This is your SolarWakeup for March 13th, 2017

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for March 10th, 2017

Limited commentary this week as I am traveling in Europe.
PURPA is an excuse. Duke is looking to shorten the solar offtake contracts in NC to 5 years. Not because that is better for consumers. Only because they know a 5 year contract won’t get financed therefore stopping solar altogether.
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Pruitt versus Joe Kernen. A non-scientist’s dialogue on carbon emissions between the host of Squawk Box and Pruitt. No, he doesn’t believe CO2 is the primary driver for climate change. Yes, he wants scientists to keep studying it. No, he won’t keep on funding it. No, solar associations said absolutely nothing on the topic. No, I haven’t heard them be critical at all of the new administration.
Painful to see. Sungevity is having issues after the reverse merger collapsed. This is sad to see and continues to show how difficult it is to grow a solar company at scale. Without more markets opening up, this may get worse before it gets better.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for March 9th, 2017

Limited commentary this week as I am traveling in Europe.
Aquion goes 11. Hardware is hard. Storage owners are wondering what’s next with their batteries.
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Net metering is fair. No surprise here, let’s keep compromising though.
Energy Star. Trump can get rid of Energy Star but it’s too late and too stupid anyways. Manufacturers will keep labeling the efficiency of their products for consumers.
Revenue is strong. But margins suck. That’s why advanced energy has the same revenue as pharmaceuticals but nowhere near the influence.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for March 8th, 2017

Limited commentary this week as I am traveling in Europe.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for March 7th, 2017

Limited commentary this week as I am traveling in Europe.
Gutting the EPA. What the Trump administration has proposed as a budget for the EPA is nothing short of terrible. Anyone that can stand by that kind of cut is a special kind of person.
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The Common Ground. I get it, solar and utilities want to get along. Utilities don’t like the bad PR and solar is having a problem affording the policy battles.
Storage in NYC. Let’s fix the solar on rooftops problem in LA first because solar on roofs in Manhattan is probably a bit crazy. On the other hand, storage in the basement of each building would do much good for peak demand cuts and helping when grid needs some demand response.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for March 6th, 2017

Limited commentary this week as I am traveling in Europe.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for March 3rd, 2017

Bannon vs. Tillerson. Who would have thought? The CEO of Exxon in the cabinet seemed like the worst thing ever (I still don’t condone or support it) but then the rest of the internal staff became public. Self described economic nationalist (i.e. I win if you lose), Stephen Bannon, hates the Paris Agreement and he is taking the argument to drop out to the Oval Office (SNL covered this a few weeks ago). Tillerson is on the other side of the table, as an engineer and the 41 year veteran of Exxon, I am glad to have that voice in our corner.
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Silevo your way to the door. Somewhat quietly, but not without anticipation, Silevo has been exited by Tesla. After missing several milestones, the investors will fail to receive further payments and Panasonic has taken control of the manufacturing plant. Toodles!
Yea, this happened. In the words of my favorite demi-god, Maui. Yes it's really me, Rick Perry, breathe it in. Enjoy this video, it’s a must watch resume for the Secretary of Energy.
Enjoy your weekend! Don’t forget to buy your IREC Impact @35 and Vote Solar Equinox Tickets

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for March 2nd, 2017

That didn’t take long. Just yesterday I made the case for picking up our fight for solar policy. Later that day,  solar policy groups took a big loss in Arizona and are calling it a win. When it comes to policy or market dynamics, the test is whether or not the policy allows the market to grow going forward. If it fails the test, if it fails to allow more customers to exercise their choice to add solar, then the policy change is a loss. If, and I expect this to be the case, the solar industry saw no way to win any forward progress, a likely outcome in Arizona, and the deal on the table saved existing solar customers by grandfathering them for 20 years, then take the loss, give up and say the truth why you made the deal. The language outlining the deal was clearly agreed upon because all three press releases I saw had the same crappy language. It’s a loss folks, and that is unfortunate. We should fight with our greatest assets, our supporters by filling halls and streets with signs. Make it political. We lost against a company that is under grand jury investigation.
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 A bull distracted by bright red colors. The headlines are never ending in Washington DC and when you get large cuts to the State Department, most of us are ignoring whatever is happening to DOE or EPA. We call it moving the goal posts because once State dollars come back, you feel like you’ve won and the environmental and energy lobby has lost. Heritage and Koch brothers are laser focused on executing their plant to undo everything possible when it comes to our industry.
New headline, old news. Reuters has the news from a filing about the 20% cut to the workforce at SolarCity. I can only presume that some was due to slowdown in markets like Arizona and Nevada and some from redundancies in the merger. The company still has 12,000 employees which isn’t a small number. Read the article and I don’t see more than that, but I could be wrong.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for March1st, 2017

Utility Math 101 by Duke Energy. PURPA contracts have been around for many decades, there was never an intention for them to create massive marketplaces for solar projects in places like North Carolina, Oregon, Idaho and more. Simply put, it makes utilities buy energy from power plants at the approved avoided cost. So when it comes to Duke Energy’s cry for help, saying consumers are overpaying for the contracts on solar projects, I wonder what they are really saying. Before solar, Duke never came forward to lower the avoided cost in the contract. Maybe Duke is saying that the rate was always too high and miscalculated for years but in reality they want to lower the value of the value so that less solar gets built. They have spent the last year blocking every application and is getting sued by developers. Watch for more PURPA attacks at FERC.
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 Don’t call it a comeback. Yet. NRG was early into the clean energy game when it comes to the IPPs and today they are far from the only one. You’ve seen several IPPs make the acquisitions and start business units to take advantage of the decentralized energy that gives consumers choice. Bridging this transition from producer to a consumer centric model takes time and some financial pain. It took the foresight and investments to create the path, and yes it took the firing of a CEO to shine the light on this venture. Looking at the progress from a financial perspective, it is fair to assume that the green energy vision outlined years ago will go forward.
If you stand for nothing, what will you fall for? Yes, solar is like telecom. It is the cutting of the cord from large, central, and top down approach to a consumer centered, decentralized power system. Most importantly it puts the choice in the hand of consumers instead of monopolies. There is much to lose and hence the fighting over this change is taken on by lobbyists and special interest groups. Until recently, the solar industry fought as if their lives depended on it, in many cases it did. With rumors of gutted policy teams, shrinking budgets and fear of being partisan, solar has taken a step back. In Indiana and Kentucky as well as other States, bills look to kill solar and it doesn’t look like much is happening to fight it. Where is the SEIA press release? Where are the national companies saving a market that doesn’t yet exist? We want to be the centered, well behaved children in a political battle. So in the words of Hamilton (the musical), if you stand for nothing, Solar Industry, what’ll you fall for?

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for February 28th, 2017

Who killed coal? Can we finally bury the lead on this story? Coal is dying and solar has very little and Obama has even less to do with it. The only way to bring coal back (and this is a stretch) is to ban natural gas. Clean Coal super project, Kemper, being built by Southern Company is not economical to operate unless you run it with…natural gas. Thomas Fanning, who gives his annual “I love solar” speech  at the BNEF Summit in NYC, told investors on an earnings call last week. Clean Coal is a myth, coal doesn’t work financially, and this may go into the history books as the project that buried the industry all together.
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 The RPS is making a comeback. When we spoke to Senator Wiener of CA and Assemblyman Brooks two weeks ago on EnergyWakeup, we saw a trend. That RPS bills would make a comeback but I definitely didn’t expect it to happen so quickly. Minnesota is now looking at a 50% RPS bill. Let’s be honest about what this is and that is ratepayer protection. Legislators have done their math on energy costs and when it comes to keeping fuel cost subsidies out of the consumer’s electric bill, they know that renewables without fuel costs are the way to go.
Corporate PPAs for the win. The corporate RPS is also coming in fast but let’s give it some more time. The reason is that the corporate PPAs outside of virtual net metering and community solar States is a financial transaction in the form of electric contracts and hedges. Some corporations already do this but many don’t, especially smaller ones so it will take time for the industry to find the best way to do this. I prefer the PJM and ERCOT markets over regulatory rulemaking in community solar States. The reason is simple, I can’t control a utility regulator 10 years from now to keep the rules the same or to not change the value of the solar credit given to the offtaker.

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Yann