Huge spike in short interest according to the figures just released: SolarCity Corporation (SCTY) Short Interest - NASDAQ.com
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Johan
Ex got M3 in the divorce, waiting for EU Model Y!
jhm
Well-Known Member
Chanos and his crew double down
Each to their own. I don't agree buy hey, that's what makes a market right? I will watch for a possibility to enter in with some calls if there is an iv. drop and return to normal put-call parity after the ER.
Yesterday a lot of Oct. puts had IV over .9. Today they're down to under .75. Calls still have lower IV around .65, but still high and not at parity.
So basically alot of ootion holders lost money today, even on calls. But this may be a sign that shorts are backing off. Maybe the dumb shorts haven't figured this out yet.
California Launches Its First Real-World Smart Inverter Test : Greentech Media
Rooftop PV and behind-the-meter batteries can team up to reduce customer energy bills, shave off expensive peaks in building energy consumption, and store midday solar-generated electrons for evening discharge to help smooth out their impact on the grid. But more complicated functions, like balancing voltage on distribution grid circuits, or disconnecting and reconnecting to the grid for emergency backup power, require a third technology: smart inverters.
On Thursday, the SunSpec Alliance, the University of California-San Diego, and SolarCity launched a project meant to test this emerging standard for advanced inverter functionality. It’s the first real-world test of a technology set to be mandated for all new solar and battery projects in California in 2016, a fact that’s drawn some of the world’s biggest inverter makers into the project.
“We have an ensemble cast of partners here,” SunSpec Alliance chairman Tom Tansy said. Funded by a $2 million California Energy Commission EPIC grant, the $4 million project will run interoperability tests featuring inverters from seven different global manufacturers -- ABB, SMA, KACO, Outback, SolarEdge, Enphase and Ideal Power.
Starting late this year, each company will submit their smart inverters, along with chosen battery and solar integration partners, to testing by UCSD. The university’s state-of-the-art microgrid, which includes pretty much every form of distributed energy known to humanity, will provide a useful control and renewable power resource for the testing, Tansy said.
“That’s where we’ll prove out our communications interoperability, via the SunSpec standard,” he said. SunSpec and partners have built a set of standards around linking inverters with components like batteries, solar panels, and energy management systems. “They’ll be doing things like curtailment, voltage regulation, frequency regulation, both on power from the solar array and from storage.”
Almost all of today’s solar and battery inverters come with advanced features that fit this description of “smart.” But very few companies are turning them on, let alone communicating with utilities and grid operators about what they’re doing, and what they’re capable of.
That’s largely because most utility and grid regulatory frameworks haven’t kept up with distributed energy’s growth. There isn’t even an Underwriters Laboratories specification for smart inverters yet, although a California-led group is working with UL and inverter makers to fill that gap by next year.
UCSD is also providing its digital models of its distribution circuits -- the campus is like a grid in miniature, and submetered to an unusual degree for public buildings. OSIsoft, the biggest provider of data management software for utility SCADA deployments and other resources of circuit-level data, is participating in that part of the project as well, he said. Project partners will also pull data from the distribution circuit maps newly unveiled by the state’s big three utilities, including UCSD’s utility, San Diego Gas & Electric.
The broader goal is “to see how deeply a circuit can be penetrated,” he said. At most utilities, “there’s an artificial cap of about 15 percent of the total demand capacity that can be offset with renewable energy” and other distributed energy resources (DERs), he said, in terms of how much a distribution grid circuit can bear before causing potential problems.
But tests at Department of Energy labs, and analyses of real-world circuit data in DER-rich grid locales in Hawaii and California, indicate that many circuits can bear a much higher portion of distributed energy -- and even benefit from it -- as long as it’s planned and managed well. CEC’s grant request form (PDF) describes the project’s goals: “To develop a complete smart inverter data communication standardization and go-to-market solution to enable photovoltaic (PV) penetration beyond the 15% Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) guideline, incorporate energy storage as a standard building block of PV systems, and evaluate the market-expansion potential of a standardized communication interface.”
That just happens to also be the range of specs for Tesla’s new Powerwall home energy storage systems, by the way. Ryan Hanley, senior director of grid operations for SolarCity, wouldn’t say which battery and inverter partners the company planned to work with on the project, which is set to start some time early next year. But SolarCity is “cost-sharing more than we’re getting from the grant -- we’re putting up more in R&D and program support than we’re receiving.”
“We are going down to one circuit and finding 50 residential customers, and deploying 50 smart energy homes on that circuit,” he said. “In each home, we’ve got solar PV, a smart inverter, a residential battery, and a smart thermostat.” That last control point allows access to air conditioning, a key ingredient of household electricity load that could provide more flexibility in absorbing and redirecting solar power. Think of precooling a home with plentiful solar energy, and “storing” that cool to let the AC idle through the late afternoons and early evenings, when large swaths of Southern California circuits reach their peak, for example.
On the inverter-grid interconnection front, SolarCity plans to provide three main services with its aggregated 350 to 500 kilowatt-hours of storage. “The first one we’ll do is support voltage needs on the feeder,” he said -- something that requires advanced inverter functions to operate in concert with each other and utility-facing grid sensors and controls. Second, 50 homes will also support local capacity needs for the substation serving the circuit, much as SCE’s local capacity resource procurements are doing with storage from Stem, Ice Energy/NRG and Advanced Microgrid Solutions.
“The third one, which is my favorite, is we’re aggregating all 50 of those systems and providing wholesale grid support,” Hanley said, through the Proxy Demand Resource demand-response program run by grid operator CAISO. “What’s of note here is that it’s a heterogeneous portfolio. It’s the first time we’ve aggregated different technologies and bid them into CAISO. The rules were just recently changed to allow this,” he said, with a big demand-response auction set for later this year, and rules for how distributed assets can play in DR markets still under development for rollout over the next few years.
SolarCity’s control platform, which manages its small but growing fleet of Tesla battery-backed solar homes and businesses, will also control this 50-home fleet as a virtual power plant, capable of responding to utility signals and, in some instances, turning themselves over to utility control, he said. The combination of customer and utility benefits from this arrangement are complex, and “part of the goal of the project is to quantify that,” he said.
SolarCity isn’t the first to bid behind-the-meter battery flexibility into California’s grid markets -- behind-the-meter startup Stem has done that in pilot projects in the past two years. Nor is it the first to test solar-battery grid support and load shifting capabilities. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District has a big residential solar-battery test underway. Southern California Edison has the stimulus-grant-funded Irvine smart grid demonstration test bed, and California’s big three IOUs want to do many more pilots over the next few years as part of their distribution resource plans.
But the project SolarCity is part of is the first to use the standard smart inverter specification so soon to become a mandatory part of California’s new solar fleets. UCSD’s inverter tests will serve as a blueprint for SolarCity to interconnect its various distributed energy assets, Hanley said, although it’s not planning to test every new inverter in its 50-home pilot -- “We’ll probably be using one inverter, maybe two,” although that could expand over time.
More broadly speaking, “we believe the industry is better off the sooner smart inverters are widely deployed, and we want to do everything we can to accelerate that,” he said. California is in the midst of reworking its utility regulations to bring DERs into play with utility grid operations and planning, and stand in for part of utilities' multi-billion-dollar investment plans, to reward what they do for the state's renewable energy and carbon reduction goals. The sooner advanced inverter functionality is part of that DER market, the faster new rules and markets will evolve to express that value in terms of kWh and kVAR, and eventually, dollars and cents.
Tags: abb, advanced microgrid solutions, california, enphase, germany, hawaii, ideal power, kaco, regulators, sma, smart energy, smart inverter, solarcity, stem
Rooftop PV and behind-the-meter batteries can team up to reduce customer energy bills, shave off expensive peaks in building energy consumption, and store midday solar-generated electrons for evening discharge to help smooth out their impact on the grid. But more complicated functions, like balancing voltage on distribution grid circuits, or disconnecting and reconnecting to the grid for emergency backup power, require a third technology: smart inverters.
On Thursday, the SunSpec Alliance, the University of California-San Diego, and SolarCity launched a project meant to test this emerging standard for advanced inverter functionality. It’s the first real-world test of a technology set to be mandated for all new solar and battery projects in California in 2016, a fact that’s drawn some of the world’s biggest inverter makers into the project.
“We have an ensemble cast of partners here,” SunSpec Alliance chairman Tom Tansy said. Funded by a $2 million California Energy Commission EPIC grant, the $4 million project will run interoperability tests featuring inverters from seven different global manufacturers -- ABB, SMA, KACO, Outback, SolarEdge, Enphase and Ideal Power.
Starting late this year, each company will submit their smart inverters, along with chosen battery and solar integration partners, to testing by UCSD. The university’s state-of-the-art microgrid, which includes pretty much every form of distributed energy known to humanity, will provide a useful control and renewable power resource for the testing, Tansy said.
“That’s where we’ll prove out our communications interoperability, via the SunSpec standard,” he said. SunSpec and partners have built a set of standards around linking inverters with components like batteries, solar panels, and energy management systems. “They’ll be doing things like curtailment, voltage regulation, frequency regulation, both on power from the solar array and from storage.”
Almost all of today’s solar and battery inverters come with advanced features that fit this description of “smart.” But very few companies are turning them on, let alone communicating with utilities and grid operators about what they’re doing, and what they’re capable of.
That’s largely because most utility and grid regulatory frameworks haven’t kept up with distributed energy’s growth. There isn’t even an Underwriters Laboratories specification for smart inverters yet, although a California-led group is working with UL and inverter makers to fill that gap by next year.
UCSD is also providing its digital models of its distribution circuits -- the campus is like a grid in miniature, and submetered to an unusual degree for public buildings. OSIsoft, the biggest provider of data management software for utility SCADA deployments and other resources of circuit-level data, is participating in that part of the project as well, he said. Project partners will also pull data from the distribution circuit maps newly unveiled by the state’s big three utilities, including UCSD’s utility, San Diego Gas & Electric.
The broader goal is “to see how deeply a circuit can be penetrated,” he said. At most utilities, “there’s an artificial cap of about 15 percent of the total demand capacity that can be offset with renewable energy” and other distributed energy resources (DERs), he said, in terms of how much a distribution grid circuit can bear before causing potential problems.
But tests at Department of Energy labs, and analyses of real-world circuit data in DER-rich grid locales in Hawaii and California, indicate that many circuits can bear a much higher portion of distributed energy -- and even benefit from it -- as long as it’s planned and managed well. CEC’s grant request form (PDF) describes the project’s goals: “To develop a complete smart inverter data communication standardization and go-to-market solution to enable photovoltaic (PV) penetration beyond the 15% Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) guideline, incorporate energy storage as a standard building block of PV systems, and evaluate the market-expansion potential of a standardized communication interface.”
SolarCity’s energy-smart neighborhood, plus virtual power plant
This brings us to SolarCity’s part in the project, which is distinct from the UCSD work. The aggregator of hundreds of thousands of solar systems across California will seek out about 50 customers on a specific test circuit of Southern California Edison’s sprawling distribution grid, and equip each with a lithium-ion battery system, capable of providing roughly 7 to 10 kilowatt-hours of storage, Tansy said.That just happens to also be the range of specs for Tesla’s new Powerwall home energy storage systems, by the way. Ryan Hanley, senior director of grid operations for SolarCity, wouldn’t say which battery and inverter partners the company planned to work with on the project, which is set to start some time early next year. But SolarCity is “cost-sharing more than we’re getting from the grant -- we’re putting up more in R&D and program support than we’re receiving.”
“We are going down to one circuit and finding 50 residential customers, and deploying 50 smart energy homes on that circuit,” he said. “In each home, we’ve got solar PV, a smart inverter, a residential battery, and a smart thermostat.” That last control point allows access to air conditioning, a key ingredient of household electricity load that could provide more flexibility in absorbing and redirecting solar power. Think of precooling a home with plentiful solar energy, and “storing” that cool to let the AC idle through the late afternoons and early evenings, when large swaths of Southern California circuits reach their peak, for example.
On the inverter-grid interconnection front, SolarCity plans to provide three main services with its aggregated 350 to 500 kilowatt-hours of storage. “The first one we’ll do is support voltage needs on the feeder,” he said -- something that requires advanced inverter functions to operate in concert with each other and utility-facing grid sensors and controls. Second, 50 homes will also support local capacity needs for the substation serving the circuit, much as SCE’s local capacity resource procurements are doing with storage from Stem, Ice Energy/NRG and Advanced Microgrid Solutions.
“The third one, which is my favorite, is we’re aggregating all 50 of those systems and providing wholesale grid support,” Hanley said, through the Proxy Demand Resource demand-response program run by grid operator CAISO. “What’s of note here is that it’s a heterogeneous portfolio. It’s the first time we’ve aggregated different technologies and bid them into CAISO. The rules were just recently changed to allow this,” he said, with a big demand-response auction set for later this year, and rules for how distributed assets can play in DR markets still under development for rollout over the next few years.
SolarCity’s control platform, which manages its small but growing fleet of Tesla battery-backed solar homes and businesses, will also control this 50-home fleet as a virtual power plant, capable of responding to utility signals and, in some instances, turning themselves over to utility control, he said. The combination of customer and utility benefits from this arrangement are complex, and “part of the goal of the project is to quantify that,” he said.
SolarCity isn’t the first to bid behind-the-meter battery flexibility into California’s grid markets -- behind-the-meter startup Stem has done that in pilot projects in the past two years. Nor is it the first to test solar-battery grid support and load shifting capabilities. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District has a big residential solar-battery test underway. Southern California Edison has the stimulus-grant-funded Irvine smart grid demonstration test bed, and California’s big three IOUs want to do many more pilots over the next few years as part of their distribution resource plans.
But the project SolarCity is part of is the first to use the standard smart inverter specification so soon to become a mandatory part of California’s new solar fleets. UCSD’s inverter tests will serve as a blueprint for SolarCity to interconnect its various distributed energy assets, Hanley said, although it’s not planning to test every new inverter in its 50-home pilot -- “We’ll probably be using one inverter, maybe two,” although that could expand over time.
More broadly speaking, “we believe the industry is better off the sooner smart inverters are widely deployed, and we want to do everything we can to accelerate that,” he said. California is in the midst of reworking its utility regulations to bring DERs into play with utility grid operations and planning, and stand in for part of utilities' multi-billion-dollar investment plans, to reward what they do for the state's renewable energy and carbon reduction goals. The sooner advanced inverter functionality is part of that DER market, the faster new rules and markets will evolve to express that value in terms of kWh and kVAR, and eventually, dollars and cents.
Tags: abb, advanced microgrid solutions, california, enphase, germany, hawaii, ideal power, kaco, regulators, sma, smart energy, smart inverter, solarcity, stem
jhm
Well-Known Member
Thanks, Gene. That was a good article.
SolarEdge has has announced a new inverter architecture they believe will open up some big efficiency gains. They compare this to the advance that flat screen TVs had over vacuum tube TVs. They are bringing digital processing into inverters. They believe they can get 99% efficiency and use smaller magnets. I hope this plays out. If so, it may even factor into Tesla vehicles, where higher efficiency, smaller size and lighter weight could yield significant performance gains.
SolarEdge Announces Leap in Solar Inverters With HD-Wave Technology - NASDAQ.com
I continue to see SolarEdge as a really important player in the Tesla/SolarCity ecosystem.
SolarEdge has has announced a new inverter architecture they believe will open up some big efficiency gains. They compare this to the advance that flat screen TVs had over vacuum tube TVs. They are bringing digital processing into inverters. They believe they can get 99% efficiency and use smaller magnets. I hope this plays out. If so, it may even factor into Tesla vehicles, where higher efficiency, smaller size and lighter weight could yield significant performance gains.
SolarEdge Announces Leap in Solar Inverters With HD-Wave Technology - NASDAQ.com
I continue to see SolarEdge as a really important player in the Tesla/SolarCity ecosystem.
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jhm
Well-Known Member
Interesting. Can you explain the difference between rebate rates and fee rates? Thanks.
jhm
Well-Known Member
Ok, that makes sense to me. No need to trouble yourself for exact definitions. Thanks.
What is GaN? - YouTube
Solarcity, spacex, and tesla all will be utilizing gallium nitride instead of sillicon in all their products. As such, a seemingly new moore's law curve will be started and some really exciting innovations will materialize.
Solarcity is creating a massive panel factory(and bigger ones in future) that will be able to transition to gallium nitride semiconductors at scale. Tesla inverter production as well as Spacex satellite production will also incorporate gallium nitride at scale.
I highlight this tech because Solarcity may well be front and center with innovations that determine viability beyond the 20 year contract mark. If this becomes the case, the retained value beyond 20 years is highly likely since they will offer returning customers the best energy system available on the market.
Again, I also believe these innovations will lead to an energy "panel" system that will take advantage of all wavelengths on the electromagnetic spectrum. All roads are heading that direction with gallium nitride reaching cost parity with sillicon this year.
Solarcity, spacex, and tesla all will be utilizing gallium nitride instead of sillicon in all their products. As such, a seemingly new moore's law curve will be started and some really exciting innovations will materialize.
Solarcity is creating a massive panel factory(and bigger ones in future) that will be able to transition to gallium nitride semiconductors at scale. Tesla inverter production as well as Spacex satellite production will also incorporate gallium nitride at scale.
I highlight this tech because Solarcity may well be front and center with innovations that determine viability beyond the 20 year contract mark. If this becomes the case, the retained value beyond 20 years is highly likely since they will offer returning customers the best energy system available on the market.
Again, I also believe these innovations will lead to an energy "panel" system that will take advantage of all wavelengths on the electromagnetic spectrum. All roads are heading that direction with gallium nitride reaching cost parity with sillicon this year.
Johan
Ex got M3 in the divorce, waiting for EU Model Y!
Yeah! This was less tin foil hat than the satellite network beaming around TWhs every night
If we can find mention from SCTY that somewhere in their Silevo plans they have or will mention Gallium nitride that will be quite an important nugget of info, upon which we should assign a lot of value as investors. I hope they talk about this next ER, or that they get asked by an analyst.
[I know a lot of you TSLA and SCTY analysts read these boards for insight and the latest regarding these companies. Go ahead and ask about Gallium nitride panels, you are free to use my idea
]
jhm
Well-Known Member
http://www.pv-tech.org/news/solaredge_claims_digital_processing_innovation_will_bring_flat_screen_revol
The weight and size reductions in SolarEdge's HD wave inverter is pretty impressive, mass 9.5kg down from 22kg, volume 14.5l down from 30l. Also efficiency goes from 98% to 99%. In the PV space, the real upshot of this size reduction is savings in installation cost as one worker can install rather than needing two. Shipping cost should come down, and eventually the price of the whole unit. The more discrete size should be welcomed by customers. Competive inverters are at around 12c/W. It will be interesting to see how much total installed cost this could knock out for SolarCity.
The weight and size reductions in SolarEdge's HD wave inverter is pretty impressive, mass 9.5kg down from 22kg, volume 14.5l down from 30l. Also efficiency goes from 98% to 99%. In the PV space, the real upshot of this size reduction is savings in installation cost as one worker can install rather than needing two. Shipping cost should come down, and eventually the price of the whole unit. The more discrete size should be welcomed by customers. Competive inverters are at around 12c/W. It will be interesting to see how much total installed cost this could knock out for SolarCity.
jhm
Well-Known Member
Rooftop solar is a prime example of free market development | Arizona Capitol Times
Wow, Lyndon blasts APS CEO Don Brandt! Massive flame. I love it.
Wow, Lyndon blasts APS CEO Don Brandt! Massive flame. I love it.
jhm
Well-Known Member
Johan, I was just about to add those quotes. I think this points to the essential question of who "pays for the grid." In a competitive market, a business must cut costs when there is a shortfall in revenue or suffer loss of profit. Fundamentally, it is investors in utilities who must bear the risk of building out a cost structure that revenue cannot bear. SolarCity knows it must cut costs by 5% or more each year to remain competitive, why should it be any different for a utility?
The difference, of course, is that utilties are monopolies with government guaranteed profits. And this really is the greatest sort of government subsidy that any business could receive. So I am glad that Lyndon is calling out these entitled entities what they are, state granted monopolies.
The difference, of course, is that utilties are monopolies with government guaranteed profits. And this really is the greatest sort of government subsidy that any business could receive. So I am glad that Lyndon is calling out these entitled entities what they are, state granted monopolies.
jhm
Well-Known Member
The world is changing, but utilities and regulators are not : Renew Economy
Of course, not all utilities have a sense of entitlement. The CEO of Vector, a New Zealand utility, Simon Kackinzie gets it.
Of course, not all utilities have a sense of entitlement. The CEO of Vector, a New Zealand utility, Simon Kackinzie gets it.
Utilities are not guaranteed to make a profit -- consider the fact that PG&E went bankrupt. They are guaranteed a reasonable rate of return on used and useful assets; in return, customers are guaranteed to be charged a just and reasonable rate for power. The historical alternatives to a regulated monopoly are grim: unregulated monopolies serving low-density areas, charging what the market would bear, while in higher-density areas, competing networks stringing parallel infrastructure, greatly increasing the overall cost to serve customers.
jhm
Well-Known Member
That may have been the case historically, but I don't believe it holds presently and going forward. Forty years ago, one could have made the same argument for telephone service. Now we have multiple competing telecommunications networks, and it has never been cheaper to make a phone call, even to places that lack landlines and powergrids. Competing infrastructure is not nearly as costly as lacking for competition. The question is utilities should be granted monopoly status to protect them from competition. I think that day is over.
jhm
Well-Known Member
PV Magazine Mobil: GTM Research: BoS cost reductions drive falling PV system prices
Balance of system (BoS) are now around 75% of cost of rooftop solar..GTM expects BoS cost per Watt to fall 40% by 2020. SolarCity's Zep Solar is leading the way. Rail-free mounting hardware minimizes the amount of aluminum purchased, transported and installed and labor costs of installation.
The view here is that module costs are such a small fraction of total cost that further cost reductions will do little to drive down installed costs. This of course is true if we assume no gains in efficiency. However, increasing efficiency reduces the number of panels to install, which reduces labor, mounting hardware, some power electronics such as DC power optimizers, and transportation costs. For example, a 4 kW system requires 16 250 W panels or just 10 400 W panels. This is a 37.5% reduction in all BoS costs that vary with the number of panels.
So one of the things I really like about SolarCity is that they are laser focused on driving down total installed costs along all levers. This is why they own Zep Solar for efficient mounting hardware, Silevo for high efficiency panels, and manage their own installation crews for efficient construction practuces. Lyndon has said he must reduce costs by at least 5% every year to remain competitive. I beieve he was making specific reference to the total installed cost per Watt. What's becoming increasingly clear is that these cost reductions will not happen by simply buying cheaper panels; installers have to do the hard work of cutting every penny.
Balance of system (BoS) are now around 75% of cost of rooftop solar..GTM expects BoS cost per Watt to fall 40% by 2020. SolarCity's Zep Solar is leading the way. Rail-free mounting hardware minimizes the amount of aluminum purchased, transported and installed and labor costs of installation.
The view here is that module costs are such a small fraction of total cost that further cost reductions will do little to drive down installed costs. This of course is true if we assume no gains in efficiency. However, increasing efficiency reduces the number of panels to install, which reduces labor, mounting hardware, some power electronics such as DC power optimizers, and transportation costs. For example, a 4 kW system requires 16 250 W panels or just 10 400 W panels. This is a 37.5% reduction in all BoS costs that vary with the number of panels.
So one of the things I really like about SolarCity is that they are laser focused on driving down total installed costs along all levers. This is why they own Zep Solar for efficient mounting hardware, Silevo for high efficiency panels, and manage their own installation crews for efficient construction practuces. Lyndon has said he must reduce costs by at least 5% every year to remain competitive. I beieve he was making specific reference to the total installed cost per Watt. What's becoming increasingly clear is that these cost reductions will not happen by simply buying cheaper panels; installers have to do the hard work of cutting every penny.
Johan
Ex got M3 in the divorce, waiting for EU Model Y!
You'd also think that as SCTY keeps growing and are installing more and more W per month some economies of scale will come in to play, with experienced install crews, even smarter racking solutions, perhaps designs with pre-racked and pre-cabled panels from the factory that can be installed very quickly and cheaply ("plug-and-play"). Perhaps semi-automated installation processes in the future, using specifically designed lifts/machines etc. etc.
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