Solar Photovoltaic

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....

Joseph McCabe Many people ask me, “which CIGS company is going to emerge as winner in the race towards high efficiency thin film PV’s? To provide an enlightened perspective to the question, some historical perspectives are needed. First Solar (FSLR) has helped the Thin Film PV Industry by proving that respectable solar to electric area efficiencies can be achieved in a low cost manufacturing processes, with respectable performance over time. First Solar’s technology is cadmium telluride (CdTe) on glass. Previously, amorphous silicon was the thin film leader, with the highest commercially available thin film area efficiencies; currently they...

Jennifer Runyon As the solar PV market goes through its trials and tribulations, thin-film manufacturers could be poised to take on more market share. In the solar electricity market, capitulation, consolidation and contraction are the buzzwords of the day. Today, all solar PV manufacturers face an over-supplied and underfunded PV market. The oversupply and drop in subsidy markets across Europe and the U.S. has forced crystalline silicon manufacturers to sell their PV panels below manufacturing costs or risk losing all market-share. As the weeks tick by, major manufacturers, one after another, are going under or announcing...

Doug Young The latest news from Canadian Solar (Nasdaq: CSIQ) and Suntech (NYSE: STP) is casting a shadow over a nascent recovery for the embattled solar sector, as each company struggles to fix its broken finances pummeled by a two-year downturn. Canadian  Solar has announced a plan to raise up to $50 million through a stock sale, while domestic media are reporting that bidding for bankrupt Suntech is moving ahead quickly, indicating the end may be near as an independent company for this former solar high-flyer. All this shows that investors shouldn’t get too bullish on solar companies...

Doug Young August 9th was “Solar Friday”, as we were bombarded with a flurry of news that showing the sector is rebounding and could also see its first major merger. In the former category, earnings updates from Yingli (NYSE: YGE) and Trina (NYSE: TSL) are showing steady improvement for the embattled panel-making sector, while a quarterly report from Canadian Solar (Nasdaq: CSIQ) is showing the sudden improvements may already be starting to plateau. In the latter category, Chinese media are reporting that both Yingli and Trina are also showing interest in investing in Suntech (NYSE: STP), the former...

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...

L. Myron Clark A two-day surge on Feb. 8-9 took at least thirteen solar energy stocks more than twice their recent lows.  These names represent about half the publicly traded companies in the industry (on an unweighted basis).  The "two-bagger" stocks follow somewhat different patterns, as indicated in the two graphs below.  Several of them hit their 52-week lows in late September or early October 2011, close to the bottom in the broad market.  Those lows ranged from 80% (YGE) to 86% (JKS) below the respective 52-week highs.  The companies include: Jinkosolar Holding Co (JKS), ...

By Jeff Siegel While solar bears and short-mongers celebrated the 8% dip in SolarCity (NASDAQ:SCTY) yesterday, opportunists are sniffing around for another buying opportunity. Especially those who didn't take my advice to load up after the stock fell below $50 back in March. What a bargain that was! In any event, SCTY took it on the chin yesterday, and I suspect there will continue to be some ebbs and flows in the near-term. Long-term, however, SCTY remains a solid play on the growth of solar in the United States. It's also worth noting that SCTY has just unveiled a...

L. Myron Clark Solar energy stocks took a huge jump today in U.S. trading.  While the sheen faded slightly as afternoon skies turned overcast in the eastern U.S., as of the NYSE closing bell about half the sector was up 20% or better.  Absent major industry news or earnings blowouts, short covering is the most plausible explanation for the sudden sharp rise.  Among the biggest winners were: Hanwha SolarOne Co. Ltd. ADS (HSOL)  +36.80% JA Solar Holdings Co. Ltd. ADS (JASO)  +34.72% JinkoSolar Holding Co. Ltd. ADS (JKS)  +31.86% ReneSola...

Doug Young  More bright signs are emerging in the solar panel sector with word of 2 major new tie-ups, one involving ReneSola (NYSE: SOL) in Japan and the other Yingli (NYSE: YGE) in China. In the first, ReneSola has signed a massive deal to sell panels to a Japanese solar power plant developer. The latter case looks similar, with Yingli in its own deal for a major joint venture to co-develop new solar power plants with one of China’s top nuclear power companies. The deals point to the huge potential from the China and Japan markets for solar...

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...

A Conversation with Applied Material’s Solar Head Charlie Gay by Neal Dikeman I had a chance to chat today with Dr. Charlie Gay, the President of Applied Materials' (AMAT) solar division.  You may recall, we broke the story in the blogosphere 5 years ago about Applied’s entry into solar, which was anchored with a highly touted and very aggressive strategy for turnkey large format amorphous silicon and tandem cell plants called SunFab. Charlie reminded me that when they began 5 years ago, they did so along two major thrusts:  The acquisition of Applied Films in...

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...

Tom Konrad Over the last couple of years, investors who were hoping to do well by doing good have gotten bad sunburns.  Since the start of 2011, the two ETFs which track the solar sector, Guggenheim Solar (NYSE:TAN) and Market Vectors Solar Energy (KWT) are down 74% and 75%, respectively, even after the large jumps up in the first week of the year. That jump was in large part caused by the January 2nd purchase of two large solar projects by Warren Buffett controlled MidAmerican Solar from Sunpower Corporation (NASD:SPWR.) You might wonder, Why would...

by Paula Mints CdTe and crystalline manufacturer and project developer First Solar (FSLR) announced positive results for Q1 as well as a switch in strategy emphasis from deployment to module sales. Honestly, revenues, positive net income and other financial metrics matter less in this case than the company’s strategy switch to module sales. Downward price pressure and margin compression along with continued aggressive pricing from China makes this move confusing. Cost leadership is mutable in the PV industry and it is difficult to imagine that First Solar will have an advantage in this regard for long. ...