Solar Photovoltaic

by Paula Mints In June, Tesla (TSLA) announced it would shut down some of its solar installation stores, end its agreement to sell solar systems through Home Depot and either lay off or reassign affected workers. Tesla indicated that this was part of its overall plan, that is, business as usual. Comment: In 2016, Elon Musk, oops, Tesla adopted, oops, acquired, SolarCity from his cousins, oops, SolarCity shareholders for $2.6-million, oops, $2.6 billion, ramming the deal down skeptical shareholder’s throats, oops, making an economically rational case for the deal. A shareholder lawsuit is working its way through the courts. SolarCity, the pioneer...

By Harris Roen The market is starting to notice that solar investing has been extremely profitable in 2013. As of the middle of September, the average solar stock is up over 50% in the past year, and over 15% in three months (that’s over 60% annualized!). These returns are taken from a broad list of about 60 publically traded companies in the solar industry (see chart above). Though all are involved in solar, solar may not be the primary business of many of these companies. For example, Panasonic (PCRFY) produces photovoltaics, but it is only a small...

by Paula Mints Economic theory holds that when a good is provided it must be paid for and that the value for that good will be set by a dance between the sellers and buyers in a market. It is assumed that when the price is too high buyers will back away and the price will adjust. When the price is too low sellers will fail to make sufficient margin to continue producing the good and the price will adjust. And finally, when the price is just right, equilibrium will be achieved and buyers and sellers will be...

Xantrex Technology Inc. (XTX.TO) has been awarded US $873,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) under its Photovoltaics Manufacturing Research and Development Initiative. Xantrex will match the funding from NREL during the course of the project for a total budget of $1.74 Million. This program will take place at the Xantrex facility in Livermore, California. Xantrex PV inverters are America's leading choice for large-scale solar installations. Presently, utility-interactive, three-phase inverters are available in models ranging from 10 kW to 225 kW, and multiple inverters can be paralleled for larger power installations. ...

Doug Young  Bottom line: Beijing should promote cutting-edge companies like Tesla that can help advance its new energy agenda, while abandoning ones like Yingli that use old technology to make cheap copycat products. Two green energy stories were in the headlines last week, spotlighting China’s drive to become a global leader in the new technology and also the right and wrong ways to achieve that aim. An item involving US electric vehicle (EV) powerhouse Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) represented the right approach, with reports that the company might near a deal with Beijing to build a manufacturing plant in China....

by Doug Young China sent an important message to the struggling solar panel sector last week when one of the country’s major manufacturers was forced to turn to global capital markets to raise new funds, hinting that it couldn’t receive the money from state-backed domestic sources. The move sparked a sell-off for New York-listed shares of Yingli Green Energy (NYSE: YGE), as its request for funds met with a frosty response on Wall Street. The fact that Yingli had to seek funding from commercial-oriented western investors indicates Beijing is taking a hands-off approach to financing...

by Shawn Kravetz In the second quarter, solar stocks were impacted by broad energy sector declines on global macroeconomic concerns (most notably Greece and China). This negative sentiment has continued unabated into July exacerbating the disconnect between fundamentals and perceptions. JA Solar (NYSE: JASO) epitomizes this dislocation. We at Esplanade Capital Electron Partners (ECEP) owned JA Solar prior to June 5, believing the company to be worth ~30%+ more than the share price. On June 5, JA Solar received a takeover offer from its Chairman/CEO and parent company at a 20% premium....

Lessons From SunEdison, First Solar, and SolarCity by Paula Mints SunEdison (SUNEQ) Currently SunEdison faces at least 15 lawsuits. SunEdison, Terraform (TERP) and other defendants asked to have the cases against them consolidated. Along with the lawsuits, from October 2015 through May 26 at least 20 security class actions have been filed against SunEdison its subsidiaries, officials and underwriters. Many of these actions relate to claims that investors were misled about the liquidity of SunEdison, et al. Meanwhile, GCL-Poly wants to buy SunEdison’s (MEMC) polysilicon business for $150-million and those in charge of selling off the...

Doug Young I’ve been trying to avoid writing about the latest punitive tariffs for Chinese solar panels that look set to come from the European Union this week, since the story has dragged on for more than a year now and the outcome was almost inevitable. But that said, it would be a bit remiss of me not to write at least something on this latest move, which is expected to see European Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht formally recommend the introduction of anti-dumping tariffs for solar panels supplied from China. (English article) The latest reports...

Tom Konrad CFA Disclosure: I and my clients have long positions in HASI. I have sold NYLD $40 and $45 calls short. The secret sauce for bringing residential solar into the mainstream is the solar lease.  With the simple value proposition of little or no money down and cost savings from day one, a homeowner does not have to be an environmentalist or green to be interested in the green of a solar lease.  He or she simply needs to live in a state where the combination of annual sunshine and state incentives provide the economics to make solar...

by Colin Murchie Seeking Solars' Emilio Estevez It is no secret that costs of capital must decrease to make distributed generation a massively scaling resource. And, as costs of capital steadily decrease, the “residual value” – what happens to the asset once the PPA has run out – becomes more and more important. With that in mind, it no longer seems reasonable to fill the years after the PPA’s expiration – with a row of zeros on the pro forma. There is residual value there that is often...

Doug Young  Bottom line: The recent plunge in solar stocks is the result of panic selling due to falling oil prices, meaning the shares could rebound sharply once the sell-off subsides. US investors were showing signs of new energy indigestion in the shortened trading day after Thanksgiving, dumping stocks of all the major solar panel makers in a messy post-holiday sell-off. With no major news from any of the companies, the driving force behind the sell-off appears to be the recent plunge in oil prices, which hit new 4 years lows late last week after OPEC declined to cut...

by Paula Mints In terms of the current trade petition and the USITC decision, government interference will not correct an imbalance that is embedded in the industry (globally) particularly when it is put in place by a body that does not understand the nuances of the problem. Despite evidence to the contrary, attorneys and consultants for Suniva/SolarWorld seem to have convinced the USITC that cell manufacturing in the US can be resuscitated and that tariffs and quotas the mechanism that will stimulate manufacturing. In reality, this situation is stimulating uncertainty and doing harm. Table 1: Tariff Recommendations   ...

The 2014 rankings for solar module suppliers have been released from the newly combined Solarbuzz and IHS Technology solar research team. The team predicts that the global top 10 PV module suppliers will stay the same, although some reshuffling will occur. The rankings are based on full year shipment estimates. The group is forecasting Trina Solar (TSL) to be the largest module supplier in 2014 in terms of global shipments. IHS said that Trina is expected to break industry records for both quarterly and annual PV module shipments in Q4’14. Yingli Green Energy (YGE), the holder of these...

By Harris Roen Summer is here, and the sun has been shining on alternative energy. Two investment themes in the changing alternative energy landscape have emerged as potential profit centers for investors. To take advantage of these trends, the Roen Financial Report has added in four new companies to the list of about 250 alternative energy companies that we track for our readers. Investment Theme #1: The growing domestic Japanese solar market In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japan has committed to growing renewables as a domestic energy source. According to Mercom Capital Group,...

Ucilia Wang The pending sale of bankrupted Q-Cells, once the largest solar cell maker in the world, to Korea-based Hanwha Group is the latest reminder that playing geopolitics in the world of solar will only get harder. The creditors of the German company agreed to the sale with a vote on Wednesday, though the sale still requires regulatory approval before it’s finalized. Hanwha will gain a sterling silicon solar cell maker by buying Q-Cells, which was the reigning cell maker back in 2008, before it ceded the spot thanks to the financial market...