Tag Archives: Daily Rundown

This is your SolarWakeup for January 9th, 2023

The Locational Value. Community solar has the keys to two of the biggest values in solar. First, it removes single offtaker credit risk, whether credit is for default or leverage on renegotiation. For every homeowner or tenant that cancels, there’s a waiting list of additional offtakers ready to take their place. Second, it no longer associates load with immediate location which makes it easier to create a value proposition. Every day, we read about need for housing and more density, but meeting that density requires capacity that has to be met by community solar. Regulators should be tripling down on this market alongside generation aggregation programs.

Come Work With Me. I’m adding a few folks to my team at FlexGen. As you know, we’ve been building out the energy storage ecosystem with our services and the leading EMS platform in batteries. With the growth of the market, our team needs to continue to expand. I’ve had the pleasure of working with some of the best across solar and storage over the past decades and want to continue that trend. Here is the link to apply

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.

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for January 8th, 2023

Let’s Catch Up. Welcome to 2024, I hope you all enjoyed your break, doing whatever kept you busy. For the many new subscribers, welcome to SolarWakeup. For returning subscribers, thank you and please forward this newsletter to someone that may enjoy our daily chats. I’ll be at Intersolar North America next week if you are there to say hello! Lastly, please engage with our sponsors that help keep this community thriving and consider joining the ranks. We are the oldest and largest newsletter in the solar industry and now’s a great time to reach your target audience by sponsoring SolarWakeup.

Mild Winter Meets Winter Storm. Grid planning is always a tale of two extremes. While the winter has been so light that owning a ski resort may be the worst investment idea of 2024, planners are sounding the alarm on what would happen if a weather event strains supply with a major gas plant retiring in May. I’ll note that sounding this alarm is an amazing economic lobby for higher payments by the power markets to keep the plant operating. This has happened several times in the past and could be the case here once again. On the other hand, this should also increase the focus on having new generation and storage approved for construction and revenues.

An Economy’s Bandwidth. Talk to any economic development professional and they will tell you that the biggest hurdle for them is access to grid connection. Our pain of interconnection is similar for those looking to build new factories, data centers or offices. There simply isn’t enough bandwidth on the grid to build our the economic development at the pace that capitalism is trying to build it.

California Needs A 180. It’s a shame to see the turn that the California residential solar market has taken. Ultimately, the economy needs rooftop solar to be robust and enable those connected assets to be interconnected and ultimately become the reliable asset that they can be. But none of that will happen if the ecosystem that has been built over 20 years is left to wither. Unfortunately the headlines of the layoffs will continue until regulators reengage in a fruitful discussion with industry on stopping this.

Storage Growth Intelligence. So much to be said about the storage market and how it could evolve in various markets. I’m heading to London next month to check in on the happenings across the pond but in the US market analysis says that growth should be robust. One of the things that’s becoming clear is that portfolios will be built, they will use various suppliers based on supply availability and regulators will require upgrades (which has already happened). Asset owners will need to run those assets efficiently and reliably while ultimately realizing that they will also need to perform robust data analytics across their portfolio. Not all controls are created equal and they will likely not work on an interconnected basis across platforms, so making that decision intelligently is part of that game. With three major trade shows this year from ISNA, ACP and RE+ (forever SPI), you’ll see how much storage talk happens across those convention floors

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.

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for December 22nd, 2023

Adieu 2023. You’ll hear from me one more time in 2023, as I recap the storylines that will remind me of this rather strange year. So this will be the last regularly scheduled newsletter for the year and an interesting thought popped into my head as I sat down to write this. BNEF’s Nat Bullard, who started writing his weekly rundown 2 years after I did, announced today that he will be ending Sparklines after a 9 year run. NREL also used to have a newsletter that ended circa 2013. I’m not ending the SolarWakeup run, while many of you have commented that I’ve been writing less, which is true, I still enjoy getting the news out to you. Which means that SolarWakeup will continue its run as the most influential newsletter in solar (and storage). I also don’t have hundreds of thousands of subscribers (though I think I should) because this isn’t my job. Writing this newsletter is how I get better at my day job, it makes me learn every day about what is going on and then have a thought about it. This level of routine, which is not in my DNA, has forced me to take into account so many different market variables and then publicly challenge you to correct me on that view if I’m wrong. So here’s to many more rundowns and thoughts, with your job being two things. First, I hope you value this enough to tell folks that they should subscribe and second, you challenge and correct me on my views so that we can find ways to keep getting better at this.
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.

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for December 21st, 2023

The 2023 Year, Your Views. It’s been a year, hasn’t it? As we put a bow on 2023, I will put some thoughts down over the weekend but before I publish that I want to hear from you. In 2022, we won the IRA battle and this year has been about the foundation of winning the win, i.e. making it work for us. What’s the one thing you’ll remember about 2023? Hit reply and let me know, your views could make it into the newsletter.

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.

Opinion

Best, Yann