This is your SolarWakeup for March 15th, 2018

2017 Solar Market Data Is Out. Frank has the details for you on the 2017 data that is out fresh this morning. 2016 kicked 2017’s a$$ but we knew that was coming. 2016 had two big advantages on 2017, the ITC pull forward and the 201 fight in 2017. As an industry we still surpassed 10GW in total capacity with utility scale leading the way once again. Resi retracted but non-residential made some gains. We’ve got the reaction from across the solar industry for you to judge against your own thoughts. One thing to consider is that solar came in behind natural gas but just yesterday the Arizona regulators put a halt on all new natural gas in Arizona unless the utilities request a waiver and show that solar plus storage is not a better choice. (Hint: this may be the start of the end for new gas) Here’s the full story.

Things You’ll Find On Twitter. Having the ability to report on original content is giving me a new look on Twitter, especially as I sit in airports across the Country. This time I ran across a tweet storm from an NRDC attorney, Miles Farmer, who was giving the play by play on a new FERC filing. It’s worth a read and consideration when you realize that our market is still subject to so many different levels of regulation that many of us never think of.

The Koch Re-Education. Last year we spoke about the moves by utilities and Koch backed groups to pay for community leaders to preach anti-solar in churches across the solar belt. The gig appears to be over as new economic opportunities are shown in our industry and community leaders are pushing back. Misleading education is apparent across the country and anytime it falls flat is a good day.

Larry Kudlow. Is going to be the next Gary Cohn, aka #1 economic advisor to Trump. Kudlow loves Reagan and Art Laffer. For Kudlow, the free market will solve all problems. Which means that all tariffs will be gone by the end of next week! Well, that is unlikely to happen because Kudlow is going to realize that he will either have played a free market capitalist on TV or his stay in the White House will be short lived. This is a reminder that Scaramucci also spent a lot of time on the CNBC air over the years.

3 Million EVs. Volkswagen is planning on building 3 million EVs in 2025. That’s only 6 years from now and I wouldn’t be surprised if they beat that. Energy demand growth curves may be flat over the past decade but don’t expect that trend to stay the same. With announcements like these, I am not surprised that companies like EVgo are making big executive moves in anticipation of growth.

Wakeup San Francisco. New speaker announcement! Joining the discussion is Lindsay Saxby of Marin Clean Energy, a CCA that has been an active buyer for solar energy. Lindsay is the Power Supply Contracts Manager for MCE and will be a great discussion about how CCAs operate in the grid and the role they could play for our sector. You can get your tickets here for the event just 4 weeks from now.

March Madness Bracket. SolarWakeup is having the 1st annual March Madnessbracket challenge and it’s free. Go to ESPN Tournament Challenge and search for SolarWakeup group. The password is GoSolar. The more folks we have, the more fun we will have. The winner gets to write the opening paragraph and promote their agenda, company or cause. You must fill out your brackets today, before the first game starts.

Opinion

Have a great day!

Yann