Suntech Forced into Bankruptcy, Yingli Partners with GCL
Doug Young The inevitable has finally happened at tanking former solar star Suntech (NYSE: STP), which has been forced into bankruptcy ending a months-long battle between the company's founder Shi Zhengrong and just about all the company's other stakeholders. In the meantime, I would be remiss not to mention another solar news tidbit that has panel maker Yingli (NYSE: YGE) forming a new strategic tie-up with GLC-Poly Energy (HKEx: 3800), in what could eventually become the first mega-merger in the struggling solar panel sector. Let's start with Suntech, which has been in the headlines nearly non-stop these...
Why I Believe in Thin Film
Analyzing Solar Stocks With False Assumptions Dana Blankenhorn When most people think of solar energy, they see flat panels on a roof. They don't think about thin film. They don't see it. This is one of the many advantages of CIGS and other thin film solar technologies. So what if its efficiency is half that of a panel? It conforms to the shape of the place where it lays. Thin film can also be productized in ways no panel can. It can be turned into something retailers can sell or bloggers will...
Doing Solar Incentives Right
Different solar incentives encourage different types and locations of solar installations. Better solar installations will result if we first decide what we want from solar, and then choose the solar incentives we use to match.
Tom Konrad, Ph.D.
Choosing Carefully
This article is based on a presentation I gave at Solar 2009 . As with wind, the current incentives for Solar photovoltaics are good for encouraging more solar, but they are less effective at encouraging better solar. Jigar Shah, founder of SunEdison and Jigar Shah Consulting, told the audience that they should be very careful in calling for a Feed-in-Tariff...
Will SolarCity IPO Offer Hope for Renewable Energy Investors?
By Harris Roen SolarCity, a solar panel installation and finance company, is one of the more promising stories for alternative energy investors this year. SolarCity filed details of its initial public offering (IPO) on Tuesday, making it one of the few alternative energy company IPOs that investors are optimistic about. This article explains what type of business SolarCity is, lays out details of its stock rollout, and reveals important pluses and minuses for investors. What SolarCity Does SolarCity’s product is simple; it installs solar systems for homeowners, business (including Wal-Mart, eBay and Intel) and government...
First Solar Rides the Wall of Worry
Dana Blankenhorn When people first get excited about solar energy, one of the first things they think of doing is to invest in it. And the first place they think to throw their money is thin-film solar manufacturer First Solar Inc. (FSLR) of Tempe, Arizona. First Solar is what I might call the “big iron” play in solar. That is, it mainly produces large, flat panels that are installed by utilities and connected to the grid. It's a good business. The company regularly earns 25% on assets, 30% on equity, and it's managed conservatively. So why is it that...
Community Solar Providers In National Grid 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.
VENDOR NAME
PRICING STRUCTURE
ADDITIONAL DETAILS
SPECIAL OFFERS
Abundant Solar Power
10% discount subscription model
Contract to be signed
Amp Energy
Mostly 10% subscription model
12-month contract with auto-renew option, termination fees waived with proper notice
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 Regional Food Bank of Northeastern NY
Ampion
10% discount subscription model
Free cancellation at any time, excess credit is banked
BlueWave Solar
10% discount subscription model (Broker for solar farms)
Links to own development as...
Are Solar PV and Wind Incompatible with Nuclear and IGCC?
Paul Denholm, a Senior Analyst at the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), sees an upcoming struggle between renewable sources of electricity such as photovoltaics (PV) and wind with low-carbon baseload alternatives for space on the low carbon grid of the future. These baseload alternatives are nuclear and Internal Gasification Combined Cycle coal plants with Carbon Capture and Sequestration (IGCC w/ CCS, refereed to by advocates as "Clean Coal). This may come as a shock to advocates of the idea that Global Warming is such a big problem that we will need all forms of low carbon electricity, because the...
Trade Wars Send Chinese Solar Companies Offshore
Doug Young Bottom line: A new wave of overseas investment by Chinese solar panel makers should ease western complaints of unfair state-support and provide a more solid foundation for the sector’s longer-term development. Solar panel makers migrate overseas As a settlement to avoid anti-dumping tariffs for Chinese solar panels exported to Europe showed signs of unraveling last week, a new report emerged that showed a more positive trend for a sector that has become the subject of nonstop trade wars over the last 4 years. That newer trend has seen...
Will Crystalline Solar Kill Thin Film?
A Conversation with Applied Material’s Solar Head Charlie Gay by Neal Dikeman I had a chance to chat today with Dr. Charlie Gay, the President of Applied Materials' (AMAT) solar division. You may recall, we broke the story in the blogosphere 5 years ago about Applied’s entry into solar, which was anchored with a highly touted and very aggressive strategy for turnkey large format amorphous silicon and tandem cell plants called SunFab. Charlie reminded me that when they began 5 years ago, they did so along two major thrusts: The acquisition of Applied Films in...
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...
The Value of Net Metered Electricity in New York
by Tom Konrad, Ph.D. Net metering is unfair and is dangerous for the long term health of utilities, at least according to Raymond Wuslich, when he spoke at the 2015 Renewable Energy Conference in Poughkeepsie, NY. Wustlich is an attorney and partner at Winston & Strawn, LLP., and advises clients across the electricity and natural gas industries on Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) matters. To make his point, Wuslich used a simplified New York residential electric bill. In this simplified bill, the customer was charged 12¢ per kWh for...
First Solar Buys GE’s Tech: A Defensive Move?
James Montgomery Flexing its muscles yet again, thin-film solar PV leader First Solar (FSLR) has quietly acquired GE's (GE) similar solar intellectual property portfolio, but questions linger about whether and when the company will see the benefits. The deal includes both a specific module purchase commitment plus a longer-term commitment with agreed-upon pricing "over an extended period of years," according to First Solar CEO Jim Hughes during the company's 2Q13 earnings results. GE, meanwhile, will supply inverters for First Solar's global deployments, technology acquired through French firm Converteam, and it will seek to sell solar PV...
First Solar Won the Race; The Environment Lost
Joseph McCabe, PE In 2011, I wrote about the CdTe Horse Race in which the three US companies making cadmium telluride (CdTe) photovoltaic (PV) modules, First Solar (FSLR), Abound Solar and General Electric (GE Solar, stock ticker GE) jostled for position. Abound and GE were challenging the reigning champion First Solar to build the largest PV manufacturing facility in the world. The official results of that race are in, and First Solar has beaten the competition by many lengths. Within about a year of each other both Abound and GE Solar...
Solar Bits: LDK Woes, Hanwha Loan
Doug Young A couple of news bits from the solar sector are showing at once how companies continue to struggle with fallout from the ongoing downturn even as some larger players continue to receive lifelines from Beijing. In the former category, floundering giant LDK (NYSE: LDK) has just announced an arbitration panel's ruling that it must pay hundreds of millions of yuan for equipment that it ordered at the height of the solar boom but which it no longer wants or needs. Meantime in the latter category, mid-sized player Hanwha SolarOne (Nasdaq: HSOL) has just received a major...
Chinese Commercial Solar Group Formed To Tackle Trade Wars
by Doug Young Chinese solar panel makers have taken an important step to solving their ongoing trade spat with the west by formally launching a private sector trade association to speak on their behalf. The move gives the panel makers their first truly commercial representative to discuss the matter with peers in the US and Europe, providing a better alternative to the government-backed groups that previously spoke for them. This kind of step is long overdue, and should help to de-politicize and hopefully solve what is largely a commercial matter, involving western claims of unfair state...
Report: Two Solar Technologies That Will Thrive; Two On the Demise
Steve Leone Solar technology photo via BigStock For every revolutionary advance in solar, there are countless evolutionary dead-ends technologies that were well worth exploring, but ones that ultimately failed to live up to the mantra of "cut costs or die." These are the Solyndras of the world. Their science may have raised the bar, but ultimately they were judged by the market, which measures the bar on cost alone. From that perspective, it’s more like a limbo line “How low can you...
