This is your SolarWakeup for March 5th, 2018

SEIA Board Meeting. The solar industry is looking to turn a corner after 2017 filled with tax reform, trade cases and projects pulled into 2016 because of the ITC cliff. SEIA, fresh off a leadership change, is trying to do the same. Without the ability to define itself during the trade case, the board convened last week to do just that. We covered some of the highlights of the vision, here.

Your Top Story. 5 hours after the daily newsletter goes out to the solar industry, we have a great view of what you consider the most important story of the day. There is no science to knowing the top story, it can come from anywhere in the rundown but it is the daily solar choice award. At noon eastern, we will take the top story and review the news for you and give you a better understanding of this article and for those of you that missed it, give you that link once again. This type of data is only available on SolarWakeup, no other place in solar curates the top news in solar as we have done for the past 6 years. I hope you enjoy this new feature. Friday’s top story was about a conservative that advocates for solar, Debbie Dooley.

Steel And Aluminum Tariff. Hard to know what’s really going on here but assuming what Trump said is going to happen, steel and aluminum will be getting taxed 25% and 10% respectively. Having seen skilled workers taking raw aluminum last week and create finished products, I am shocked at the short sightedness of this. Creating more jobs in making the commodity fails to think of the exponentially more jobs that take a commodity and makes finished goods like cars, buildings and solar racking systems. I hope that this gets walked back as some sort of negotiation tactic because it’s not good.

NEM Representation. Net metering continues to be under attack in the States you know and those you don’t think about. The problem is that if we want new markets to develop, rules like interconnection and net metering have to exist in order to get them off the ground. Of course, this means that markets where no-one benefits from the rules yet, has to be covered by advocates. That is exactly what Vote Solar does and they need your money to do more of it. Applause and retweets only go so far to putting people into State Capitols. On March 22nd, join Vote Solar for their fundraiser, Equinox, in San Francisco.

Wakeup San Francisco. Less than 40 days until SolarWakeup Live! on April 10th in San Francisco. Join me and your solar colleagues in a lively discussion on the important topics that drive our industry. Tickets available here and sponsorships available by hitting reply.

Opinion

 

Have a great day!

Yann