Webber Research: Renewable Energy Weekly

• ENPH Partners With 5B In Australia
• GE Renewable Energy Q1 Earnings
• Sunpower COVID Updates
• Safe Harbor Deadline Extension Brought To Treasury
• BNEF Semi-Annual LCOE Update (Page 2, Charts On Page 4)
• New York Approves Offshore Wind Plans, But Delays Action Due To COVID
• Orsted’s 120GW Skipjack Offshore Wind Farm Delayed 1 Year
• Q Cells Tops US Market Share
• Sunrun Hires New CFO
• Houston’s First Climate Action Plan
• California Confirms PV & Storage Installers Are Essential Workers
• Chicago Supporting EV Adoption
• Figures:
• US Net Electricity Generation By Type
• US Net Electricity Generation By Renewable Type
• Monthly Net Wind & Solar Generation State
• Weekly Solar System Pricing
• Grid-Tie Solar System Weekly Retailer Price ($US/Watt)
• Solar Panel / Solar Module 120W+ Weekly Retailer Price ($US/Watt)

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ENPH Partners With 5B In Australia: On 4/22 ENPH announced it would collaborate with Australian solar innovator, 5B in its role in the Resilient Energy Collective (REC) – aimed at providing solar power solutions to Australians disconnected by bushfires and floods. 5B selected ENPH’s IQ 7+ microinverters to pair with its portable Maverick solar array systems, which will also be outfitted with Enphase Envoy with (communication gateway) which connects the system to Enphase Enlighten for easy monitoring & maintenance. ENPH also announced a partnership with Sunlogics in Belgium on 4/29 as its exclusive microinverter supplier using IQ 7 and 7+ microinverters (also outfitted with Envoy). Separately, after the close on 4/27 ENPH was announced to replace Core Laboratories (CLB) in the S&P MidCap 400 index effective before the market open on 5/1. ENPH traded up 16% on 4/28 as a result.

GE Renewable Energy Q1 Earnings: On 4/29 GE reported a $302MM Q1 loss in its Renewable Energy segment, down from a $187MM loss in Q119. Orders declined 13% y/y to $3.1B, which GE attributed mostly to poor execution and only partly to COVIDrelated supply chain disruptions and delays. GE highlighted LM Wind’s sites closures in India and the US and capacity reductions at 3 other sites in its Onshore Wind business (previously disclosed). In its Offshore Wind business, GE remains on track for certification of its Haliade-X turbine and plans to start production after delivering its 80- unit 6MW commitments to EDF (expected completion 2021). In Grid & Hydro, GE is operating 15 factories at full utilization, 10 factories at less than 80% utilization, and 8 factories at less than 50% utilization. Its facilities located in China are operating at preCOVID levels, including Wuhan which was shut down for 6 weeks. Overall GE said COVID-19 has had a limited effect on its Renewables business but that it’s monitoring supply chain constraints and implementing cost-out and restructuring initiatives.

Sunpower COVID Updates: On 4/20 SPWR announced further actions to address the financial and operational impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic including reducing base salaries of executive management another 35-50% (after cutting 25-30% and withdrawing 2020 financial guidance a month earlier), idling factories in France, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, and the US (with expectations to bring them back online in the coming few weeks), and temporarily transitioning a portion of its employees to 4-day work weeks in response to reduced demand and workload (affecting ~3,000 workers according to GTM), but it said it’s still on track to spin-off its manufacturing arm, Maxeon Solar Technologies by the end of Q2.

Safe Harbor Deadline Extension Brought To Treasury: Last week senators from the Energy and Natural Resources Committee wrote a letter to the Department of Treasury advocating a 1yr deadline extensions for the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) and Production Tax Credit (PTC) due to setbacks related to the COVID-19 outbreak. …continued

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