This is your SolarWakeup for September 15th, 2022

Market Dynamics. Unrepresented in market forecasts and the dynamics of the supply chain is the impact that a stand alone energy storage tax credit would have on the solar market. If you own a solar farm, there was little thought to adding storage to it due to the technical limitation of dc-coupling and having to make it work with the existing interconnect so you could charge the batteries with the solar generation without screwing up your PPA. With a stand alone storage ITC, it’s very likely that many if not all asset owners will think about adding batteries to their site either to augment their PPA or to just trade that asset merchant until someone wants to acquire that capacity. Likewise, solar developments in the pipeline had a 1x per day cycle in the storage forecast, less perhaps. The PPA you had for that as available plus PPA becomes a preforma that thinks about running it 2-3 cycles per day in addition to shifting the solar generation.

Where The Money Is Going. Pipeline are through the roof, forecast are already underestimating installations and now capital is pushing hard into recycling. The WSJ ran this reporting just days ago and some more firms are working on repurposing and repowering end of life battery cells. My point is that money is going into both ends of the project life, installing it and decommissioning the asset. Now the question to answer at SPI is what are you doing with the project while its running so that it makes you more money than you expect?

Opinion

Best, Yann