January 2012
1 post
10.5MW Project Pipeline - SCE CREST Program
Renergy was pleased to assist in closing a 10.5MW (DC) pipeline in the Mojave desert. We have 6 projects that are contracted under the SCE CREST feed in tariff program.
The end of the year was quite a scramble to meet the expiration of the grant in lieu of ITC expiration date, but we were able to do it. Baker & McKenzie was great to work with as was Reznick and we got it done.
Now a few...
November 2010
1 post
51,000 solar systems in CA - who's going to...
We have been looking at the business of cleaning and maintaining solar PV systems.
According to Go Solar California (the organization that runs the California Solar Initiative) there are over 51,000 systems either installed or currently reserved in the big three shareholder owned utilities’ territories (PG&E, SCE and SDG&E).
In looking at systems that have been in place for as...
October 2010
1 post
Solar Power International 2010
Amazing how SPI continues to grow and grow - we mostly did meetings but couple anecdotes from the exhibit hall:
1. Panel manufacturers - how can any of these guys possibly distinguish themselves from the competition on a technical or features basis? Other than bankability (warranty) and price - there is no discernible difference. Commodity.
2. Tracking, concentrating, other than pv technology...
March 2010
4 posts
Recurrent Energy and Kaiser - 10MW
Recurrent Energy and Kaiser
Southern California Edison Orders 200 Megawatts of... →
SCE/Sunpower - T5 product
Wells Fargo Plans for $100M Solar Financing... →
Wells Fargo and SunPower team up to offer PPA’s.
Star Investor Vinod Khosla Responds : Greentech... →
Interesting exchange between Greentech Media and Vinod Khosla..
January 2010
1 post
Renergy Capital - Renewable Energy Financing
As of January 2010, I have joined Renergy Capital, LLC as a partner, along with Jeff Phillips and John Markham.
We intend to finance distributed solar generation, fuel cell and other renewable energy projects at commercial scale.
December 2009
2 posts
Commented on "A VC"
But JLM, as Seth Godin says, sometimes it’s more important to know when to quit if you want to succeed (see “The Dip” for example). Always a fine line between persevering/”never say die” and “the definition of insanity is trying the same thing expecting a different result”.
Sometimes you have to find the door instead of bashing your head against the...
Commented on "Both Sides of the Table"
Great post! Sometimes street smarts can take a while to sink in (or be rediscovered). I founded a company in 1999 and left a very staid old (low margin) industry to do so. The founder of my prior company had boostrapped it over 25 years into a $100M business and I learned a lot about how to run a lean and successful business from him.
That all went out the window when we took venture capital in...
November 2009
4 posts
3 tags
New York Launches Renewable Energy Assessment...
Similar to California’s AB 811 program, New York has just launched it’s own version:
“The legislation will empower communities to launch Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) loan programs, allowing them to leverage federal funds and provide loans to commercial and residential property owners. Property owners could then opt into these programs, finance energy efficiency...
3 tags
Customer Development Model
Steve Blank is the founder of e.Piphany - a 1999 IPO deal that allowed him to retire. His methodology is called “Customer Development” and involves iterating quickly based on customer feedback. The earlier variants of this method (or similar anyway) include Guy Kawasaki’s iterative development model and “fail fast, fail quickly” models.
I think what’s...
Solar Peripheral Opportunities - water...
Beyond just panels or the generation piece of the equation, there are many opportunities in the space surrounding solar - from racking and installation solutions, to inverters, to cooling to storage.
Couple interesting articles lately discuss the massive amounts of water the utility scale guys are applying to pump in the Mojave desert here in California:
“The Genesis Solar Energy Project...
(Re)Think: Hawaii - vicarious thrills from afar
One of the great things about social media is how much you can learn from killer events, even when you can’t be there in person.
Great example is (Re)Think: Hawaii - by reading Dave McClure’s posts along with searching the hashtag #rethink (along with the slides on slideshare) you could really pick up a lot of the information about building a successful web business that was being...
October 2009
10 posts
Solar Power International 09 - The next...
The show reminded me of the internet shows I used to attend, exhibit/speak at in the 1999 era (and a bit of the Search Engine Marketing show feel in the 2004-2006 era). Lots of optimism, rapidly increasing attendance (compared to last year, I think the show as about 3X as big both in attendees and exhibitors) and enthusiasm. Those are the good points.
On the other hand, I think there is equally...
Startup Advice from Mark Twain
One of my favorite quotes about being an entrepreneur from Mark Twain: “To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.” Just substitute “starting a business” for “life”, and you have the essential ingredient for being an entrepreneur. The rest is just experience.
Who should own the solar asset?
Session here at Solar Power International 09.
SunPower has 450mw worldwide and 900 dealers.
Solar equipment companies starting to invest in installs.
New category of merchant plant which has no long term tariff, instead sells into grid on spot market. Also shared arrays that are owned in common and solar utilities. These are setup specifIcally to sell to an identified group of customers.
Duke...
System Financing Session-Solar Power International...
Panel discussion. Ed Feo of Milberg thinks it’s crazy that there isn’t standardized docs for solar PPA’s. Also important to make sure all parties have same expectations as to costs and benefits, prior to commencement. What can be standardized or simplified? - power purchase agreement Feo thinks that a lot of customer education will be required to get customers to understand why...
Electricity rates will rise to cover Hybrid...
Bloomberg - SCE electric rates to increase to cover infrastructure for electric car charging - http://bit.ly/2x5TkG - great news for solar!
Hybrids - consquences for the grid
Adoption of plug in hybrids requiring charging will mean huge demand on a grid in SoCal that can’t even handle increase in big screen tv’s!
LA Times Plug in Hybrids - what about the grid?
LA Times story on plug in hybrids - http://bit.ly/1jM2r4 - was hoping for more reporting on the consequences for the grid.
Inverters - the next wave to "green the grid"
More details soon, but learning a lot about inverters and how electricity moves around the power grid. Reactive power is what allows the energy to flow - creates magnetic field, etc. It is something you don’t see or know it’s there (or sometimes that you are paying for it) but it makes it all possible. There are a lot of efficiency gains to be made both on the grid and within...
April 2009
1 post
Sale of Largest Solar Distributor in North America...
This is the deal we worked on for 18 months - now going full bore on solar finance! Acquisition Gives ITOCHU Largest Solar Distribution Network in the U.S. April 13, 2009 New York: April 13, 2009 — ITOCHU Corporation, jointly with ITOCHU International Inc. (collectively, ITOCHU), has agreed to acquire the business of SolarNet LLC, a solar energy solutions provider that includes DC Power...
February 2009
4 posts
PG&E 500MW plan - 1/2 PG&E Land 1/2 Private
Many reports of announcement - but the really interesting news is that 1/2 (or 250MW) will be contracted out to private developers. No details on whether this will be “build to own” or PPA style deals (with PG&E as offtaker). Question - can PG&E take the CSI subsidy as well? Or is that a violation of the CPUC rules that setup the CSI?
Solar in a Box - the Ultimate Residential...
Installation costs for residential solar typically represent more than half the cost of the installed array, and the installation process cries out for innovation. Several companies have created “solar in a box” products. Typically, they come in kit form and include panels with dedicated inverters, racking/attachment system and wiring for interconnection to the grid. Here’s a...
Grants instead of Tax Credits - Boom?
The new stimulus bill apparently will provide for government grants to replace the current tax credit scheme. On the surface this should solve a lot of problems, since as everyone knows there is a lack of investors with tax credit appetites. Couple of interesting wrinkles though (as I understand it): 1. must place in service in 2009 or 2010 - so long term projects are out of luck (like utility...
Solar Data - Opensolar.org
Great mashup of CSI data and Google Maps - you can see the locations, components of costs of projects that have received CSI rebates - http://opensolar.org/. Suggestions - 1. Instead of pulldowns provide search functions for installers. 2. Allow searching/sorting by geo, size, $$, type of panel, date, etc. Great start though and very useful..
January 2009
1 post
MMA New $200M fund - $10/watt?
News on MMA’s new fund - http://greenwombat.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/ - stated $200M fund, 20.6MW = approx. $10/watt.. This seems high in relation to the prices we are seeing and what most lenders will fund. Possible developer note/other depreciation or tax credit multiplier?
July 2008
1 post
AB 811 - New California Law Authorizes Cities to...
California has passed a new law AB 811, that authorizes cities in California to make low interest loans secured by a lien on the property. The liens transfer to any subsequent owner if the property is transferred and the property owner makes payments much as they would property tax payments. This mechanism should allow cities to easily raise bond money to finance the programs, given that the loans...
March 2008
2 posts
SCE ProLogis Solar Deal - Who pays?
Yesterdays announcement that ProLogis had agreed to lease roofspace to SCE for solar arrays raises some interesting issues for the industry, most importantly, can private sector PPA based solar integrators be competitive with public utilities? Arno Harris thinks so. He is the CEO of Recurrent Energy, so of course he has to! The biggest question is whether the public (and the many public watchdog...
California Solar Initative - Affordable...
The CSI is making progress on the long promised program for affordable multifamily housing. A draft staff proposal was submitted on February 29, 2008 and a public hearing was held this week. Presumably the program should be available in the next 90 days. This one is going to go fast, even faster than the commercial CSI, which in many areas is now all the way down to step 5 ($.22 per KwH). The...
January 2008
1 post
California Solar Initiative Subsidies are Going...
California Solar Initiative Subsidies are Going Fast! Here’s the latest numbers: January 2008 Opens with High Solar MW Reservations
TRIGGER TRACKER SNAPSHOT FOR JANUARY 15, 2008 Administrator Customer Current Step ...
December 2007
1 post
California Energy Commission Report on Solar...
The California Energy Commission (CEC) through the Public Interest Energy Research Program (PIER) commissioned a report from Navigant Consulting that has quite a bit of useful data (as of September 2007) for solar market sizing. The report is titled “California Rooftop Photovoltaic (PV) Resource Assessment and Growth Potential by County, and can be downloaded here. The report focuses on the...
November 2007
1 post
Solar Power in California - Disruptive...
For the last couple months I have spent some time learning about the solar power opportunities here in California. The market is being fed by two financial engines - (1) The California Solar Initiative (CSI) which is a subsidy program from the state of California and (2) the Federal tax credit (30% for commercial installations) which is scheduled to expire at year end 2008, but many are working to...
October 2004
5 posts
Guy Kawasaki - "Art of the Start" and...
I am starting to get into Guy’s new book - The Art of the Start. Chapter 5 is called The Art of Bootstrapping (I like to skip around in most business books and use them more as reference guides).
There is a lot of great stuff in this chapter, but today I want to focus on Guy’s thoughts on a bootstrappable business (meaning one that you can start and grow on your own steam). I think...
Local Search - The Pie Gets Bigger
Couple of interesting announcements yesterday from Yahoo! and Bill Gross of Idealab (Idealab was the spawning ground for Overture as GoTo.net, Yahoo! purchased Overture).
Gross announced Snap and Insider Pages in conjunction with John Batelle’s Web2.0 conference. More about Snap in a future post (in short, the transparency and ability to pay on the basis of sales generated, etc. is pretty...
New Battle Brewing in Search Engine Optimization?
Great post by Jim Hedger at Search Engine News Journal on the possibility of a new battle in the search engine optimization wars. Apparently, Jim feels that the PhD’s at Google are fed up with what they see as the “gaming” of their search engine results by SEO firms. Jim speculates that Google may be rebuilding their ENTIRE 4.5 BILLION index of webpages, using a new spider to...
Paid Search is Expanding
Bambi Francisco’s article (sorry, the article is behind a subscription wall at CBS MarketWatch) this morning is about law firms using paid search advertising to troll for Vioxx clients. The really interesting tidbits in the article are that pay per click advertising accounts for 40% of online advertising expenditures and is growing at 63% per year. Admittedly, these are some of the rosier...
As Guy Kawasaki Says "Don't Worry, Be Crappy"
No posts from me since May because I have been working fairly non stop on my new company. We are in stealth mode, but getting ready to launch (soon!).
Guy Kawasaki is one of my favorite business writers and I was fortunate enough to partner with Garage Technology Ventures (when it was garage.com) when I raised venture capital for my first startup in 1999.
Guy has a new book out called “The...
May 2004
5 posts
Blog Moved
Moved my blog over to Blogger.com today, thus the posts all have the May 10, 2004 date.
Original Postings were Feb, March, April and May, roughly…
Coreflix sold to public company
Today we completed the sale of the Coreflix (tm) online DVD rental business to Americana Publishing, Inc.(OTC Bulletin Board: APBH). I have written about this business before, but in short it was a DVD rental service geared towards “action” and “extreme” sports titles. This was the first “disruptive” business I have launched and it proved to me the basic tenets...
Emergent Business Strategy
An important part of a disruptive business model is the concept of an “emergent” strategy. In short, startups never start out with the right strategy, part of the entrepreneurial effort is figuring out the right strategy as you go - thus the right strategy “emerges”.
As Clayton Christensen points out in “The Innovators Solution” (see link in previous post), a...
coreflix.com
My co-founder and I, Ben Padnos, along with another co-founder, started coreflix.com (www.coreflix.com) in late 2002 as an internet based DVD rental service for Action Sports (Surf, Skate, Snow, etc.). Learning from my last company, NetFreight, I had conceptualized this business to fit into the disruptive framework.
A little background on the Action Sports DVD industry.
1. There are no...
NetFreight.com
I founded NetFreight.com in 1998. It was the first business to business internet based marketplace to service the transportation marketplace (long haul trucking, both full truckload and less than truckload). Over the next two years, we raised and spent approximately $3.2M, built some cool technology but never really got traction in the marketplace (although we did have some cool test customers...