Solar Access Requires Regulators. Anti-solar advocates often attach solar for helping the rich only and not democratizing the benefits to everyone. This is especially aimed at low-income residents or renters that may not be the typical single family solar customer. The responsibility for this disparity mostly falls on regulators that do not open the market to all property types. Tools like community solar easily solves this, like is has done successfully in several markets. More importantly, regulators could take a new look at the excess production rate which is well below market value for energy costs. The problem with solar financing is the requirement for long term contracts secured by appropriate credit. For low-income or renters, it doesn’t match the solar financing. If regulators had a backup energy rate in case of default or vacancy, more competition over that market would follow.
The Work On Climate. Since it’s often lost on us that we are working on a bigger issue that affects everyone, I thought I would share an interesting realization I had over the weekend. Climate change sometimes seems too big for us to impact, what could one of us possibly do to help. The impacts from climate are serious and we have all felt them over the past few years. But, a few months ago when the national shelter in place was happening, we saw how fast the climate can change in a positive direction. We don’t have to believe a thesis, no cars on the road gave us the cleanest air we’ve seen in decades. We are so close to having a grid without coal and vehicle electrification on the way, it is possible that we will see immediate impacts from the positive gains our industries are making.
The Price And Compensation Signal. Grid operators and utility executives manage their work based on signals. Grid operators look at reserve margins within generation to match demand forecasts while utility executives look at the share price. On the technical side, we’re realizing that we cannot manage a grid only on the generation side, our reserve margin through demand shaping and demand response needs to be much closer to 20% or more. Same goes for executives, regulators have the opportunity to hold them to their climate goals and tie rate of return to achieving the decarbonization that is needed. If the utility profits drop when they fail to meet climate goals, executives will lose money because the share price will drop.
Diversity In Solar. Solar CEOs from several prominent companies are looking to improve the diversity in solar. The CEO collective has written the note linked below outlining their thoughts and actions.
Get The Power. Later this year, the residential solar market is going to get some major savings with most of their balance of systems when the shift to higher power solar modules really gets going. With power density going up more than 10%, those savings will trickle down to mounts, rails, inverters, labor and wire and hopefully into installers’ wallets. Make sure you are getting the best modules and pricing possible by joining the SolarWakeup Buyer’s Group. You can see the pricing on our price discovery page.
- PV-Magazine: Project Sunlight wants to scale low-income solar nationwide — without subsidies
- Axios: Why climate change is a time bomb
- Utility Dive: Investor-owned utilities lack executive compensation incentives aimed at emissions reductions, report says
- Orlando Sentinel: Ken LaRoe, founder of First Green Bank, wants to focus on climate change with new venture
- Solar Power World: Advanced Green Technologies installs largest privately owned solar project in Florida
- PV-Tech: Trump unveils plans to end bifacial exemption, raise solar import tariff rates
- Renew Economy: Rooftop solar and battery storage take centre stage in W.A energy transition
- Solar Builder: kWh Analytics tries to solve solar’s overestimation, underperformance issues with new STAR reports
Opinion
Best, Yann