Specialist
Former director at Sunrun Inc
Agenda
- US clean energy policy drivers, focusing on Inflation Reduction Act and California NEM (Net Energy Metering) 3.0
- Solar and storage bundling and net customer creation cost drivers
- Key player positioning and installation growth outlook in markets such as Texas
Questions
1.
What impact could we see from the clean energy component of the Inflation Reduction Act on US solar installers given the extension of solar tax credits, increased domestic solar spending, manufacturing subsidies and so on?
2.
Would you say the solar tax credit extensions are pivotal to the industry’s continued growth? Would industry growth have been able to stand up on its own without the ITC [investment tax credit]?
3.
Do you expect quite a bit of dislocation between federal policy and the favourable parts of the Inflation Reduction Act for the solar industry and what’s going on at the state level?
4.
How could NEM [Net Energy Metering] 3.0 in California flesh out given it’s such a large solar market?
5.
How severe would an incremental USD 1 per kilowatt on the access fee over USD 2 per kilowatt be for the Californian solar market? If we think about USD 2-8, would there be a large impact on solar growth in the state?
6.
Do you consider the imposition of grid access fees to be necessary long term, so even if we don’t see it with NEM 3.0, it will be imposed eventually anyway to counteract grid congestion?
7.
Do you expect policy leakage when we look at California and other key states in the US solar market? Could net metering policy tighten across the US in the near-to-medium term?
8.
Who could be the biggest losers from grid access charges in California across the main installers, including Sunrun, Sunnova, SunPower and SolarCity? Who is the major market share owner in the state?
9.
Could you clarify what you mean by long-term oversubscription risk on the low-income community credit?
10.
How should we think about the interplay among the key policy items that we’re seeing on the horizon, including the Inflation Reduction Act and the infrastructure bill? How could the US solar market evolve with regards to linkages with EV credits, battery incentives and so on?
11.
How much value accretion could come from bundling and energy-as-a-service to key solar installers? Now that we’ve not just got the solar system and the modules but the battery and EV charging systems, some of this will obviously have to come from partnerships, but is there significant value accretion when we think about the current lifetime value of the customer relative to what it could evolve to with bundling?
12.
Which key player is probably best-positioned to benefit from offering products and services under one bundle?
13.
How sensitive or insulated are players regarding what’s going on at the policy level? Are certain installers more sensitive to what happens on the policy stage than others that have more robust, standalone operating models?
14.
What’s your outlook on net creation cost, to use a Sunrun metric? What are your thoughts on this when we think about CAC [customer acquisition cost], installation cost and how the policy framework that we’re looking at could impact this, as well as the inflationary environment and recessionary conditions that are emerging?
15.
Why was Texas previously inoperable if it’s now the key growth market in the near term? How do we think about the penetration cost here for installers? What would it take to get a foot in the door and work towards similar penetration to that in California?
16.
The industry perhaps has a golden window of opportunity with the Inflation Reduction Act, the infrastructure bill and utility rates being so high based on fossil fuel prices. If major installers get outsized installation growth in new markets such as ERCOT [Electric Reliability Council of Texas], would they be sticky or transitory?
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