MidAmerican, SunPower Begin “Major Construction” at Antelope Valley
James Montgomery Joshua trees in Antelope Valley, CA. Photo by Tom Hilton MidAmerican Solar and SunPower have begun "major construction" at the Antelope Valley Solar Projects (AVSP), two co-located megasolar projects totaling a combined 579 megawatts (AC) generation capacity that MidAmerican bought earlier this year for $2+ billion. Construction work technically began in January with laying groundwork and putting infrastructure in place, such as trailers and supplies. One MW has already been installed at AVSP, and now efforts will ramp up over the coming weeks with more workers...
A Solar Penny Stock Worth Watching?
Dana Blankenhorn As a rule "penny stocks," public companies routinely selling for less than $1 a share, and sometimes just a few pennies, make me nervous. While the intent is laudable – to give small investors a chance to bet on long shots just like the boys on Sand Hill Road – the result has always looked like a rigged casino. Because of its low capitalization and small float it's easy to “pump and dump” a penny stock, boosting its value with some publicity, then selling it short. And if the deal were worthwhile, why isn't the smart...
Staying Alive: Could Thin-film Manufacturers Come Out Ahead in the PV Wars? Part 1
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...
Doing Solar Incentives Right
Different solar incentives encourage different types and locations of solar installations. Better solar installations will result if we first decide what we want from solar, and then choose the solar incentives we use to match.
Tom Konrad, Ph.D.
Choosing Carefully
This article is based on a presentation I gave at Solar 2009 . As with wind, the current incentives for Solar photovoltaics are good for encouraging more solar, but they are less effective at encouraging better solar. Jigar Shah, founder of SunEdison and Jigar Shah Consulting, told the audience that they should be very careful in calling for a Feed-in-Tariff...
What Just Happened: SunPower Struggles And Restructures
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. The high efficiency monocrystalline cell pioneer and manufacturer SunPower (SPWR) began signaling its competitive struggle in early 2016 and...
SunPower (NASDAQ: SPWR) and Graphene Investing
By Jeff Siegel 've said it before, and I'll say it again... If you want to profit from solar, the money is in installation and technology. Certainly SunPower (NASDAQ: SPWR) knows this to be true. One of the few U.S. solar plays still around, SunPower surprised analysts with a narrower Q1 loss and sales that exceeded estimates. This, by the way, was due to an increase in installations. No surprise there. And certainly those of us who regularly monitor installation data, which is not hard to come by, have been quietly picking up shares since the start...
Walmart vs Tesla
by Paula Mints
Walmart takes on Tesla Solar for Poor Quality Installations and Components
Early in August, after several quarters of slowing sales, Tesla (TSLA) announced a restart of its residential solar lease, referring to it as solar system rentals.
Around the same timeframe, Tesla stated that it had no timeline for the availability of its solar tiles.
On August 20, Walmart (WMT) filed a breach of contract lawsuit against Tesla/SolarCity in the commercial division of the New York State Supreme court claiming “years of gross neglect” leading to several fires at its facilities. According to court documents, one fire took place after...
Intermolecular’s Solar Strategy Rising During Industry Eclipse
Tom Konrad CFA Solar Eclipse at Sunrise photo via Bigstock Solar module prices have fallen 50% in the last six months. This is great news for solar consumers, but has meant deep pain for solar manufacturers. Just last week, GE Energy (NYSE:GE) laid off workers and put expansion plans at their Colorado factory on hold for at least 18 months while they try to improve the Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) thin film solar technology they plan to produce there. That move followed the bankruptcy of another thin film producer...
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...
Magnetek Aurora(TM) Inverters Complete Manhattan’s Largest Building Integrated Solar Power System
Magnetek Inc. (MAG) announced that Manhattan's largest functioning Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) power system recently began harvesting energy from the sun.
The US Solar Module Capacity Bandwagon
by Paula Mints
South Korea's Hanwha Q Cells (HQCL) jumped on the US solar module capacity building bandwagon by announcing that it planned to add 1.6-GWp of module assembly in the US with the goal of taking advantage of the 2.5-GWp of cells that can be imported without the tariff.
Comment: The US has about 1-GWp of module assembly for which cells must be imported. Jinko is expected to add 600-MWp of module assembly capacity in Florida.
SunPower (SPWR) is expected to add capacity in Oregon if and when (when or if) the SolarWorld US acquisition is approved. Meanwhile new module assembly is...
Time to Buy Solar Stocks
By Jeff Siegel Here's Deutsche Bank's latest comments on the state of the global solar market: “We see the sector transitioning from subsidized to sustainable markets in 2014.” That's a bold statement, and one that's sure to agitate solar haters. But that's not our concern. Our concern is simply when it will be safe to jump back into the solar game. According to analysts at Deutsche Bank, margins will rebound and profitability will return in the second half of this year. This is something we've been saying, too although I suspect it'll be more towards...
JA Solar and Renesola Rush to Reassure Creditors
Doug Young Mid-sized solar panel makers JA Solar (Nasdaq: JASO) and ReneSola (NYSE: SOL) are both in the news today discussing their finances, in what looks like an attempt to calm the nerves of investors and creditors who are no doubt worried following the bankruptcy forced upon former industry leader Suntech (NYSE: STP) earlier this week. All of these companies have billions of dollars in debt which they used to build up their manufacturing operations over the last decade, and big amounts of that money will be due for repayment in the next 2 years. Meantime, the...
India Hates Coal
By Jeff Siegel If you think the war on coal in the U.S. is bad, you ain't seen nothing yet! We recently got word that India is set to double the tax on coal production, while promoting electric vehicles and renewable energy projects. I'm pretty sure there's some Luddite reporter in Mumbai right now who's head's about to explode. But that's neither here nor there. While I'm no fan of regulatory regimes of any kind, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't happy to know that a crap-ton of money is getting funneled into renewable energy and electric...
Finding the Apple Computer of Solar Power
by Joseph McCabe, PE Have you noticed the corporate pitches that compare their products to iPhones or iPads to try and force the feeling that they are "like Apple"? Bill Ford just pitched the Ford electric car in this manner. If Apple is the gold standard, the question becomes, what solar company is closest to being just like Apple? I think the answer is none, at least not yet. The Apple Model Apple has a design culture that attracts design professionals to their product. They also have a completely vertical integrated product where their case, graphical...
The Top Ten PV Manufacturers: What The List Doesn’t Mean
by Paula Mints Every year at this time lists of lessons learned during the previous year give way to lists of top ten PV manufacturers. It’s time to ask what these lists mean, and whether they have a purpose to the ongoing growth and health of the photovoltaic industry. So Many Numbers, So Little Time There is more than one way to size the photovoltaic industry and unfortunately, much of the time are the metrics are considered to be synonymous. The PV industry is sized by capacity, shipments, production, module assembly capacity, installations and...
