This is your SolarWakeup for October 13th, 2020
Solar Access Requires Regulators. Anti-solar advocates often attach solar for helping the rich only and not democratizing the benefits to everyone. This is especially aimed at low-income residents or renters that may not be the typical single family solar customer. The responsibility for this disparity mostly falls on regulators that do not open the market to all property types. Tools like community solar easily solves this, like is has done successfully in several markets. More importantly, regulators could take a new look at the excess production rate which is well below market value for energy costs. The problem with solar financing is the requirement for long term contracts secured by appropriate credit. For low-income or renters, it doesn’t match the solar financing. If regulators had a backup energy rate in case of default or vacancy, more competition over that market would follow.
The Work On Climate. Since it’s often lost on us that we are working on a bigger issue that affects everyone, I thought I would share an interesting realization I had over the weekend. Climate change sometimes seems too big for us to impact, what could one of us possibly do to help. The impacts from climate are serious and we have all felt them over the past few years. But, a few months ago when the national shelter in place was happening, we saw how fast the climate can change in a positive direction. We don’t have to believe a thesis, no cars on the road gave us the cleanest air we’ve seen in decades. We are so close to having a grid without coal and vehicle electrification on the way, it is possible that we will see immediate impacts from the positive gains our industries are making.
The Price And Compensation Signal. Grid operators and utility executives manage their work based on signals. Grid operators look at reserve margins within generation to match demand forecasts while utility executives look at the share price. On the technical side, we’re realizing that we cannot manage a grid only on the generation side, our reserve margin through demand shaping and demand response needs to be much closer to 20% or more. Same goes for executives, regulators have the opportunity to hold them to their climate goals and tie rate of return to achieving the decarbonization that is needed. If the utility profits drop when they fail to meet climate goals, executives will lose money because the share price will drop.
Diversity In Solar. Solar CEOs from several prominent companies are looking to improve the diversity in solar. The CEO collective has written the note linked below outlining their thoughts and actions.
Get The Power. Later this year, the residential solar market is going to get some major savings with most of their balance of systems when the shift to higher power solar modules really gets going. With power density going up more than 10%, those savings will trickle down to mounts, rails, inverters, labor and wire and hopefully into installers’ wallets. Make sure you are getting the best modules and pricing possible by joining the SolarWakeup Buyer’s Group. You can see the pricing on our price discovery page.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for October 12th, 2020
Trump Still Anti-Solar. On Saturday, the White House released a proclamation signed by Trump (now we know what he signed at Walter Reed) pushing for the bifacial tariff exemption to be eliminated. He also called for the 201 tariff drop to not go to 15% but 18% instead. Taxing Americans access to solar continues to be his priority.
OakTree Shaking IPO Foliage. With Array Technologies about to have a monster IPO, it won’t be long before the best exhibitor at solar conferences, Shoals, follows suit. Take it from me, widgets have great margins. From racking to wire accessories, this part of the BOS ecosystem is ripe for investors.
Vehicle To Grid Auf Deutsch. In a German article, follow the twitter thread here to read the original article, the head of Volkswagen’s charging division talks about electrification and vehicle to grid capabilities in the future. In a DC coupled architecture, you could see a cable from the car to the stationary energy storage already installed at the home.
The Subsidy Of Crappy Deals. In a new analysis, MISO shows that uneconomic coal power plants ‘lost’ over $400million in a 4 year window. Lost is a big word, because it’s really a subsidy. Add this to the long list of subsidies that generators, utilities and incumbents have received when solar plus storage is already economically viable.
Laudato Si, Iterum. You may recall the Pope’s Laudato Si from several years ago. The Pope is once again calling for action on climate change. You could see Joe Biden, a practicing catholic, echo those words to make the case on this basis as well.
The Michigan Farmer. Last week’s news that Biden was releasing a climate change ad in Michigan is out. This has the potential to get traction in other states, like Iowa and North Carolina for example.
Energy Storage Gold. Check out these ERCOT market prices from this weekend, energy storage operators are paying their bills.
Bad Solar TikTok Dance. Now there is a solar TikTok. In this video, a man escapes a collapsing roof and you should watch til the end to discover the likely issue here.
Get The Power. Later this year, the residential solar market is going to get some major savings with most of their balance of systems when the shift to higher power solar modules really gets going. With power density going up more than 10%, those savings will trickle down to mounts, rails, inverters, labor and wire and hopefully into installers’ wallets. Make sure you are getting the best modules and pricing possible by joining the SolarWakeup Buyer’s Group. You can see the pricing on our price discovery page.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for October 9th, 2020
VSLR RUNs Away. Vivint Solar officially stopped trading yesterday and owners of VSLR shares will see RUN shares in their portfolio instead. This makes the acquisition official after a near unanimous approval by shareholders. If the future is a debate of central versus distributed, monopolies versus deregulation, then Sunrun will be distributed utility fighting the 20th century behemoths.
Tracking Big IPOs. Array Technologies S-1 filing has been revised and the company has increased its capital raise to $675mm from the initial plug in number of $100mm. This makes the case that the virtual roadshow has gone well, with the IPO banks able to upside it to over $800million. Array has $92million in EBITDA in the first 6 months of 2020, 87% of their revenue coming from the US and the company is principally manufacturing in the US. Oaktree is a major investor in the company after an investment in 2016. S-1 Filing
The Veepstakes. A prolonged section in the VP debate about climate change had some wondering what they were watching. While the climate echochamber on Twitter wants to either, stop arguing whether climate change is real or complain that Senator Harris didn’t dig into the Green New Deal or state that the Biden admin will ban fracking. I will remind everyone once again, politicians can’t do anything until they are in power. If they feel like they need to straddle the middle to satisfy a voter in Pennsylvania, then they will. It was crazy to see VP Pence talk about the Trump administration’s environmental record, the list of deregulated pollutants during the last 3 years, the MOPR, solar tariffs and more make the case for this being an environmental disastrous administration.
MNSEIA Roundtable. The Minnesota Chapter is hosting an important roundtable with other state chapters and SEIA. Click the image above to register for the event being held next week during their two day gateway event.
Get The Power. Later this year, the residential solar market is going to get some major savings with most of their balance of systems when the shift to higher power solar modules really gets going. With power density going up more than 10%, those savings will trickle down to mounts, rails, inverters, labor and wire and hopefully into installers’ wallets. Make sure you are getting the best modules and pricing possible by joining the SolarWakeup Buyer’s Group. You can see the pricing on our price discovery page.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for October 8th, 2020
Happy Birthday. 9 years and 1 month ago, my wife told me I should start a solar newsletter that talks about the previous day's top stories. For the past 9 years she mostly regrets that (I'm joking). Well it's my wife's birthday today and I'm thankful for her push and support in this and many of our adventures in the solar coaster.
Cleantech Journalists. A must see for business leaders and PR pros. Today I join other clean tech editors to talk about issues we are looking at and the best way to get your story in the news. Register here.
Congrats. Personal message of congratulations to the CALSSA Board President, Ed Murray. Yesterday, he announced that his Aztec Solar was being acquired by East Coast’s Sigora Solar. If you listened to the capital market update calls, I predicted that regional installer consolidation was on the way. Way to go Ed!
Policy Moves. Just in time for distributed solar’s time to shine, policy pro Walker Wright is returning to Sunrun as VP of Public Policy. Walker is a rockstar advocate, one of the fiercest defender of solar regulations in the Country and knows how to duke it out, whether in the halls of the Capitol or back room at the smoky steakhouse.
Situational Awareness. In a tweet exchange, PG&E board member doesn’t remember the last time his company made a move to kill net metering. I reminded him.
Yann On A Pod. I joined Tim Montague to talk about solar markets and the Buyer’s Group on his youtube based podcast. It was a great conversation.
Get The Power. Later this year, the residential solar market is going to get some major savings with most of their balance of systems when the shift to higher power solar modules really gets going. With power density going up more than 10%, those savings will trickle down to mounts, rails, inverters, labor and wire and hopefully into installers’ wallets. Make sure you are getting the best modules and pricing possible by joining the SolarWakeup Buyer’s Group. You can see the pricing on our price discovery page.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for October 7th, 2020
Build It And They Will Come. Bloomberg’s BNEF is out with a revised forecast for residential solar in 2020 and increases their estimates to 3GW, almost 10% higher than 2019. This is in line with what SolarWakeup has been saying since May and the data points that you heard on the Roth Capital solar market update call last week. This means that in a time where the industry thought that new sales would crater because of the lack of face to face sales, solar demand was higher than ever. Not only will 2020 have the highest capacity on record but the backlog will be substantial across the market, watch out for Q1 numbers. Suppliers should be ready to adjust Q1 supply chain accordingly.
The Golden Grid. Two headlines with one message, distributed solar is creating value well beyond energy production especially when paired with storage. Generac continues to acquire companies, this time acquiring grid services company Enbala. Generac already has a bit of a 100% storage attachment strategy especially when installed with Generac generators. In short, Generac is building the residential microgrid company. Only question is which utility will buy Generac? Sunnova is following in Sunrun’s footsteps and entering the ISO-NE capacity market, increasing the value generated by their customer’s solar and storage equipment. Next step is a 3rd party provider that provides that benefit to homeowners that are not part of the Sunrun/Sunnova platforms and want to aggregate with neighbors.
Speaking About Value. Later in 2021, the California regulators will take up the decision about net metering 3.0. Yesterday, some advocates filed their opening briefs including CALSSA which did a great job talking about the value that non-solar owners get from solar homes and lowering their costs of electricity. I link to the brief from the NRDC, a supposed environmental firm, that lacks an intellectual grasp of how solar works. They write, “non-NEM customers should not continue to or further subsidize NEM customers in excess of the total energy system and climate benefits all customers receive from NEM exports.” They continue to write that focus should be on large scale solar. All of that will be intriguing to execute when the grid goes down because there isn’t enough demand response on the other end of the line. We just went through two events where distributed solar and storage created more than 1.5GW of free capacity so that ALL users could continue to have power. This green on solar attack won’t be tolerated on this platform and I’m happy to moderate that debate publicly anytime.
Michigan Climate Voter. Biden is out with a climate ad in Michigan. Biden is old school, ads are tested, polled and scripted exactly to match the target demo. My prediction is that if Michigan voters like it, you’ll see it in Florida soon.
Yann On A Pod. I joined Tim Montague to talk about solar markets and the Buyer’s Group on his youtube based podcast. It was a great conversation.
Get The Power. Later this year, the residential solar market is going to get some major savings with most of their balance of systems when the shift to higher power solar modules really gets going. With power density going up more than 10%, those savings will trickle down to mounts, rails, inverters, labor and wire and hopefully into installers’ wallets. Make sure you are getting the best modules and pricing possible by joining the SolarWakeup Buyer’s Group. You can see the pricing on our price discovery page.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for October 6th, 2020
Utility Scale Solar At Risk. Utility scale solar has been and continues to boom across the Country, both in utility and 3rd party owned segments. This has helped the cost of solar to drop across all segments and scale has caused modules to get to sub 30 cents per watt which is helping everyone. But here is the important counterpoint that everyone needs to keep in their mind. In the past few days we’ve seen announcements of solar in Louisiana, Arkansas and Nebraska to name a few. Solar is the biggest interconnection backlog in Michigan and ERCOT amongst others. The reality is that utility scale solar grows in strength everywhere that consumers have an increasing ability to put solar on their own roof. Residential solar is 10% of the capacity compared to utility scale but is 99% of the public opinion. 10 years ago, my neighbors in Florida would tell me solar doesn’t work because they can’t put it on their house. Those same neighbors (even with their Trump lawn signs) have solar panels on their roof now and they trust large scale solar to be just as effective. This is a symbiotic relationship that our industry often overlooks at its own detriment.
Blue Wave Scenario. In the first of the scenarios let us look at a what is possible if Biden takes the White House, democrats the house and senate and remove the filibuster. Basically control of all law making. First the downside. In this scenario so many things will be focused on that energy policy would probably not reach the top 5. You would also have to think about how clean energy and climate policy may intersect or deviate. You could see solar advocates push for some or all of the following (I wonder if the wish list already exists): national RPS, strengthening PURPA for renewable qualified facilities, national carbon policy, standardized permitting laws, extension of the ITC with direct pay, job training, R&D dollars and a greener TVA. Fundamentally, I could see policy that aims to achieve carbon free energy generation and solar on every rooftop as the goals. Execution will be up to the legislative writers. There are some great folks working hard on Clean Energy 4 Biden that would make great staffers in the administration if this happens and New York policy folks will have a big impact on Senator Schumer’s position on this as majority leader.
Exxon Planning Disaster. An internal document from ExxonMobil says that the corporation is planning on increasing carbon emissions. What happens next with institutional investors especially university endowments will be interesting to watch. If they hesitated full divestiture from fossil fuels, leaving Exxon will be an easy decision.
Chasing C&I Gold. Siemens and Macquarie (Green Investment Group) are forming a new joint venture to target solar plus storage on commercial buildings. Storage is the silver bullet for the C&I market that always had a problem with the default/downside scenario with tenants that leave or off takers that default.
Yann On A Pod. I joined Tim Montague to talk about solar markets and the Buyer’s Group on his youtube based podcast. It was a great conversation.
Get The Power. Later this year, the residential solar market is going to get some major savings with most of their balance of systems when the shift to higher power solar modules really gets going. With power density going up more than 10%, those savings will trickle down to mounts, rails, inverters, labor and wire and hopefully into installers’ wallets. Make sure you are getting the best modules and pricing possible by joining the SolarWakeup Buyer’s Group. You can see the pricing on our price discovery page.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for October 5th, 2020
Vote Save Solar. On Friday’s episode of Pod Save America podcast, former Obama official Dan Pfeiffer commented that the first person to knock on his Bay Area door since the pandemic started was a solar salesperson. Sometimes I get my market data in the strangest places and for those wondering, he was not interested to talk to anyone at his door. Anyone know whose salesperson is door knocking in San Francisco?
To Clean Or Not To Clean. NextEra is celebrating the news of their new market cap surpassing Exxon’s by spinning themselves as a clean energy company. NextEra is first and foremost a monopoly that is primarily gas. Being a monopoly has enabled the company to invest in many gigawatts of wind and solar across the Country which gives them the ability to make the clean energy headline. Fundamentally, NextEra would build anything that makes them money regardless of its cleanliness. For years, their CEO was loud and proud that solar wouldn’t work, even spinning Florida too cloudy for PV. I think the Florida consumers that subsidize NextEra should be beneficiary of the company’s success, but obviously I am just dreaming.
What’s The Legislative Forecast? For the next 30 days, we will cover the what ifs of various election results, maybe even look at certain states that have flippable legislatures. Looking at polling, the options ahead for DC tend to expect a Biden White House, Blue House and toss up in the Senate. The Senate toss up has layers given how the institution operates and the unknown about the filibuster. Tomorrow, we’ll look at the blue wave scenario with removal of the filibuster and how energy policy would look in that scenario.
Solar On Schools. Every school in America should be covered in solar and now should have a microgrid as well. Schools are at the center of every community and in many cases the source of safety for natural disasters or emergency events. This is just common sense at this point.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for October 2nd, 2020
Weekend. Have a great weekend. If you have any market insight that’s worthy of updating capital markets in a few hours hit me up.
Solar Market Update Call. The solar market can be considered complex and fast moving but if you join this monthly market call you can make sense of it. Register for the next Roth Capital solar market call happening at 10am Eastern today.
Get The Power. Later this year, the residential solar market is going to get some major savings with most of their balance of systems when the shift to higher power solar modules really gets going. With power density going up more than 10%, those savings will trickle down to mounts, rails, inverters, labor and wire and hopefully into installers’ wallets. Make sure you are getting the best modules and pricing possible by joining the SolarWakeup Buyer’s Group. You can see the pricing on our price discovery page.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for October 1st, 2020
Monopoly Overreach And Insanity. This got my blood pressure up early yesterday when Twitter started circulating the news that NextEra approached Duke with the intention to acquire the Carolina utility. Even though Duke is based in Charlotte, it has operations in North and South Carolina as well as Florida. NextEra which already has well over 50% of Florida’s consumers can’t get enough when it comes to a regulated non-competitive market. Imagine the power that such a utility would have across the Southeast, politicians would have to allow them to do anything because what other choice would they have? This is incredibly dangerous but entirely plausible.
Nonstationary Power. When Tesla first released the power wall they called that division stationary power. I publicly opined on this platform years ago that stationary power implies non-stationary power to be on the auto side of the company. Delaware had done a vehicle to grid pilot a few years ago and Enel has been showing off their programs in Italy online. With the CPUC enabling some testing of V2G we’ll look a bit into how that overlaps with the solar industry. Homes with EVs often have 70kWh plus in their driveway, it makes sense to have the ability to use that energy in certain situations.
Speaking Of EVs. Do any SolarWakeup readers know anything about ev conversions for internal combustion vehicles? Please reach out and share your tips.
Solar Market Update Call. The solar market can be considered complex and fast moving but if you join this monthly market call you can make sense of it. Register for the next Roth Capital solar market call on October 2nd at 10am Eastern.
Get The Power. Later this year, the residential solar market is going to get some major savings with most of their balance of systems when the shift to higher power solar modules really gets going. With power density going up more than 10%, those savings will trickle down to mounts, rails, inverters, labor and wire and hopefully into installers’ wallets. Make sure you are getting the best modules and pricing possible by joining the SolarWakeup Buyer’s Group. You can see the pricing on our price discovery page.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 30th, 2020
First In 12. Much to my surprise and many others, Chris Wallace went off script last night (there wasn’t much of a script at this point anyways) and asked a climate change question to Trump and Biden. This was the first climate change question in 12 years according to Grist reporting in a presidential debate. I won’t cover the answers, it ranged from raking the forest to weatherizing buildings and regulating methane. Biden did call out the SunShot success in lowering the cost of solar to record levels, a nice mention of our industry.
The Role of Labor. We don’t talk about this often, our industry is different, but it should also be part of the discussion. Many of the utility and oil infrastructure jobs are part of major labor unions. Labor has been one of the major political forces fighting solar policies in State capitols. The crush on oil, COVID aside, has very little to do with our industry that would fall more on the EV infrastructure and utility sector. The utility sector tends to take a very strong position fighting against labor unions. Solar on the other hand is largely silent but we shouldn’t be. I believe that I would be directionally correct in saying that 50% of solar capacity is installed in partnership with labor unions including large scale solar in California, many public projects across the country as well as DG projects in states like NJ, MA, NY and IL. I would love to hear your view on this, including data that may support or refute my thoughts.
No Congressional Acts Likely. Senator Whitehouse is holding out hope for the Senate to take up climate legislation. As much as I would love for the Senator to be right, he may have thought this to be true before last night’s debate.
EPA, SCOTUS, and What If. In the week’s leading up to and after the selection of Kamala Harris as the VP, we wrote about how she could lead the fight against climate change by taking on polluters with laws like the clean air and water acts. In reality, these laws are on more nuanced standing after the passing of Justice Ginsberg who wrote the opinion giving the EPA the power to regulate emissions. The case for regulatory overreach was often argued by Justice Scalia including as recently in 2015 in Michigan v EPA where Scalia wrote the opinion for the 5-4 majority. If you recall, I quoted Justice Ginsburg’s 6-2 majority opinion from the EPA v EME Homer City in 2014 which gave the EPA more ability to regulate emissions across the Country. With the balance of the court changing, based on Judge Coney Barrett’s comments that Scalia’s views are her views, you can imagine some ability for a Biden/Harris administration having more difficulty executing on the pollution enforcement strategy I outlined just a few weeks ago.
Solar Market Update Call. The solar market can be considered complex and fast moving but if you join this monthly market call you can make sense of it. Register for the next Roth Capital solar market call on October 2nd at 10am Eastern.
Get The Power. Later this year, the residential solar market is going to get some major savings with most of their balance of systems when the shift to higher power solar modules really gets going. With power density going up more than 10%, those savings will trickle down to mounts, rails, inverters, labor and wire and hopefully into installers’ wallets. Make sure you are getting the best modules and pricing possible by joining the SolarWakeup Buyer’s Group. You can see the pricing on our price discovery page.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann