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Paula Mints
SPV Market Research
Paula Mints is the Founder and Chief Market Research Analyst of the global solar market research firm SPV Market Research.123 She is passionate about climate change and solar energy.3 Mints has over 16 years of experience providing market research and analysis on the solar industry.45 Her specific areas of expertise include global markets for solar products, applications, system and component prices, manufacturing capacity, production, shipments, inventory, costs, and prices.14
Paula's career highlights:
- SPV Market Research Mints founded SPV Market Research in October 2012. The firm provides high-quality market research products focused on the supply and demand sides of the global solar industry.13 SPV's research spans technologies (crystalline, thin film, CSP, CPV), capacity, production, shipments, inventory, cost, pricing, applications, and markets, from raw materials to end-users.3
- Navigant Consulting Before founding SPV Market Research, Mints was the Principal Analyst for the Solar Services Market Research Program and Director in the Energy Practice at Navigant Consulting, Inc. where she began in 2005.123
- Strategies Unlimited Mints began her solar market research career in 1997 with Strategies Unlimited.123 She served as Director of Photovoltaic Market Research Practice.3
Mints earned her MBA at San Jose State University in 1999.13 Her work has been cited in the US Department of Energy's SunShot report.13 She is the author of many articles on the economics and behavior of the solar industry and a chapter in Advances in Photovoltaics Volume 1.13 Mints has also served on the expert committee for the EU Photovoltaic Technology Platform.13
Highlights
Net Metering under attack in California and the US in general
After the CPUC set California’s solar market on a glide path to nowhere following the implementation of its NEM 3.0 plan in March, the First Appellate Court of San Francisco heard arguments on December 14 to throw out the new rules and return to the net metering drawing board. New connections are down over 70% since NEM 3.0 went into effect in March.
Instead of paying retail electricity rates for solar generated electricity, under NEM 3.0, solar system owners are paid at the avoided cost rate, lowering the average compensation from ~$0.30/kWh to ~$0.08/kWh. When the CPUC announced its plan, the judges indicated they wanted to be fair to all ratepayers, meaning those without solar, while also viewing the change as a way to encourage storage adoption.
Older NEM customers will continue to be compensated at the retail rate for 20 years, after which their compensation drops to the avoided cost rate – meaning that a customer whose system was installed in 2007 would see a significant change in their true-up in 2027.
The argument to throw out NEM 3.0 and start from scratch is based on a statute in the state’s Public Utility Code requiring NEM rules to ensure that the net metered solar market continues to grow sustainably. The over 70% decrease in new connections in 2023 over 2022 does not indicate that sustainability is being maintained. Arguing that the case should be thrown out, attorneys for the CPUC stated that they are obligated to consider the total cost of net metering programs to all ratepayers.
The upcoming decision of the Appeals Court may well have a ripple effect across other states where investor-owned utilities and public utility commissions are considering gutting net metering programs of their own – typically under the guise of fairness to all and encouraging storage.
And net metering is also under fire outside of the US, where utilities, faced with lower revenues, are fighting back, and governments looking to encourage self-consumption are switching to net billing and dumping net metering altogether.
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