How Weather Risk Transfer Can Help Wind & Solar Development
by Daryl Roberts
The Need To Accelerate Renewables Adoption
Renewables are growing rapidly as a percentage of new electric generation, but are still being assimilated too slowly and still constitute too small of a fraction of total generation, to be able to transition quickly enough to scale into a low carbon economy in time to mitigate climate change.
The issue of providing public support, with subsidies and other reallocation methods, is a politically charged subject. High carbon advocates, for example American Petroleum Institute, argues that support for renewables distorts the market. On the other hand, it has been argued, for example by...
Yingli Joins The $1 Club; China Solar Slows
Bottom line: A new second wave of consolidation is likely to occur in China’s solar panel sector later this year, with money-losing companies like Yingli and ReneSola as the most likely acquisition targets. Looming signs of new trouble are brewing in the solar panel sector, with shares of Yingli Green Energy (NYSE: YGE) taking a bath after the company reported widening losses and slowing revenue growth. The 15 percent sell-off saw Yingli’s shares re-approach an all-time low from just 2 and a half years ago, as the company joined a small but growing club of US-listed solar panel makers...
SunTech’s Sunset Illuminates State Ties
Doug Young Sunset for Suntech. Photo by Tom Konrad As the sun rapidly sets on former solar pioneer Suntech (OTC: STPFQ), I thought I’d take a look at the latest reports that show just how closely the company relied on state support. At the same time, another major development has seen Suntech’s shares finally de-list from New York, where they have traded since its 2005 IPO. The de-listing is something that should have happened long ago, even though investors continued to bet that Beijing would rescue Suntech ever since...
ReneSola Finds Shareholders Hard To Please
Solar project developer ReneSola Ltd. (SOL: NYSE) reported financial results this week for the quarter ending June 2018. Revenue topped $27.8 million in the quarter well below the year ago period when a faster pace of development activity generated $44.8 million in sales. The negative year-over-year comparison was anticipated following the sale of ReneSola’s solar cell manufacturing operations in September 2017. Now the company is making its way with solar project development, engineering services and electricity sales from its owned solar power facilities.
Management had guided for sales in a range of $25 to $30 million in the June 2018 quarter. The good news was that ReneSola...
US Solar: Blistering Demand v Expiry of 1603 Treasury Program
by Clean Energy Intel Despite the Solyndra affair and its aftermath in the political arena, the solar industry in the US continues to see a blistering rate of growth. At the same time, the end of year expiration of the 1603 Treasury Grant Program could have a negative affect on the financing environment for all renewables - including solar. Sources of Growth In The North American Solar Sector Source: NPD Solarbuzz North America PV Markets Quarterly report The latest survey-based data from Solarbuzz points to...
Get Ready for a Revival in Solar Tech Investments
James Montgomery The Skies are Brightening as Manufacturers Resume Spending to Improve Efficiency Slumping solar PV equipment spending has finally bottomed out, and we're about to witness a "revival" in investments that will finally close the yawning gap between oversupply and demand, according to a pair of analysts reports. Solar PV manufacturers spent nearly $13 billion in 2011, but then their investments plunged more than 70 percent to $3.6 billion in 2012, and will probably drop another 36 percent this year to $2.3 billion, the lowest level since 2006, says Jon-Frederick Campos, analyst with IHS...
China Solar Companies: “We Can Survive”
Doug Young A mini flurry of news from embattled solar panel makers seems to have the same singular message, designed to tell investors that they can survive an industry crisis now entering its third year. Of course the companies that emerge when the crisis finally subsidies could be far different from the ones that went into the crisis, which seems to be the message from LDK (NYSE: LDK) in its latest announcement involving its slow takeover by a Chinese investor. At the other end of the spectrum, the message from Canadian Solar (Nasdaq: CSIQ) is a more upbeat,...
Are Solar Incentives a Subsidy for the Rich?
by Tom Konrad One of the most common arguments against incentives to help people buy solar panels for their homes are that they are a subsidy for the rich, paid for by everyone. The argument goes: only the rich can buy a photovoltaic system, which, even with subsidies, costs thousands of dollars. Why should everyone chip in to help rich people buy new toys? On the face of it, this argument is persuasive. Why should everyone pay, if only the rich get the benefit? Basic fairness dictates that society should only subsidize activities which create societal (rather than individual...
Solar Verticals and “Balance of System” Valuations
Garvin Jabusch Tom Konrad has kindly provided an opportunity for me to contribute a response to his recent piece “Inverter Stocks: A Value BOS Play on Solar.” I’m grateful for the opportunity because it gives me the chance to discuss these stocks and along the way to clear up some misconceptions it seems may exist regarding Green Alpha’s portfolios and our vision of the next economy. Tom wrote, for example, that “Garvin... has been making the case that the solar sell off is irrational on this blog since...
Solar Inverter Shakeout: 3 Survivors, 2 Buyers, a Loser and a Wildcard
Tom Konrad CFA Inverter for a solar array. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Solar inverter stocks are looking cheap, but until the weaker players are forced out, they are likely to get cheaper. The major publicly traded solar inverter companies are Power-One (NASD:PWER), Satcon (NASD:SATC), SMA Solar (OTC:SMTGF), Siemens (NYSE:SI), Advanced Energy Industries (NASD:AEIS), Schneider Electric (OTC:SBGSF) and upstart Enphase Energy (NASD:ENPH). Over the last year the industry has faced eroding margins and an increasingly competitive environment. This parallels the problems of solar manufacturers: the industry has too much...
Q-Cells and Hanwha: Solar Geopolitics Gets Messy
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...
Solar Eclipse
Debra Fiakas The chip makers dominate discussion of the solar energy sector. Nonetheless, a passing comment in a recent blog post introduced me to an interesting company that seems to have been over looked in the solar story - Apollo Solar Energy, Inc. (ASOE: OTC/BB). Apollo produces tellurium, a little known chemical element that looks deceptively like tin. It is typically a by-product of copper and lead mining operations, but can be found hiding beside gold as well. While these are very common metals, tellurium is quite rare on earth. Outer space is another story. Although...
Microinverters Make a Move on Multi-MW Solar Power Installations
Tildy Bayar A microinverter from iEnergy Photovoltaic (PV) microinverters, traditionally used in smaller rooftop solar installations, are being used in a 2.3-MW commercial rooftop installation in Ontario, Canada, supplier Enphase Energy (ENPH) has announced. The installation is the largest commercial rooftop project under the province’s feed-in tariff (FiT). Analysis firm IHS Research has called the announcement a milestone in the microinverter segment’s progress towards establishing itself outside its biggest market, the U.S., and outside the residential solar segment. According to IHS’s analysis, PV microinverter shipments are forecast to exceed...
Is Timminco For Real?
Timminco (TIMNF.PK or TIM.TO) was, without a doubt, one of the great solar plays of 2007. The Toronto-based company, which has yet to turn a profit, claims it has come up with a process to produce solar-grade metallurgical silicon with cell efficiencies of about 14%. Metallurgical silicon allows for important energy cost savings in the production process (~70%), so being able to approach cell efficiencies reached by conventional solar-grade silicon processes could mean an important cost advantage for metallurgical silicon producers when measured on a per watt basis. Eventually, certain people began publicly doubting Timminco's...
The Solar PV Shipment Shell Game
by Paula Mints Outsourcing has been a common practice in the photovoltaic industry since…always. Ignoring it in favor of reporting higher shipment numbers has been a common practice since…always. There is more outsourcing now than there was ten years ago because the industry is bigger. When the PV industry was at megawatt levels, outsourcing was at megawatt levels. Now that the industry is at gigawatt levels, outsourcing is at gigawatt levels. Today’s outsourcing is also more acceptable in the past everyone did it quietly, today it is out in the open. Yet despite this openness and acceptability,...
Trina Solar Factory Tour: Addressing Environmnetal & Quality Concerns
by Tor Valenza a.k.a. “Solar Fred” This article is part of a multi-part series published at Renewable Energy World. You can read the other parts here: one, two, three, and four. The Trina Solar (TSL) factory tour and testing facility tour is over. It took perhaps an hour, maybe less. The next stop is a small auditorium where Ben Hill, Trina’s VP of sales, gives us a PowerPoint presentation that includes Trina’s history, market share, company philosophy, and their Formula 1 racing branding initiative. Afterward, Trina’s CEO, Jifan Gao, appears, and we are able to ask him questions through...
