GE To Delay Colorado Thin-film Manufacturing Plant
Steve Leone Delays and cancellations photo via Bigstock Now, energy giant General Electric (GE) said it is putting plans for its Aurora, Colo., plant on hold for 18 months in reaction to the continued drop in crystalline silicon solar panels. When the company announced its plans to jump into American thin-film manufacturing nine months ago, it did so in grand fashion. Company officials unveiled a plan for a 400-megawatt (MW) facility that would churn out cadmium telluride (CdTe) panels, the same thin-film technology deployed by...
First Solar: Companies Plan, God Laughs
by Paula Mints
First Solar (FSLR) offered a great lesson about the announcing of plans (man plans, god laughs) in July when during its Q2 release call it discussed the yield problems slowing commercial production of it’s Series 6 large format module. The production delays are due to a single point of failure causing a bottleneck. First Solar expects to enter volume production with its Series 6 module early in 2019.
Muted-kudos to First Solar for discussing a not-so-secret problem with Series 6 production. The kudos are muted because if the company had been more circumspect in the first place there...
List of Solar Manufacturing Stocks
This list was last updated on 6/6/2022.
Solar manufacturing 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.
See also the list of Solar Farm Owner and Developer Stocks, the list of Residential Solar Stocks, and solar and wind inverter stocks.
5N Plus Inc (VNP.TO, FPLSF)
Amtech Systems Inc (ASYS)
Array Technologies, Inc. (ARRY)
Apollo Solar Energy (ASOE)
Ascent Solar Technologies Inc (ASTI)
Canadian Solar (CSIQ)
DAQO New Energy Corp. (DQ)
First Solar Inc (FSLR)
GCL-Poly Energy Holdings Ltd. (3800.HK)
Guggenheim Global Solar ETF...
Community Solar Providers In NYSEG Territory
See the Buyer's Guide to New York Community Solar for details on how New York community solar works and lists for other utility territories.
This list last updated on 9/9/2020.
VENDOR NAME
PRICING STRUCTURE
ADDITIONAL DETAILS
SPECIAL OFFERS
Abundant Solar Power
10% discount subscription model
Contract to be signed
Astral Power
10% discount subscription model (Broker for solar farms)
No cancellation fee. Bill needed in customer’s name
$100 check and $100 donation to Feedmore WNY
BlueWave Solar
10% discount subscription model (Broker for solar farms)
Links to own development as well as any external ones. Available services in your area found through ZIP code search.
Citizens Energy
20% discount subscription model (Nonprofit)
free cancellation; no fees; no credit...
SunPower and SolarWorld: Strange Bedfellows
by Paula Mints
Oh, what a tangled web you weave when vying for an exclusion from tariffs via strategic ac-quisition. In April, SunPower (SPWR) announced it had acquired (subject to regulatory approval) So-larWorld US, subsidiary of the company that kicked off the solar tariff dispute with a petition in 2012, focused on China as the dumper of cells and modules. SolarWorld GmbH, based in Germany, could not file the petition. It needed its US subsidiary to do so. As SolarWorld US is, currently, the only crystalline cell manufacturer in the US, it takes on a value beyond the sum of...
EU Likely To Impose Sanctions On Chinese Solar Cos
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...
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...
Investing In Solar Innovation
By Jeff Siegel The road into the digital age has been paved with innovation. Everyday items have been electrified with panels and displays for endless possibilities of interaction. Automobile windscreens, household appliances, even walls and furniture are lighting up all around us, wired with sensors and displays that receive and transmit information. It seems the only surface left to electrify on this road to an everything-digital future is the roadway itself. Some folks believe one day soon, your local road network could be carrying not only the flow of vehicle traffic, but torrential flows of digital data and...
China’s Solar Power Inc Eyes $300 Mln NY IPO
Doug Young Bottom line: New York IPO plans by a Canadian Solar unit and Solar Power Inc could auger a new wave of similar listings by Chinese new energy power plant builders, offering investors a higher growth alternative to traditional utilities. Just a day after solar panel maker Canadian Solar (Nasdaq: CSIQ) announced it has spun off its fast-growing solar power plant-building unit for a US listing, another China-based peer is discussing plans for a similar IPO. This time a company called Solar Power Inc is the one disclosing plans for a New York listing to raise...
The Cost Of ‘Free Solar’
by Paula Mints Economic theory holds that when a good is provided it must be paid for and that the value for that good will be set by a dance between the sellers and buyers in a market. It is assumed that when the price is too high buyers will back away and the price will adjust. When the price is too low sellers will fail to make sufficient margin to continue producing the good and the price will adjust. And finally, when the price is just right, equilibrium will be achieved and buyers and sellers will be...
Right About Tesla, Wrong About Yingli
Doug Young Bottom line: Beijing should promote cutting-edge companies like Tesla that can help advance its new energy agenda, while abandoning ones like Yingli that use old technology to make cheap copycat products. Two green energy stories were in the headlines last week, spotlighting China’s drive to become a global leader in the new technology and also the right and wrong ways to achieve that aim. An item involving US electric vehicle (EV) powerhouse Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) represented the right approach, with reports that the company might near a deal with Beijing to build a manufacturing plant in China....
First Solar Jettisons Its O&M Business
by Paula Mints
In August, CdTe manufacturer First Solar (FSLR) sold its North America O&M business to NovaSource Power. According to First Solar CEO Mark Widmar, the decision was due to contracting O&M margins and customer demands for more services. The company is also exploring jettisoning its EPC business. First Solar plans to focus on its module manufacturing business.
Comment: Apparently, First Solar finally realized that O&M is low margin and that the EPC business may also not have much margin cushion. Now the company can concentrate on another low margin sector of the solar manufacturing chain, manufacturing.
First Solar has occasionally...
China Trys to Cork EU Solar Tariffs With Wine Probe
Doug Young China is quickly learning how to play the game of tit-for-tat trade wars, with news that Beijing has launched a new anti-dumping probe against wines imported from the European Union. Anyone who has followed recent China-EU trade relations will know, of course, that announcement of this new probe by the Commerce Ministry comes the same day that the EU formally announced anti-dumping tariffs against imported Chinese solar panels. While I certainly don’t condone this kind of trade war rhetoric, I have to say that China’s decision to target Europe’s wine industry looks like a very...
US Solar: Lawsuits, A Quiet Exit, and Grand Plans But Fewer Results
Lessons From SunEdison, First Solar, and SolarCity by Paula Mints SunEdison (SUNEQ) Currently SunEdison faces at least 15 lawsuits. SunEdison, Terraform (TERP) and other defendants asked to have the cases against them consolidated. Along with the lawsuits, from October 2015 through May 26 at least 20 security class actions have been filed against SunEdison its subsidiaries, officials and underwriters. Many of these actions relate to claims that investors were misled about the liquidity of SunEdison, et al. Meanwhile, GCL-Poly wants to buy SunEdison’s (MEMC) polysilicon business for $150-million and those in charge of selling off the...
First Solar’s New Mexico Project: The Parity and the Pain
James Montgomery Unusually public details about a newly signed solar project deal in New Mexico raise some interesting questions about the purchasing power of solar energy, how close it's getting to grid parity and just how much pressure is on upstream suppliers to fulfill that objective. First Solar (FSLR) has acquired a 50-megawatt (MW) solar power project in New Mexico from the solar division of Element Power. The deal is billed as the state's largest solar project; it also, according to some unusually public information revealed in a regulatory filing, raises some interesting questions...
US Still Net Exporter of Solar to China
by Clean Energy Intel Following the announcement that CIGS solar start-up Solyndra had declared Chapter 11, I published an article suggesting that although this was clearly not good news, the overall solar sector in the US was still in relatively good competitive shape, with a healthy trade surplus with the rest of the world of some $1.9bn. You can read my original article here. Although competition from China is intense, particularly in low-cost module production, the US remains a strong player across the supply chain as a whole - particularly in polysilicon production and the manufacture of the...
