American for a day

As I listened to what Obama’s inaugural address, I found myself alternating between listening to the specific things he was saying, and thinking about his overall message and what people might take from it.  To the specifics, he did specifically mention energy policy changes, harnessing the sun and seems committed to renewables.  Great news.

But the overall message does seem more important – the problems, challenges and responsibilities that people, companies and nations had yesterday are going to still be there tomorrow, but that we can rise to meet them.  Real hope.  Powerful stuff.  The contrast between that and anything our current leadership here in Canada might have to say is striking.

In Canada, we prefer our politicians to be safe and boring, and usually it works for us – we avoid leaders like Bush, but it seems we lose out on the Obamas too.  Food for thought.

2009 is going to be a good year.  Peace everyone.

Current Economic Situation and Solar

I’ve been asked a few times what the current economic situation mean to the solar industry.  (It’s amusing that people would think would I know.)  My stock answer was that it’ll probably hurt the more marginal propositions, and slow down uptake in areas where there aren’t programs to support solar.  The article linked above provides a decent analysis and some of the broad strokes.  There will be more pressure from investors to have your ducks in a row and really demonstrate profitability, and home owners might delay upgrades because getting loans becomes harder.

But demand and prices for electricity are going up, resistance to nuclear, coal and natural gas plants are holding, the consequences of carbon are becoming more apparent, consumer demand for clean energy is growing and there is an ongoing boom in innovation in the industry supported by a continuing flow of investment.  So…  I think the solar industry will weather the current economic crisis.

A couple of points to consider.  A summary of some recent deals and funding in solar by Cleantech.com, a good summary of the impact of the ITC passing, even without the US, solar is booming elsewhere, Spain for example.

Put another way, we’ve recieved dozens of meeting requests from people attending the Solar Power International 2008 conference, and we’re a start up still in the prototype phase of product development.  We have allot of interesting things to talk about, but I can’t even imagine what it must be like for people with a product already available on the market.  I said that 2009 will be remembered as the year of solar, and I stand by it.  Good time to be entering the industry.

Updates and Comments

The Renewable Investment Tax Credit passed in the senate.  I guess this is eclipsed by the current credit crisis, but this is good news.

I had a journalist ask me the other day what my opinion was on how the current credit crisis would effect renewable energy companies.  At the time I said  that shaky, mediocre propositions might not go through, and that some risky projects, especially mega-projects might get cancelled out-right.  I believed then (and believe now) that really solid technologies, business models and companies would weather this storm and excellent companies might hardly notice.  There are also the companies that Leeman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and others invested in, and I have no idea what this all means to them, but I wish them good luck.

What I’m interested in is how this will effect residential and building integrated solar installation.  It seems obvious that if there’s a construction downturn, that less new buildings with solar will be built, but if that’s the case, then that de facto means that more people, companies and institutions will be looking at the buildings they’ve got and thinking about staying for the long haul.  I think that companies that can offer a really attractive offer for solar energy installations will come out of this really well.  If a company knows it’s not moving for a decade or longer, added efficiency upgrades to their current facilities makes sense.

Right now I think solar hot water companies are going to boom because the cost versus benefit really makes sense there, and I think that home solar will have a short term lull, followed by a subsequent boom starting next year.  I said that 2009 will probably be the solar year, and I stand by that.

Also, I visited Upper Canada Solar Generation Ltd in Brockville, ON last week, and they have got some interesting things going on.  They showed me their test facility and their system using Enphase Micro-inverters.  I have to say, I was very impressed, definitely worth checking out. 

Sorry for the few updates last week, quite busy over here, but more coming this week.  Peace.