What It Takes, To Win. I had the incredible pleasure of spending the day with more than 200 solar professionals and the world class leaders from CALSSA in Sacramento yesterday. The annual ‘Solar In The Capitol’ lobby day allows groups of 6 to meet with legislators, including the members that represent the companies and individuals. Legislators thanked us for coming and helping them as they push for solar policy, the in person lobbying is irreplaceable and there should have been a thousand of us. I can’t thank Bernadette Del Chiaro and her team enough. There would be no solar industry in California without them and CALSSA and now I had the pleasure to see their work up close and personal. If you are not a member, join by clicking here.
Taking The Case To WTO. In a move that surprises nobody, China is taking the US to the WTO to review the tariffs imposed during the 201 case. It is important to note at this point that Suniva is no longer operational and SolarWorld USA is under contract to be acquired by SunPower. Don’t expect much to happen but its a process.
Free Markets. Subisidies. Sitting with republicans to talk about solar often starts with a comment about subsidies and that the free market should choose the technologies. That is complete and utter bullshit and now Rick Perry breaks down why the free markets in energy are really not free markets. Quite the contrary, energy markets are advantaged to the incumbent monopolies against competition and new technologies.
Storage Is Inevitable. In our lobby day, we spoke up for SB 700, the CA bill that would extend the SGIP program for 5 years. After the PG&E announcement to build over 1.5GWh of storage and the solar industry’s move to include storage in more systems, the future of energy storage is unstoppable.
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By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent
By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent
Easily lost amidst the excitement and thrill of building more solar capacity is a real concern: What do we do with the solar modules after the typical 25-year lifespan of a particular project? Fortunately, thanks the the European Union, a German manufacturer is on the case and has built the first industrial-sized recycling pilot plant for an industrial company in its home country. According to the website Phys.org:With strong competencies in plant manufacturing and wastewater treatment including recycling, the Geltz Umwelt-Technologie firm has built a test and treatment facility at a large disposal firm to retrieve reusable materials from solar modules.
Up until now, there has not been any technical solution to recycle and separate the valuable materials from the mixed scrap. The critical step in the recycling process is therefore the destruction of the polymer layer.Here's where German engineering came in. According to the article, "ELSi came up with a novel solution to address this key issue. Using an energy-efficient pyrolysis process, project partners managed to dissolve the undesired polymer layers and easily detach the glass in the panels. This novel advanced process enabled them to successfully separate and recover aluminium, glass, silver, copper, tin and silicon in their pure form." "During the process of isolating and classifying materials, the fine materials were separated by sieves and air classifiers. To treat the exhaust gases of the mechanical process, project partners used a thermal afterburner and a quench system with a gas scrubber," the article continued. The article says that at its current capacity, the plant could recycle 50,000 solar modules a year and recapture 95% of the materials to be used as raw materials again. Think about that for a minute: Not only is solar the clean energy of the future but, with this recycling technology (if it works) in place, it could also be the cleanest manufactured form of energy as well. That would make solar an absolute no-brainer - so let's hope the plant works as advertised. More: State-of-the-art solar panel recycling plant
By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent
By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent
Reuters is reporting that China has filed a World Trade Organization (WTO) complaint against the United States over the solar tariffs President Donald J. Trump imposed in February. Who could have seen THAT coming? (Everyone. Everyone saw this coming.) From Reuters writers Dan Stanway and Muyu Xu:China’s commerce ministry said a U.S. decision to subsidize renewable energy firms and impose tariffs on imported products has seriously distorted the global market and harmed China’s interests, firing the latest shot in a broader trade conflict.This is what happens when you start a trade war - the laws of unintended consequences kick in and suddenly you're fighting on 10 fronts simultaneously.
As the U.S. violations have severely distorted the global market for products like photovoltaics and seriously damaged China’s trade interests, China’s use of the WTO dispute settlement mechanism is a necessary measure to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests and maintain multilateral trade rules.According to the ministry, though exports of solar modules have surged 21% this year, only a small fraction went to the United States, with the bulk going to India, a burgeoning solar market with the advantage of being much closer to China than the United States (which makes it cheaper to ship product to it). No one knows how this dispute will ultimately turn out, but it once again points out how ridiculous the U.S. decision to impose solar tariffs is. Keep this case on your radar; something tells me it won't be going away any time soon.
SEIA’s Hopper Makes Hires. Abby Hopper, CEO of SEIA, is adding two senior hires to the team. A VP of business development will join based in the Bay Area and Jon Smirnow will join as well. Smirnow is a name you’ll recognize given that he has been an executive at SEIA before and he was active during the 201 trade case. The new executives will be joined by a VP of federal affairs that has yet to be hired.
Local Policies, Local Outreach. Policy and solar advocates have been taking the solar to the local level. The Million Solar Strong Campaign took to Long Island City with State and local elected officials to grow solar in New York and add solar to 100,000 low income households by 2023. While this was specific to New York, you could be doing this right in your backyard. As an example, 200 solar pros including 12 from the Quick Mount PV team will be heading to Sacramento to lobby for solar policies including SB 700 and SB 100. Why do we send 12 employees to lobby for solar? First, we actually shut one of our manufacturing lines down for the day so that solar pros from all aspects of our business can be heard from. Second, if we don’t stand up for our jobs and market, then who will?
Utility Choice Creates New Formulas. The first iteration of customers leaving investor owned utilities was municipalities leaving to form munis. Then it was the start of the CCAs (community choice aggregators) and energy choice initiatives like in Nevada. The issue at hand is always what happens when a customer leaves and who pays for the infrastructure that was built to serve the customer.
Yea, But What If? Bloomberg has an interesting post that shows that installed cost of solar for public companies is declining in spite of the Trump tariffs. The message is that look how great the market is working. Let me be really clear, the market would be growing faster and more broadly if the tariffs didn’t exist including the AD/CVD charges. What if, that’s the question we need to show data for.
Congrats To Conergy Team. A quick word to the team of Conergy pros remaining in Asia. I spent a great two years with many of them and now they are joining Macquarie as their solar development and EPC platform. The Conergy team is top notch, based out of Singapore, and this is well deserved corporate development.
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