It’s Open, All The Time. Last week, FlexGen officially opened its 24.7 remote operations center servicing energy storage asset owners for monitoring, reporting and performance analytics of those sites. This world class facility was purpose built for energy storage operations and one of the most exciting projects in my career. This comes in line with new product launches as the technology teams have shown innovation in ways that we weren’t expecting for years to come. Storage is driving grid reliance on the asset class faster than expected, meaning operators are having to keep up with new specifications and regulations, demanding more from batteries and the operating systems that keep them running. At the same time, revenues from batteries create a particularly important relationship between asset owners and the operations center. Over the past few months, I’ve learned that many systems are not actively monitored, reliably monitored and little to no analytics is performed on the data, and those systems deserve more.
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Yann
Project Sunroof Monetizes. Google announced that it will be offering an API for rooftop solar data which has the projection of creating $100million in annual revenues in year 1. The data is said to include access to 350million properties and introduce the overlay of 30 days of air quality history. Will this be a must have feature in proposal tools or will resi solar look at this as an unnecessary addition to the data set?
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Yann
Don’t Let Facts Get In The Way. Of a good story, or political talking point. Ever since the 2014 era ITC extension, solar has had to trade molecular fuels subsidies for its own extensions. Today, the US develops as much oil and gas as the global markets allow them to, with little to no say from the US federal government. In many ways, Riyadh determines how much oil is drilled in the US more so than DC but I digress. Politically, there is only one thing I really care about here which is something that I’ve complained about a lot, somewhat mitigated by the transferability of the tax credits but that’s the passive income rules that solar has to abide by that oil and gas does not. Democrat votes may complain about this leading up to 2024 but I expect the Biden administration to brag about the oil production ahead of the election while knowing that renewables are taking off with the IRA and EV impact on transportation is at its highest ever.
But Let’s Drill. More geothermal that is, check out my friend’s startup at XGS energy for another major player getting into the space.
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Yann
Newsflash, It’s Still Hot (And Great To Invest In Batteries). Texas hit market price caps again, many times this year and something that has become somewhat of a norm since Uri. That comes days after Engie announced the acquisition of the largest storage development platform, Broad Reach Power. With some of the earliest storage projects working in Texas, BRP has shown that having assets in market unlocks revenue streams in peak demands especially. That is the thing with storage in ERCOT, the assets need to be ready to push the limits and show that they can unlock opportunities 24/7/365 and projects ultimately will change hands and that’s where the operating software (EMS) and performance analytics are incredibly important to back up the performance data comes in. As you add storage to your pipeline and want to get more intel about storage operating systems, EMS and data analytics, reach out to meet with my team at RE+.
Grid Reliability (And Security). NERC is highlighting the overlap of energy policy with grid reliability but so does the importance of grid security. As the grid has to evolve to be more resilient and intelligent, security will undeniably be linked to grid reliability. It may be up to the market participants to set the standards thou as grid policy is oftentimes years behind the actual growth in the market.
The Problem With Physics. Germany has a grid physics problem. One of the highest penetrations of renewables, a desire to retire coal and nuclear plus a less than optimal supply of natural gas matched with increased energy demand from economic growth and a transportation sector quickly transitioning to electric fuel. Put all of that together and the grid needs flexibility but little to no storage is going onto the grid.
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Yann