This is your SolarWakeup for October 7th, 2019

Home Value With Solar. The data on home values with solar is getting better simply due to the volume of transactions. Some perspective on the numbers though. The percentages are somewhat useless given that the home values are not the same across state lines. The total value is what you are looking for and it is directly correlated to the cost of electricity. San Francisco leads with $41k but the rest of the country is somewhere in the $10k range. That number is key because after the ITC and energy savings you enjoy while being in the home, you have the value left over. Solar buyers often run an ROI analysis, i.e. 7 year payback, but what they should really do is look at the ROI to premium value. Is anyone in solar selling on this?

SEIA Fights ITC. Insiders are telling me that SEIA is getting ready to deploy money into the ITC extension fight. I can’t be prouder of SEIA for allocating the limited resources in this way when they will likely be the lone trade group to do so with the support of many of you. Neither SEPA nor SETS have commented on the call to participate financially in the policy that pays their bills.

Bipolar Bifacial Exemption. It wasn’t expected to happen like this, the bifacial exemption was on the block but insiders thought it wouldn’t be seriously reviewed until the mid-term review of the 201 tariffs. This is the Trump times though and the bifacial exemption is officially gone. This means that the utility-scale developers that sought to get a premium output module without the 201 tariff are now back to square one. The winner is First Solar but in reality, they were sold out in the near future anyways which means we’re all losers. Here is my beef with this, the 180 turn in regulation cost companies millions of dollars and time they won’t get back. Engineering has to be redone, business plans, layouts and potentially even financing documentation.

Perry Ends His Stay. Rick Perry is coming to the end of his reign at the Department of Energy. He came into the administration looking to be the global head of business development for the US oil and gas industry and that looks to be the reason for his departure. Over the weekend Axios reported that Trump was putting the blame of the Ukraine call on his Energy secretary so the departure is somewhere between ‘get me out of here and make money lobbying’ and ‘you’re the fall guy and be a good soldier’. Who will be the next Energy secretary? Your guess is as good as mine, but since the secretary safeguards the US nuclear arsenal I hope someone gets the nod.

 Opinion

 

Best, Yann