This is your SolarWakeup for March 25th, 2024

Slower, Faster Or As Expected. Every headline these days is about energy demand, even old statements are recirculating the internet. On a personal level, I am not sure that we are going to be meeting the moment. There is no doubt that power plants are reaching the end of their 3rd or 4th lives, coal plants from the 60s and 70s are still operating. Plants will have to retire and many of them will repower if the economic case can be made for it. That leaves a big hole in the generation side which we absolutely need to make up with all of the solar and wind that can get built. This means more interconnection throughput and faster paths to offtakes across the geographies that need the energy. Demand side changes must also be met with regulatory flexibility, particularly in data centers. As society advances with our ever growing desire to stream everything and how fast the growth in AI will impact everyone’s everyday lives, data centers are the center of that possibility. So here’s the big question for you, do you think the overlap of retirements of generation meeting demand for new power is coming at us slower, faster or as expected in forecasts?

Opinion

Best, Yann