This is your SolarWakeup for September 4th, 2018
Welcome Back. Big news recap from this Labor Day Weekend. SolarWakeup Live! Jersey City is now live, we’ve got some great conversations on tap and as always a big focus on dealmaking. NJ has a bold solar agenda ahead and this is where you will want to be on November 6th. Get your tickets at solarwakeuplive.com as well as information on sponsorships.
Europe Moves Forward. The European version of the solar tariff was in the form of a minimum price. After several years of the counterintuitive tax, the EU is pulling the MIP. The UK took a brunt of the tax as it was the market that was the hottest during the time, but now many of the markets will be able to tackle unsubsidized solar within the global market dynamics.
Moniz Issues Approval. Since the CA Legislature sent SB100 to the Governor, much has been said about the pros and cons of the bill that would have California at zero carbon for 100% of its energy consumptions. The Governor has yet to sign the legislature but is widely to do so ahead of the Global Climate Action Summit happening in San Francisco. The former Secretary of Energy has chimed in, telling Axios’ Amy Harder that this is a ‘very big deal’.
Consumers Pay For Fire Damage. There was some sentiment that the California fires would cause the utilities to use shareholder money to pay for the damages, potentially causing a bankruptcy of an IOU. Given the system that we are in, where regulated monopolies have to take very little risk, I am not surprised that consumers will have to pay the tab. Whether it is fires in California or hurricanes in Florida, the regulated monopoly model is outdated and no longer works for consumers in my opinion. The shareholders and consumers need to be aligned in benefits of new investments and aligned with the regulations that both parties have to operate under.
Ain’t First, You’re Last. Many co-operative utilities (co-ops) are part of larger generating entities. This gives them some bulk buying power which was essential in larger power plant operations. Some of the entities have places caps on the co-ops regarding how much solar they could contract with individually which has angered many co-op boards that are run by the ratepayers. Some co-ops are now leaving the larger entities and finding their energy in the open market with a lot of renewable energy attached to it.
Thank Your Neighbor. If they have solar on their roofs, they save you a lot of money. This latest report shows how much solar saved the system within ISO-NE during a recent heat wave.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for August 31st, 2018
Be Heard On SolarWakeup Live. Now that I am fully installed in the hub of solar, the SolarWakeup Live studio is also in operation. After a short summer break, come back to check out the podcasts from this platform which cover that most interesting people in solar doing the most important work. Being on SolarWakeup Live means sitting on the orange chair and introducing your point of view on the most influential newsletter in solar. If you have a story to tell and want to join me in person, send your pitch the next time you are in the Bay Area.
SB700 Heads To Governor Brown. The Senate has approved SB700 in concurrence and it has made its way to Governor Brown. Further info on the Assembly vote, it passed 57-18 in a giant bipartisan victory. Lastly, the delay in the bill vote I mentioned yesterday was due to a floor speech being left behind and needed to be brought to the Assemblymember.
Lion Point Offers To Take CSIQ Private. Lion Point was part of the Suniva process when they tried to get into the debt stack during the original bankruptcy. The reason was likely due to the investment that Lion Point had in Canadian Solar. Now Lion Point sees the potential for more upside with Canadian Solar as a private company and has offered to take it private for $250million. That’s what some folks would consider, funding secured.
More Debt For Cheaper Cost. The team at kWh Analytics has been doing nice work over the past 5 years to get to this point. The work has been to figure out what makes better solar installations and creates less risk for capital providers. Once that information has been credibly gathered, asset owners can engage with kWh to put an insurance product on their debt placement and significantly increase the amount of debt that it can put on the project cash flows. In the latest round, kWh insured cash flows for a portfolio of 50MW in Oregon. I also had to pleasure to hosting the kWh team at the Quick Mount manufacturing facility for a tour last week, this type of connection making is the reason I moved to San Francisco so we could all be a lot closer together.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for August 30th, 2018
Two Days. Two Victories. Hot off the win on SB100, California keeps it coming with SB700 passing the Assembly. SB700 is a bill to extend the SGIP, the storage incentive, by 5 more years. This is an enormously important policy that allows storage to grow in the largest solar market and help consumers get solar with storage to offset the value they lost in the new time of use rate schedules. This isn’t just a victory for California however because when this market drives volume to residential and behind the meter storage locally, that means lower costs for everyone. This is part of the reason that even if you’re not doing business in California, you should consider joining CALSSA as a way of saying thank you. SB700 will head to the Senate for a concurrence vote before going to the Governor, no obstacles should come up however.
Policy Wins Take Hard Work. I was sitting in front of a computer when the votes were cast in favor of SB700 but behind the scenes, at the State, Capitol Bernadette Del Chiaro and her team at CALSSA were running around and whipping votes. They say you never want to watch sausage and laws being made and this was no different but we can recognize the work. About 15 minutes before the Assembly voted on SB700, the bill was skipped in the regular floor schedule. Most people in solar won’t ever know that and almost nobody knows, myself included, what happened in those 15 minutes. Two weeks ago 200+ solar professionals went to Sacramento to lobby for this bill and in the last year, hundreds of companies joined CALSSA to allow the lobbying to happen. My point is that none of this comes by accident or for free. If we want to succeed in this regulated business, we have to participate with our time and money.
What’s Next? There is another solar related bill on deck, AB893, which looks to increase the amount of renewable energy that California utilities have to source from developers. I’ll dig into that tomorrow to give you more insight on where that will go from here. I hope that this California edition gives hope to other States to follow suit. Governors Cuomo and Murphy should get the fear of missing out and urge their legislatures to make bold statements and grow solar in dramatic fashion.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for August 29th, 2018
The Big Deal, 100% For California. Let’s let this sink in. By a 2 vote margin, the 100% renewable energy future for California has passed the California Assembly. This isn’t a State saying, let’s aim for a carbon free electricity future, this is California, the 5th largest economy in the World. The economy that the world looks to for innovation and direction when all other things look like politics and rhetoric are ruining everything. Senator De Leon pushed hard for this policy last year and fell short, instead of letting it go, they went for it all once again with success. Governor Brown could sign the legislation by the end of the week just prior to the arrival of global dignitaries arrive in San Francisco for the Global Action Climate Summit. Hats off to the policy folks that worked overtime and the millions of people that pushed their legislators to get this done. Climate policy is moving in the wrong direction in many political arenas around the world and while Trump goes for all things coal, California stands up and gives us all hope! Go California and Go Solar!
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for August 28th, 2018
Climate Change Solved. Horses For Everyone. In the 2004 episode of the West Wing, the President’s deputy chief of staff hosts a summit on renewable energy. The biggest problem solar had in that meeting was the inability to manufacturer enough solar panels and the other renewable energy sources laughed heartily at the immaturity of the solar market. When I read today’s note that it would take 500,000 Teslas to make up for a single Nuclear plant, I couldn’t help but think of how nuanced this statement would be in 10 years. In 2017, 17million cars were sold in the US, in 2030, millions of EVs will be sold in a single year. Don’t let progress stand in the way of the real change we need in this world.
Put This Mayor On Tour. I’d like to be a Mayor. It’s local enough where you can meet your constituents where you happen to lead them, you don’t have to go home to your district to understand their issues. In other words, you are in the same situation they are in every single day. There is a respect that people have for Mayors and I have respect for the Mayor of Abita Springs, Louisiana. This town recently installed 200 solar modules, 60kW, but regardless of size the impact is far greater.
Sweet Solar News. Ever since I interviewed the CEO of Connexus Energy about their honey-making solar farm in Minnesota, it seems that I have turned the news into a trend. As solar developers seek to get approval from rural zoning boards, pollinator habitats may be a good way to get some positive votes. Send some pictures this way if you have engaged the help of bees on your solar farm.
Watch This Space. During my discussion with Engie’s Head of Innovation, Thierry Lepercq, we spoke about the future of and intersection of EVs with solar. The conversation went towards a future of autonomous EVs fueled by clean energy that are owned by the utility but dispatched by you and me. A future where EVs are always on the road and intersect fully with the solar market, is a future that I can see our market be central to.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for August 27th, 2018
OpEx Is OpEx. The headline is better than the actual story. Exxon is out with an RFP to buy solar and wind energy for its operations. The reason for this is nothing more than better contract terms than other sources. I’d actually look at the other side of this story and point out that Exxon doesn’t have the internal ability to get this done because they haven’t made that splashy solar acquisition. If you’re a corporate you are looking at doing a solar deal because there will not be a fuel rider in the contract, which is the real value here on top of the super low price. At least, Exxon should do the tax equity for the deal, they have the liability.
The Future Of Solar In NJ. NJ is a market that has been the core base for solar on the east coast. Now that Governor Murphy is leading and the legislature has passed some policy, I will be looking at the market in some greater detail. What are the interesting topics? There is a community solar pilot program docket being opened by the BPU but also other market aspects should make the market grow from its solid basis. Let me know what you’re looking at.
Cheap Solar Is An Issue. In 2008, a legislator, the chair of the energy committee in the Florida House, told me that he liked solar but he can’t pick winners and losers and solar must compete on price without his influence. I was young and naive so I took that comment in stride but it has stuck with me. 10 years later, solar costs have dropped like bad habits and may be causing legislative issues that those words can’t keep up with. Not only is solar cheap it’s democratized access to energy generation which is the shift that the energy market wasn’t anticipating 100 years ago.
Codes, Codes, Codes. Energy codes, as John Farrell points out, can matter and should matter to the markets. I would like to point out that energy, especially solar, has to fill the requirements of no less than a dozen code jurisdictions. The issue is that contractors often don’t have the ability to keep up with this and the building inspectors are still getting up to speed on all things solar. This ends with homeowners getting some installations that are below the expected standard and even allows some manufacturers to get away with poorly designed products that don’t meet code. I don’t have the answer to who it should be that ensures homeowners are protected but I’ve already asked SEIA to look into the possibility of adding parts of this to the consumer protections guide.
Solar Policy In CA. You may be surprised to see more news coverage about California solar policy. So here is the scoop. SB 700, which is a 5-year extension of the SGIP program, is doing well and is the bill that CALSSA (formerly CalSEIA) is running. On the other side is AB 893, a bill that would increase the amount of solar and wind that utilities and CCAs have to procure through offtake agreements. The complication here is that there are two bills that have solar support but one is backed by CALSSA and the other is backed by SEIA. One is for DG and one is for utility scale. I have my personal thoughts on this and much of those have been shared with the relevant parties but some of you have asked me about the bills and here is the background.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for August 24th, 2018
Have a great weekend! See you next week.
Round And Round For Coal. It’s been 6 years writing this column and the story of training coal workers to go solar has lasted about the same time. Unfortunately for them, Trump became President and promised to bring back coal. Now as we all know, coal’s future is non-existent. Just ask any utility CEO or even coal CEO, the future of coal was decided when utilities across the Country replaced their power generation with natural gas. If everyone accepted this as truth, then we could turn out focus on finding new jobs, including solar jobs, for folks in the coal economy. It is not their fault that this happened but they also need to be part of the change by telling their leaders that ‘bring back coal’ should be replaced by ‘give us solar jobs.’
Tip A Hat For Policy. Coming from the private sector, the author of this post is the Manager of Climate Change and Renewable Energy for WWF. The headline is true and each of you know it to be as well. Policy is the root of our work, it enables the rules that allow your customers to benefit from solar. That is why we need to continue to discuss the possibility of having every solar worker spend an hour per month educating or lobbying politicians about the work we are doing.
Big Solar Market Market Share. There are data points that catch my eye and seeing 5 solar module companies moving 20GW in the first half of the year was one of them. Funny enough, I would be guessing if you asked me who they were given that the US is a bit over 25% annualized in that total. Solar is a big market, let’s take some joy in that.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for August 23rd, 2018
No column today, more solar news coming your way tomorrow. Have a great day!
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for August 22nd, 2018
Solar Inverter Wars. Frank goes inside some of the behind the scenes that are causing a long-awaited product release by Huawei to be delayed. Huawei has largely avoided the public image place on ZTE by Trump but it hasn’t been able to avoid the impacts caused by tariffs. Other residential inverter companies have had to adjust their supply chain as well but the release of the Huawei line has been talked about for years at this point. It would be interesting to have transparency on the other business moves that have had to adjust due to tariffs of various nature.
Screw Solar, Go Clean Coal. Yesterday was quite the news day and dropping to the bottom of the media’s list was the fact that the administration proposed a coal policy that would kill 1,400 people. This isn’t a study by a think tank or advocacy group, this comes straight from the EPA. That’s not 1,400 total, that 1,400 per year by 2030. Over a 10 year period that’s 14,000 Americans dying for no good reason whatsoever. If we can’t make the case against this, we’re less prepared to fight than anticipated.
A Clean Energy Vision. GTM’s Julia Pyper has a great interview out with Senator Heinrich about his vision for 100% renewable energy. I won’t steal the thunder but I do want to point out that when Senator Wyden, also a democrat, was at the US ITC arguing for tariffs on behalf of SolarWorld, Senator Heinrich spoke right after to argue solar’s case. He gets the vision of our industry and I applaud him for seeking out the industry media to make his case for a vision we agree with.
Going Inside Tesla. I have a newfound respect for folks that operate manufacturing plants and I love to get an inside look at how others are doing it. Obviously, Elon is a particular level of special, love him or hate him, (I’m a fan) and you have to respect that ability to roll out products that wow the consumer. I’m sure this will drive the typical love/hate emails that usually accompany Tesla comments from me, but put it aside and enjoy this interview. It’s pretty cool.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for August 21st, 2018
Given my updated schedule for work and my continued desire to provide value to you on a daily basis, there will be days that I’ll write one extended paragraph instead of the multiple topics. I don’t mean to cheat you out of good content but until every single reader is a customer of Quick Mount PV (not sure why that hasn’t happened yet), I will be pounding the pavement to get you to switch. Hope you’re all on board with this message and I appreciate the understanding. For the other (one person) that thinks the content has gotten to spammy since I joined Quick Mount, thanks for playing along!
Future Of Energy Savings. If you play out the game plan and use New Mexico’s demand charge as a sample, you can see a tricky future for the ‘rate design’ 3.0 era, especially in markets where solar doesn’t gain enough strength to thwart any of these attempts. Storage is going to drop costs much like solar dropped from $2.50 to $0.75 per watt perhaps even faster. With storage becoming a standard part of solar, cheap solar, any utility costs may become an added savings to the solar install. That would leave the utilities to move from solar NEM fees and demand charges to minimum bills and increasing those to make up for the lost revenues. However, if the system is completely isolated, what would the argument be? With net metering, the argument is that the solar generator has access and is using the grid during overproduction. In non-export systems, it would simply be a lost revenue argument where the fight would be that some customers don’t have access to solar or that the grid was built for all customers and they must pay for what was built in the past. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
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Yann