Digi International Acquisitions Since 2005
This timeline is intended as a supplement to the article: Bold or Bogus? Digi International’s Move toward Smart Grid Technology.Source: The Investor Relations Group, New York, NYApril 2005 - FS Forth-Systeme GmbH/Sistemas Embebidos S.A. (FS Forth), providers of embedded modules based on the company's processors and NET+OS software, as well as other microprocessors with supporting embedded software. May 2005 - acquired Rabbit Semiconductor® Inc. (formerly Z-World™, Inc.). The acquisition expanded Digi's embedded portfolio to include the Rabbit line of microprocessors and microprocessor-based core modules and Z-World single-board computers (now all sold under the Rabbit brand). July 2006 - acquired MaxStream®,...
Ten Solid, Clean Companies Ready For Stimulus, and Five That Aren’t
by Tom Konrad Last February, I wrote " I expect the Fed-induced reprieve to be fairly short lived, ten solid companies I'd be happy to buy more of if and when the bottom really falls out of the market." When I wrote those words, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was over 12,700. Now, it's around 8,500, and I doubt anyone remembers the "Fed-induced reprieve" I was referring to. The "bottom fell out" in September and October. On October 12, with the DJIA at 8451, I wrote "I don’t know where the market will go from here, but I...
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...
Discom-fort: Barriers to Renewables in India
by Ishaan Goel
Energy is crucial to India’s policy agenda. Millions of households are yet to gain reliable access to electricity, hampering their potential for economic growth. Severe pollution issues create widespread health problems. Renewables are prioritized as viable solutions across the political spectrum, with their low costs and ease of installation in remote regions. The current administration has ambitious plans for renewable energy (RE), targeting an almost 4x increase in installed capacity to 450 GW by 2030 and introducing a spate of tax and investment reforms.
At the heart of the Indian power supply chain lie distribution companies (discoms). The...
2010: The Year of the Strong Grid? Part II
The Strongest Strong Grid Stocks Tom Konrad, CFA A comparison of the financial strength of transmission (or "Strong Grid") companies. In Part I of this article I made the case that transmission stocks, or "Strong Grid" might be a clean energy sector that takes off in 2010, as Smart Grid stocks and Battery stocks did in 2009. If the sector does take off, the rising tide will probably float all boats, but if it doesn't, it will probably be better to be in the strongest such companies, because, as in 2009, the harsh financial climate will probably mean that...
Transmission – The Bottleneck We All Saw Coming
by Paula Mints
Transmission and distribution is the process of getting electricity from the point of generation to the point of use. Unfortunately, upgrades, maintenance, and the need to extend the electricity infrastructure from point a to point b are often ignored. Also ignored are infrastructure designs that support a distributed grid with renewable energy sources of electricity.
Transmission bottlenecks are the utterly foreseeable consequence of accelerated solar and
wind deployment. As countries worldwide were announcing RE goals, holding auctions, and providing incentives, system operators everywhere were warning about the need to add new and upgrade existing infrastructure while also warning about...
Transmission Stocks: Bringing Wind Power to Where it’s Needed
Last week, Charles told us to expect wind power industry suppliers to benefit from shortages in wind turbine components. Owens Corning (NYSE:OC) which I mentioned in my Blue Chip Alternative Energy Portfolio fits nicely into this category with their composites for turbine blades, as do the power converter stocks I mentioned two weeks ago. As essential to wind power as any of these is improved power transmission. The National Wind Coordinating Collaborative states, Electrical transmission facilities connecting windy areas and load centers are sometimes non-existent or minimal. Even in cases where a good wind resource has...
Comverge, Diverge, or Merge?
Tom Konrad CFA Comverge (COMV) has a great residential demand response business. The company lacks focus, but the stock has significant upside as an acquisition target. As part of my ongoing series on energy management companies (see these articles on World Energy Solutions (XWES) and EnerNOC (ENOC)) I spoke with Comverge CEO Blake Young. The Comverge Advantage Comverge is the strong leader in residential demand response (DR,) one of the most cost effective grid stability solutions. Even within demand response, residential DR is an excellent niche, because working in the market for residential DR...
Our Smart Grid Stock List
Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA I've been writing about the smart grid and its potential since before I joined AltEnergyStocks, in 2007, although at the time, I wasn't using the term: I mostly called it "Smart Metering." Now, Smart Grid is a central part of federal stimulus plans, and the term is firmly ensconced in the popular lexicon. GE even created a Super Bowl ad around the Smart Grid (video). It was far past time to create a Smart Grid category in our Alternative Energy Stock List, but now we've done it. The companies in the Smart Grid Stock List...
2010: The Year of the Strong Grid? Part IV: General Cable
Tom Konrad, CFA General Cable (BGC) is a strong grid stock that's suddenly looking a lot cheaper. Time to buy? General Cable is not only one of my Ten Clean Energy Stocks for 2010, it was also holding it's own in my list of "strong grid" (that is, electricity transmission) stocks that have strong financials. About 59% of the company's revenues come from what I would consider "strong grid" markets: their "electrical utility" and "electrical transmission" segments. I published the most recent version of that list on February 11. In both these articles I cautioned that I...
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...
Understanding Manufacturing Economics for Grid-Scale Energy Storage
John Petersen I have a new favorite word AGGREGATION! At the risk of sounding like a reporter, I’m going to summarize a pre-holiday news story you might have missed but need to know about. In late November the PJM Interconnect, the largest of nine regional grid system operators in the US, announced that it had begun buying frequency regulation services from small-scale, behind the meter, demand response assets in Pennsylvania. The first resources brought on-line by PJM were variable speed pumps at a water treatment plant and a 500 kW industrial battery array...
Ten Solid Clean Energy Companies to Buy on the Cheap: #8 Quanta Services, Inc....
It may be a stretch to call a company with a P/E ratio in the high 30s "cheap," but in the case of Quanta Services (NYSE:PWR), it's a bargain. I won't repeat myself about why electric transmission and distribution (T&D) investments are a good bet. Put simply, the grid has been long neglected, and improved long distance transmission is essential to bringing large scale renewables such as solar and wind onto the grid. How does Quanta fit in? They build transmission line for utilities. When I ask industry insiders what company is best placed to actually string the wires...
REDI-ing Your Portfolio for a Low-Carbon Economy
Tom Konrad, CFA Colorado's recently released Renewable Energy Development Infrastructure (REDI) report looks at what the resource-rich state needs to do to accomplish the state goal of reducing CO2 emissions 20% from 2005 levels by 2020. Investors who expect the developed world to attempt similar cuts in emissions should take note of the report's conclusions, and invest accordingly. Since Colorado Governor Bill Ritter recruited my friend Morey Wolfson for the Colorado Governor's Energy Office (GEO) he's had a lot less time to socialize with the rest of us in the clean energy community, but we caught up over lunch...
List of Smart Grid Stocks
Smart grid stocks are publicly traded companies that use or enable information technology to operate the electric grid more efficiently. They are also included in the list of electric grid stocks.
This list was last updated on 3/21/2022.
Advanced Energy Industries (AEIS)
AMSC (AMSC)
Arrow Electronics (ARW)
Digi International (DGII)
Echelon Corporation (ELON)
EnSync, Inc. (ESNC)
ESCO Technologies, Inc. (ESE)
Fluence Energy, Inc. (FLNC)
Itron (ITRI)
Kontrol Energy (KNR.CN, KNRLF)
Landis+Gyr Group AG (LAND.SW)
Schneider Electric (SU.PA, SBGSF, SBGSY)
SMA Solar Technology (S92.DE)
SolarEdge (SEDG)
Superconducting Technologies, Inc. (SCON)
Wallbox N.V. (WBX)
If you know of any smart grid stock that is not listed here and should be, please let us know by leaving a comment. Also...
The Electric Grid Index
Charles Morand A little while ago, we received the following request from a reader: " when are you going to start an ETF or mutual fund called "Energy TS&E". T for transmission, S for storage, and E for efficiency. I guess you need an index first. I'm thinking Quanta, Amer Superconductor, Exide, Axion, Itron, Echelon, etc. There is no good one stop shop for this subsector. Sign me up." While we don't plan on launching a licensable index or a mutual fund because of all the regulatory thicket we'd...
