What Just Happened: SunEdison, First Solar, and SolarCity
2016 was a wild year and not just for solar and after decades of reliance on government incentives, subsidies and mandates the global solar industry may be inured to unpredictability but the industry as a whole should be wary of global trends. Solar PV expert Paula Mints looked at a number of the developments for solar companies in the December edition of SPV Market Research's Solar Flare. Adapted for AltEnergyStocks.com, this series of articles is reprinted with permission. In 2015 SunEdison (SUNEQ) was still buying up companies, developing projects, sponsoring conferences and was viewed – though skeptically...
LDK Sells 16.6% of Company in Chinese State Bailout
Doug Young The nascent state-led bailout of China's struggling solar industry has taken another step forward with word that LDK Solar (NYSE: LDK) has just sold a big chunk of itself to a partly state-owned consortium for enough cash to perhaps fund its operations for another month or 2. This new rescue package values LDK at just $140 million, which is probably still too high a figure for one of China's weakest solar panel makers in an industry where everyone losing big money due to a huge supply glut. Let's take a closer look at this latest announcement...
SolarCity: Fanning the Flames
by Debra Fiakas CFA Solar power installer Solar City (SCTY: Nasdaq) has attracted a swarm of shareholder lawsuits in recent weeks. The stock is trading at a price level 44% below its 52-week high of $88.35 set in February 2014. That has to be disheartening for those who were on the wrong side of the trades at those lofty levels. In February when traders were bidding $88 and change for SCTY, the stock was trading at about 50 times revenue and 47 times cash flow from operations. Of course, since the company had yet to produce...
SolarCity: Sunburn, or Healthy Glow?
By Harris Roen SolarCity (SCTY) fell 9.1% Wednesday when the company released its first quarter earnings report, but gained all of it back and then Thursday on huge volume. Still, the stock has plummeted 22% in three months, and is down 37% from its highs in February 2014. Is this just a healthy correction from its outsized 400%+ gains from the IPO just 17 months ago? Or have we entered into a new lower trading range more in line with financial realties? This article will analyze current developments to this distinctive energy stock, and project where...
Jinko Collapses 28% Amidst Environmental Crisis
by Clean Energy Intel Shares in JinkoSolar Holdings (JKS) fell a full 28% yesterday after the company was forced to idle its manufacturing facility in Haining following three days of protests over allegations that the facility has been polluting the local river. The difficulties relate to one of the company's wholly-owned subsidiaries, Zhejiang Jinko, and the company has now admitted that the local environmental protection authority is investigating the allegations that the company has been discharging hazardous waste into a river: "There have been reports that Zhejiang Jinko Co., Ltd. ("Zhejiang Jinko"), a wholly owned subsidiary...
The History and Future of Solar Shingles
by Kyle Pennell
Back in late 2016, Tesla (TSLA) moved to acquire SolarCity, a solar panel manufacturer and installer. Shortly thereafter, the electric automaker revealed why: it had developed a new residential solar product, the solar roof. While it looked like any other home roof, the tiles that composed the roof actually contained solar cells. An individual roof tile won’t produce much energy, but when linked with others in sequence, the tiles can potentially generate power equal to that of regular solar panels.
But while Tesla’s solar roof energized the solar industry, it was hardly revolutionary. At the time of Tesla’s unveiling...
New Yingli Fund Evokes Shades Of Suntech
Doug Young I wrote earlier this week about troublesome signs for the solar panel sector’s fledgling recovery after a revenue warning from Trina (NYSE: TSL), and now we’re seeing another worrisome signal with news that Yingli (NYSE: YGE) is launching a new fund to build solar power plants. This kind of scheme looks eerily similar to one that kicked off the downfall of former industry leader Suntech (NYSE: STPFQ), though there are also a few differences. Still, Yingli’s latest move signals that the industry may not have learned its lesson from the Suntech debacle. Yingli’s decision...
First Solar Keeps Buying Solar Projects To Keep Pipeline Full
James Montgomery First Solar (FSLR) has added another mega-scale project to its pipeline, helping ensure there's enough to feed its thin-film solar PV manufacturing machine. Rock formations in Clark County, NV. Photo by John Fowler The 250-MW Moapa project being developed by K Road in Clark County, Nevada, about 30 miles north of Las Vegas, was given a green light last summer, making it the first major U.S. solar project approved on tribal land. Construction has been pushed back roughly a year from the original timeline, with First Solar now saying...
New Loans For LDK and Canadian Solar Just Band-Aids
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...
From Solar 2009: Removing The $2,000 ITC Cap
Charles MorandLike Tom, I attended part of the Solar 2009 conference last week. One of the most interesting presentations I heard was by Andy Black, CEO of OnGrid Solar, on the potential impact on residential solar installations of removing the $2,000 ITC limit (link to the actual paper). Prior to changes in October 2008, ITC tax credits for rooftop solar PV installations were capped at $2,000. In the author's own words: This paper presents revised and expanded financial analyses of residential cases . It will look at Internal Rate of Return (IRR) only (for simplicity of...
The Ghost of Solyndra Haunts Chinese Solar Stocks
Doug Young The solar sector’s slow recovery is receiving some new setbacks in the form of lawsuits by 2 bankrupt US companies against Yingli (NYSE: YGE), Trina (NYSE: TSL) and Suntech (NYSE: STP), the last of which is also in bankruptcy reorganization. Adding to the mess, Suntech has just disclosed that more of its European assets have been seized by the Italian courts, throwing yet another new complication into its ongoing reorganization. This growing tide of litigation is somewhat expected, as investors try to recover whatever money they can following the sector’s spectacular crash over the last two...
LDK Posts Steep Loss Amid Mounting Industry Pressure
Steve Leone Margin squeeze photo via Bigstock China's LDK Solar(LDK), a producer of polysilicon, wafers, cells and modules, has reported a steep quarterly loss that underscores the dramatic industry-wide shift that has occurred in the past year. In a weaker-than-expected fiscal first quarter statement posted Tuesday, LDK reported a net loss of $185.2 million, or a loss of $1.46 per diluted American depository share (ADS). During the same period a year ago, the company posted a net income of $135.4 million, or a $0.95...
Are Solar Stocks Cheap For A Reason?
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...
US Still Net Exporter of Solar to China
by Clean Energy Intel Following the announcement that CIGS solar start-up Solyndra had declared Chapter 11, I published an article suggesting that although this was clearly not good news, the overall solar sector in the US was still in relatively good competitive shape, with a healthy trade surplus with the rest of the world of some $1.9bn. You can read my original article here. Although competition from China is intense, particularly in low-cost module production, the US remains a strong player across the supply chain as a whole - particularly in polysilicon production and the manufacture of the...
The Performance Of Solar PV Systems
Aug 11-09 Solar PV Charles Morand A couple of weeks ago, I noted the importance of examining parameters other than module costs when gauging the economic competitiveness of solar PV energy. I noted how multiple factors influence the levelized cost of energy produced by solar PV systems, and thus its relative cost position on the grid. Nothing new here. However, besides standard test conditions (STC) conversion efficiency, or nameplate conversion efficiency, public data on parameters other than cost per watt-peak is not always easy to come by. That's...
Cree, a Solar Play?
For investors excited about Cree's (NASD:CREE) Light-Emitting Diode (LED) business, here's one more piece of good news: The EE Times Reports that the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (Freiburg, Germany) claims it has achieved a record efficiency for its inverter designed for PV generators, using Cree's SiC transistors. I've previously noted that inverters are a good way to participate in the Solar and Wind power markets without needing to invest in the high priced (or foreign) companies which dominate those markets, and even without this news, Cree is a longtime favorite of this blog. The stock shot up...
