This is your SolarWakeup for March 28th, 2024
Guess Who’s Back!!! Stop the presses and get out your purchase orders! Suniva. Is. Back. In partnership with Heliene, a domestic content solution is in the market. On one hand, I guess the tariffs are doing their job as we’ve seen with other suppliers. On the other hand, will the brand survive starting the biggest trade war in solar since SolarWorld? Suniva really never went away, I’ve had multiple Suniva employees/e-mail address stay subscribed to this newsletter for the better part of 10 years. We’ll see how the market responds.
“Energy Pragmatism”. “In fact, in my nearly 50 years in finance, I’ve never seen more demand for energy infrastructure.” That’s Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, in his annual letter to shareholders as he coins the term ‘energy pragmatism’. The term encompasses the dual goals set by Countries around the world which originally started with decarbonization, i.e. energy transition, and now adding energy security. The pragmatism also brings in the additional issue of demand increase of markets due to economic growth in various sectors, Fink sites Germany and Texas as risks to suffer from outages. You can find the letter here
News
1 Solar Power World:
Heliene is first domestic silicon solar panel manufacturer to reach domestic content bonus
2 Axios:
BlackRock's Fink shows the realpolitik of the energy transition
3 Utility Dive:
A new era of price-based demand response emerges, but utilities and regulators need proof of its potential
4 Bloomberg:
Amazon Says Japan Isn't Meeting Corporate Needs for Clean Power
5 New York Times:
Yellen Warns China Against Flood of Cheap Green Energy Exports
6 Reuters:
US looks to reboot aluminium sector with a new smelter
7 PV-Tech:
Grid constraint “the fundamental challenge” for EU solar developers – LSS EU
8 Renewable Energy World:
Americans want residential solar, but trust and costs are still big concerns
9 Energy Storage News:
Rimac opens UK facility to manufacture first BESS units
Opinions:
10 PV-Magazine:
Californians could see up to $128 fixed charge added to their monthly electric bill
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for March 27th, 2024
Opinion
News
1 PV-Magazine:
1100 GW solar and 1000 GW storage now await transmission interconnection
2 Solar Power World:
Sunnova to offer solar + storage services at Home Depots across the US
3 Axios:
Biden's "hush-hush" oil boom
4 Utility Dive:
Sonnen CEO aims to repeat company’s Utah virtual power plant success
5 Bloomberg:
China Grid Giants Seek Solutions for a System Flooded With Solar
6 Reuters:
Europe's clean power sources on a record roll in early 2024
7 Energy Storage News:
Texas BESS reliability issue is ‘not over’ for ERCOT despite NPRR 1186 state-of-charge rule rebuff
Opinions:
8 Renew Economy:
“No excuses -” Australia urged to exit coal, double rooftop solar by 2030 in accelerated push to net zero
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for March 26th, 2024
Opinion
News
1 Bloomberg:
Hawaii Faces Lengthy Blackout Risk Amid Power-Plant Outages
2 Reuters:
Maxeon Solar files patent infringement lawsuit against Canadian Solar
3 Heatmap:
Biden’s Big Bet on Aluminum
4 New York Times:
Germany’s Solar Panel Industry, Once a Leader, Is Getting Squeezed
5 Utility Dive:
ISO/RTO Council urges FERC to nix NERC’s proposed cold weather reliability standard
6 Renewable Energy World:
REC Silicon delays restarting Moses Lake polysilicon plant
7 Energy Storage News:
ARENA funds microgrid trials for sodium-sulfur, zinc-bromine LDES tech in Western Australia
8 PV-Magazine:
DOE releases funds to streamline siting and permitting for renewables
Opinions:
9 Axios:
Why real estate websites are adding climate change data to home listings
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for March 25th, 2024
Slower, Faster Or As Expected. Every headline these days is about energy demand, even old statements are recirculating the internet. On a personal level, I am not sure that we are going to be meeting the moment. There is no doubt that power plants are reaching the end of their 3rd or 4th lives, coal plants from the 60s and 70s are still operating. Plants will have to retire and many of them will repower if the economic case can be made for it. That leaves a big hole in the generation side which we absolutely need to make up with all of the solar and wind that can get built. This means more interconnection throughput and faster paths to offtakes across the geographies that need the energy. Demand side changes must also be met with regulatory flexibility, particularly in data centers. As society advances with our ever growing desire to stream everything and how fast the growth in AI will impact everyone’s everyday lives, data centers are the center of that possibility. So here’s the big question for you, do you think the overlap of retirements of generation meeting demand for new power is coming at us slower, faster or as expected in forecasts?
News
1 Bloomberg:
From AI to Oil, Demand Dominates the Talk in Houston
2 Axios:
Americans' average commute distance, mapped
3 Reuters:
Europe's top utility to invest $45 billion with focus on US grids
4 PV-Tech:
Primergy signs ‘long-term’ PPA with San Diego Community Power for solar-plus-storage project
5 Renewable Energy World:
SunPower gets Nasdaq deficiency notice for late filing
6 Solar Power World:
IRS further defines energy community qualifications for IRA credit
7 Energy Storage News:
EU Batteries Regulation ‘will force energy storage industry to think more about end of life’
8 Heatmap News:
Suburbia Is the Real Battleground for Electric Cars
9 PV-Magazine:
IRA clean energy projects to create 30,000 North Carolina jobs, $10 billion to GDP
Opinions:
10 Wall Street Journal:
Rivian’s Delivery Van - Not Just for Bezos Anymore
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for March 22nd, 2024
Opinion
News
1 PV-Magazine:
California cuts interconnection costs for distributed solar developers that agree to export limits
2 Bloomberg:
EVs Are Much Lower-Emitting Than Combustion Cars
3 Utility Dive:
Granholm tells Congress ‘adjustments have been made’ to distribution transformer proposal
4 PV-Tech:
Iberdrola to invest US$17 billion in renewables by 2026
5 New York Times:
High Winds Fuel Wildfires in Virginia and Other Mid-Atlantic States
6 Renewable Energy World:
DOE launches $10M funding opportunity for interconnection solutions
7 Energy Storage News:
DOE - US energy storage pipeline up 300% since Inflation Reduction Act passed
8 Heatmap News:
The EPA's Final Auto Emission Rules Are Out
9 Canary Media:
Ohio greenlights massive solar, storage and agrivoltaics project
Opinions:
10 Reuters:
Biden's softer climate regulation shows big US bet on subsidies to decarbonize
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for March 21st, 2023
Opinion
News
1 Utility Dive:
Electrifying US trucking could cost nearly $1 trillion - Study
2 Axios:
Tensions between phaseout advocates and oil titans on display in Houston
3 PV-Magazine:
Booming U.S. energy storage installation grows 90% year-over-year
4 New York Times:
Biden’s Climate Law Has Created a Growing Market for Green Tax Credits
5 Bloomberg:
KKR, EIG to Invest $1 Billion in Solar Developer and Projects
6 Reuters:
Germany looks at special account for $488 billion power grid expansion
7 PV-Tech:
Chinese companies supplied half of US PV modules in 2023
Opinions:
8 Heatmap News:
Why Moving to 24/7 Clean Electricity Is Going to Be Really, Really Hard
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for March 20th, 2023
Opinion
News
1 New York Times:
Biden’s Climate Law Has Created a Growing Market for Green Tax Credits
2 Utility Dive:
New England could see resource adequacy troubles even with billions in investments
3 Bloomberg:
UAE’s Masdar to Buy 50% Stake in US Renewables Firm Terra-Gen
4 Axios:
Gas execs sees tailwinds from AI power needs
5 Reuters:
Equinor spends $6 billion a year to keep Norway oil, gas steady, CEO says
6 Energy Storage News:
Bulgaria gets tenders for 350MW of energy storage alongside 1,425MW renewables launched
7 Canary Media:
Data centers, bitcoin and EVs send utilities scrambling for more power
Opinions:
8 PV-Magazine:
IRENA says world needs 1.1 TW of renewables per year
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for March 19th, 2023
Reconciling The Obvious. It’s too early to say that we have a problem, but it’s too late to ignore the problem as much as we are. Largely due to two factors, operators, regulators and politicians are not up in arms about the fact that our energy use will be far larger than our energy generation in a much small time frame than expected. First, we’ve never really faced this problem before. Energy consumption went up at the rate of economic growth and in a very predictable fashion. Mornings and nights at home and day time at the office while everyone filled up their cars at the gas station. Second, power plants didn’t retire at the speed as they are going to because we’ve been extending them beyond their useful life and the plateau on energy consumption has been steady for a few decades. Package that with our replacement generation being variable in nature (for the most part), we have an operational challenge ahead for us that must not be ignored. Fixing the interconnection queues, getting more generation built and then adding markets for resilience, especially fast response, is key for keeping the lights on. Just look at the top two headlines, 58GW of retirements and massive AI data center build out, and you’ll see the problem as well.
UK Postcard. The UK just made some market changes that are having a memorable effect on the storage build out in the Country that is something that every storage owner and investor needs to consider for the future. By expanding the market and adding new products, asset owners need to now adjust their preforms and cycle management. How is their state of charge? Are they compliant with the new rules and how will they manage their augmentation? All of that to say, if they don’t have a digital solution in place to make and continue to adapt to those changes, they will either lose out on revenue, underuse their system or augment their site at the wrong time. When these events occur is the right time to reset the proforma internally and adjust the system by switching the EMS or adding additional data analytics capabilities to the system. More to come on this…
News
1 Utility Dive:
Up to 58 GW faces retirement in PJM by 2030 without replacement capacity in sight
2 Bloomberg:
AI Driving US Power Growth Forecast by 81%, NextEra Says
3 Axios:
View from Houston - CERAWeek's competing visions
4 Reuters:
China's Longi to cut nearly one-third of staff, Bloomberg News reports
5 Heatmap:
8 Down-Ballot Races That Could Shape America’s Climate Future
6 PV-Tech:
FTC Solar reports financial stabilisation following leadership change
7 Energy Storage News:
Great Britain’s battery fleet dispatching 47% more energy after changes brought in by ESO
8 Canary Media:
Utah developer quadruples battery storage to meet new electricity demand
Opinions:
9 PV-Magazine:
Can anything topple lithium-ion?
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for March 18th, 2023
Cheap Solar Panels, Winners and Losers. It’s always been the dilemma, cheap solar panels from Asia hurt the domestic manufacturing build out. On the other hand, imagine the lowest scenario, if solar panels were free then consumers and tax payers would benefit from cheaper PPAs (energy cost) and value of tax credits. I don’t know the right answer but the same is true for anything we import really. Imagine Amazon.com only selling domestically manufactured goods or Walmart. Nobody is saying all solar panels should be made here, I would welcome that, but there’s also an economic upside to it as well. I’d love to hear more thoughts on this from you all, how do you reconcile cheap solar panels?
News
1 Axios:
U.S. "tracking" to unveil new climate targets this year
2 Utility Dive:
First Solar CEO warns senators of ‘collapse’ in solar cell, module pricing
3 Associated Press:
Across the US, batteries and green energies like wind and solar combine for major climate solution
4 Bloomberg:
India Lowers Import Tax on EVs to Lure Players Like Tesla
5 Reuters:
Poland to spend $16 billion on power grid by 2034
7 Renewable Energy World:
New Oregon rules aim to streamline interconnection
8 Canary Media:
Inside the right-wing conspiracy to thwart the clean energy transition
Opinions:
9 PV-Magazine:
Solar can help with marijuana’s green problem
Have a great day!
Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for March 14th, 2023
Sea Of Suits. If there is one legacy left behind from the solar industry, it’s the 3,500 navy blue suits that come together at the Infocast Solar + Wind (And Storage) Conference in Phoenix. For the veterans, this is the old Rancho Bernardo conference. It was great to catch up with so many of you that I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing in so long. It’s incredible that our industry drives this level of collaboration and investment, representing the $50billion market that we all created in 2023 and will continue to grow.
News
1 Utility Dive:
US electricity prices outpace annual inflation
2 Politico:
Here comes $20B in climate finance
3 PV-Magazine:
Power Electronics plans 20 GW inverter factory in U.S.
4 Bloomberg:
US to Offer Record Loan for Lithium Americas Project in Nevada
5 Axios:
Biden targets freight emissions in infrastructure push
6 Financial Times:
US solar manufacturers in ‘dire situation’ as imports soar
7 Reuters:
E.ON hikes grid investments to $46 billion, gives bullish outlook
8 Renewable Energy World:
Pathways to procurement - Where public EV charging meets utilities
9 Energy Storage News:
Inflation Reduction Act doing well versus EU Green Deal because of ‘how easy it is to understand’
10 PV-Tech:
Sol Systems bags US$250 million for 189MW Illinois PV project
Opinions:
11 Canary Media:
Four ways virtual power plants can help the US grid keep up with demand
Have a great day!
Yann
