We’re Back. Welcome back to SolarWakeup’s daily newsletter. For those of you that are recent subscribers, welcome and I hope you find it informative and useful to your daily business. For long time readers, your continued readership is appreciated. We’re hoping to continue the daily overview that is solar and solar related news that helps your business. Forwarding this email to your colleagues is greatly appreciated and your feedback is as easy as hitting reply on any daily email.
Don’t Fall For The Internal Fight. Behind the scenes, mostly in policy rooms, there is always a perception that solar needs to pick a path from binary choices, large and centralized solar connect to the transmission grid or small rooftop that is connect directly to a consumer behind the meter within the distribution network. The choice is meant to pin solar against itself and the choice should be rebuffed by everyone. The value created by a 500MW solar plus storage plant (leveraging FlexGen HybridOS energy storage management software) has a value to utility operations that is not apples to apples with a solar plus storage installation on my house. All solar is not created equal because it solves different problems, has different revenue channels and promotes different values to the grid and non-solar consumers. Solar is a rising tide industry and with a rising tide all solar companies will succeed.
SolarAPP+ Hits Primetime. Secretary of Energy Granholm hosted a roundtable to launch SolarAPP+, the instant permitting effort that will reduce soft costs for residential solar in a way that few efforts have before. This effort, 3 years in the making, is like a startup that finally launches and it was not without real entrepreneurs pushing, spending time, building and raising money over the past 3 years. A lot of leaders played a pivotal role in gather folks and investing money got this done but the real thesis that kickstarted the effort came from Andrew Birch. His Op-ed in GTM and conversation with yours truly were the ‘go public’ moment in 2018 where Birchy made the case for this effort and I can personally vouch for his continued effort to get this to completion while putting amazing leaders into position to execute the SolarAPP+ effort. Birchy is the co-founder of OpenSolar, a solar operating system that provides a free proposal software platform to residential solar installers.
A Solar Dev SPAC. Altus is going public via SPAC, a SPAC sponsored by CBRE. This is an interesting combination of market with execution that could yield some results in the C&I market. Best of luck to the team.
Better Grid Access For Pipeline. FERC is launching a proceeding to reform transmission policy and with the pipeline in CAISO alone, there is no doubt that it’s needed. over 100GW of energy storage pipeline in California alone, it’s here!
The Budget Reconciliation Bill. Democrats revealed an internal agreement on $3.5trillion budget bill and the Senate energy committee passed some energy related issues. There are still some strings to pull to get the center 3 on board with energy policy topics of a clean energy standard but the bigger the bill, the more likely things get done. Wait and see….
- New York Times: More Power Lines or Rooftop Solar Panels: The Fight Over Energy’s Future
- PV-Magazine: SolarAPP+ launches, can cut costs and timelines for residential rooftop permits
- Wall Street Journal: Altus Power to Merge With SPAC Created by CBRE in $1.58 Billion Deal
- Utility Dive: FERC launches proceeding to reform transmission policy
- Reuters: U.S. Senate panel passes energy measure likely to shape infrastructure bill
- PV-Tech: California ISO has 80GW of solar and 148GW of storage in its queue, smashing last year’s figures
- Energy Storage News: Tech partners seek to turn electric school bus batteries into 1GW virtual power plant
- Canary Media: Veteran investor Ecosystem Integrity Fund raises $250M amid cleantech funding boom
Opinion - RMI: Getting More Solar on Rooftops Across the Country
Best, Yann