This is your SolarWakeup for September 17th, 2020
BP Solar Comeback. 20 years ago, BP was the talk of the solar town. Just outside of DC, BP made solar modules because solar was the future. Then came Chevron with tax equity but that too passed. When you look at issues facing oil today, part of it is Covid and hundreds of parked airplanes but the other one is that oil is competing with electricity and losing. BP is in the business of powering your method of transportation, that’s why Vitol is out with an announcement expanding their power trading as well. Electricity is the new oil and that’s where the majors are going. Not too long ago, BP said that they couldn’t invest enough capital in renewables. 5 years from now they will have invested tens of billions and more; with less risk and better returns than they get today. Anyone doubting their return expectations go check out their corporate bond costs and ask your friend at NextEra if they expect 8-10% returns as well. Here’s a prediction, in my lifetime the CEO of BP will come from the renewables division and it will be the core revenue generator.
The Greater Responsibility. Peter Parker was told that with great power comes great responsibility. If you haven’t noticed, solar is being asked to do a lot more than install a few panels. Our industry will lead on creating jobs where other industries have left them behind. Remember the Gaval family in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania living in a home worth less than $115,000? I haven’t stopped thinking about them and how the parents and two sons would surely be an asset to the solar industry and they could each live in their own house. We hold ourselves to a higher standard than just making money. Helping others, making solar inclusive and diverse while creating more jobs than any other sector is part of our DNA. With that internal bar set so high, outsiders will judge us and expect solar to fix it.
EV Charging PubCo. Chargepoint is going public via a reverse merger with a SPAC. This is a great step in the direction to bring charging to retail investors. For me, retail investors create comfort and credibility for the underlying company they are working with. An investor may look at it from a company standpoint and then realize they have 50 chargers in their County and they should get an electric vehicle. It normalizes the concept.
Farewell Spent Rods. I had some long form opinion about the state of nuclear but as much as some utility regulators hold out hope that nuclear is the future, it is merely the past. We will not see another nuclear power plant built in the US and likely other western Countries as well. There are many reasons for this but the biggest one is the lack of capability to actually build one.
SC Rooftop Solar. Vote Solar is calling the agreement with regulators and Duke Energy “the most forward thinking rooftop solar program in the US.” The NEM successor creates a system blended with demand response, storage and other variables in what some would call the biggest step towards performance based compensation. Without modeling out how this actually tracks to homeowners, I have two thoughts on this. First, a deal is a win and certainty beats uncertainty any day. Second, wouldn’t it be fantastic if the monopolies also had performance based compensation and allowed a robust power market in their territory?
Catch Me. If you didn’t get the chance, I was a guest on the Solar Spotlight podcast.
A New Mark. The SolarWakeup Buyer’s Group now has members doing over 200MW in aggregate. This means more vendors wanting to do more with those members and that means savings for you. If you’re curious, check out the price discovery page.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 16th, 2020
No Column Today. Your solar news will return tomorrow including a new SolarWakeup podcast about the concept of a competitive power market in the Southeast United States. If you prefer to hear my podcast from the other side of the table, I joined the Solar Spotlight from Greenlancer podcast to talk about solar.
Thoughts. Take a moment to see how you can help our friends in the Gulf Coast. Hurricane Sally is going to be incredibly wet, when it passed my house last weekend we got 10 inches of rain and now is forecasted to do 30 inches in Louisiana. It’s wet and slow, one of the worst combinations for hurricanes.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 15th, 2020
No More Naked Roofs. Every house has a roof on it so why doesn’t every roof have solar? Within our community this doesn’t seem like a stretch and even may be our goal, so why doesn’t this possibility get more airtime in mainstream news? The jobs, the distributed resilience and cost savings for consumers are all benefits that will be the side effect of this endeavor that wouldn’t actually cost anything.
The Google Promise. There are layers to the Google promise on carbon neutrality. In this latest announcement, Google said it will only use carbon free electricity by the year 2030 including in a 24/7 time matching. This will drive significant energy storage and other generation that will allow for that to happen. Second, Google has now repaid its climate debt, meaning its emissions since startup have been offset. This is the first time I’ve seen climate debt paid off, what would happen if every Fortune 500 did this going back to 2000 or earlier?
Making Climate Political. Normally politicians have to message in order to drive polling numbers in their favor. Climate and clean energy issues have long polled well in a bipartisan way but have failed to drive the politicians in their direction. One of the problems may have been that bipartisan issues don’t do well in politics. To that end, Joe Biden’s campaign seems to be happy to take the issue as their own and making it partisan. I don’t love the idea of solar becoming 100% partisan but it’s been somewhat so already. Let’s hope both sides fight over solar as their issue and who loves it more.
A SPAC To Watch. SPAC are all the rage these days. While not new, acquisition corporations are gaining favor in the capital markets as an easier and less turbulent path to public markets. This SPAC, Climate Change Crisis Real Impact I Acquisition Corp, has a notable CEO in David Crane. Crane, as you may recall, sounded the alarm about climate change when he was the CEO of NRG. The Chairperson of the SPAC is Mary Powell, former CEO of Green Mountain Power and still a director of Sunrun amongst other clean energy companies.
New Products, Lower Prices. The SolarWakeup Buyer’s Group has been hard at work to improve the product and price list over the past few weeks. If you haven’t talked with us about it, send us a note or do a price discovery.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 14th, 2020
Here’s The Scoop. There’s something big brewing in the residential solar market. SolarWakeup has learned that industry veterans are coming back into the market in a big way, looking to to build the next national platform through acquisitions of existing market leaders. With the fragmentation that exists today, it makes sense that this would be the strategy and for those companies that seek that exponential growth it seems that the opportunity is coming up. We can’t say more at this point but stay tuned to this space…
An Expanding Market. Even with the impacts of COVID in the space, halting installations and changing sales strategies, the residential solar market is now forecasted to remain strong. After my comments were published by PV-Magazine about the finance market faltering, Woodmac responded and changed the terminology to indicate a strong investment environment for residential solar. The forecasters also increased the 2020 estimates by 700MW to remain flat year over year. This was something SolarWakeup predicted in May on our podcast episode. Even if megawatts will remain flat, SolarWakeup has the estimate at 10-15% increase over 2019 numbers, total spend will be up over 10% given the average system value has increased by almost 15% due to bigger systems and energy storage inclusion. You can now understand what drives the investment thesis in the scoop above.
500+ Air Quality. 6 of the largest fires in California, including the largest ever, are burning right now. Oregon saw fires within 20 miles of populated areas around Portland and the impacts of the fires are dramatic. Air quality measurements are reaching very unhealthy levels, over 600 AQI in some areas. At 500 AQI, you need to consider wearing heavily filtered masks inside your home at all times. We don’t know what this means for long term health but this is definitely not a positive sign of things to come.
Let’s Have Solutions. As I read about Gaval family in Pennsylvania, I think about how the solar industry can be a home for them. We are all thinking about how companies operate with more remote work, I’d love to see the idea of distributed offices instead of larger facilities in metros. Imagine a 20 person office in Mahanoy City, a coal mining town where the Gavals live. The solar industry is advocating for distributed energy, why couldn’t we also distribute our workforce in a similar way.
New Products, Lower Prices. The SolarWakeup Buyer’s Group has been hard at work to improve the product and price list over the past few weeks. If you haven’t talked with us about it, send us a note or do a price discovery.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 11th, 2020
Head Into The Weekend. We are going to put a bow on Q3 this month and head into Q4 with the biggest backlog and solar development pipeline in the history of solar. Here are your top news for the week.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 10th, 2020
Seeing Red. Pictures out of the Bay Area were daunting yesterday, not reminding me of my home for the past 2 years. This is the planet’s reminder that whether we believe in climate change or not, it’s here and we need to do more. It was enough to get Obama to tweet about the fires yesterday.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 9th, 2020
‘Green’ Transport. Uber announced that it was following Lyft into 100% electric vehicles by 2030 and carbon goals a few years later. For drivers that have an electric vehicle, Uber will pay them an extra $1.50 per ride as an incentive as part of a $800million push to enable drivers to make the switch. I’m sure this will also include a riders option to request a ‘green’ ride maybe for an extra fee to urge the demand to come along. For new readers wondering why we cover electric vehicle adoption, especially at this scale, it’s because it changes the demand for solar. As grid demand increases due to oil to electric shift in transportation, solar will make up a significant portion of that gap.
The Pipeline. In the next few years there will be a great understanding of the enormous pipeline that solar and storage has built in interconnection applications. Overnight, gigawatts of solar and storage could be built for less than 5 cents per kWh in almost every market across the Country. That optionality, when grid operators understand the magnitude, should be explained to lawmakers in greater detail especially as folks urge the risks of a new energy system by shouting ‘look at California’ every opportunity they can. How many GW of interconnection applications are viable across the Country?
Deployment Not Tech. I’ve never heard the term technology gap before but the sentiment remains the same. By focusing the lawmakers and regulators on research and development as opposed to mass deployment, you delay the actual success of the plan to achieve certain goals. R&D is vital and needs to continue including at greater levels, but the way to get to cheaper solar plus storage and great innovation on efficiencies is through scale. That’s how we went from 200watt to 350watt solar modules from $4/watt to $0.40/watt in less than 15 years. Utilities saying that we can’t get to goals without a leap in tech are hoping for a few more quarters of rate base, just look at Dominion’s request to get an 80 year extension on a nuclear plant.
Revisit Shareholder Pressure. GTM has a good story looking back on Blackrock’s climate push as shareholders. This includes the notice it put many corporations on that were falling behind on reaching climate goals or moving into a more sustainable direction.
Join The Buyer’s Group. Residential installers should be taking advantage of the 20%+ savings in the buyer’s group with new products added last week and more coming. You can fill out the price discovery and get a 1-week trial if you do.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 8th, 2020
Power Crisis Part 2. California entered the weekend with a heat wave reaching record temperatures across the state causing grid operators to ask consumers to lower consumption as much as possible. There was no reporting about any widespread outages because Californians responded and a massive buildout of distributed generation helped the distribution networks. This isn’t how it should be done, the grid has a reserve margin and if that margin isn’t being met then the operator needs to increase the reserve threshold. Moreover, consumers shouldn’t have to be philanthropic participants to the transaction. If the grid needs their action, that should be a transaction with financial value. The utilities have the responsibility to serve and came close to failing once again, but don’t wait long to see the failure.
Heat Waves, Fires, Outages. The heat waves caused a power crisis, someone will have to do a dumb it down version on why heat waves (on weekends) cause an undersupply but I digress. About 10 minutes before I started writing this, PG&E announced it would cut power to 172,000 accounts in 22 counties due to low moisture and high temperature environment that is conducive to wild fires. How in the world is that utility still operational? It’s early September and fires are burning in large numbers, the last thing that folks should worry about is losing power in addition to all of the other concerns they are facing. The Bay Area is consumed by smoky conditions at unhealthy levels, no electricity means no circulation or worse if your health conditions require medical devices. Ratepayers in California pay some of the highest rates in the Country and deserve better service for their investments. This is a problem with transmission infrastructure, which is causing the utility to shut off power. Remember that for the paragraph below.
Nationalize This. Here is a tweet from the Secretary of Energy, who never missed an opportunity to make his point and desire to return to the 20th century. The key quote “He [Sec. of Energy] also encourages policymakers to evaluate why the grid is not able to handle extreme stress, which could be alleviated with the support of greater caseload power generation and natural gas supply.” This was in response to the state’s request for federal intervention, clearly a moment of need and not a moment to get a backhanded comment.
Fixed Electricity Price. Here is your question of the day. Why is our electricity price a fixed rate, especially for IOUs? Competitive markets would do a better job of creating the types of behavior the grid needs to be resilient, resilience can’t just happen on the generation side of the ledger. We talk about this and more in this week’s podcast which posts later this week.
Join The Buyer’s Group. Residential installers should be taking advantage of the 20%+ savings in the buyer’s group with new products added last week and more coming. You can fill out the price discovery and get a 1-week trial if you do.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 4th, 2020
The Trade Association Consolidation. Bloomberg’s Brian Eckhouse has the reporting that a new trade association is forming out of AWEA, the national wind association. American Clean Power Association. Founding members include NextEra, Berkshire Hathaway and Avangrid. The idea is to consolidate the message around clean energy without regard to the source of the fuel, planning to represent all sources including solar.
SEIA’s Decision, Position. If you are in the solar industry, you should thank SEIA’s leadership for not joining the new group. Sources over the past year have been telling SolarWakeup that SEIA was discussing the option of being part of the new association. While I think we have gone beyond the fight between RE sources (see West Wing episode), how would an all source association advocate for net metering policies in California for example or deciding whether QF facilities should be 10 or 50MW. More importantly the new association, in my opinion, represents the status quo and leaves no room for getting involved in energy choice discussions or fighting IRP filings given the fox is in the henhouse. The political power for clean energy is in solar because everyone has the ability to participate, you can put a panel on your RV, 20 on your home or build out a 1GW solar farm. This is a tough year for associations that lost their revenue streams in trade shows, didn’t qualify for PPP and companies struggle to pay their fees, SEIA still bet on the future of solar by staying the course alone.
The Best Blackout TicToc. When the lights went out in California, and more importantly when they didn’t (but almost), a lot of factors came into play. This quote from CALSSA’s leader sums it up, “They were texting and emailing and calling us: ‘We need all of your battery customers giving us power,’” said Bernadette Del Chiaro. Grid operators had no plan on how to activate the distributed resources across the State and no way to send a market signal to create value for homeowners discharging their batteries. The resiliency ended up showing up out of goodwill from homeowners while an unnamed natural gas plant went offline when it was being counted on. This is part of the reason this publication has written at length about price signals for distributed resources and giving local RA procurement control to the operators closest to the capacity. Residential solar and storage can now provide up to 530MW of capacity and that’s over 1GW next year and growing. Add that with demand response operated by companies like OhmConnect and a real plan could provide over 2GW on demand.
Clean Jobs Good Jobs. I think everyone that works in solar loves their job. Loving your job doesn’t mean you don’t aspire for more but you love what you do and the impact it has on society. I’d love to see a Polaroid campaign of you and your employees/colleagues that says why you love your job.
The Savings Commence. Yesterday, an installer saved over $10,000 buying modules through the Buyer’s Group, it costs you money not taking a look and calculating your savings. If you’re curious about our price list, hit reply or take the price discovery.
Sell More Solar with CollectiveSun. My friends at CollectiveSun know Nonprofits. They know that Nonprofits are looking for three things when going solar: a simple and user friendly process, the ability to utilize tax benefits, and access to funding that doesn’t break the bank. CollectiveSun can help you give them all that and more. These days, more than ever, Nonprofits are looking to lower their operating expenses. CollectiveSun will help you generate more sales and will work with you to become the go-to solar installer for Nonprofits. Click here to learn more about working with CollectiveSun.
Have a great weekend!
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 3rd, 2020
Duke’s IRP. Duke filed their IRP and gave regulators a menu of options to choose from but in many ways is telling the story that they want to tell. The way it reads to me is this, let us build more gas, stop our coal plants when we want and we’ll do some solar and storage along the way. Less gas and closed coal means big expensive options for consumers is the headline that the utility wants to see in the news. Good thing for consumers and the solar market is that solar advocates are becoming experts in IRP dockets. This is the opening salvo, watch this space for more updates along the way. I even heard rumors that advocates are doing a special website to cover this.
A Regulators View On CA. Former FERC commissioner, Cheryl LaFleur, breaks down the energy situation in California in 5 categories. This is a macro view of the problem without delving into some of the micro issues that have riled up energy twitter or when Trump talks about the topic. The counterpoint comes from Sunrun’s Lynn Jurich on the impact resi solar can have.
The Fallout. This is the decision we have to make in this decade. Solve the problems on our grid with more resilient infrastructure close to the demand or leave generation in place that has already reached the end of its useful life. Microgrids versus capacity contract extensions, that’s the argument in a nutshell.
Benefits Of Retail Energy. Here is what happens when you combine Peter Thiel, bitcoin, data center, heat wave, no wind and competitive power markets. A bitcoin mine back by Thiel in Texas had a clause in their retail energy contract that let it sell back their energy by powering down their consumption and reap the benefits from the trade. Funny story of the day.
The Savings Commence. Yesterday, an installer saved over $10,000 buying modules through the Buyer’s Group, it costs you money not taking a look and calculating your savings. If you’re curious about our price list, hit reply or take the price discovery.
Sell More Solar with CollectiveSun. My friends at CollectiveSun know Nonprofits. They know that Nonprofits are looking for three things when going solar: a simple and user friendly process, the ability to utilize tax benefits, and access to funding that doesn’t break the bank. CollectiveSun can help you give them all that and more. These days, more than ever, Nonprofits are looking to lower their operating expenses. CollectiveSun will help you generate more sales and will work with you to become the go-to solar installer for Nonprofits. Click here to learn more about working with CollectiveSun.
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Yann