This is your SolarWakeup for April 12th, 2019
Apple Pushes Suppliers. Apple is moving its suppliers to add renewable energy for at least the amount of energy used to make the parts that go to Apple. This is a great type of leadership, by creating a prerequisite to get some of the business. Other big buyers should follow their lead here. I’d be interested in knowing if Apple helps the suppliers accomplish the goals through expertise or even outsourced purchasing.
Climate Politics Should Be Non-Compromising. There is some talk this week that the Green New Deal has accomplished its goals since some fringe republicans are coming out with their ‘climate’ plans. That is total nonsense, there is no sense in debating policy in public with other legislators or negotiating non existent bills. Also, the only person that should be negotiated with is Senator McConnell. Until then, make your case to the American public.
Run On Climate. Tom Friedman of the NY Times is saying that politicians should run on climate and I agree, but so do the polls. It’s been true for awhile that climate change, clean air and clean water does really well with voters, especially independents. Even more, the pivot from jobs to solar is easy. The pivot from corporate monopolies (utilities poll terribly) to solar is easy. If you’re going to run on something, run on solar.
Corporate Access To Lower Costs. More on the Apple comment from above. How can we make the access to solar easier and more standardized for other corporations? If a supplier is looking to have solar in order to make their company stand out, what is the cheapest way for them to accomplish that?
Question For You. Yesterday I wrote about the revenue put which made me ponder something. If your current debt is coming in at 1.3 DSCR and you can buy a product that gets you closer to a 1.1 ratio, what consideration would make you reject the higher debt level?
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for April 11th, 2019
Stop The BS. Sometimes I don’t point out articles that are filled with bias especially when a position of influence is used to portray a motive as an opinion. First, there is no reality where solar or wind are better off without the tax credit. Second, if you think that your sponsor capital will be cheaper without the tax equity structure, don’t use it. There are some in solar that think that the ITC going away will make financing easier, those people should go sell mortgages. Others are afraid that solar asking for the ITC and not getting the extension would be a failure. I look at it more pragmatically. I want the ITC to be as close to 100% as possible. I want it to last in perpetuity if I can influence that legislation. If I were writing an article purely based on motive, I would ask for a 50% ITC with a cap of $20k. It would shave the cost of the ITC by 90% to the taxpayer and residential would thrive. Except that this market requires us all to be on the same page, creating volume for the same supply chain and creating funding for the associations that lobby for our market to exist. If you have an urge to write an opinion piece on the topic, send an email to your college roommate that promptly throws it away.
You Have To Fight, For Your Right. The California Senate passed the Solar Bill of Rights through committee by a vote of 11-0. The nice part about it is that the legislative support largely came from the homeowners that bought solar from installers. This is a proof of concept that could catapult the Solar Rights Alliance into great funding opportunities and more coverage across the Country.
Cheaper Debt Is Good. Few things get me excited as much as lower coverage ratios. Every time I see debt closings use the revenue put from kWh Analytics I think of the other things that could also make solar projects get more capital efficient.
MidWest Solar. Catch me at the upcoming Midwest Solar Expo where I’ll be sitting with State PUC Commissioner, Katie Sieben and a great conversation with an executive from Xcel Energy. I will also be attending The Energy Fair for their 30th anniversary, this will be a special interview with a great speaker we will reveal soon!
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for April 10th, 2019
Absent a column today, check out these great solar communications jobs. If you are hiring, send the link to the job to me and I’ll give you a shoutout.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for April 9th, 2019
Quick recap today as the day job takes over my day today.
Covering Climate Politics. Congrats to Julia Pyper of GTM who is venturing out to contributing editor and focus on her Poli Climate podcast alongside her co-hosts. They will be focusing on climate issues in politics leading up to the 2020 election. Supported by Schwarzenegger’s institute and Leonardo DiCaprio’s foundation, the podcast will be covering an important topic in an important time.
I Lose You Lose. Duke wants ratepayers to pay for coal ash cleanup. I have a question about the regulated monopolies. Are there any costs that consumers shouldn’t pay for? At what point do shareholders bear some risk of capital loss? This can’t be a guaranteed growth of capital investment, that’s not a monopoly anymore. That’s privatized government.
Grid Operators Speak Out. Interesting view on a renewable grid in the UK. National Grid is playing lots of cards in the energy deck on multiple continents, that could make for a fun board room at times.
PURPA In Big Sky Country. No-one really wants to open up the PURPA law but maybe the decades old law needs to be reformed so that there is clarity and certainty across the Country.
MD Win. The House in Maryland passed the 50% RPS yesterday. Ball goes to Governor Hogan, let’s see what he does.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for April 8th, 2019
Tax Credit News. Last week was a big week for clean energy incentives with two separate events. First, a bill was filed to add energy storage to the ITC eligibility on a standalone basis. This has been a long requested change in definition by the solar industry. More importantly, over 100 member of the house democratic caucus signed a letter to Chairman Neal asking for amongst other things for an extension of the ITC.
Be Real. With Democrats in charge of the House, any spending bill would need the votes of the House and now a large faction is stating their ask. The clean energy industries also came out in support of the letter. Nothing will happen immediately but keep this in mind as we get into spending season after recess. This type of omnibus spending bill is what got the last ITC extension to become reality.
Replacing Power Plants. Los Angeles is looking to find their way into a renewable future and while LADWP and local politics make it complicate, I give major kudos to Sunrun for offering another plan forward. 75,000 homes with solar and backup power would double the residential solar in LA and offset one of the power plants. To change the status quo barriers to be broken and the technical envelope needs to pushed which means that the keepers of the status quo need as much input as possible to show them what is doable. As of late, Sunrun has been doing a lot of glass shattering with their capacity auction win in ISO-NE with the help of National Grid Ventures, pay equity and their impact report. This helps everyone in the residential market, myself included, as the market is a rising tide floats all boats environment.
Fixing C&I Credit. Check out the new concept for credit security in the C&I market. This was one of the SunShot award winners a few years ago that I found rather interesting, especially if they can commercialize and scale.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for April 5th, 2019
Weekend NCAA Fun. Adam Cavitt is one of the competitors in the SolarWakeup Bracket Challenge and he’s an elite picker of NCAA games. He has 3 of the 4 Final Four teams (I have zero) and he has Virginia winning it all. This puts him in the top 5,000 pickers out of 17million. One bracket does have Texas Tech winning it all so that should make for an interesting weekend.
Have a great weekend and talk to you again on Monday!
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for April 4th, 2019
PG&E Says, Kick Rocks. As expected, PG&E has named Bill Johnson as the CEO and ‘refreshed’ the board of directors. The only name remotely associated with associated with clean energy is a board member of NextGen Climate. Vote Solar came out with statement where Adam Browning said, “White we need a renewable energy leader, TVA, under Bill Johnson’s leadership, is a renewable energy laggard.” PG&E came back with a soft defense of the climate progress by TVA which any solar installer in the territory could easily refute. The most telling aspect of this is the comment from someone that was friendly to PG&E last session. PG&E looks to be taking the approach of most monopolies and expects everyone to get on board with their plan and they will not get on board with anyone else’s.
CCAs Making A Play. The California Community Choice Aggregators are coming together and offering an option to the legislators that want option b instead of bailing out PG&E. The CCAs are saying that PG&E should become a ‘wires-only’ business and let the CCAs serve the customers. This is an intermediary step to retail choice, which I would assume CCAs are not advocating for. I hope that the legislators give this a serious look in the name of safety and let PG&E focus on keeping the State safe.
Grassley Makes Easy Statement. I was hoping that I didn’t have to read this but after Trump said that the noise from wind farms cause cancer, my phone and email didn’t stop. Now that Senator Grassley from Iowa has given a great quote on the topic, let’s highlight the “idiotic” nature of the comment. (Not my words) Solar farms may cause sunburns I guess…
Solar Needs To Do Better. Solar is going to be a marketplace for schemes and sleaze bags that are trying to get rich quick. We see them all of the time and have friends that ask us about the latest ‘rebate’, ‘credit’ and ‘energy audit’ robocall. These scams are easy to point out but we also need to have a conversation about the folks that install solar with the same attitude. I get that I am vested in this as a manufacturer of racking products and while I think everyone should use Quick Mount products, I respect most of my competitors that meet a level of engineering, testing and quality. I am happy to compete for the business of installers that follow the code and work with the building inspectors to give homeowners solar systems that will last the duration of my 25 year warranty. What solar can’t have, and what is happening, are installations that will leak next year when the installer is long gone. I have plenty of solar wall of shame content from social media and we can point to plenty of non-code compliant product being peddled at some of the biggest conferences as well.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for April 3rd, 2019
More Of The Same. Bill Johnson, the former TVA, Progress Energy and Duke Energy CEO, will likely be named as the new CEO for PG&E. Working with three of the hedge funds, PG&E is nominating a new slate of directors that will not include the clean tech names that were floated by another fund. All of this will come in time for the new legislative session where Sacramento will have to decide on the bailout for the utility around the indemnities and liabilities from last years disasters. The legislature should send a strong message by denying PG&E anything and instead going all in on CCAs, solar, storage and more retail competition. First with a return to NEM 1.0 and a higher rate if a C&I project loses the tenant off taker. Maybe PG&E will realize that Sacramento isn’t playing along with more of the same.
BlackRock Goes Clean. CleanCapital is expanding their relationship with BlackRock’s Renewable Power Group with an equity investment. Last year, BlackRock and CleanCapital acquired 60 C&I projects totaling 47MW and now BlackRock will own a piece of the development platform. More to come…
Climate Change Talks Go Mainstream. On Friday, AOC held an hourlong town hall with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes to talk about the Green New Deal and climate change. One of the important notes was AOC’s reiteration that this was a resolution and not the law. That the resolution is aspirational and with the help of Rhianna Gunn-Wright explained how the goals were achievable with the help of solar and wind. I recommend watching the event, it makes the strong case around the urgency and generational need for lofty goals.
EV Critical Mass. Last month, 58% of all auto sales in Norway were Tesla. Ford announced a 370 mile range for their EV SUV and Mercedes is ready to announce a full electric lineup by 2022. Duke Energy is asking to rate base over $70 million in charging infrastructure including for mass transportation. I haven’t seen too many demand models include massive EV adoption to the extent that I expect to become reality.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for April 2nd, 2019
Sorry, Not Sorry. First, SolarWakeup isn’t going premium. Yesterday was an April Fools joke (for now). I hope I don’t disappoint with the newsletter continuing on with the current arrangement you and I have. If you missed it, here is the link.
Quick Mount Expanding. Sometimes the most important news of the day is something I’ve been working on with the amazing team at Quick Mount PV. When we aren’t keeping the largest racking factory operating in the US, we’re looking for ways to expand and help our customers. Yesterday we announced our new warehouse and training center in Florida. Getting closer to our customers is key to our mutual success in addition to making the best portfolio of products in the industry. We won’t stop innovating and will always listen to our partners and installers when they have great feedback.
Storage Portfolio Transacts, Again. Macquarie is selling 50% of the energy storage portfolio to SUSI partners. SUSI is a Swiss investment company that was one of the first in the market with a focused fund on energy storage. Macquarie funded the AMS portfolio of Southern California storage projects a few years ago and is exiting half of that position now that it has been derisked. Macquarie’s GIG is doing some pretty great things around the world including the purchase of my former employer, Conergy, which continues to lead in Asia.
If You Care About Climate Change. Many of the stories today talk about the role of solar in the future energy and climate policies around the world. My biggest frustration with climate policy making now is the amount of money is sucks out of the process. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; there is no industry that does more to advance good policy than solar per dollar spent. If big donors care about climate change and want to do something about it, which means they have to lobby and get involved in policy, they should be putting a large portion of their advocacy spend into solar policy groups.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for April 1st, 2019
SolarWakeup Changes. In the seventh year of this newsletter, it has grown way more than I ever expected. With that growth comes some influence but it also creates costs of hosting, email services, social media and back office. As I look forward to creating a bigger family with more channels, more podcasts (Wakeup Podcast Network is coming), and bigger events, the newsletter has to become a premium product. You’ll still be able to see some of the top stories but the newsletter commentary will be sent daily to paying subscribers. It will be worth the small price and you can subscribe here.
Governor Newsom Speaks Up. Over the past few weeks PG&E has been making moves that very much differ from the goals I was hoping for. Turning down the slate of directors that could have messaged a future focused on safety and clean energy and floating the TVA CEO as the next CEO. California’s Governor wasn’t excited about these moves and in coordination with the CPUC chair sent that message loud and clear. Calling the recent moves “troubling” and focused on short term profits instead of safety and reliability.
Solar Battery Replaces Retiring Gas. Florida Power & Light will be adding a 2hour 900MWh battery to an existing solar farm in Florida. The flexibility will allow for the retirement of 2 end of life natural gas plants. The canary in the proverbial rate base mine.
SC Slow Solar Stall? The solar industry was heading to South Carolina last week with a rally and SEIA representation. Solar has a wonderful opportunity to be the anti-monopoly and anti-corruption market that benefits South Carolina. I hope the legislature can see that future and passes the bill.
LEGO Goes Solar. The family holding company of the toy company, LEGO, has acquired the majority stake of Enerparc US. Enerparc, which is based in my hometown of Hamburg Germany, is a large player in the European market and has been slowly making some moves in the US. I’m curious to see how LEGO sees itself participating in the US market as an investor or developer.
News
Opinions:
Have a great day!
Yann