What If. What if we permitted solar plus storage with the caveat that it only charged and discharged to the grid at the times that make the most sense as opposed to the worst-case scenario? How much of the interconnection queue could go through right away? Think of it like a flight plan that an airline would file to get in and out of an airport in orderly fashion. Then asset managers would get charge and discharge clearances with the words “operator, hold for a phone number for an asset deviation” whenever something happens outside of the plan.
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Yann
Farewell AEE Solar. Installers got a brief email yesterday stating that the distributor AEE Solar would be closing their doors in just over a month. With a slowing market and higher cost of capital, it ultimately got to be less than profitable. There’s also been an increase of competition from electric supply houses that leave the specialized company in a bind.
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Yann
Problems With Blame. I am on the more concerned side of many when it comes to the ever-present energy crunch that I see on the horizon. Both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal wrote about it over the weekend and in similar points of view brought in the climate goals as part of the equation which is this. The WSJ says the energy crunch is partly to blame on our climate goals whereas the NYT says the energy crunch hurts the climate goals. Both are mostly wrong and I’ll give you two concrete examples. First is a conversation I had with an ER doctor in 2008, who also happened to Chair the Energy Committee in the Florida State House at the time. (I point out that he’s a doctor so that you know his career wasn’t spent analyzing energy markets) He told me when we wanted to create an RPS (renewable portfolio standard) that it wasn’t the Government’s job to pick winners and losers but solar would have to compete in the free market. My other example is Texas, one of the largest users of solar and storage in the Country today, which I assure you have nothing to do with climate goals. Ultimately the energy crunch is caused by an overlap of two versions of the energy transition; solar and wind are cheaper than alternatives and electrification of everything (EVs, homes, and data) is massively increasing consumption. Climate goals aside, we simply are not doing enough to keep our grid reliable into the future.
A Thank You. Over the last few weeks there have been some big corporate offtake agreements which are always important for the market expansion and I’m glad those are happening. We’ve also seen a major expansion of the energy communities which is a major win by our policy teams, I know SEIA staff played a major role alongside other association and corporate teams. Thank you!
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Yann
Guess Who’s Back!!! Stop the presses and get out your purchase orders! Suniva. Is. Back. In partnership with Heliene, a domestic content solution is in the market. On one hand, I guess the tariffs are doing their job as we’ve seen with other suppliers. On the other hand, will the brand survive starting the biggest trade war in solar since SolarWorld? Suniva really never went away, I’ve had multiple Suniva employees/e-mail address stay subscribed to this newsletter for the better part of 10 years. We’ll see how the market responds.
“Energy Pragmatism”. “In fact, in my nearly 50 years in finance, I’ve never seen more demand for energy infrastructure.” That’s Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, in his annual letter to shareholders as he coins the term ‘energy pragmatism’. The term encompasses the dual goals set by Countries around the world which originally started with decarbonization, i.e. energy transition, and now adding energy security. The pragmatism also brings in the additional issue of demand increase of markets due to economic growth in various sectors, Fink sites Germany and Texas as risks to suffer from outages. You can find the letter here
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Yann