2010: The Year of the Strong Grid? Part III
Two Strong Grid Stocks in Hiding Tom Konrad, CFA A look at two transmission (or "Strong Grid") stocks I missed previously: EMCORE Group and AZZ Incorporated. In part I of this series, I made the case that 2010 might be the year that transmission stocks caught investors' attention, as smart grid stocks did in 2009. In part II, I looked at the transmission stocks in our Electric Grid stock list, and compared their financial strength. My initial screen, based on Current ratio, Cash on Hand, Debt, Cash from Operations, P/E ratio, and dividend yeild allowed...
Energy Storage on the Smart Grid Will Be 99.45% Cheap and 0.55% Cool
7.17.09 Storage Week John Petersen Infocast’s Storage Week was all I had hoped it would be, and more. While I thoroughly enjoyed serving on three discussion panels and was warmly received by roughly 250 attendees, including executives of companies that I've occasionally criticized, the most important value for me came from the opportunity to hear four days of high-level presentations by industry executives, national thought leaders and policymakers who repeatedly stressed that: From a utility perspective grid-based energy storage is the functional equivalent of an instantly...
ABB Group – A Cleantech Company?
Tom Konrad CFA Power and automation giant ABB, Ltd. (NYSE:ABB) was named Cleantech Corporation of the Year at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco. The company has been focused on acquiring start ups in the cleantech space for the last couple of years, with two significant ones in 2010: Ventyx, a provider of IT systems to utilities, and Baldor Electric, the premier supplier of high-efficiency motors in the US. I very much like ABB's approach to cleantech. I'd even written about Baldor as a good way to invest in energy efficiency earlier in 2010 just a couple months before...
SMA Solar’s Transformerless Inverter Provides Power During Outages
Ed Gunther From Solar Light Flashes: SPI12 Edition Sunny Boy TL-US Inverter SMA Solar Technology AG (ETR:S92) will begin limited shipments of the transformerless Sunny Boy 3000/4000/5000TL-US-22 inverter series for 3 to 5 kiloWatt rated AC power PV systems in 4Q12. The TL-US series has added a unique Emergency Power Supply feature providing daytime power to a dedicated power socket in the event of a grid power outage. The power socket is isolated from the grid during the outage and supplies up to 12 Amps so long as...
Keynes Meets Carson, And How You Can Invest It (Part 1)
I'm not sure whether John Maynard Keynes, the father of Keynesian economics and an ardent proponent of government interventionism during hard economic times, and Rachel Carson, the mother of modern environmentalism and the author whose work is credited for the eventual creation of the EPA, ever met during their lifetimes. But if current voter sentiment holds until November 4, their ideas could soon converge and form the basis of government policy for at least the next four years. Let me explain. First, John Maynard Keynes. There is no doubt that the deliberate and coordinated nationalization of financial services...
Fending Cyber Threats with a Fortress
RuggedCom Fortifies the Smart Grid and Captures the Substation Market By Joyce Pellino Crane I wonder how many utility executives lie awake at night worrying about cyberthreats to their electricity substations. If you’ve ever gone a few days without electricity in your home, you’ll quickly realize how minimal life becomes. Working on your computerthe speedway to higher thinking and creativity is impossible. Watching television, charging your cell phone, keeping food frozen, and micro-waving popcorn, can no longer be done. Every task requires planning and, much more physical laborconsider what it would take to wash and...
General Electric: Seeking to Define the Smart Grid
By Harris Roen General Electric (GE) is a standout company that supplies products and services in the alternative energy and environmental fields. GE also has a robust stake in smart grid technology; its energy division alone has products that include power delivery, smart metering, charging systems, and power sensing. According to Cleantech, GE is a player in 5 of the 6 critical business areas affecting smart grid development. As part of their commitment to shape the future of the smart grid, GE committed $200 million for entrepreneurs, students and other innovators as a “call to action” for...
ABB: Improving Transmission and Distribution Efficiency
Diamond in the Rough Alternative energy stocks are usually exciting, development stage companies with break-through technology which just might to totally transform the way we live. Unfortunately, that's a better description of a speculative lottery ticket style company than a solid investment which will provide solid, long-term capital gains. So it's always a pleasure to find a company whose products are so commonplace that we don't even notice them, even when we see them every day, and yet is involved in essential work to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. I took this picture in...
Keynes Meets Carson, And How You Can Invest It (Part 2)
Two weeks ago, I brought you the first of a series of two articles on how you can play the clean infrastructure build-out that could come as a result of an Obama victory today. In that article, I made the point that the political and economic ideology that had prevailed in America over the past 30 years, economic laisser-faire, had been severely undermined by the recent credit meltdown and what now looks like it will be the worse economic shock in a generation or more. I further argued that the increasing sidelining of the "small government" discourse in...
List of Wind and Solar Inverter Stocks
This article was last updated on 12/20/2022.
Inverter stocks are publicly traded companies that manufacture or are suppliers to companies whose products, called inverters, convert power from direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC). Inverters are used to allow power from solar, wind, and batteries to feed the electric grid. They are also included in the list of electric grid stocks.
Advanced Energy Industries (AEIS)
Darfon Electronics Corporation (8163.TW)
Enphase Energy, Inc. (ENPH)
Hoymiles Power Electronics Inc. (688032.SS)
Schneider Electric (SU.PA, SBGSF, SBGSY)
SMA Solar Technology (S92.DE)
SolarEdge (SEDG)
If you know of any inverter stock that is not listed here and should be, please let us know by...
Bold or Bogus? Digi International’s Move toward Smart Grid Technology
Research Analyst Bucks NaysayersBy Joyce Pellino CraneJay M. Meier may be out on a lonely limb, but the senior research analyst at Feltl and Company is unwavering in his enthusiasm for Digi International, Inc. (Nasdaq:DGII)Meier is recommending Digi as a buy, insisting that the company is undervalued given its potential for growth in the smart grid sector.“The company is woefully undervalued,” he said, “and it’s probably going to start growing in the second half of 2010 as evidenced by all the smart grid technology it has...”But other research analysts are not so sure. I spoke with two who...
Hidden Gems? Why Green Investors Should Look at Daewoo Shipbuilding and Ener1
Part 2 of 2 Bill Paul Neither Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. Ltd., which trades OTC under the symbol DWOTF, nor Ener1 Inc., which trades on NASDAQ under the symbol HEV, is an obvious candidate for having hidden potential. Heck, Daewoo isn’t even a green energy stock. Or is it? Lost in the hubbub of Copenhagen and Congress, there’s been important news about both these companies that strongly suggests – at least to me – that each has plenty of undiscovered potential that will really start paying off over the next 18 to 24...
Hammond Power Solutions: A Cheap Power Regulation Play?
We have discussed on several occasions the investment opportunities related to power regulation and renewable energy. I have also recently written about the value approach to investing. I came across a stock today that I believed fell into both categories: power regulation (transformers) and value. The stock is Hammond Power Solutions (HPS-A.TO or HMDPF.PK), a firm that makes transformers for a number of applications, including wind turbines. While revenue and earnings have been ramping up quite nicely over the past four years, the stock price has been trending mostly laterally (albeit in a volatile manner) over the...
2010: The Year of the Strong Grid? Part VI: Will the Real Strong Grid...
Tom Konrad, CFA For clean electricity to flourish, the electric grid needs not only to be smarter, but more robust. This is where my strong grid stocks come in. But stringing wires for power is a lot like stringing wires for telecommunications as well a large number of other businesses which do not have much to do with the energy trends I hope will boost the long term prospect of these companies. Knowing how much these companies earn from grid infrastructure helps predict how much they will benefit from the trend. Unlike many of the financial statistics...
How to Invest in the Pickens Plan
A friend recently asked me how to invest in the Pickens Plan. I named a stock (see below). He then surprised me by saying "You are the fifth person I've asked, and no one else knew how. Several said it could not be done." You can invest in T. Boone Pickens's plan. Here's how: The Plan T. Boone's plan is both simple and audacious. We will build wind farms all over the Great Plains. Build the necessary transmission to get that electricity to cities, displacing natural gas used in electricity generation for the use in automobiles. This will...
My Portfolio’s Latest Casualty And Addition
The Casualty Last Monday, I discussed how I had recently reviewed Railpower Tech with a view to potentially adding to my position on grounds that: (a) the company had a fair amount of cash in the bank, which reduced the need to go to capital markets for financing for a while; and (b) that it was getting badly battered by general market conditions, potentially offering an attractive entry point. Although my portfolio has taken a beating in recent weeks, I remain ready to take small positions in stocks if I feel they are being unfairly bashed, including in...
