By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: The Motley Fool, a stock analysis website, wrote an article with the headline – Solar-Manufacturing Renaissance Already Falling Apart, which then went on to Express surprise that the Trump 30% tariffs on solar modules hasn’t had module companies flocking to the United States in droves. Come to the shocking (not shocking) conclusion that maybe the tariffs won’t drive an American module renaissance, let alone a manufacturing renaissance. SolarWakeup’s View:  There’s a larger question here, sparked by the odd headline: Can something fall apart if it was almost entirely mythical to begin with? When Trump … Read More →

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: If you’ve ever doubted whether utilities fear that solar will put them out of business, read Sammy Roth’s excellent report in The Desert Sun, in which he Discovered that a public utility had an “oppo research” department to find dirt on the owner of Renova Energy, an outspoken critic of the utility, and Used ratepayer money to hire private investigators for this fishing expedition. SolarWakeup’s View: Let’s get this out of the way first: If you’re not reading Sammy Roth in The Desert Sun regularly, what the heck is wrong with you? He covers solar … Read More →

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: At 10:55 am, Trump Administration officials told assembled reporters that the intelligence community Has determined Russia is behind attempts to penetrate our electricity grid and have done so successfully. The U.S. is sending an alert to energy companies to raise threat awareness. SolarWakeup’s View:  It’s not enough that the Russians may have hacked our elections in 2016. Now they’re trying to take down our electrical grid. The Associated Press first reported the story and is slowly being picked up by other media outlets. The information is scarce at this point, but according to national … Read More →

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: SEIA and GTM Research finally closed the book on 2017 with the release of their U.S. Solar Market Insight report, which indicated the following (quoting directly from the release) In 2017, the U.S. market installed 10.6 GW-DC of solar PV, a 30% decrease year-over-year from 2016. In 2017, 30% of all new electric generating capacity brought online in the U.S. came from solar, ranking second during that period only to natural gas. Q4 2017 saw price increases in most PV market segments stemming from increases in module costs. This was due to a global … Read More →

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: Teslarati got hold of aerial photos of Tesla’s Gigafactory near Reno, Nevada, which show Significant progress in the past few weeks on constructing what Elon Musk has said will be a 70 MW system on its roof. Plenty of work still needs to be done to make the system operational. SolarWakeup’s View:  Elon Musk is one of the best showmen in the world. His ability to get earned media (as opposed to media he pays for) is uncanny and (I say this jealously) brilliant. Take, for example, his Reno, Nevada, Gigafactory (GF1), which will … Read More →

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) passed a rule by a vote of 2-3 (no, we’re not sure how that’s a thing either) that Tries to usurp the rights of states to set their own clean-energy goals. Privileges fossil fuels over renewable electricity sources by not accounting for the full value of energies like wind and solar. SolarWakeup’s View:  For the moment, let’s set aside the issue of the Republicans’ mythical support of “states’ rights,” which they largely ignore when inconvenient on a multitude of issues, to which you can now add electricity generation. … Read More →

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed a sweeping electricity bill yesterday that had been championed by the state’s largest utility, Dominion Energy. The bill declares 5 GW of solar and wind development as being in the public interest. It also discusses how adding renewable resources will also modernize the grid. SolarWakeup’s View:  This bill shouldn’t surprise anyone. Shortly before he left office, former Governor Terry McAuliffe signed a raft of legislation to offer support for the solar industry across every segment, designed to encourage solar development in the state. From yesterday’s signing of Senate Bill … Read More →

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: The Minnesota-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance, who employs one of the best DG analysts in the industry in John Farrell, have released a study that Proves that distributed generation is now cost competitive with utility-scale solar. The sweet-spot for project size is between 10 MW and 20 MW. SolarWakeup’s View:  The common narrative in the solar industry is that DG solar is still more expensive utility-scale. But an analysis by the Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR) says that a full analysis shows that narrative is simply wrong. Farrell’s analysis is worth reading for … Read More →

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: Quartz Media’s Michael Coren read a Greentech Media report and pronounced that solar in California is overbuilt. At the same time, Coren contends there is plenty of solar in the pipeline. And the residential and commercial markets are still moving ahead. SolarWakeup’s View: What happens when writers who aren’t steeped in the inner workings of solar try to write about it? Bad information gets spewed out into the atmosphere and undoes whatever pollution control solar has done in the first place. Now, I’m sure sure Michael Coren can write rings around around me when it … Read More →

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What Happened: GE unveiled its latest wind turbine, the Haliade-X. It will Stand 853-feet tall. Have blades the length of a football field. Will, if all goes according to plan, will produce 67 GWh annually (Vox calls that “whackadoodle.”) SolarWakeup’s View: First off, let me say my first reaction to this story was, “Whoa – that is one enormous wind turbine.” But then it got me to thinking: When a utility retires a fossil-fuel-fired plant, how much wind and solar will we need to replace all that generation? The answer is a ton. When a plant is … Read More →