Solar Photovoltaic

Charles MorandIt seems as though the darkest clouds are finally dissipating over alt energy's financing horizon. Over the past few weeks, money has started flowing into the sector again, as evidenced by a number of recent deal announcements: On June 9, I reported on the upcoming IPO for Magma Energy Corp., a geothermal exploration company. The IPO's size will be upped from an initial C$50 MM to C$100 MM, a sign of increased market appetite  SunPower Corp. raised $418 MM in early May through a share and debt offering, and recently announced it had reached a $100...

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...

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. Over 60% of global PV cell and module manu-facturing is either in China or owned by...

Doug Young Yingli (NYSE: YGE) has become the latest player in China’s struggling solar sector to get a lifeline from Beijing, as an interesting picture starts to emerge of the relative health of the sector’s major players and who is likely to lead a coming consolidation. The list of who gets these lifelines could also reflect the relative importance Beijing places on China’s wide and varied field of solar panel and panel component makers, meaning some of these lifeline recipients could emerge as potential leaders to help consolidate the sector in the months ahead.I should make a big...

Meg Cichon Enphase (ENPH) has been slowly inching its way into the solar service business on both a residential and commercial scale, and may even tap utility-scale projects in the near future, according to Marty Rogers, Enphase’s vice president of worldwide customer service and support. Last year Enphase announced a partnership with solar crowdfunding platform Mosaic to offer O&M services to residential solar loan customers. More recently, it announced a commercial O&M offering that combines its C250 commercial microinverter technology with services that assist the design, installation and maintenance of solar projects, including cloud-based monitoring and a dedicated service...

James Montgomery Roughly one month ago General Electric (GE) leapfrogged First Solar (FSLR) in thin-film cadmium-telluride (CdTe) solar photovoltaic (PV) conversion efficiency, with an 18.3 percent efficient champion cell a full percentage point higher than First Solar's 17.3 percent mark set last year. That reign proved to be short-lived, as First Solar has produced an NREL-verified 18.7 percent cell out of its Perrysburg, Ohio factory and R&D center. Keith Emery, who manages NREL's cell and module performance characterization group (and the cell efficiency records chart), confirms that the new First Solar cell arrived and...

by Doug Young China sent an important message to the struggling solar panel sector last week when one of the country’s major manufacturers was forced to turn to global capital markets to raise new funds, hinting that it couldn’t receive the money from state-backed domestic sources. The move sparked a sell-off for New York-listed shares of Yingli Green Energy (NYSE: YGE), as its request for funds met with a frosty response on Wall Street. The fact that Yingli had to seek funding from commercial-oriented western investors indicates Beijing is taking a hands-off approach to financing...

by Clean Energy Intel A new academic study published last week suggests that solar energy has already reached grid parity in some areas in North America and is therefore poised to move into the mainstream. The study, 'A Review of Solar Photovoltaic Levelized Cost of Electricity', was co-authored by Joshua Pearce of Michigan Technological University and Kadra Branker and Michael Pathak of Queen´s University in Kingston, Ontario. It was published in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. You can read an abstract of the study here. The study focuses on the assumptions behind many of the past studies of the...

Doug Young Bottom line: Yingli’s downward spiral will continue as customers abandon the company due to its financial weakness. Shares of the stumbling Yingli (NYSE: YGE) are coming under pressure after its latest earnings report. The intense pressure solar panel makers continue to feel as their sector still struggles to recover from a downturn that dates back 4 years due to massive oversupply.  Panel prices have rebounded somewhat over the last 2 years and many of the best-run companies have returned to profitability during that time. But intense pressure still remains for less well-run companies like Yingli. ...

Tom Konrad CFA Invest In What You Know "Invest in what you know" is an old stock market adage.  The idea is that, if you have some personal knowledge of the real economy, you can use that to make better investments.  How useful this adage is depends on how you apply it.  If you know more about a stock market sector than other investors because of "what you know," it's possible to make better investments because you may be better at spotting future trends.  If, on the other hand, you feel you know a sector...

By Jeff Siegel In as soon as five years, you could be living right next door to a power plant. Actually, even closer. The power plant could be operating from right inside your home. I'm serious. Take a look... This is a backup battery system installed in a home that's powered by domestically generated electrons, courtesy of the biggest nuclear reactor known to humans: the sun. And according to super genius Elon Musk, within five to 10 years, every set of solar panels installed by SolarCity (NASDAQ: SCTY) will come with a battery pack. Nighttime Solar Musk's cousin and...

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...

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...

Doug Young The woes at fast-fading former solar superstar Suntech Power (NYSE: STP) keep on coming, with the company releasing its latest earnings report that shows its woes are likely to continue until its increasingly inevitable takeover by the state. That takeover, if and when it comes, is likely to be as filled with fireworks as Suntech's actual decline, with all signs indicating that founder Shi Zhengrong won't easily yield control of his company to the government-backed funding sources he needs to provide it with desperately needed new capital. Before we delve too deeply into that...

Dana Blankenhorn The lessons of technology investing also apply to solar investing. The decision by Evergreen Solar (ESLR) to move to China has some analysts saying "ha-ha" over solar energy. But in fact it reveals a basic fallacy in the way solar power, and solar power stocks, are analyzed by Wall Street. It's a manufacturing assumption. Solar panels are said to be a manufacturing business. So if prices are going down, that's bad. If governments are no longer seeing solar as just good PR, if they're treating it as a real industry that has to make...

Doug Young Bottom line: The latest EU anti-dumping probe into Chinese solar panels is likely to find that manufacturers violated a previous agreement, which could result in new punitive tariffs by the end of this year. In a move that will surprise to no one, the European Union has formally launched a probe into Chinese solar panel makers who are being accused by European rivals of violating a landmark agreement that averted anti-dumping tariffs. I should really stop using the word “landmark” to describe the 2013 deal between the Chinese panel makers and EU that avoided a...