The Storage Division. This week Nexamp announced the addition of Mark Frigo as the VP of Energy Storage. If you’ve read this column for sometime, you know that I rarely talk about jobs and who starts where but Mark is an indication of a bigger trend so I spent some time talking to him about the move from RWE to Nexamp. From a macro viewpoint, we agree that having energy storage knowledge internally to a solar development business, or more broadly any generation business, is going to be a normal occurrence. Given his experience in storage I asked what some of the misunderstandings are about storage and where we are at in the ballgame. First, Mark believes that there is a lack of appreciation for the technical complexity in energy storage. Second, storage is additive to solar in almost every case but that continues to be expanded depending on the market and price signals that are delivered by the power market operators. We also talked about bankability, risk and market forecasts but I’ll get to that part of our conversation next week. In the meantime, I’d love to talk to more of the energy storage unit leaders in solar.
Level The Market. Treasury’s Janet Yellen is making the case for leveling the playing field for subsidies between fossil fuels and renewables. I am a lone soldier barking up this tree but we really deserve to have equal treatment on active/passive income rules in renewables especially in a market where corporate tax rates, therefore tax liabilities, were cut.
Investment Grade Monopolies. California is going to help PG&E get back to an investment grade credit by aiding in the securitization of certain wildfire related costs. The argument is that higher interest costs are passed along to consumers and therefore this isn’t exactly a subsidy to the utility. It would be equitable to enforce some level of coordination in support of solar and storage in return for the government support given that California is trying to get to 100% clean energy.
A Loanpal IPO. The worst kept secret in resi solar has been the Loanpal IPO. Over the past year, the company has been rumored to be moving to Texas and recently did a raise that very much felt like a pre-IPO round. The largest lender for resi players with a unique focus on sales team channels has been strong at building the market share without giving up margin according to those in the know. This is expected to be priced well above $10billion and should add a few folks to the Forbes list we highlighted yesterday.
Open Up The Weekend. Enjoy the weekend and if any of you find yourselves in Florida, give me a shout.
- PV-Tech: US Treasury to raid fossil fuel subsidies to pay for ITC extensions, other clean programmes
- Utility Dive: California tees up proposals to securitize $7.5B in PG&E wildfire costs
- Bloomberg: Solar Financier Loanpal Plans IPO as Soon as This Year
- PV-Magazine: Power quality issues challenge utilities as solar is added to the grid, survey finds
- Canary Media: Software will eat solar – Driving utility-scale solar prices below 1 cent per kilowatt-hour by 2025
- Energy Storage News: Early closure for Vistra coal plant prompts fresh call for Illinois solar-storage transition policy
- Solar Builder: Power couple – Spruce Power, sonnen partner on residential energy storage, VPP plan
- Axios: The link between economic growth and CO2 emissions is weakening
Opinion
Best, Yann