This is your SolarWakeup for January 8th, 2023

Let’s Catch Up. Welcome to 2024, I hope you all enjoyed your break, doing whatever kept you busy. For the many new subscribers, welcome to SolarWakeup. For returning subscribers, thank you and please forward this newsletter to someone that may enjoy our daily chats. I’ll be at Intersolar North America next week if you are there to say hello! Lastly, please engage with our sponsors that help keep this community thriving and consider joining the ranks. We are the oldest and largest newsletter in the solar industry and now’s a great time to reach your target audience by sponsoring SolarWakeup.

Mild Winter Meets Winter Storm. Grid planning is always a tale of two extremes. While the winter has been so light that owning a ski resort may be the worst investment idea of 2024, planners are sounding the alarm on what would happen if a weather event strains supply with a major gas plant retiring in May. I’ll note that sounding this alarm is an amazing economic lobby for higher payments by the power markets to keep the plant operating. This has happened several times in the past and could be the case here once again. On the other hand, this should also increase the focus on having new generation and storage approved for construction and revenues.

An Economy’s Bandwidth. Talk to any economic development professional and they will tell you that the biggest hurdle for them is access to grid connection. Our pain of interconnection is similar for those looking to build new factories, data centers or offices. There simply isn’t enough bandwidth on the grid to build our the economic development at the pace that capitalism is trying to build it.

California Needs A 180. It’s a shame to see the turn that the California residential solar market has taken. Ultimately, the economy needs rooftop solar to be robust and enable those connected assets to be interconnected and ultimately become the reliable asset that they can be. But none of that will happen if the ecosystem that has been built over 20 years is left to wither. Unfortunately the headlines of the layoffs will continue until regulators reengage in a fruitful discussion with industry on stopping this.

Storage Growth Intelligence. So much to be said about the storage market and how it could evolve in various markets. I’m heading to London next month to check in on the happenings across the pond but in the US market analysis says that growth should be robust. One of the things that’s becoming clear is that portfolios will be built, they will use various suppliers based on supply availability and regulators will require upgrades (which has already happened). Asset owners will need to run those assets efficiently and reliably while ultimately realizing that they will also need to perform robust data analytics across their portfolio. Not all controls are created equal and they will likely not work on an interconnected basis across platforms, so making that decision intelligently is part of that game. With three major trade shows this year from ISNA, ACP and RE+ (forever SPI), you’ll see how much storage talk happens across those convention floors

Managing Installer Cash Flow. Interest rates are the highest in 22 years, increasing solar financing costs and softening consumer demand for loan products. Businesses are feeling the pain of strained cash flows, labor costs and profitability pressures. Palmetto, a B2B technology company accelerating the adoption of clean energy, has announced a new partnership offering for solar installers to help stabilize cash flows and grow faster in today’s market. Built on top of Palmetto’s Clean Energy Operating Platform, this is a comprehensive suite of tools and services enabling installers to streamline operations, optimize performance, and increase profitability. Visit https://www.palmetto.com/finance or contact capital@palmetto.com for more.

Opinion

Best, Yann