Utility Model, Your Questions. Some of you have posed the question why PG&E should be liable for the wildfires given that they are natural disasters. Shouldn’t PG&E be held harmless for something that is out of their control? This is a reasonable question and one that I’ve been looking for an answer to. One answer is proposed on the Vox ‘Today Explained’ podcast that aired last week. If PG&E is allowed to rate base the cost of the infrastructure and has the responsibility to keep those wires free of debris and in top order, receiving additional rate base for that maintenance, should PG&E therefore be held to the standard of having performed the work that they claimed to be doing? If PG&E had felt that wires were unsafe and required additional work such as tree clearing, modernization or even under grounding, why didn’t the company with the expertise request the capital in order to alleviate the concern? You can credit Voltaire or Uncle Ben but the truth is that “with great power comes great responsibility.” It is now up to the regulators to decide what type of responsibility that is.
Ford Follows SolarWakeup Advice. This may be the most important headline for the next decade because an electric F150, that performs as you would want an electric F150 to perform, will create a mass consumer shift from fossil based transportation to EVs. Ford sold 910,000 F-series trucks in 2018 and I would absolutely trade my EV in for an electric F-150 so I can only hope for the execution to happen fast and properly. More importantly, Ford needs to make sure that the look and comfort of the truck stays the same while creating an electric incubator within their dealerships. No salesperson of the traditional ICE vehicles should overlap with the electric drive sales process, it should be a competition that allows the market to decide without sales incentives getting in the way. For solar and utilities, this means understanding that the next decade is about electrifying everything and I know from speaking with utility execs that they very much welcome the news from Detroit.
Catching Up With Kelcy Pegler. Ever wonder what it’s like to build a business to 500 employees, selling it and growing it to 2,500? Or what it’s like to make Bill Walton the greatest solar spokesperson in the history of the world? If those two questions were keeping you up at night, you should definitely listen to my conversation with Kelcy Pegler Jr. the former CEO of NRG Home Solar.
Good Old Fashioned Global Warming…
- Scientific American: As Fires Choke Utility, the Question of Who Pays for Warming Emerges
- Bloomberg: California Shouldn’t Waste a PG&E Bankruptcy
- Car and Driver: An All-Electric Ford F-150 Pickup Truck Is Happening
- SolarWakeup Live: Kelcy Pegler, former CEO of NRG Home Solar, on growing a solar company and selling it big
- Think Progress: Governors kick off 2019 with bold calls for climate action in these 5 states
- Utility Dive: Texas regulators defer to legislature on utility ownership of energy storage
- Statesman Journal: Oregon could effectively ban solar farms, but first a bunch of new ones will be built
Opinion
Have a great day!
Yann