This is your SolarWakeup for March 9th, 2020

Covering Corona. I am as much in the dark about what is to come or what to do in our business when it comes to dealing with the coronavirus. There is a humanitarian aspect to the spread of the virus that is best covered by others. My hope is that I can bring together the wisdom of the crowd. This week, I will circulate a survey and ask you to participate so that we can learn from each other about what we are doing as an industry. I hope to learn from you about what you’re seeing in consumer behavior and how you are preparing. More to come.

Oil Wars. The headlines are busy this weekend, stock market futures have triggered a stop to stop a free fall ahead of the open and oil is trading down almost 40% from Friday morning’s price. While global uncertainty is driving people into their corners, OPEC and Russia have a disagreement that caused the Saudis to increase production and lower global pricing. Maybe it’s time to charge our cars with solar instead.

The Good News. Virginia is joining the yearlong stampede to 100% policies enacted by States around the Country. Some estimates have the impact at an increase of more than 50GW of solar nationally. That means that the policies pushed by groups at the State level, led by local installers and pushed by homeowners that went solar are now helping the entire solar industry. I’ll restate this, grassroots solar supporters have pushed more solar in the US in the past year than ever before. This isn’t a statement about us versus them or me versus you. It’s a statement meant to create clarity for those that investment into DG or grassroots is a waste. Reality is that $1 into either of those segments creates 100X the impact than another report into the tariff impact.

Looking Ahead. This week we will get the earnings report from Vivint Solar that gives us the comparison between them, Sunrun and Sunnova and a great look into the residential solar market. Not a great week to have an earnings update but the data is from Q4 which will put a bow on the great 2019. I’m looking to hear whether Vivint Solar says anything about a dealer network, more thoughts on this topic soon. 

Opinion

Best, Yann