In Case You Missed It. I joined FlexGen, the second largest integrator in the US, last week. Read here. I want to give you a behind the scenes of why I joined FlexGen at what I see as a crucial moment in our market and the energy transition.
The Macros. Renewables are going to continue taking addition share of the generation portfolio. Politics will drive that continuation to some degree but cost and emissions are the leading factors. Consumers are leading the charge by adding solar at record levels, remember my 1million solar homes forecast a few years from now. The climate related impacts with hurricanes on the east coast, fires in the west and heat/freeze temps causing new grid peaks. Lastly, with solar costs down 90% since I joined the industry in 2006, battery costs are also coming down. The ability for solar and storage to be market makers not market takers is a fundamental reason for me making this leap.
Grid Needs. Natural disasters caused the grid to shutoff but the heat waves and winter freezes really put the pressure on the grid. This behind the scenes in ERCOT shows just how close to long term disaster the grid came. A grid only works when generation and demand are close to matching up and when either side of the chain falls down, there is a slack in the line that can cause major issue. This slack is optimized in the ancillary services portion of the power market and result in what you would imagine the details of grid services is. So whether it was front of the meter batteries or a virtual power plant, batteries play a major role in this dispatch capability.
A ClimateTech Play. ClimateTech is the nexus where hardware meets software to enable the energy transition happening today. For the past 10 years, FlexGen has been building the most advanced software platform that spans from electron controls to trading integration in the energy management system. The energy storage systems are true systems, power electronics, controls and battery racks brought together by hardware vendors with billions of R&D in play to make technological leaps. For us, as integrators, we will always bring the most bankable technology to our partner EPCs, IPPs and other asset owners. That’s the advantage of being hardware neutral in clean tech, something I’ve believed in since making that mistake in the 08/09 years.
Maturing Market. Like solar, energy storage is finding its comfort with all of the market participants. Who does what and how does it work are going to be solved. As a technology partner to the market, Kelcy said it best. “We didn’t just wake up and say, ‘Let’s make this software capability because we think it could create a lot of value,” he added. “Our software platform has been built over a decade with all the learnings and scars and bruising that occurs in being on the front edge of innovation.”
Learning Together. Over the coming weeks, months and years, I hope to bring you along my learning curve. You’ve come to know me as wanting to be in every room and every conversation and I want to learn from you and explain what market discoveries I’m making as we work this in parallel. I know that we will make 100% clean energy grids a reality and that means we all have to do a lot more of what we are doing, so let’s go forth and execute together. In the meantime, I’ll be here every morning and you can hit reply anytime to say hello or ask a question.
- Axios: John Kerry to travel to Europe next week for climate talks
- CNBC: Biden climate envoy John Kerry talking to banks, asset managers about mobilizing capital for clean energy
- Reuters: Give shut-out U.S. coal, auto workers a chance in green energy – Manchin
- Utility Dive: Glick commits to avoid repeat of ‘disturbing’ lack of action in Texas after 2011 outages
- PV-Tech: New US Energy Secretary shakes up DOE, calls for ‘hundreds of gigawatts’ of new clean energy
- Solar Builder: You down with VPPs? How the virtual power plant movement is going so far
- Bloomberg: Saudi Arabia’s Bold Plan to Rule the $700 Billion Hydrogen Market
Opinion
Best, Yann