This is your SolarWakeup for October 12th, 2018

We are entering the end of the year quarter and while we shoot to hit our numbers, we have to worry about what is coming up next. Based on seeing the first responses of the Solar Sentiment Survey makes me think that while you are optimistic, you need to be looking at what’s next. New Jersey is on track to replace the SREC program with something new while adding energy storage, innovating PJM markets and piloting community solar. That’s why we are heading the Jersey City next for SolarWakeup Live! the most influential event in solar. If you haven’t been to one yet, the event is a day of 1 on 1 interviews with the folks that drive the market. I do all of the interviews and get to the bottom of the issues that are important to your business. Head to SolarWakeuplive.com to get your ticket. Today only, you can get 20% off using code SWL20.

CALSSA Annual Dinner. See you there tonight! Make sure to place your bids for the auction products!

SolarEdge Buys Batteries, I Hate It. Yesterday, SolarEdge has acquired a high tech battery company called Kokam for about $88million. The premise I presume is that batteries will become as normal on a solar installation as the inverter meaning that another box will sit near the inverter with energy storage normalized into the system. That premise however creates a commodity out of the energy storage system which makes owning the battery manufacturing a bad place in my opinion. SolarEdge should have focused on acquiring a system integration and playing the commodity of the battery market to ride the cost curve down. We are in the very early stages of energy storage and I’m betting on the price declines of battery cells being very steep.

SRA > NRA. This isn’t a political post. This is a post about the funding mechanism for the NRA and the perception of the power that the NRA uses in political arenas. Everytime someone buys a gun, they join the NRA. They get a sticker and then they are on the NRA mailing list to continue supporting the association. In solar we don’t currently have a similar mechanism where every solar installation has a built in funding mechanism, until now (once you participate of course). The Solar Rights Alliance is looking to join every solar customer into an alliance and activate them during moments of advocacy across the Country. Check out the great program by seeing more about the information released in the CleanTechnica post.

NY Is In A Rush. Another $40 million from the New York State Government to spur C&I solar and storage in the State. While the money is appreciated, it would be great to see the VDER program fixed so that solar can work without the peaks and valleys created by incentive programs. VDER is too complicated today and doesn’t fully stack the value generated by generation. Moreover, the simplicity of a community solar type program could go a big way within the VDER framework. There are some signs that programs are getting more renewables in place, my friend Katie Ullman just went to work at Drift which works on the market side of greening consumers’ energy needs.

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Have a great day!
Yann

SolarEdge Moves Into The Energy Storage Business

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent In the ever-competitive microinverter business, even the slighest innovation or acquisition can tip the scales in favor of one company or another. SolarEdge is hoping its acquisition of a majority stake in a South Korean lithium-ion battery maker will give it just such an edge. SolarEdge announced that it has entered into definitive agreements to acquire a major stake in Kokam Co., Ltd. Headquartered in South Korea, Kokam is a provider of Lithium-ion battery cells, batteries and energy storage solutions. [wds id=”3″] “Our technological innovation combined with Kokam’s world-class team and renowned battery storage solutions, … Read More →

East Meets West: Boston Expands Community Solar Access To New Territories

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Massachusetts is still working out its solar future, but at least for residents of Boston and the eastern part of the state, community solar has become much easier to access, thanks to the efforts of a company called Ampion. Under a new agreement with Eversource, the area’s primary utility, residents living in the eastern half of Massachusetts will now be able to purchase solar electricity from community solar farms in the western part of the state. Prior to this agreement, the two segments of Eversource’s customer base were considered separately, severely hindering the spread of … Read More →

This is your SolarWakeup for October 11th, 2018

Don’t Ignore The Argument. Op-eds from across the spectrum appear in publications that have the intention of turning the readers against solar. In politics the decision is often to shift off an issue instead of making an argument for the position. In solar the decision to shape an argument is helped by the fact that the reader has an 80% chance of being pro-solar. To be more specific, a Koch funded argument appeared in The Hill a few days ago attacking net metering. Today you have the response from Vote Solar’s Zadie Oleksiw rightly taking on the argument. 
Distributed Solar Consolidation. Another acquisition yesterday on the development platform side, this time by Constellation. The East Coast based utility has purchased PFMG Solar from Spear Point Energy. The Southern California developer has been actively developing on the West Coast for many years. Interestingly side note, I signed in to a meeting at PFMG Solar, circa 2011,  and as I walked in, the Constellation team was walking out. Now the name on the door will change, congrats to all involved. 
Google Continues Their Plan. It’s been over a year since my conversation with then Google’s Sam Aarons who is now with Lyft. Back then the search giant had announced it had reached 100% renewable energy with two follow on goals. First, match the energy needs with renewable energy within the same geography and lastly, match the geography and the need with renewable energy at time of day. The post highlighted here shows the goal outlined a year ago and the ability to execute on it in certain locations in the near future. 
Storage In Carolinas. Doesn’t look like Duke will be the driver to get to scale doing storage in the Carolinas. $500 million may sound good on a press release but over 15 years it’s borderline offensive. Energy storage will be tens of billions in scale all across the Country in a few years and one filing from a utility shows how out of tune the incumbents are with the energy market of the 21st century. 
To Dos. If you haven’t done so yet, make sure to fill out the Solar Sentiment Survey for Q3. Also, check out the agenda for SolarWakeup Live! Jersey City, not only a great event to learn about the market movements but also get some deals done. All the top folks in the market will be there.

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Have a great day!
Yann

Duke Energy Plans To Invest $500 Million In Energy Storage

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent It may not seem like much. After all, it only works out to 37.5 MWh per year. But Duke Energy’s decision to invest $500 million for energy storage in conjunction with its solar portfolio in the Carolinas is still big, given the utility’s ongoing love/hate relationship with solar energy. The investment will take place over 15 years and will increase battery capacity in North Carolina from its current 15 MW capacity and in South Carolina, well – right now you need a microscope to see its battery storage, so any increase would be immense. [wds … Read More →

DoE Grants Aim To Find Longer-Duration Batteries

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Utility Dive (UD) had an interesting piece on the recent Department of Energy (DoE) grants that are aimed at finding longer-duration batteries, which are important as more renewables join the grid. Right now, according to UD, lithium ion batteries don’t provide enough storage capacity (typically four hours) to really be a sufficient for the widespread battery storage that is necessary as renewables increase their penetration throughout the country. As they should, the DoE is now investing government funds in research-and-development (R&D) to find alternatives. [wds id=”3″] UD reports: Last month, the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects … Read More →

This is your SolarWakeup for October 10th, 2018

NJ Utilities Commission. There are a lot of solar and storage topics on the docket in NJ. Recently the community solar rules for the pilot program came out. Coming up are the rules for the replacement to the SREC program and of course the studies on the energy storage implementation. That’s just on the solar front, there are topics regarding PSE&G’s proposals plus the offshore wind vision for New Jersey. This is a long way to say that the discussion with NJ BPU President Fiordaliso will be great. I look forward to getting the point of view from him about the clean energy future. 
Solar Jobs Survey. The annual survey to count the solar jobs, it’s a big number, is available to be filled out. Make sure to take your time and pass it along to your human resource department so that we can get an accurate count. The link to the survey is in the post below. 
Watch FERC. Montana may not be the hotbed for PURPA contracts but when it comes to FERC ruling on solar and storage with PURPA, this may be ground zero. PURPA has arguably been the best policy written decades ago with no assumption that it would help solar. Nonetheless it has been used in States across the Country to lower the cost of electricity for consumers and help utilities add a lot of solar with little friction. 
SEIA Install White Paper. I see a lot of solar installations and most of them are well done. Of course that is a function of my work at Quick Mount PV but I also have seen some terrible installations that great installers have to fix for homeowners. Solar does have a small subset of ‘get rich quick’ installers. These are folks that could care less about the industry and are simply trying to cut corners and take money from homeowners. Our job as an industry is to make sure that competition elevates quality and does not race the quality to the bottom dollar. SEIA’s white paper on best practices for installations is a great start. It highlights the documentation that each party in the process should provide to the homeowner and it complements the education of homeowners and code officials. Send me more of your great pictures and solar wall of shame contestants, we need to highlight the good and bad!
Sentiment Survey. Don’t forget to take the SolarWakeup Solar Market Sentiment Survey. 30 seconds from start to finish and results will be released at solarwakeuplive.com

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Have a great day!
Yann

Make Time To Take The Solar Foundation’s Jobs Survey

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent I know it seems like we just did this, but that’s because as you get older, time speeds up exponentially. So when you receive your notification from The Solar Foundation that it’s time to fill out their National Jobs Survey again, don’t think it’s a mistake; it really is that time of year again. It should be obvious, but every year I hear people ask why they should fill it out. How does it help them? To which I say, are you crazy? [wds id=”3″] It’s a 15-minute survey, but the effects of it are … Read More →

Op-Ed: New Jersey Must Protect Low-Income Solar

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Yesterday, I sung the praises of Vote Solar as an organization that does the work behind the scenes to make your job possible. I listed several of their recent efforts and asked you to support their Equinox fundraiser on October 18. Then I sat down at my computer this morning and found an article in NJ Spotlight by – you guessed it – Vote Solar (and our friends at GRID Alternatives) fighting for low-income solar [wds id=”3″] (As a writer, I must also say I’m always impressed when I see a Vote Solar piece because … Read More →

This is your SolarWakeup for October 9th, 2018

Stopping Coal Is Not Enough. The NY Times is out with an op-ed to call for the end of coal in response to the IPCC climate change report. The truth is that the policies that are needed to make an impact on our climate future are much more than shutting off coal though that is a nice start. Policies, enacted by legislators, need to be bolder and far reaching. They need to be long term and they need to be bipartisan. I may be an ideologue here but I think we are close to that point where the politics should shift. First, renewables are incredibly popular and undecideds care that you are pro-solar. Second, hedge fund managers are warning about climate change. Third, there are billions to be made by billionaires in clean energy. 
Go Blue! It is a little known fact that more than 10 years ago, Michigan was well on its way to being a solar manufacturing hub. Governor Granholm was known to talk solar on an ongoing basis before it was popular. Over the past year, Michigan and its utilities have been on a path to stop the cheapest solar energy from getting to market. But after a change of heart which started with the settlement with the Tom Steyer led coalition, the regulators are starting to drive towards the PURPA restart. With details still in short supply, there is work to do but another example of how the policy teams move the market forward. 
An Easy Ask. In case you needed more reasons from me on why you should come to the Vote Solar event next week in DC, Frank is here to remind you of the likely ways that Vote Solar is helping you make more money. The solar coaster would be a lot more turbulent if Vote Solar wasn’t as good as it was. So while my ask is for you to help the group with $100, imagine the following scenario. Imagine a solar market where Vote Solar gets a check for $100 million dollars from a donor. Imagine if the solar advocacy groups had unlimited budgets to educate and organize to move solar policies forward. So instead of asking you for $100million, please consider coming to and donating $100 to Vote Solar. 
NJ Community Solar. Simplifying the market for community solar is a good way to make solar more accessible within the PJM market which should have made it possible long ago. This is why I am excited to have the NJ BPU President sit with me at SolarWakeup Live! Jersey City to talk about the future of the solar market in New Jersey. I want to also thank the sponsors of the event for making it possible. Please consider visiting the sites of Aten Solar, Pfister Energy and PV Pros by clicking on the logos below. 
Opportunity Missed. I am reminded of the mistake that we made during the Obama years with regard to TVA. The board of the TVA should have been stacked with folks supportive of solar policies. It would have been an example of how to lead a 21st century utility and how consumers can get cheaper electricity made from the resources they believe in.

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Have a great day!
Yann