This is your SolarWakeup for November 13th, 2017

A Moment To Write A Note. You really have no choice, today is the day that you need to take a minute and forward an email to your team. If you didn’t know, Robert Lighthizer, is the US Trade Representative. He is the one that sits in the oval office and briefs the President on trade issues. The solar 201 petition is essentially passed the trade commission phase and moving into the Lighthizer hearing phase. This hearing is happening on December 6th and while you will not be able to get into the hearing, you can send public comment. Here is your task for today. As each of your employees to write a comment and ask your customers to send one too. Together we can get 100,000 comments on behalf of the solar industry to Mr. Lighthizer. The link to comments is here, if you need a draft script, it is here.

Not What If but Would You? Everyone has done this math but it is time to execute. What if your employee cost went up by 5 cents per hour. $2 per week. What if your salary went down 5 cents per hour or $2 per week? $2 per week isn’t going to break your business or personal budget. On the other hand, if every solar professional provided 10 cents per hour to an advocacy campaign, I guarantee that your job prospect would improve and be saddled with less regulatory uncertainty. In theory, if I started a SolarWakeup advocacy campaign that was funded by our readers and their companies employees, we would have over $10million in annual budget. With that budget, we would have a mailing list of over a million American solar supporters and local officials would know better than to vote against solar. Call this SolarPledge 2.0. If 10,000 readers/employees commit to this, I’ll quit my other work and we can conquer the solar coaster together. Would you?

Power Markets & Solar. In my conversation with Tom Matzzie last week we spoke about his work in the power markets as an energy retailer. Part of being a retailer is matching generation with customer load through financial products common in the power markets. Those same products, outside of accounting rules, allow retailers to create their own synthetic community solar programs. Some cautionary messages from Tom on this as well but if you aren’t working with a retailer yet, you probably should be.

The MA SMART Program. This week you will hear the recording of my conversation with Mike Judge, Director of Renewable Energy at Mass DOER. Mike is in charge of the SMART program regulations draft and the auction process. The news he made at SolarWakeup Live! was that the RFP for the first block will come out this week or next. There was some hesitation in light of the 201 proceeding but if the SMART program were to start on time, next summer, the RFP has to go out now. Be aware that the auction could be skewed by developers that have protected modules without 201 tariffs meaning that any assumed increase of price you include could put you outside of the bidding norm.

Your Event. I want to thank MDV-SEIA for asking me to hold an interview at their event. If your group is hosting an event and want to chat about doing the same, I welcome the opportunity.
House Versus Senate. Keep your eyes on the difference between the Senate and House tax bills.

DC Sponsors. Starting today you will see logos and links for Live! DC sponsors. I want to thank Standard Solar, MMA Energy Capital, NTCIC, GAF and True Green Capital for sponsoring. Please take a moment and learn more about their work.

Opinion

Have a great day!

Yann