This is your SolarWakeup for September 11th, 2023
Welcome To Vegas. Like many of you will today, I have arrived in Las Vegas. Beyond the expo and the parties, it’s all about the people and the relationships you get to expand on while we’re in the same room. Congrats to everyone launching new ideas and products this week, these are fun moments.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 8th, 2023
Nice RE+ Lead. Heading into SPI (sorry, but I had to get it out of my system), I mean RE+, the solar industry shows where it can go this year with a projection of 28 GW for the year. That includes a soft start to the year with IRA implementation efforts and guidance slowing down what will be a sprint for the foreseeable future. See you all in Vegas! Stop by the FlexGen booth to say hi and of course learn about the leading operating system software for your battery projects.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 7th, 2023
Ensuring Generation Growth. The language coming from the US offshore development companies is concerning as many of them are seeing no path to start of construction. The issue at hand is that the proforma is upside down, costs from interest rates, supply chain and inflation causing revenues to miss the mark on the capex that it will take to build GW of offshore wind. The problem is the need for generation is expanding faster than expected to we need to build all of the generation possible. That leaves a couple options for these wind projects, let utilities ratebase it or force the markets to renegotiate the offtake agreements. In the meantime, it’s important to accelerate the interconnection bottleneck and get more solar/storage projects financed and built.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 6th, 2023
Opinion
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 5th, 2023
Investing In Ecosystems. American politics mandates that you have to accomplish big things in your first two years if you can, because the election cycle eats you up in the second half of your first term and you likely lost Congressional seats in the mid-terms. Biden had the Chips Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure and Inflation Reduction Act find his signature in that first half and the administration has been busy since then. The interesting part of that is not the politics for the point I want to make today, it’s how the administration is working on all angles of the trillions of private dollars that will follow these markets. Invest in the infrastructure that enables roads, charging, and wires that will allow electrification to be resilient. Fund training for construction, factories and maintenance of a new portfolio of assets. Expand the markets that will demand the production of everything: cars, batteries, renewable energy and more. For example, most people love their EVs but some will complain about charging infrastructure that could limit their recommendation. Some want more solar, but the interconnection queue is clogged from outdated wires. All of this is wonky and early but in order to see trillions in economic growth trickle through the system, it has to get done.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for September 1st, 2023
Opinion
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for August 31st, 2023
It’s Open, All The Time. Last week, FlexGen officially opened its 24.7 remote operations center servicing energy storage asset owners for monitoring, reporting and performance analytics of those sites. This world class facility was purpose built for energy storage operations and one of the most exciting projects in my career. This comes in line with new product launches as the technology teams have shown innovation in ways that we weren’t expecting for years to come. Storage is driving grid reliance on the asset class faster than expected, meaning operators are having to keep up with new specifications and regulations, demanding more from batteries and the operating systems that keep them running. At the same time, revenues from batteries create a particularly important relationship between asset owners and the operations center. Over the past few months, I’ve learned that many systems are not actively monitored, reliably monitored and little to no analytics is performed on the data, and those systems deserve more.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for August 30th, 2023
Project Sunroof Monetizes. Google announced that it will be offering an API for rooftop solar data which has the projection of creating $100million in annual revenues in year 1. The data is said to include access to 350million properties and introduce the overlay of 30 days of air quality history. Will this be a must have feature in proposal tools or will resi solar look at this as an unnecessary addition to the data set?
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for August 29th, 2023
Don’t Let Facts Get In The Way. Of a good story, or political talking point. Ever since the 2014 era ITC extension, solar has had to trade molecular fuels subsidies for its own extensions. Today, the US develops as much oil and gas as the global markets allow them to, with little to no say from the US federal government. In many ways, Riyadh determines how much oil is drilled in the US more so than DC but I digress. Politically, there is only one thing I really care about here which is something that I’ve complained about a lot, somewhat mitigated by the transferability of the tax credits but that’s the passive income rules that solar has to abide by that oil and gas does not. Democrat votes may complain about this leading up to 2024 but I expect the Biden administration to brag about the oil production ahead of the election while knowing that renewables are taking off with the IRA and EV impact on transportation is at its highest ever.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for August 28th, 2023
Newsflash, It’s Still Hot (And Great To Invest In Batteries). Texas hit market price caps again, many times this year and something that has become somewhat of a norm since Uri. That comes days after Engie announced the acquisition of the largest storage development platform, Broad Reach Power. With some of the earliest storage projects working in Texas, BRP has shown that having assets in market unlocks revenue streams in peak demands especially. That is the thing with storage in ERCOT, the assets need to be ready to push the limits and show that they can unlock opportunities 24/7/365 and projects ultimately will change hands and that’s where the operating software (EMS) and performance analytics are incredibly important to back up the performance data comes in. As you add storage to your pipeline and want to get more intel about storage operating systems, EMS and data analytics, reach out to meet with my team at RE+.
Grid Reliability (And Security). NERC is highlighting the overlap of energy policy with grid reliability but so does the importance of grid security. As the grid has to evolve to be more resilient and intelligent, security will undeniably be linked to grid reliability. It may be up to the market participants to set the standards thou as grid policy is oftentimes years behind the actual growth in the market.
The Problem With Physics. Germany has a grid physics problem. One of the highest penetrations of renewables, a desire to retire coal and nuclear plus a less than optimal supply of natural gas matched with increased energy demand from economic growth and a transportation sector quickly transitioning to electric fuel. Put all of that together and the grid needs flexibility but little to no storage is going onto the grid.
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Yann