Joe Agliozzo

10.5MW Project Pipeline - SCE CREST Program

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 23:19:00 -0500

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 transmission hurdles and we will be able to break ground and complete these projects.

The CREST program and SCE’s transmission network is a world unto itself - there is an incredible amount of complexity to understand so that you have a REALISTIC idea of when you are going to be able to connect your project to the grid and how much it’s going to cost you.

There are many developers out there pushing CREST projects who are seriously deluded on connecting their projects to the grid!

51,000 solar systems in CA - who's going to maintain them?

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 19:02:44 -0500

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 little as three years it’s amazing to see how dirty the panels have become. We have also seen panels shaded by weeds growing up from in between the panels! This especially seems to be an issue with some of the early SunPower (Powerlight) lay flat systems. The complete lack of access to the interior portions of these systems is a major problem for conducting ongoing maintenance.

We inspected another site where the system was producing less than 2/3rds of projected production and the managers on site had no idea. The monitoring company that had been paid to monitor the system not only failed to notify the owner, they didn’t even realize they were being paid to monitor the system and had never enabled the data link to the meter!

These examples are for multi-million dollar commercial systems. It’s likely that there are similar problems in the residential sector. System installer’s salespeople often told the prospective buyers that the system would be maintenance free and require no servicing. In many instances this has not been the case. Panels get dirty, inverters malfunction, connections fail, etc. Meanwhile the production suffers, and once production is lost you can’t get it back.

At a minimum, it seems like there is a real need for reliable remote monitoring - like an alarm company for your solar PV system. Owners can receive daily email reports, or texts with a summary of the previous day’s production, or simply a “your system is functioning normally” message. Prolonged below expected production would then trigger a service call to find out what’s wrong with the system before more production is lost.

Solar Power International 2010

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:23:15 -0400

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 (for distributed gen) - lots of interesting things, but I am not sold on the long term performance of these systems and maintenance requirements. Also not “bankable” at this time with any banks or TEI’s I know of - that makes them a non-starter, unfortunately. This is a prime area for DOE loan guarantees, in my opinion.

3. Attendance - massive. So much buzz around solar yet so few people actually making real money in the space. I suppose it’s a combination of people still feeling that they are early in an industry that will take off and a genuine passion for green/environmental/sustainability.

4. (related) Public Attendance - on Wednesday night the show was “open to the public” and the lineup to get in was around the block. Shows either that the “public” has a real hunger for solar or free exhibit hall swag.

5. Inverters - in a follow on to the Intersolar event in SF, it seems that larger inverter manufacturers are starting to realize that inverter replacement puts a huge crimp in the cash flow of a financed project and are coming up with ideas to essentially include a reserve in their pricing to accommodate future replacement. Can take the form of an extended warranty or premium pricing that includes service and replacement.

Recurrent Energy and Kaiser - 10MW

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 15:34:21 -0400

Recurrent Energy and Kaiser

Southern California Edison Orders 200 Megawatts of SunPower Panels for Large Utility Solar Project - MarketWatch

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:54:43 -0400

Southern California Edison Orders 200 Megawatts of SunPower Panels for Large Utility Solar Project - MarketWatch:

SCE/Sunpower - T5 product

Wells Fargo Plans for $100M Solar Financing Together with SunPower -- Seeking Alpha

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:53:58 -0400

Wells Fargo Plans for $100M Solar Financing Together with SunPower -- Seeking Alpha:

Wells Fargo and SunPower team up to offer PPA’s.

Star Investor Vinod Khosla Responds : Greentech Media

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:52:12 -0400

Star Investor Vinod Khosla Responds : Greentech Media:

Interesting exchange between Greentech Media and Vinod Khosla..

Renergy Capital - Renewable Energy Financing

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0500

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.

Commented on "A VC"

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:08:37 -0500

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 same wall, but some times there is no door! I know you are a military historian, should the British have continued to fight in France (never say die/press on) to victory or retreated (quit) at Dunkirk? I bring this example up because I believe it is often cited as one of the greatest military decisions in history, preserving the men of the British army so they could eventually succeed in WWII, right? Look forward to your thoughts on this one.

Originally posted as a comment by joeagliozzo on A VC using DISQUS.

Commented on "Both Sides of the Table"

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:59:20 -0500

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 1999. Every board member was on top of our management team to hire every consultant and headhunter we could find so we could “push out product out to the market” and “grab attention and market share” and “staff up”. I guess on the one hand they were right, because as Steve Blank says “in a bubble, get liquid”. With another round or two and a bunch more employees and some semi-useful software, I guess we could have emulated Ariba, Commerce One, or one of the other ecommerce/vertical market companies that never really had a solution that solved ANY significant problems but managed to make the employees rich, but we missed that window by about 6-12 months. That did not end well! Fast forward to my next two companies where we “recovered our street smarts” and bootstrapped and had to find early customers to make ends meet, and that discipline forced us to develop stuff that people would actually pay for. The flip side to that is that bootstrapping and trying to find quickly addressable markets can cause you to go after small markets/solutions that can’t result in the kind of home run you dream of as an entrepreneur. I guess there is a happy medium in there where street smarts combine with thinking big and if you look hard enough (maybe that is an element of street smarts as well) you find an addressable entry point to a large market. That way you get early traction but can grow into a situation where you can grab the brass ring in the large market. Again, thanks for the post and the series!

Originally posted as a comment by joeagliozzo on Both Sides of the Table using DISQUS.

New York Launches Renewable Energy Assessment program

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:54:00 -0500

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 retrofits and renewable energy systems and reap an immediate savings on their energy costs. They will be able to repay their loans via an annual charge on their property tax bill.”

Full Article - http://thegovmonitor.com/world_news/united_states/new-york-to-launch-pace-loan-programs-for-property-owners-16221.html

Customer Development Model

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:33:33 -0500

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 changed now (vs 1999, when we were doing NetFreight.com) is that the COST of failing is so much less. Back then, I think we were afraid to admit to our VC and other investors that we were wrong and needed to pivot and so we were actually afraid of customer feedback if it showed we were “wrong”. We probably spent close to $2M before we even had an “alpha” out the door!

Today, with the free services or at least low cost cloud services available on the web, you really can fail much more cheaply, afford to be wrong more often until you get it right, and investors are more expectant and tolerant that you will be wrong before you get it right.

Steve also has great guidelines on how you know you are right based only on smaller sample sizes and stresses that you can’t even think about scaling the business until you have a product/customer fit.

You also have to think about what kind of market you are in. Unless you are in an established market and are either trying to be the “best” or a cheaper or niche alternative, spending wildly to grow your sales typically won’t work, because there is no market there to spend it on (yet). This lesson was learned the hard way by many, many “pioneers” who ended up only with arrows in their back (think Palm, B2B markets, etc.)

The customer development model can be applied to more than just tech or web businesses as well. Right now in our renewable energy finance business, we are constantly trying to test different finance programs with different types of customers. Hopefully by the end of the process we will have products that fit each customer segment for each type of tariff and renewable technology. I also struggle with how to characterize say the “solar” market. Is it a new market that will still take time to develop or is it a segment of the overall established “energy” market where we will be “better” to some and “cheaper” to other. I don’t think many people in the industry think about it that way, hopefully we can gain an advantage if we can come to the right conclusions and execute on them.

Check out Steve’s latest lecture posted on his blog.

Solar Peripheral Opportunities - water conservation?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:50:11 -0500

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 would consume an estimated 536 million gallons of water a year, while the Mojave Solar Project would pump 705 million gallons annually for power-plant cooling, according to applications filed with the California Energy Commission.” - full article.

The utility scale solar thermal guys want to use wet cooling because it’s more efficient than dry cooling. Given the drought conditions here in CA (and the fact the desert is the best location for solar) along with dropping panel prices, it’s possible that the PV solutions may sooner or later give solar thermal a run for their money on these projects.

Also seems that somewhere some startup can figure out some creative process to create steam or cool these systems more economically (along with cleaning the mirrors/troughs) etc.

(Re)Think: Hawaii - vicarious thrills from afar

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:00:00 -0500

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 shared at the conference.

Great example of the info available is Dave’s Startup Metrics for Pirates - AARRR (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue)

Startup Metrics for Pirates (Startonomics Hawaii Nov 2009) View more documents from Dave McClure.

Can’t wait to see what they do with sustainability tomorrow.

Solar Power International 09 - The next "Internet"?

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:02:22 -0400

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 as much naivete present in the audience now in green/solar as there was then in the “internet” space, especially among attendees looking at the commerical solar side. Most attendees have no idea how difficult it is to come up with good economics, sell the customer and finance a PPA or lease agreement. The sessions on exactly these issues were very superficial and there was very little practical advice offered on how to navigate the current market and its issues and successfully develop a solar power plant. Maybe the conference organizers consider this more of a general interest show and don’t want the speakers to dive that deep. Also I didn’t attend the workshop sessions on Monday, maybe they had a deeper dive in those meetings.

On the exhibit floor, the coolest thing were the small booth startups with new or “tweaked” technology. New microinverters, racking systems, monitoring, smart grid apps, panel/system cleaning systems, etc. This is one major difference between the green era and the internet era- there is real hardware being innovated here and real problems are being solved (the cost of producing solar power).

Andalay (not to be confused with Andole - the company that built ebay stores back in the day - which is kind of a funny parallel) did a great presentation in their booth on the benefits of their solar in a box system (with microinverters). Easier and faster to install, lower part count for simplified installation, better and more robust production (the microinverter effect), etc. I think ultimately there will be 1-3Kw systems available at Home Depot that a DYI’er can install, and the package will come with a “coupon” or something that can be used with a local electrician to make the interconnect at the meter.

Overall, it was a good show. Solar power may not be the best of the alternative energy choices from some perspectives, but it is certainly part of the solution, and the economics are getting better all the time. With continued innovation as well as support from the government (it was pointed out at the show that the total of alternative energy government support is still a fraction of that provided to the fossil fuels industry) there is a “bright” future for solar and it’s great to be part of a growing industry!

Startup Advice from Mark Twain

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:28:50 -0400

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?

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:59:00 -0400

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 Energy-presence in 5 states. Own renewables and also invest. Solar, wind, biomass. Also buy RECs. DG program is a roof lease program. Duke owns the arrays and power produced.

Power rates in North Carolina are $.04 commercial and $.08 residential. Coal is predominant.

Recurrent feels they are different because they do 2-20 mw distributed. Not sure about that, there’s quite a few that do exactly the same thing.

Hudson clean energy provides capital. Claim 500mw pipeline.

For RE they think DG should also include solar at the distribution point or substation. Following IPP business model. Essentially doing utility scale solar in a distributed fashion.

Believe in rooftop rental program with power sold on feed in tariff.

Remainder of Arno Harris’ presentation focused on advocating role for IPP’s (like RE). 500 MW between SCE and PGE for IPP.

1000 more in CPUC FIT proposal.

Opportunity for IPP’s has drastically improved in last year.

Expo Hall at Solar Power International 2009

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:31:36 -0400

Expo Hall at Solar Power International 2009

System Financing Session-Solar Power International 09

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:31:29 -0400

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 it’s good for them. Part of the value proposition for customers is reduced costs. This panel could be much more valuable if they would talk about actual agreements and specific contract clauses. For example liability assignment, risk of loss, production agreements, easements or site licenses, etc. This is basically a bunch of semi useful general “concepts”.

Solar Power Partners Installations

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:20:50 -0400

Solar Power Partners Installations