt and would have a hard time getting off the ground again in a slowing market where most customers would shun them. So the jobs President would have to choose to kill jobs. Second, China. China could make this a big point in the ongoing conversations between the President of both Countries. Does Trump really want to hurt American jobs while also angering a central industry in China while he is looking to get China to help with North Korea? China has seen the impact of a minimum price in Europe and repeating that in the US would be disastrous given the total capacity of manufacturing in the Country.

Make sure you listen to the latest episodes of EnergyWakeup. Hear from solar entrepreneur, John Gurski, the founder of Energy Toolbase, a cloud based energy bill analytics and proposal tool. I also speak with Tony Clifford from Standard Solar about being acquired by Gaz Metro and his work at SEIA.

Opinion

Have a great day!

Yann