Solar Photovoltaic

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...

Tildy Bayar Lux Research’s report, The Great Shakeout: China’s Path to a Rational Solar Industry, outlines the challenges Chinese solar companies will face during the anticipated consolidation, and suggests likely strategies for survival and success in a post-shakeout solar market. While many smaller companies will go under, the nation’s top-tier companies will survive and thrive in an eventual balanced global solar landscape, the report predicts. Policy Measures China’s government will continue to support its solar sector, upping its domestic capacity target in order to boost local demand and reduce its dependence on foreign markets. But Zhun Ma, Lux...

Dana Blankenhorn Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV)  is often in the news. There's a romance to it. Instead of having ugly solar panels on your house, your whole house could be an integrated solar system. It could use all the heat and light hitting it, from any angle, look like any other house, and pay for itself. Pythagoras Solar, an Israeli start-up, says its solar windows, cells sandwiched in glass, can both lower heating and cooling costs while they generate electricity, paying for themselves in 3-4 years. Pythagoras is private, but most publicly-traded BIPV plays are penny stocks, like...

Tom Konrad CFA Clean Edge's Clean Energy Trends 2012 contains some disturbing predictions for solar stock investors. Clean Energy Trends 2012, the annual report from Clean Edge by Ron Pernick, Clint Wilder, and Trevor Winnie, was released today. On the surface, it seems like good news for the solar sector.  Although headlines in 2011 featured much bad press for Solar PV, the industry has not been "withering on the vine." Here are some key points in the report:   Combined global revenue for PV increased from $71.2 billion in 2010 to $91.6 billion...

Doug Young  Bottom line: Yingli’s shares could rebound a bit as concerns ease about an imminent bankruptcy, while Hanergy’s shares are likely to continue sliding when trading resumes to correct from a massively speculative recent run-up. This week has been a volatile time for solar company stocks, which have taken a beating after Yingli (NYSE: YGE) warned about its ability to stay in business due to its heavy debt load. Now Yingli has put out a new statement saying its earlier warning was misinterpreted, helping to reverse a huge sell-off of its shares as it laid out the next...

Solar farm owner and developer stocks are publicly traded companies who develop or manufacture equipment that converts sunlight into other types of useful energy.  Includes manufacturers and developers of both solar photovoltaic and solar thermal equipment, as well as their supply chain. This list was last updated on 3/21/2022. See also the list of Solar Manufacturing Stocks, the list of Residential Solar Stocks, and solar and wind inverter stocks. 7C Solarparken AG (HRPK.DE) Abengoa SA (ABG.MC, ABGOY, ABGOF) Acciona, S.A. (ANA.MC, ACXIF) Adani Green Energy (ADANIGREEN.NSE) Algonquin Power and Utilities (AQN, AQN.TO) Atlantica Yield PLC (AY) Azure Power Global Ltd. (AZRE) Bluefield Solar Income Fund (BSIF.L) Boralex (BLX.TO, BRLXF) Brookfield Renewable Energy...

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...

by Shawn Kravetz In ten years of solar investing, we have never encountered an opportunity as obscure and potentially lucrative as Renewable Energy Trade Board Corporation (OTCPK:EBODF).  Disclosure: I am long EBODF. Before walking through the long thesis, we must caution potential investors that EBODF "went dark" with the SEC in March 2013. However, we have conducted rigorous due diligence on the ground in Asia and through the Hong Kong Stock Exchange filings of Goldpoly New Energy Holdings (0686.HK) - EBODF's sister company sharing the same parent/leading shareholder - China Merchants New Energy Group (part of massive Chinese...

Doug Young New developments in the battered solar energy space indicate the day of reckoning is fast approaching for embattled Suntech (NYSE: STP), even as the latest results from rival Yingli (NYSE: YGE) are showing early signs of a rebound for the battered sector. Industry watchers will recall that cash-strapped Suntech has nearly $600 million worth of bonds that will mature on March 15, even though it lacks the money to repay the bondholders. The company hired investment bank UBS in October to try and renegotiate the debt, though we haven't heard anything from the company since...

by Billy Parish Five years after the Great Recession, most Americans have yet to regain their faith in our country’s largest financial institutions. The Dow is up, but the latest Financial Trust Index shows that 58% of Americans expect the stock market to drop 30% or more this year. Meanwhile, a recent Harris Poll noted that only seven percent of the public trusts the leaders of Wall Street. Strangely, the same poll which found that most Americans think stock prices will decline also found that 92% of Americans plan to hold or increase their investments in the stock...

by Clean Energy Intel In a further sign of the continue supply-demand imbalance in the solar sector, weekly data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance suggests that the spot price of polysilicon, the raw material used in most solar panels, accelerated to the downside last week, falling at the fastest pace since June. Prices of solar wafers and cells also continued their decline: 'The average selling price dropped 5.8 percent on the week to Oct. 10 to $43.78 per kilogram, according to the latest results from the London-based research firm’s survey of contracts conducted from Oct. 3 to...

by Paula Mints Don Quixote by Honore Daumier via Wikimedia Commons For decades the photovoltaic industry has been driven by its beliefs, hopes, the availability of incentives, and what it is willing to ignore in terms of market realities and technological barriers. The apparent achievement of grid parity, even at drastically low margins, was hailed a victory. Continued deployment of multi-megawatt installations in the face of low margins for developers and likely gigawatts of poor quality installations has been regarded as proof of the inevitability of the industry’s success. ...

Meg Cichon The renewable energy market has been slowly strengthening ties with energy storage, and it now seems to be tying a secure knot. Wind and solar developer SunEdison (SUNE) announced today that it bought the energy storage team, projects and 100-MW pipeline of Pennsylvania-based Solar Grid Storage (SGS). SunEdison is now able to offer integrated battery storage solutions for its renewable energy project portfolio, and delve into an energy storage market that is set to grow 250 percent in 2015, according to a new report from the Energy Storage Association and GTM Research. The solar plus battery...

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...

Doug Young A few of the latest headlines reflect a cooling appetite by banks for funding solar energy related projects, creating a worrisome vacuum that Beijing may need to fill as it seeks to stop struggling sector from sinking further still. Two of the latest such headlines look like particular cause for worry, with Canadian Solar (Nasdaq: CSIQ) taking over financial responsibility for a solar power project from one of its construction partners for unspecified reasons that I suspect are related to waning interest by banks in funding such projects. (company announcement) Another similar recent domestic media report...

Doug Young  Bottom line: Yingli’s use of crowd-funding to finance a small project and the bargain sale price of a small polysilicon maker reflect continuing struggles at second-tier solar companies and the need for more consolidation. Two solar energy stories are showing how overcapacity continues to haunt the sector 2 years after it began to emerge from a major downturn. The first involves a desperate-looking fund-raising plan from the struggling Yingli (NYSE: YGE), which is trying to use crowd funding to pay for a new solar plant. The other news involves another slightly bizarre investment in the space, with...