Tag Archives: Daily Rundown

This is your SolarWakeup for June 8th, 2023

Domestic Supply Chain Unknowns. Passing the IRA created intentions, rules, guidance and now interpretations. The intention is to make the products that are installed by American workers right here, with many new factories activating to participate in this market. The rules were published by congress and drafted by the agencies that oversee the execution of the law passed by the legislative branch. Now the guidance has come out, meant to create rules of the road so to speak, and enable deployment of billions of capital. However, the interpretations leave some guidance with additional questions that the industry is working through. Part of this is also on the buyers in the industry to choose to go along with a domestic content success, it can’t just be a decision to buy something cheaper made elsewhere. At some point, the market has to decide to make local manufacturing a given, not a choice.

Not Peanuts. Duke’s capital plan includes $65billion of investments in the next 5 years, 80% of which are labeled as low carbon. This isn’t a unique situation, the investments being made by munis, cooperatives, and investor-owned utilities are significant and growing to allow for the grid to become more stable and resilient within the energy transition.

Texas Storage Postcard (From The Future). Texas, with a robust, energy based power market, has been installing storage at quite the pace, especially in the distribution scale because of the quicker permitting process (take note!). As storage has been built in ERCOT, regulators have realized that batteries can do quite a few things that are valuable to maintain grid stability. This realization comes with new services and regulations that storage assets need to conform to, requiring new configurations, upgraded controls package and analytics capabilities. This will be a reality with Federal agencies as well, particularly on industrial controls and cybersecurity protocols. Happy to connect you with folks from our FlexGen team to get more insight on these rather complex and nuanced challenges that the market will maneuver through.

The Lender You Can Depend On. In a market that is full of uncertainty, you can rely on Dividend Finance to bring you white glove service to help you reach your long-term goals. Apply Here

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for June 7th, 2023

SEIA Clout Expansion. Having spent the last few days in DC for the SEIA board meeting and administration briefings, I’m in awe of how far this industry has come. SEIA’s leadership under the stewardship of CEO Abby Hopper makes the calls and gets calls back from the agencies doing the hard work of implementing the IRA. On Monday, positive feedback was heard from Departments of Labor, Interior, Energy and Treasury on how and when the rules would come out. The ended with a grand finale with John Podesta, who’s running the IRA implementation for President Biden, speaking to the board for over an hour. This administration cares about the solar industry, what it takes to get it right and how to do more. In short, solar is doing more than we ever thought possible 15 years ago.

Government Role In Insurance. State Farm has decided to stop writing new policies in some parts of California but long before this headline, disaster risks have made premiums incredibly high, too high for many. Florida had a similar issue because of hurricane risk and that’s why the State of Florida created a public option, so that everyone has access to relatively affordable hurricane insurance. California will have to do a similar thing and so will other states that suffer from climate risk because the private insurance market can’t mitigate losses year after year.

The Lender You Can Depend On. In a market that is full of uncertainty, you can rely on Dividend Finance to bring you white glove service to help you reach your long-term goals. Apply Here

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Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for June 6th, 2023

Would You Rather? It’s still hard to understand what causes pushback to solar project developments. Farmland that’s used for solar means that the farming isn’t able to pay the same rent. People don’t want to see it? But they still want their lights to turn on. Ultimately it becomes an exercise of staying in the dialogue as long as possible because homeowners also don’t want a gas, coal or nuclear plane near their home either, they probably pick solar over all their options.

You Get A Battery (Plant). France gets it, someone in the EU needs to be building battery factory ecosystems and Macron seems to setting his Country up for success. The reality is that engine manufacturing is getting replaced by battery manufacturing and the best way to build a battery plant is to lean in and create a market beyond EVs. Manufacturing plants are all about the throughput, that is where “we make it up through volume” comes from, an EV plant that doubles as a storage product is also important.

The Lender You Can Depend On. In a market that is full of uncertainty, you can rely on Dividend Finance to bring you white glove service to help you reach your long-term goals. Apply Here

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This is your SolarWakeup for June 5th, 2023

What’s In The Debt Deal? Headlines highlight environmental permitting for energy projects as being included in the debt ceiling deal. First, getting debt ceiling issue behind us creates an economic certainty that is a pre-requisite for anything that is to follow in terms of private capital investments. What the deal also brings to the forefront is the need to talk about permitting as something that hinders the type of private investments that our infrastructure needs and time kills deals (as well as returns). The deal does not actually deal with the issue of permitting and interconnection in the way that is really needed but more of a down payment for further discussions.

Almost $2 But Need $4. Trillion dollars per year, that is. The amount of capital that needs to be invested annually according to the IEA in order to meet the climate and energy needs that come with the energy transition. New generation, new resilience, new fuel delivery mechanisms, are all part of the global picture as we transition more and more energy usage from molecules to electrons. But at $1.7trillion this year, that’s not a bad market to serve of be investing out of.

You Snooze, You Lose. The UK has a good idea when it comes to clearing interconnection queues. When it’s your turn to step you, you better be ready to move or you’ll lose your turn. Innovators could be disadvantaged because selling or raising money for a project without interconnection is hard which means that large corporations with captive capital sources could benefit from a quick turn around. The intention to move through the queue faster is the right idea and that envelope should be pushed.

The Lender You Can Depend On. In a market that is full of uncertainty, you can rely on Dividend Finance to bring you white glove service to help you reach your long-term goals. Apply Here

Opinion

Best, Yann