Cheap Solar Panels, Winners and Losers. It’s always been the dilemma, cheap solar panels from Asia hurt the domestic manufacturing build out. On the other hand, imagine the lowest scenario, if solar panels were free then consumers and tax payers would benefit from cheaper PPAs (energy cost) and value of tax credits. I don’t know the right answer but the same is true for anything we import really. Imagine Amazon.com only selling domestically manufactured goods or Walmart. Nobody is saying all solar panels should be made here, I would welcome that, but there’s also an economic upside to it as well. I’d love to hear more thoughts on this from you all, how do you reconcile cheap solar panels?
Pay It Forward. As many of you know, before coming to FlexGen, I worked in residential solar in the Bay Area. I had the pleasure of working with some amazing people that helped create one of the fastest growing companies over the years that we worked together. Of course, residential solar is having a bit of a reset and some of these folks are impacted by cuts. So here’s my ask to you, starting with two people that were amazing employees for me, are you looking for a marketing associate and sales manager? If so, let me know so that I can connect you to them.
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Yann
Sea Of Suits. If there is one legacy left behind from the solar industry, it’s the 3,500 navy blue suits that come together at the Infocast Solar + Wind (And Storage) Conference in Phoenix. For the veterans, this is the old Rancho Bernardo conference. It was great to catch up with so many of you that I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing in so long. It’s incredible that our industry drives this level of collaboration and investment, representing the $50billion market that we all created in 2023 and will continue to grow.
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Politics And Pursuit Of None. I agree with Invenergy’s founder, Michael Polsky, that renewable energy would be better off without politics but the same could be said about most industries. Energy on the other hand is one of the most regulated industries because they are monopolies for most Americans and the trillions of dollars that exchange hands. So let’s agree that the energy markets will never exist without politics. Then agree on the next reality that is that in order to survive, grow and thrive, renewable energy markets need to win the politics of every moment. Not enough CEOs in our industry prioritize the public policy aspects of their jobs and the resources that need to be leveraged in order to advance our causes. We’ve come far, SEIAs budget is like 300x what it was 25 years ago for example and the public’s support of solar and storage is exceedingly high but when it comes to the regulators at local, state and federal levels, we are outnumbered by the incumbents that live in the nuance that is regulatory policies.
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