NRG Energy already builds solar panel projects for commercial and industrial building owners. Doyle told me that the company has been “heartened” by the amount of Fortune 300 companies that have wanted to install solar panels on their rooftops. Distributed solar panel systems have been gaining momentum, said Doyle, adding that they’ve been delivering higher growth than utility solar systems. In an interesting twist, that puts NRG Energy in grwoing competition directly with utilities, notes Bloomberg.

The emergence of the solar lease, or other financing options for solar, has helped unlock huge growth in solar panel rooftop installations in recent years. Essentially a third party, like SolarCity or Sungevity, raises a few hundred million dollar fund from a bank or a big company like Google, and uses that money to provide the up front capital for a home roof top system, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars to install. The homeowner doesn’t have to pay that upfront cost, but pays the solar leasing company a monthly bill that is usually lower than its former utility bill. Over time the bank or “the Google” gets paid back with a return that can be around ten to twelve percent.

As I reported last month, three quarters of the solar panels installed on home roofs in 2012 in California were financed and owned by these solar service companies, and not the home owner. These “third-party owned” solar systems collectively generated $938 million in revenues last year.

It’s one of the more lucrative businesses in the solar market these days. So why wouldn’t NRG Energy want to be in it. SolarCity, a former startup that has helped pioneer the business, went public in December 2012 at $9.25, saw its stock soar 40 percent on its debut day, and has now more than doubled to $18.57 Monday morning. Other companies that offer solar financing options include Sunrun, and Clean Power Finance.

The emergence of NRG Energy in the solar leasing business could be a real threat to the companies already operating in it. NRG Energy earned $1.59 billion last year, which was a decline from the previous year, but which is clearly far larger than the fairly new companies like Clean Power Finance and Sungevity.

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NRG Energy's David Crane

About a year ago the CEO of power company NRG Energy, David Crane, said he thought that the future of the green technology industry would rest on consumers, and a big part of that would be how consumers embrace electric vehicles. But fast forward a year of very slow electric car adoption rates, and Crane has changed his tune slightly. At the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit in New York on Tuesday, Crane said that he is less bullish on the impact that electric cars will have on consumers given the slow roll-out, and he now thinks that the greentech and consumer game changer could be solar rooftops.

NRG is one of the most aggressive power companies in the solar space in the U.S., and was the single largest recipient of the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program, largely through its solar projects. But Crane specifically thinks that distributed solar panels on rooftops could be the breakthrough technology, because of the rapidly dropping price of solar panels — “solar has dropped like a stone,” said Crane — and the fact that distributed solar doesn’t need high voltage transmission lines, the way that solar thermal plants in the deserts do.

Solar is so cheap today that unless you tell me that you did a solar analysis yesterday, not last year or last month, then your analysis is out of date, said Crane. “We’ve put all of our renewable eggs in one solar basket,” said Crane.

The rest of the clean energy industry, indeed, looks far gloomier. Nuclear is in a state of disarray, with the last nuclear plant in Japan closing next month, said Crane. Last Spring NRG decided to stop putting money into the development of the nuclear South Texas Project units 3&4, and had to record pretax charge of about $481 million. NRG sold off its wind business in 2010, because Crane said NRG thinks that the high voltage transmission lines needed to connect wind to the cities that use the wind power, will be a major barrier.

Crane still thinks electric vehicles could possibly be a game changer one day, but the roll out has been too slow. He owns three electric cars (I think a LEAF, a Tesla Roadster and a Fisker Karma), and NRG made investments in Aptera and has the small electric car charging project eVgo.

Despite that NRG has gotten a large amount of support in terms of loan guarantees from the DOE, Crane says that “the worst thing that happened to clean energy in 2011 was that it got politicized.” “Washington is irrelevant to what we’re trying to do,” said Crane.

Image courtesy of GigaOM (not taken at the Bloomberg event).

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NRG Energy's eVgo Network at a Best Buy

Will electric car charging stations be the case of ‘if you build it, he will come’? The folks at NRG Energy, and its electric vehicle charging network project eVgo, certainly hope so — particularly when it comes to the fast DC chargers that it’s installing around malls and public areas in the Dallas, Texas area. Those DC chargers can charge an EV in 15 to 30 minutes, but are somewhat expensive (six figures), so can be the riskier part of investing in the electric car charging network says Arun Banskota, President of NRG Energy’s EV services and who oversees eVgo.

The eVgo project is selling electric car charging like cellphone minutes via a subscription service. The installation of a Level 2 slower-charging home charger (capable of adding about 25 miles of range per hour) is free for the customer and eVgo charges anywhere from $50 to $90 a month on fixed three-year contracts for the battery charging. The cheaper rates are for people who only want the Level 2 charging capability at their homes and the more expensive plans give access to the publicly located fast DC chargers.

While home chargers will likely be used enough by the customer to enable NRG to make back money on the installation, it’s the DC chargers that NRG needs to convince customers to sign up to use, and to use regularly. Banskota told me that the eVgo project plans to have 50 public chargers built out around the Dallas, Texas area, with 25 of those installed by the end of 2012.

To convince customers to sign up for the DC chargers, Banskota says NRG thought long and hard on where to build each individual station, and focuses on sites with:

• 1). Visibility
• 2). Easy on/off freeway access
• 3). A solid security assessment
• 4). An area with tested high retail engagement

Will the investment pay off for NRG? Baskota wouldn’t disclose how many users the project has so far. But he said that eVgo has a very high conversion rate when compared to any of the other electric car charging options. However, electric vehicles have seemed to roll out a bit slower than some companies and auto makers had expected, and the eVgo network can’t move any faster than the pace of adoption of electric cars.

Banskota told me that NRG Energy CEO David Crane selected him for the job of leading the charging network buildout, he thinks, partly because he  previously came from the startup world — he was the Vice President of project development for solar company OptiSolar, and he was in charge of helping build the solar project pipeline. EVgo is kindof like a boot-strapped, somewhat risky, startup inside power company NRG Energy.

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The discussion was one of the more intimate at our event last week, and for me, really drove home the massive implications that the Japanese disaster at Fukushima is now having on the nuclear industry. It was unclear just how dramatic the aftermath of Japan’s nuclear disaster would be for the international nuclear industry at large in the few weeks after the earthquake and tsunami. But Crane’s words and NRG’s decision seem like the short-term nail in the coffin for any so-called nuclear renaissance in the U.S.

The U.S. government clearly still stands behind nuclear projects, as it remains committed with Department of Energy loan guarantees. But without private industry to build these projects, they won’t go anywhere. Crane and NRG Energy also still remain committed to nuclear power, but the company just can’t sustain the investment any longer without more investment from its peers. Crane said at Green:Net:

Nuclear is the single most green thing that we can do, because there is nothing that reduces greenhouse gas emissions like nuclear power … That’s an enormous set back for the fight against climate change. A stunningly large set back.

For NRG Energy and Crane, it’s a sizable set back for the company, too. Last week, NRG said stopping the investment would lead to a first quarter 2011 pretax charge of about $481 million. Wall Street seems satisfied with the end of the nuclear investment; NRG Energy’s stock is trading at $22.47, one of its highest points in the last six months.

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Ouch. NRG said in a statement that given the “diminished prospects” of the South Texas nuclear project it “will not invest additional capital in the STP development effort.” At the same time, NRG said it would fully support any of its current or future partners if they want to continue to develop STP 3&4 units. (Crane will be speaking at our Green:Net 2011 event this Thursday April 21, in San Francisco).

The design work for the project had already essentially been halted, as NRG Energy waited for a review of the industry by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in the wake of the incident at the Fukushima reactors in Japan. The NRC is reviewing all nuclear projects built and under construction in the U.S. to see if there could be any lessons learned from the Japanese nuclear incident. Nuclear industry executives fear the NRC review process will be very lengthy and will paralyze any new nuclear projects in the pipeline, which was what happened in the aftermath of the nuclear incident at Three Mile Island in 1979.  Crane told me last month that he hoped a NRC review process wouldn’t last any longer than 3 months.

CPS Energy, which had been in discussions to purchase the nuclear power from NRG’s expanded plants, had already suspended its talks to buy the power. CPS also owns over 7 percent in the expansion project.

The U.S. hasn’t built any new nuclear reactors in decades, thanks to fears after Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. The short-term costs of nuclear construction after the Japanese nuclear disaster is expected to soar in the short term, and development of new nuclear technologies from some startups could be stalled as well. Nuclear technology has also crept along because of the low price of natural gas.

NRG’s decision to cut its losses so to speak, is an even greater indication that the Japanese nuclear disaster has set back development of nuclear power in the U.S. by many years. Other countries, like Germany, are moving even more swiftly to halt the construction of nuclear plants.

NRG will be holding a conference call later today to provide more details on its decision.

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NRG Energy's eVgo charger at a Walgreens

NRG Energy is kicking off what it calls the first privately funded, plug-in electric vehicle charging network in the U.S. in the country’s oil state: Texas. On Friday morning, NRG Energy officially started up the first fast charger in the network in Dallas, which will include 70 so-called “Freedom Stations” in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, and 50 in Houston by the end of 2012, as well as stations alongside the Interstate 45 corridor in 2012.

The first fast charging station is at a Walgreens  at 5201 Belt Line Road at Montfort Drive in Dallas. NRG Energy CEO David Crane compared the launch to “taking a page from Southwest Airlines when they started out 40 years ago to link the major population centers in Texas.” (Crane will be speaking at our Green:Net event on April 21 in San Francisco.) Other stations will be built at locations like Best Buys, around the Memorial City Mall, and at the Park ‘N Fly. NRG has teamed up with car charger maker Aerovironment and infrastructure provider GE.

For NRG’s “eVgo” electric car charging network, the power company is taking a page from the cellphone industry in charging flat monthly rates for a variety of different uses of charging. Charging plans for eVgo will range from $50 to $90 a month on fixed three-year contracts, with the cheaper rates for people who only want “Level 2” chargers, capable of adding about 25 miles of range per hour of charging, installed at their homes. The more expensive plans give access to the publicly located chargers, which will be fast chargers capable of adding some 30 miles of range in as few as 10 minutes.

These flat, fixed monthly charges — a common attribute to electricity plans in Texas’ deregulated market — are expected to earn NRG a profit over the lifetime of the contracts. Crane has said he hopes to have about 1,000 customers signed up in about a year.

Nissan North America has agreed to make eVgo charging services the exclusive charging option for Houston-area buyers of the Nissan LEAF electric sedan. Other automotive partners include Smart USA.

The electric charging network is a big bet for NRG. Crane has spoken on how he thinks the future of the green technology industry rests on consumers, and a big part of that will be how consumers embrace electric vehicles. “The green technology industry needs to improve its interface with the American consumer.” So true.

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If TEPCO pulls out of its planned investment (at least $155 million for a 10-percent share) in the nuclear project, NRG Energy will have to be prepared to bring in other investors, said Crane. But raising money for nuclear projects in the middle of a nuclear crisis will be no easy task, said Crane.

NRG Energy has already pulled back on the detailed design work needed to expand its South Texas nuclear plant, though it will still continue to pursue the Department of Energy loan guarantee for the project as well as the license for the project. The detailed design work for the nuclear project “is by far the most expensive,” of these three parts, said Crane, so the company will conserve its spending until it knows more on whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will make any changes to safety regulation.

CPS Energy, which had been in discussions to purchase the nuclear power from NRG’s expanded plants, has suspended its talks to buy the power. CPS also owns over 7 percent in the expansion project.

The NRC has declared it will review all nuclear projects built and under construction in the U.S. to see if there could be any lessons learned from the Japanese nuclear incident. Nuclear industry executives fear the NRC review process will be very lengthy and will paralyze any new nuclear projects in the pipeline, which was what happened in the aftermath of the nuclear incident at Three Mile Island in 1979.

Crane says NRG supports the regulatory review process, but hopes the NRC will do a quick review — taking perhaps three months — of all the plants in the U.S. to see which ones it needs to look at more closely, and then can give all the other ones a swift “clean bill of health.” If the review process went on for years, that could be fatal to the project, said Crane, who added, “It’s the uncertainty that is damaging to us. Our project is not in seismic area, it is not on the ocean, it is not a Mark 1 design (the GE model used in the Japanese plants under fire now) and the technology is not 45 years old,” pointed out Crane.

Overall, Crane reiterated the nuclear situation in Japan is still ongoing, and experts are likely weeks from being able to give more complete information for how long the crisis would last and what the American reaction would be. “Be patient,” said Crane.

The U.S. hasn’t built any new nuclear reactors in decades, thanks to fears after Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. The short-term costs of nuclear construction after the Japanese nuclear disaster is expected to soar in the short term, and development of new nuclear technologies from some startups could be stalled as well. Nuclear technology has also crept along because of the low price of natural gas.

Image courtesy of TravOC.

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American consumers don’t want things forced on them by the government, but they are slowly starting to become aware of energy issues via the rising cost of energy and the geo-political climate, said Crane. “Everyone in this room has a vested interest in electric vehicles becoming successful,” said Crane to the room largely made up by investors, and the future is “all about electric vehicles.”

In comparison, Crane pointed to the organic food industry, which he said was in the same place in the early ’90s that the electric car industry is in today. In 1992, organic food was ignored by the global supermarket businesses, said Crane, but today, organic food makes up some 12 percent of overall super market food sales; “12 percent of an enormous industry is an enormous number.”

The auto industry is actually taking the electric vehicle market seriously for the first time, and it’s a much different world from the one in the ’90s when GM recalled a car the company didn’t want to make, said Crane. “What company in this room has the market power to buy ads during Monday night football, or the Superbowl?” asked Crane. “I don’t. But that’s what Nissan has been doing,” with the LEAF.

Crane’s sentiments about how greentech is going to “go mainstream,” are something I’ve been thinking about recently. A cleantech investor friend of mine told me last week, “if one of the new electric cars is just a little bit successful and starts selling hundreds of thousands of units a year, that would blow all other greentech product sales out of the water.”

Crane urged the tech execs and investors in the room to focus more heavily on improving the greentech industry’s relationship with the American consumer. “You can’t count on a steady stream of state policy. The focus shouldn’t be on government, but on the American consumer. We’re getting to a point where cleantech needs to stand on its own.”

NRG, of course, is making a bet on electric vehicles. The power company is building its EVGO electric car charging network in Houston, and hoping that by offering consumers a cheaper electric fuel option than using gas for traditional cars, consumers will see the economic benefit. For $80 per month, we’ll offer customers all-you-can eat charging at home and at public charging stations, while average Americans spend $100 to $120 per month on gas, said Crane. We could offer it for far less, but most of the cost will go into paying off the cost of building the home and public chargers over three years, he said.

NRG is also selling clean power to consumers in Texas via its Green Mountain Energy division; that company is showing 31 percent CAGR (compound annual growth rate) said Crane. Selling EV charging and clean power can help diversify NRG’s portfolio away from volatile natural gas prices and into potentially higher growth businesses, and Crane said he saw green businesses being 25 percent of the company’s business by the middle part of this decade. “Opportunities abound for green retail,” said Crane.

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Image courtesy of D.Goligorsky via Creative Commons license.