Tag Archives: Daily Rundown

This is your SolarWakeup for January13th, 2025

The Mega Power. Constellation is acquiring Calpine for $16billion to create a portfolio of 60GW and adds quite a bit of thermal power to Constellation’s fleet. There’s an expectation that regulators will want some divestiture to limit concentration but with the demand for power, regulators will likely also be sensitive to the pushback on anything limiting power generation.

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for January10th, 2025

Is Texas Right? It’s always been a wind state, now at 42GW, but the past few years it’s been the sunny star of solar and storage with 22GW and 6.5GW respectively. Is it the development process? The ERCOT mechanics? Lack of capacity markets? Or just the growth of demand for energy. We know it’s not the politics so it’s something else, what is that and can we replicate it?

LA Fires. My thoughts go out to any of you affected by the fires in the LA area, it is an unimaginable horror to see how devastating those fires have been. If you know of legitimate aid or fundraising efforts that I can pass along to the SolarWakeup community, please reach out to me

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for January 9th, 2025

Taking Inventory. Imagine for a moment that we don’t all work in solar and/or storage and we need to assess the rising need for energy by the hyper scaling data center build out. There is a need for energy, power, density, and reliability while solving for clean and cheap. Now do it as fast as possible. The exercise is a bit like the old adage about wanting it cheap, fast and high quality. You can only have 2 of the 3. That’s how I think about the data center need, the pipeline of generation is easily tilted towards solar with cheap and clean a clear winner. With batteries, reliability also takes a victory on this front but density can be challenging. Will there be a mix? For sure, gas will likely play a role but speed of execution is a key aspect of this exercise and also the opportunity where regulation could make a giant impact if government wants to get involved to win the AI data center dominance on the global scale. 

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for January 8th, 2025

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Rising Rates. Electricity rates are rising at a pace faster than the most absurd models I saw back 20 years ago. With the demand continuing to increase and the economy thirsty for growth underpinned by that demand, i.e. data centers. There is also a renaissance for manufacturing which requires new energy access with high capacity which translates into new utility capex, all of which is made more expensive given where today’s cost of money is. In some ways, utilities are like banks, they front the capital for infrastructure and generation (mostly infrastructure) which is then recouped by selling electrons and power via demand charges. The problem is that the total capex is spread across the board and consumers, which are largely reducing their demand, are also paying for the infrastructure investments for the corporate growth load. Solar net metering gets a knock for costing consumers money, but in reality solar has reduced the need for distribution investments. 

Opinion

Best, Yann