Trump Rode a Wave of Economic Angst. Will He Harness America’s Greatest Economic Opportunity? There are now more jobs in the solar industry than in oil/gas/coal extraction. The clean energy market (solar, wind, electric vehicles, energy storage, etc) is job opportunity and a future leadership opportunity. While I don’t expect him to subsidize clean energy, I hope Trump’s presidency won’t actively harm this sector.

Re-regulation on the horizon? Could we actually see states move from de-regulated utilities back to regulated? It’s hard to imagine, but market mechanisms are making base load generation impossible in many cases. The marginal prices aren’t covering the fixed costs.

Dept of Transportation unveils national electric vehicle charging network. Helps solve the chicken and egg problem.

Two cool demand-side energy startups:

SolPad will offer a modular solar+storage solution for both homeowners and renters. Will be an especially big win for renters who cannot put panels on their house. From what I can tell, the only downside appears to be the fact that you have to designate which outlet the power goes to, instead of it just flowing to your entire house.

Ice Cub offers a combo A/C+thermal storage unit. The A/C can be run as a conventional air conditioner, or a tank can freeze ice and then run the A/C during times of high electricity price without using electricity. Projected to save customers who have time-varying rates up to $500/year, without much of a difference in install price.

End of the era of baseline power plants?

[Hydro storage at the Helms Pumped Storage Plant, located 50 miles east of Fresno,] which began operating in 1984, was supported by regulators because it was assumed there would be excess power at night from California’s baseload nuclear power plants. Now the opposite is occurring. As more and more solar power gets connected to the grid both in front of and behind the meter, there is the potential for excess power being generated in the middle of the day. The 1,212-megawatt Helms project and other sources of energy storage can be used to absorb excess solar power and dispatch it later in a flexible manner when consumers need the power.

Good discussion of effect of tax credits and grid parity on renewables. Currently, wind can bid negative prices in and still make money if the market clears in the negative $/MWh range, because of tax credits. When the tax credits expire and renewables dominate the grid, what do the markets clear at? How do renewable developers make money if peaks are eliminated from the load curve? They’re not making much money installing the power, as a race to the bottom has dropped payments to installers.

Solar plus storage: With SolarCity deal, Tesla aims to speed clean energy transition.

In order to solve the sustainable energy problem, you need sustainable energy generation, you need storage because of the intermittency of solar and wind, and then you need to have electric transport,” he said. “Those are the three ingredients we need to have a good future, so that’s kind of how I think about things — not that we’re an automotive company or anything like that. -Musk

The Rise of the Regional Solar Installer. I’m finding it more and more likely that the most prominent national solar installers today are putting all the work/money into developing cheap solar power. In a few years, a new company will swoop in (perhaps from these regional installers), use the ‘lessons learned’ from the current solar developers, and use a demonstrably better business plan to corner the market. Thus, it is possible that the big gorilla of the solar industry will not be one of the national names you may have already heard.

Tesla offers all-stock deal that values SolarCity at $2.5 billion. Musk was already a large shareholder at SolarCity.

Musk announces that Musk will review Musk's offer to buy Musk's company, says Musk. $TSLA $SCTY

— The Daytrade™ (@d4ytrad3) June 21, 2016

On the one hand, this is cool from a vertically-integrated clean energy offering:

Musk saw this as a compelling solution and a “no-brainer” where a consumer can go into a store and “with a few clicks” buy an electric vehicle, a solar system and an energy storage system. It makes “more effective use of our stores said Musk.

On the other hand, neither SolarCity nor Tesla have shown any interest in making money, and neither is close to profitable. Combining them will probably hasten bankruptcy (most likely) or world-domination (possibly).

One of GTM’s analysts said, “A 21-30 percent premium on a depressed stock price, paid entirely in equity in another risky company. Don’t know that I’d take this as a SCTY shareholder.”

Prep for a solar+storage boom in the next couple decades.

Offshore wind on Lake Erie to be first North American freshwater offshore wind project.