This is your SolarWakeup for December 13th, 2021
Devastation By Tornado. Tornadoes have this terrible ability of destruction with very little notice that scares me whenever I see it happen. It’s so powerful that from an infrastructure point, as an engineer, I don’t even know if you can design to prevent the damage or outright destruction especially from an energy perspective. Our thoughts go out to the communities affected by the storms this weekend, if there is a rebuilding effort you are aware of, please pass it along.
Will It, When? What will happen with Build Back Better going into the holidays? Lindsey Graham seems to be ramping up his defense against it which means that there could be some traction on the Senate side to get it through, a cheery holiday advantage for the solar industry that could use the stability of a ten year ITC extension under the supply chain challenges poised by layers of tariffs and complicated logistics. So will it pass? If so, when? This is the last week of the year…
Forecasting Is Hard, And Conservative. Solar forecasts have always been wrong, sometimes by factors but when it comes to energy storage, the forecasts will be shown to be off by multiples of that. The reality is that there is a business case to make for storage from every angle, at every level. But in so many ways, it’s hard to come out with forecasts given that storage is like 2010 solar in many ways, more to come…
Freeing Energy. Bill Nussey, host of the Freeing Energy Podcast has released his latest book centered around why distributed resources will play a major role in the grid and grow much faster than anyone predicts. You can get his book on Amazon and learn more about it here.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for December 10th, 2021
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This is your SolarWakeup for December 9th, 2021
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This is your SolarWakeup for December 8th, 2021
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This is your SolarWakeup for December 7th, 2021
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This is your SolarWakeup for December 6th, 2021
Can We Get Bigger Markets? FERC is signaling a desire for utilities and States to create larger power markets. Coordinated with studies that show that Colorado, as an example, would lower consumer costs if they entered a Western market expanding energy volumes. We saw similar efforts being fancied in the Southeast, but with less competition.
What Should The Price Signals Be? If you think a bigger market is helpful, I would argue that wider markets that operate faster would be even better. Creating value, i.e. price signals, i.e. ways for people to make money, would create behavior that enhance the grid resilience and flexibility. Imagine if behind the meter solar and storage could get capacity dollars and dynamic pricing for energy exports, that would create more capitalistic investment by homeowners. If industrial warehouse owners could generate income if the tenant leaves or uses less energy than the rooftop can generate, then more generation would get built where it’s needed. Everyone complains that solar is an ‘as available’ resource, but never wants to create the price signal that provides the upside to make it a shaped curve generation.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for December 3rd, 2021
No Denying The Transition. Whether is the EIA, BNEF or your local headline, the energy transition is showing its way to the top. Solar, wind and new sources like green hydrogen are getting build anywhere developers can get land, approvals and revenue streams. It’s not just the ESG/climate movement creating the demand, its capitalism and the access to revenue that is enabled by energy storage joining the party. I’ll give you an example, if a power plant (any type of fuel source) connects to the grid, it exports everything it produces when it produces. Solar and wind plants produce anytime the natural resource is available (i.e. its sunny) versus some peaker plants that run 20 hours per year, made only profitable by capacity contracts. This power plant already has a grid interconnection agreement, approvals and land which means adding storage is easy. Storage now allows the timing gap to occur between generation and export that is a proprietary energy arbitrage between fuel cost and energy value. When you control your marginal cost of production, controlling your value of export is the key to success.
So Many Use Cases. The exciting part of our work today is that a new market opportunity comes to fruition every day. In recent RFPs by utilities, generation without fuel cost matched with dispatch capability has been cheapest and the most reliable long term cost to consumers, i.e. no fuel cost volatility. Regulators in the Northeast are hearing arguments about reliability for the grid as well, especially in winter events. While we do little to value reliability, resilience and societal benefits in our grid investments, consumers are taking some of those matters in their own hands as well by buying solar and storage for their homes and businesses. What is the value of reliability? per kWh please…
Managing The Pace Of Change. In yesterday’s SolarWakeup, we saw a chart of EV market share and it’s incredible to see it as almost nonexistent still. If you’ve been to a charging station recently with your EV, you’ve recently waited in line for a charging port. Now for a repeat of something you’ve read here before, there’s a reason that Tesla’s energy storage business is called stationary power because the vehicles are the mobile version of it and this is where grid operators see value and incredible challenge. How do they forecast when vehicle owners would be willing to ‘charge’ the grid versus charge their car, i.e. how reliable is the EV owner as a power source. Now 10x the market share of EVs…
Looking At 24 x 7. With Amazon doing another 1GW of corporate procurement, let’s recall the next two steps that happen for corporates. First, all energy consumption will be offset with procurement and REC purchases. Second, all energy consumption will be offset by renewable energy procured within the same time segment, i.e. 2am consumption offset by 2am renewable generation. Lastly, the time match will be supplemented by geographical match. That’s how 24 x 7 will work for every major corporate.
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This is your SolarWakeup for December 2nd, 2021
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This is your SolarWakeup for December 1st, 2021
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This is your SolarWakeup for November 30th, 2021
Market Making For Renewables. As FERC orders 2222 and 841 make its way through rule making, we’ve already seen that energy storage and DERs are providing new revenue streams in the market. In many ways, storage lets asset owners commoditize the generation source and no longer exporting the energy when its made but when its most valuable. If we learned anything during the Texas winter storm is that ancillary services can be incredibly valuable and that hedges for renewables are actually must deliver contracts. From here I expect that we will see more folks opting for merchant over hedges and many more revenue streams for storage to come. Those revenue streams will accelerate renewables development that no longer needs the off take agreement to get the project to NTP.
Best Use Land Value. The Real Deal has land value in upstate New York going up at the best use case for solar development. Seems to me that all of those land owners are then moving to my neighborhood in Florida.
A Job That Never Opens. A few months ago Adam Browning from Vote Solar announced his departure which means we now have a job opening that has never existed in the 17 years that I’ve been in solar. You can apply to be the executive director of Vote Solar which is a great way to earn a living. So if this job is for you, you can read about it and apply here. If you apply and get the job, I expect a board nomination in return!
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Yann