By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent
What Happened: Quartz Media’s Michael Coren read a Greentech Media report and pronounced that solar in California is overbuilt.
- At the same time, Coren contends there is plenty of solar in the pipeline.
- And the residential and commercial markets are still moving ahead.
SolarWakeup’s View: What happens when writers who aren’t steeped in the inner workings of solar try to write about it? Bad information gets spewed out into the atmosphere and undoes whatever pollution control solar has done in the first place.
Now, I’m sure sure Michael Coren can write rings around around me when it comes to evaluating venture capitalists, technology and Silicon Valley (which are listed as his areas of expertise) – but his understanding of the California solar market is…well, charitably put, limited.
In his five-paragraph piece, Coren examines a Greentech Media report that indicates utilities in California did not procure any new solar last year, and utilities say plans to procure more solar this year will also be slow.
Coren seems oblivious to the fact that this utility slowdown has been expected in light of the Section 201 tariffs President Trump imposed in January. It’s long been assumed the utility-scale market would be hit most severely because of the number of modules they buy for the larger projects. The dip by California utilities may be entirely the result of that horrible federal policy change.
But no matter: Coren ploughs ahead and draws the conclusion that California has too much solar and is taking a break from growing its solar industry.
Except that in the piece itself, Coren undoes his argument when talking about two of the fastest-growing segments of the industry: residential and commercial. Those, he says, are still growing in California. He also adds that there is plenty of utility-scale s
olar in the construction queue.
So…let’s see if I have this straight
- Californians have built too much solar and are taking a break from new generation.
- Except for the projects utilities have already planned, which are plentiful.
- And except for the residential and commercial markets, where people are putting distributed-generation solar arrays on their roofs almost as fast as they can be permitted.
I’m not sure Coren thought his premise through (either that, or he/his editor just put a click-bait headline on the story to generate interest).
Despite Coren’s central contention that California is taking a break from solar development, I’m here to tell you: Solar is alive and well in California and looks to be about to rise.
Statewide policies like a 100% renewable portfolio standard, a clean-peak standard and the shuttering of fossil-fuel plants (and a reluctance to build new natural gas plants) means more solar is almost inevitable in the Golden State.
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