Solar Photovoltaic

Junko Movellan The Skies are Brightening as Manufacturers Resume Spending to Improve Efficiency Almost one decade ago, Japanese PV makers dominated global PV production Sharp (SHCAY), Kyocera (KYO), Sanyo (now part of Panasonic) and Mitsubishi Electric represented about 50 percent of global production in 2005. When German and other European markets expanded quickly, a great number of companies in Europe and Asia, specifically China, jumped into the “potentially” profitable PV industry. They rapidly ramped up their production and brought down costs, leaving Japanese companies behind. When the Japanese government decided to pump life...

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...

Avoiding the Rush Whenever there is a gold rush, the people who make the real money are seldom the gold miners, but rather the suppliers to the miners that come home with the lion's share of the profits.   This is not because there is not an incredible amount of money to be made in mining gold, but because the nature of a gold rush is that too many optimistic miners are encouraged by the early profits of a few to rush to pursue too few opportunities. To many, the rush into solar stocks seems to be just...

Tom Konrad CFA Two years ago, it seemed like First Solar (NASD:FSLR) could do no wrong.  The company could manufacture it’s thin film Cd-Te photovoltaic (PV) cells at a fraction of the price of traditional crystalline silicon (c-Si) cells.  First Solar was the first company to break the $1/W barrier for manufacturing cost. That was then.  Now, a supply glut caused by overbuilding and reduced subsidies has dramatically slashed the price of c-Si cells.  Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) forecasts that demand will not catch up with supply until 2014, even in their most optimistic scenario.  In May, the...

Doug Young Solar Lifeline image via Bigstock A new Chinese media report shows that after more than a year of talk, Beijing is finally turning its aggressive talk on solar energy into action by more than doubling its approval of new solar power plants this year. The main question now is: Will any of its struggling solar panel makers survive long enough to enjoy the expected boom in business when some of these new plants start to get built. Of course industry watchers will know the answer is...

by Debra Fiakas CFA The last post “Meeting Solar Challenge in the Courtroom” discussed how European solar manufacturers are complaining about China’s exports.  A complaint made by industry association EU ProSun charges China manufacturers of solar cells and panels of circumventing Europe’s anti-dumping measures by channeling their products through Malaysia and other intermediaries in order to disguise the China origin.  A report by released last month by IHS (formerly SolarBuzz) makes clear there is much at stake in the solar industry.  IHS forecasts global solar photovoltaic capacity could reach 498 gigawatts by 2019.  That call is...

Doug Young Solar panel makers are finally seeing signs that the clouds could be lifting from their embattled sector, sparking a stock rally for their volatile shares. Canadian Solar (Nasdaq: CSIQ) led off the upbeat news, releasing preliminary results that included better-than-expected first-quarter sales and margins. But perhaps more importantly, other reports said the industry is seeing some of its first sustained price increases after more than 2 years of declines. Those 2 pieces of good news ignited a rally for solar shares, led by Canadian Solar whose stock rose more than 12 percent to a...

Doug Young As the solar panel sector continues its painful overhaul, signals are emerging about who will survive the downturn and thrive when the industry returns to health. Canadian Solar (Nasdaq: CSIQ) certainly seems to be one of the strongest players coming out of the retrenchment, with word that the company has sold 4 more plants that it constructed to private buyers. Canadian Solar is quickly emerging as a strong executor of this particular strategy, which sees it construct power plants using its own solar cells and then eventually selling those plants to private sector buyers. Rival Suntech...

Ed Gunther From Solar Light Flashes: SPI12 Edition Sunny Boy TL-US Inverter SMA Solar Technology AG (ETR:S92) will begin limited shipments of the transformerless Sunny Boy 3000/4000/5000TL-US-22 inverter series for 3 to 5 kiloWatt rated AC power PV systems in 4Q12. The TL-US series has added a unique Emergency Power Supply feature providing daytime power to a dedicated power socket in the event of a grid power outage. The power socket is isolated from the grid during the outage and supplies up to 12 Amps so long as...

by Paula Mints Sizing the supply side of the global PV industry has never been easy. As annual shipments grew to gigawatt heights outsourcing increased in tandem making it almost impossible to settle on a reliable number for the size of the industry in any given year. Outsourcing, a common practice in all industries, takes place when one manufacturer buys a product or component from another manufacturer.  In the PV industry, manufacturer A buys cells from manufacturer B, assembles the cells into modules and includes these modules in its in-house production.  When both manufacturers report the resulting...

Doug Young Bottom line: Trina’s plan to separately list its solar plant-building assets is likely to meet with lukewarm to frosty demand. A new plan by Trina (NYSE: TSL) to separately list some capital-intensive assets has overtones of desperation. The intense pressure solar panel makers continue to feel as their sector still struggles to recover from a downturn that dates back 4 years due to massive oversupply. Panel prices have rebounded somewhat over the last 2 years and many of the best-run companies have returned to profitability during that time. Even better performers like Trina are feeling pressure...

James Montgomery First Solar (NASD:FSLR) is arguably the leader in thin-film solar photovoltaics (PV). It's relentlessly inched up conversion efficiencies of its cadmium-telluride (CdTe) technology, while chipping away at manufacturing costs (now at $0.67, reported in November). The current NREL-confirmed record holder for CdTe at 14.4% total area efficiency and 17.3% cell efficiency, First Solar's module efficiency in production in November 2012 was 12.7% (average), and its roadmap (last updated Dec. 2011) projects a goal of 14.5%-15.0% average efficiency for production modules by the end of 2015. In the company's 3Q12 earnings presentation, CEO Jim...

By Jeff Siegel In as soon as five years, you could be living right next door to a power plant. Actually, even closer. The power plant could be operating from right inside your home. I'm serious. Take a look... This is a backup battery system installed in a home that's powered by domestically generated electrons, courtesy of the biggest nuclear reactor known to humans: the sun. And according to super genius Elon Musk, within five to 10 years, every set of solar panels installed by SolarCity (NASDAQ: SCTY) will come with a battery pack. Nighttime Solar Musk's cousin and...

Tom Konrad, Ph.D. The last panel I attended at Solar 2009 focused on investment opportunities in Solar.  This is the first of several entries with ideas from the speakers.   They were: Allen Goodman, of ECG Consulting Group James Groelinger, of Bellegrove Associates J. Peter Lynch, of Salem Financial, Inc. Pradeep Haldar, Ph.D., MBA of the University at Albany Each had perspectives on the solar (mostly photovoltaic (PV) industry, and struck me as very knowledgeable in the field.  The caliber of the industry and investment knowledge on display impressed me, so I'll share with readers some of the...

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 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...