L R AS Published on Monday 14 December 2020 - n° 344 - Categories:industry

Interview of Tom Werner, CEO of SunPower by BloombergNEF

The company's results improved in the third quarter as panel manufacturing was outsourced to Maxeon and because SunPower is now a customer-focused, downstream company with a high-end image.

In addition to the installation of the panels, SunPower also sold batteries. It no longer has the investment expenses for research and production. It can accumulate cash.

It's a good time because Joe Biden is in favour of renewable energy. The probability of an extension of the investment tax credit is very high. It will push power companies to switch to renewable energy by 2035. He will want energy efficiency improvements in federal buildings.

The future of solar is in its association with storage. This may be a year from now, certainly three years from now. We're starting to think of the two together. By the end of next year, battery storage with solar systems could be the rule, not the exception.

Interest in solar energy increased by 43% in October compared with the previous year. So there are objective reasons to be optimistic about this. Working from home has been an accelerator of this awareness. So have forest fires, because they have cut off the supply of electricity.

There is strong demand in key markets such as California, the West and parts of the South (Texas and Florida). The Northeast of the United States is also very active. The West Coast is by far the best and largest area of activity.

For SunPower, the ideal combination is sunshine, the high cost of electricity and a favourable state policy. In California and Hawaii, there are two out of three factors, lots of sunshine and higher electricity. In New Jersey, there is also state policy. This would also be the case in Maine and Massachusetts.

Online sales have risen from 10% of orders to 90% at the height of the pandemic. It will be between 50 % and 90 % because people who make purchases of this size want to have a contact person in front of them.

The cost of a solar system is between $20,000 and $25,000. Storage accounts for a quarter of this amount. The importance of this amount can be explained by the software to use the energy in the most profitable way possible.

Thus, batteries will become a major feature of the landscape in the very near future. Energy storage is becoming a very big business.

https://about.newenergyfinance.com/blog/batteries-in-solar-installations-becoming-the-new-norm-qa/

Bloomberg of December1st

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