Solar Photovoltaic

Doug Young Trade War. photo via Bigstock It’s been interesting to watch all the different interpretations coming out of a brief flurry of talks in Europe late last week aimed at settling a trade dispute between the EU and China over Beijing’s support for its solar panel makers. About the only thing that everyone agrees on is that some talks did happen, and that China took the interesting step of letting an industry association rather than government officials handle its side of the negotiations. But after that, no...

Sun breaks through trade war clouds China and the West broke a decades-old pattern of troubled trade relations over the weekend with a landmark deal to settle a trade dispute between China and the EU involving Chinese manufactured solar panels. Leaders in China and the West should use this breakthrough agreement as a template for resolving future trade disputes, turning to compromise rather than destructive accusations and punitive tariffs to end their disagreements. Trade between China and the West has grown rapidly over the last two...

Doug Young  Bottom line: Yingli’s sudden repayment of 70 percent of a maturing bond shows the government may provide partial assistance for struggling solar panel makers, in an effort to engineer an orderly shut-down of these weaker companies. The story of China’s troubled solar panel sector has taken an unexpected twist, with word of a last-minute partial reprieve for Yingli (NYSE: YGE), one of the weakest major players that looked set to default on a large debt payment. The development came quite quickly and had a few unusual elements that hint strongly at government intervention. Yingli’s case is...

...and why it will survive. Paula Mints The photovoltaic industry is currently in a state of extreme contraction brought about by overbuilding, which was brought about by the belief that the feed-in tariff incentive model would continue expanding from region to region and which was exacerbated by decades of fighting for profits and incentives in a world that largely considered the PV industry either a science experiment or the lifestyle choice of hippies. The current infighting has made enemies of colleagues. Artificially low prices have encouraged governments to believe that enough progress has been made,...

Doug Young China’s solar retrenchment has taken a big step forward with word that a bankruptcy court has chosen Hong Kong-listed Shunfeng Photovoltaic (HKEx: 1165) from a field of bidders vying to invest in reorganizing former solar pioneer Suntech (NYSE: STP). The decision is interesting both because of who the bankruptcy court selected, and also because of who lost the bidding. The selection of Shunfeng looks particularly significant, as it could mark the emergence of a new major player as the battered solar panel sector finally starts to emerge from its 2-year-old downturn. The latest reports don’t contain...

by Debra Fiakas CFA This week solar panel installer SolarCity (SCTY:  Nasdaq) made its first earnings announcement following its initial public offering in December 2012.  The event was much anticipated even if only to get a glimpse of the company’s most notable (or it’s that notorious?) investor Elan Musk.  Billionaire Musk was mostly recently in the public eye because of a spat with a New York Times reporter over one of Musk’s other major investments, Tesla Motors (TSLA:  Nasdaq).  The reporter was entrusted to road test one of Tesla’s electric sports cars...

Debra Fiakas The chip makers dominate discussion of the solar energy sector.  Nonetheless, a passing comment in a recent blog post introduced me to an interesting company that seems to have been over looked in the solar story  -  Apollo Solar Energy, Inc. (ASOE:  OTC/BB). Apollo produces tellurium, a little known chemical element that looks deceptively like tin.  It is typically a by-product of copper and lead mining operations, but can be found hiding beside gold as well.  While these are very common metals, tellurium is quite rare on earth.  Outer space is another story. Although...

by Tom Konrad CFA SunEdison is proposing something entirely new: a YieldCo with a focus on projects in Africa and Asia, but it's a long way between an S-1 filing with the SEC and and IPO. The June launch of SunEdison's (SUNE) first YieldCo, TerraForm Power (NASD:TERP), transformed the parent company's prospects. Now it wants to repeat the performance with a first-of-its kind YieldCo that will focus on investment in Africa and Asia. A YieldCo is a publicly traded company that is formed to own operating clean energy assets that produce a steady cash flow,...

Doug Young There are quite a few developments on the solar energy front today, led by the release of new financial results from LDK Solar (NYSE: LDK), the weakest of China's major solar panel makers, that show a company in the midst of a meltdown. Meantime, Beijing has officially protested a US law that allows Washington to levy punitive tariffs against overseas industries that receive unfair state support, such as China's solar sector. Both the US and Europe believe China supports its solar sector with unfair subsidies and have taken various punitive actions; and now India is also...

By Tim Conneally The pool of public solar yieldcos keeps growing. Just before the Christmas holiday, Sol-Wind Renewable Power LP filed for a $100 million initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This will be the eighth Yieldco to debut since 2013, and the stock will trade on the NYSE under the symbol SLWD. But there's something different about this one. Sol-Wind is a yieldco that utilizes a Master Limited Partnership (MLP) structure, so it will be taxed differently from the other Yieldcos. Generally speaking, a Yieldco is similar to MLPs by nature, but the taxation...

by Shawn Kravetz In ten years of solar investing, we have never encountered an opportunity as obscure and potentially lucrative as Renewable Energy Trade Board Corporation (OTCPK:EBODF).  Disclosure: I am long EBODF. Before walking through the long thesis, we must caution potential investors that EBODF "went dark" with the SEC in March 2013. However, we have conducted rigorous due diligence on the ground in Asia and through the Hong Kong Stock Exchange filings of Goldpoly New Energy Holdings (0686.HK) - EBODF's sister company sharing the same parent/leading shareholder - China Merchants New Energy Group (part of massive Chinese...

SolarCity (NASDAQ: SCTY) is up 5% on an unsurprising new solar deal with Walmart (NYSE: WMT) By Jeff Siegel SolarCity (NASDAQ: SCTY) investors were a bit giddy Friday. The company enjoyed a nice bump after it was announced that Walmart (NYSE: WMT) had hired the company to install new solar projects at Walmart facilities in up to 36 different states over the next four years. SCTY has actually been working with Walmart since 2010, so it's not particularly surprising that Walmart's next round of solar installations is being carried out through SolarCity. Now while I'm certainly pleased to...

By Harris Roen As a result of a disappointing earnings release, SolarCity (SCTY) took a shellacking on March 7th. The stock traded down 17.6% to the low of the day, and closed down 14.4%. Still, the stock is up 6.5% for the month, and the savvy investor would have gained 78% if they bought SCTY on the first day of trading in December 2012. So what happened? Moreover, what is the outlook for this innovative solar company? It was no surprise that when SolarCity’s earnings results were released on March 6, the company had...

Doug Young Stock Band-Aid Image via BigStock   A couple of items from the struggling solar panel sector are showing how the industry is limping forward, receiving minor rescue loans to continue funding operations while manufacturers await a bigger rescue package from Beijing. I can only guess that the bigger package, which has been talked about for much of the last half year, will finally be rolled out by the middle of this year. That will finally allow the industry to try and put itself on more sustainable long-term...

Jennifer Runyon Responding to projections that the solar panel module overcapacity will continue for at least another year, solar equipment maker GT Advanced Technologies today announced a restructuring plan. The company will lay off approximately 25 percent of its workforce and consolidate its existing business units into a single Crystal Growth Systems (CGS) group. The company said that when fully implemented, the restructuring would save approximately $13 million in annualized expenses. GT expects to record restructuring charges associated with these actions in the amount of approximately $4.2 million in the December quarter. More details and commentary will be...

By Jeff Siegel Solar Failures Rising Those who wish death upon the solar industry are about to be given a gift. According to a New York Times investigation, reports of defective solar panels are starting to rise  just as the industry is on the cusp of significant adoption and expansion. Energy analyst Todd Woody points out that no one is exactly certain how pervasive the problem is, writing: There are no industry-wide figures about defective solar panels. And when defects are discovered, confidentiality agreements often keep the manufacturer's identity secret, making accountability in the industry all the...