This is your SolarWakeup for November 27th, 2023
Plans Leading To Action. If I can sum up 2023 it’s all about ‘what we’ll do’. By that I mean it was a year of setting aspirational goals and developing plans, goals and guidance. When it comes to doing, it left something to the imagination. As I shifted from solar to storage nearly three years ago, I didn’t know that I would see myself transitioning into a trillion dollar market that would set the foundation for another leap in solar’s growth potential. But ultimately, when the IRA passed in 2022, we thought 2023 would create uncapped execution in 2023 as we all held our breath for the elusive guidance and of course interconnection queues. Storage, unlike solar, is also doing self discovery for the source of capital that wants to own an asset that does not generate electricity and oftentimes does not have an offtake agreement. Heading into December, you can see the what if becoming the we’re doing because unanswered questions are finding their solutions.
Managing Installer Cash Flow. Interest rates are the highest in 22 years, increasing solar financing costs and softening consumer demand for loan products. Businesses are feeling the pain of strained cash flows, labor costs and profitability pressures. Palmetto, a B2B technology company accelerating the adoption of clean energy, has announced a new partnership offering for solar installers to help stabilize cash flows and grow faster in today’s market. Built on top of Palmetto’s Clean Energy Operating Platform, this is a comprehensive suite of tools and services enabling installers to streamline operations, optimize performance, and increase profitability. Visit https://www.palmetto.com/finance or contact capital@palmetto.com for more.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for November 21th, 2023
Happy Thanksgiving. I am thankful to have spent another year with you all in this crazy, amazing digital relationship. For those of you that are recent subscribers, thank you for joining and for those that have been with me for 12 years, thank you for making this part of my life. While I have had less time to write this year than ever before, I do enjoy sharing my thoughts from time to time with you and engaging in conversations about what is going on. We’re heading into the holiday season and that’s the time to reflect back on where this market has come from and where it’s ultimately going. We’ll be off until Monday, talk soon!
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for November 20th, 2023
Managing Installer Cash Flow. Interest rates are the highest in 22 years, increasing solar financing costs and softening consumer demand for loan products. Businesses are feeling the pain of strained cash flows, labor costs and profitability pressures. Palmetto, a B2B technology company accelerating the adoption of clean energy, has announced a new partnership offering for solar installers to help stabilize cash flows and grow faster in today’s market. Built on top of Palmetto’s Clean Energy Operating Platform, this is a comprehensive suite of tools and services enabling installers to streamline operations, optimize performance, and increase profitability. Visit https://www.palmetto.com/
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for November 17th, 2023
California Going Backwards. For some reason, California is undoing decades of leadership in solar with policies undermining the ability to build more solar. While the State boasts some of the highest electricity rates, which will continue to support some solar market, it does not allow for many of the largest energy users to host and benefit from solar energy. Landing in any major California airport still shows acres and acres of empty rooftops.
Trackers Creating Jobs. I am very proud to see Nevados’s growth in the tracker space. This is a company I’ve been personally close to for many years and it’s amazing to see the demand for this incredible and much needed all terrain tracking solution allow for new job growth in the form of a steel partnership. With the Nevados tracker you can build solar farms without grading and disturbing the natural landscape of your leased land, lowering costs and reducing impacts to the natural habitat. It also works to lower labor costs with more traditional utility scale solar farms. Definitely consider them in your plans when you’re selecting vendors.
Managing Installer Cash Flow. Interest rates are the highest in 22 years, increasing solar financing costs and softening consumer demand for loan products. Businesses are feeling the pain of strained cash flows, labor costs and profitability pressures. Palmetto, a B2B technology company accelerating the adoption of clean energy, has announced a new partnership offering for solar installers to help stabilize cash flows and grow faster in today’s market. Built on top of Palmetto’s Clean Energy Operating Platform, this is a comprehensive suite of tools and services enabling installers to streamline operations, optimize performance, and increase profitability. Visit https://www.palmetto.com/finance or contact capital@palmetto.com for more.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for November 16th, 2023
Missed Offshore Wind Opportunity. UK did what the US has thus far failed to do and that’s to renegotiate the PPAs for offshore wind developments that are now unbuildable. Thanks to inflation, supply chain issues and interest rates rising, the offtake agreements are just not bankable and the only way the generation can find its way onto the grid is with an adjustment. If the PPAs go back to bid, guess what will come back? Higher rates, but instead of now, the projects will get further time delays, so why not just get it done.
Managing Installer Cash Flow. Interest rates are the highest in 22 years, increasing solar financing costs and softening consumer demand for loan products. Businesses are feeling the pain of strained cash flows, labor costs and profitability pressures. Palmetto, a B2B technology company accelerating the adoption of clean energy, has announced a new partnership offering for solar installers to help stabilize cash flows and grow faster in today’s market. Built on top of Palmetto’s Clean Energy Operating Platform, this is a comprehensive suite of tools and services enabling installers to streamline operations, optimize performance, and increase profitability. Visit https://www.palmetto.com/finance or contact capital@palmetto.com for more.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for November 14th, 2023
Managing Installer Cash Flow. Interest rates are the highest in 22 years, increasing solar financing costs and softening consumer demand for loan products. Businesses are feeling the pain of strained cash flows, labor costs and profitability pressures. Palmetto, a B2B technology company accelerating the adoption of clean energy, has announced a new partnership offering for solar installers to help stabilize cash flows and grow faster in today’s market. Built on top of Palmetto’s Clean Energy Operating Platform, this is a comprehensive suite of tools and services enabling installers to streamline operations, optimize performance, and increase profitability. Visit https://www.palmetto.com/
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for November 13th, 2023
Update The Grid, For Free. America is a great system, if you want something fixed or built, just promote it as an opportunity to make money, send the right price signal and private capital will arrive to the scene. The top article argues my point.
Nuclear Hurting Itself. A lot is made about the system being anti-nuclear but ultimately it’s up to the nuclear ecosystem to be able to build projects on budget and they repeatedly struggle with that. Look at offshore wind, massive supply chain disruptions and the fastest increase of cost of capital in decades and regulators won’t reopen negotiations but Vogtle Nuclear got a decade of increased and early cost recovery.
Batteries Are Already Saving The Grid. More and more studies are coming out about the Texas winter storm and how batteries played a role (those that were operational at least, not all storage systems are created equal). But that is also true as operators are thinking about retirements and variability from wind and solar. Storage’s role has a tune of multi-trillion dollar opportunity.
Managing Installer Cash Flow. Interest rates are the highest in 22 years, increasing solar financing costs and softening consumer demand for loan products. Businesses feel the pain of strained cash flows, labor costs and profitability pressures. Palmetto, a B2B technology company accelerating the adoption of clean energy, has announced a new partnership offering for solar installers to help stabilize cash flows and grow faster in today’s market. Built on top of Palmetto’s Clean Energy Operating Platform, this is a comprehensive suite of tools and services enabling installers to streamline operations, optimize performance, and increase profitability. Visit https://www.palmetto.com/finance or contact capital@palmetto.com for more.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for November 10th, 2023
It’s The Friday Rundown. We’re heading into the tail end of the year, everyone is doing budgets and ready for the 2024 that 2023 was supposed to give us. Don’t forget to budget your policy spend in time and money!
Upgrades, You Need To Plan For. This hasn’t affected your solar plants but it will affect your battery plants within the first few years of operation and then many times throughout the life. You’ll need to regularly comply with regulatory specifications and upgrade your plant to take advantage of more revenue streams. Read today’s top story to see who’s doing this well and doing it now.
Utility Capital Stockage. Utilities are getting their balance sheets into shape for a massive deployment of capital in the coming years. This is causing some pain in the stock prices but ultimately should be seen as a positive for future investments being made towards the energy transition. Of course, there are trillions in external investments ready to be made for utilities as an offtaker, a path that some utilities without the needed capital will have to take if needed.
Managing Installer Cash Flow. Interest rates are the highest in 22 years, increasing solar financing costs and softening consumer demand for loan products. Businesses are feeling the pain of strained cash flows, labor costs and profitability pressures. Palmetto, a B2B technology company accelerating the adoption of clean energy, has announced a new partnership offering for solar installers to help stabilize cash flows and grow faster in today’s market. Built on top of Palmetto’s Clean Energy Operating Platform, this is a comprehensive suite of tools and services enabling installers to streamline operations, optimize performance, and increase profitability. Visit https://www.palmetto.com/finance or contact capital@palmetto.com for more.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for November 9th, 2023
Managing Installer Cash Flow. Interest rates are the highest in 22 years, increasing solar financing costs and softening consumer demand for loan products. Businesses are feeling the pain of strained cash flows, labor costs and profitability pressures. Palmetto, a B2B technology company accelerating the adoption of clean energy, has announced a new partnership offering for solar installers to help stabilize cash flows and grow faster in today’s market. Built on top of Palmetto’s Clean Energy Operating Platform, this is a comprehensive suite of tools and services enabling installers to streamline operations, optimize performance, and increase profitability. Visit https://www.palmetto.com/
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for November 8th, 2023
The Grid Needs. Let’s keep it simple, in order to accelerate the deployment of capital we need: improved interconnection process, faster permitting and more price signals.
Interconnections. No deal can get to ready to build and certainly not to notice to proceed without access to the grid connection. This isn’t a simple process to fix but removing the complexity with a bunch of baby steps would come a long way.
Permitting. I’m not advocating for today’s story from Germany but too much home rule may be a problem. Land owners want to monetize their land but being stopped to do so by third parties that slow the development of solar farms. Solar farms don’t impact the neighbourhood with traffic nor change the vista, instead they create new tax revenues and jobs. Permitting and zoning for solar farms ends up being just as important as interconnections but far more arbitrary.
Price Signals. If project cost X, the revenue must be X + Y in order to make an investable return. The higher that the certainty on Y is, the lower the return has to be in order to get an investment committees approval. Solar development has to negotiate decades long revenue certainty in order to get past this step, which isn’t easy while storage is often left working on merchant revenue streams that weren’t really signaled for storage specific reasons. Power markets could create a solar plus storage rate price signal that would drive faster paths to construction for one example or could create storage specific price signals for faster deployment as well.
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Yann