This is your SolarWakeup for August 14th, 2020

2020 Forecasting. Wood Mackenzie analysts are doubling down on their 2020 revised forecast, saying that cash deals will be down 41%, leases down 21% and loans down by 23%. This downturn would continue through 2021. Here’s the problem with that forecast. Every major public company is telling a different story, private solar installers are reporting months well above pre-COVID and loan companies said that May was the best month in history, June beat May and July beat June. Those data points don’t compute with a down year. While we were hoping for a 25% YoY growth year, 2020 will still be bigger than 2019. I invite the analysts to join our next residential market conference call scheduled for September 1st to hear some great data points.

The Loan Market. The side point of the research spotlight is the state of the loan market. Loans are rapidly increasing in overall financings and I’d like to hear your thoughts on solar loan companies. There is a diverse set of companies offering the product so reply to this email and tell me what makes you pick your loan partner. It’s not the transparent market but maybe SolarWakeup’s mission of shining the light could be helpful.

Utilities Play EV Infra. Ten years ago I told a major IOU CEO that I thought he should ask regulators for the approval to build 10,000 charging stations across their service territory. Maybe that was a bit early but I wanted the utility to front run the demand and removing the biggest hesitation factor for consumers, where do they charge. It would have also locked up the access for the sites and maybe one day EV charging companies end up buying the land rights from gas stations. Private companies now lead the EV charging network and I can’t wait to see how the compete, partner, or rate base discussion goes.

Coal To Storage Transition. Vistra, the IPP know for fossil generation, continues to diversify into battery generation. It already announced a massive storage site in Texas and previous two projects at the former Moss Landing coal plant. Now it received approvals for a 4 hour 1,500MW site near their natural gas plant, which it says it will build once the market data allows for it.

Solar Module Waste. Hard to believe that we are at the point where the market for re/upcycling of solar modules is upon us. For me it was always a problem for another day so educate me on options available or best practices on thoughts for what can be done. 

Opinion

Best, Yann