China, EU Solar Talks Less Cloudy
Doug Young After a disastrous round of talks last month that broke down almost as soon as they began, China and Europe look set to try again with a new round of negotiations to resolve their dispute over the EU’s claims of unfair state-support for Chinese solar panel makers. Much has changed since the failed round of talks in late May, including a growing number of individual European leaders who want to resolve this dispute through negotiations rather than trade wars. As a result, this new round of negotiations will take place between top-level government officials, an important...
Xantrex receives funding from NREL for high power solar inverter development
Xantrex Technology Inc. (XTX.TO) has been awarded US $873,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) under its Photovoltaics Manufacturing Research and Development Initiative. Xantrex will match the funding from NREL during the course of the project for a total budget of $1.74 Million. This program will take place at the Xantrex facility in Livermore, California. Xantrex PV inverters are America's leading choice for large-scale solar installations. Presently, utility-interactive, three-phase inverters are available in models ranging from 10 kW to 225 kW, and multiple inverters can be paralleled for larger power installations. ...
Will Distributed Solar Drive Utilities into Bankruptcy?
Tom Konrad CFA Electric utilities today look a lot like newspapers in 2000: Too much debt in an industry primed for disruption. Speaking at the Economist's Intelligent Infrastructure Conference, Brad Tirpak, Managing Partner at the private investment fund Locke Partners made the case that electric utilities are as woefully unprepared for the coming disruption of cheap, distributed solar power as newspapers were unprepared for the disruption of the Internet in 2000. He outlined the following parallels: Both had long been considered to be sure-fire businesses with dependable income. Both took advantage of the seemingly...
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...
Enphase Acquires O&M Provider Next Phase Solar
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...
Five Solar Stocks For 2015
By Jeff Siegel Times sure have changed! In 2006, I attended my first Solar Power International (SPI) conference in D.C. It was a no-frills event but loaded with valuable information I used to help Energy and Capital readers get a jump on the solar bull market that ran from 2006 to 2008. Truth be told, we cleaned up. But nothing lasts forever. And when the market nosedived in 2008, solar stocks were not exempt from the ravenous bears that mauled everything in their path. Of course, as the broader market began to inch back up in 2010, solar...
Solar Eclipse
Debra Fiakas The chip makers dominate discussion of the solar energy sector. Nonetheless, a passing comment in a recent blog post introduced me to an interesting company that seems to have been over looked in the solar story - Apollo Solar Energy, Inc. (ASOE: OTC/BB). Apollo produces tellurium, a little known chemical element that looks deceptively like tin. It is typically a by-product of copper and lead mining operations, but can be found hiding beside gold as well. While these are very common metals, tellurium is quite rare on earth. Outer space is another story. Although...
Alternative Energy Companies Posting Large Returns
Alternative energy companies delivered compelling returns for investors. A look at Crystal Equity Research’s ‘indices’ of renewable energy, conservation and environmentally-friendly technology companies found some exceptional price moves. We review five companies here that have experienced top price moves from 52-week lows.
Codexis, Inc. (CDXS: Nasdaq) has gained 257% from its 52-week low. The company won a place in our Beach Boys group through development of proteins for a mix of applications from biocatalysts for industrial enzymes, chemicals and pharmaceuticals. While the company has started generating revenue from its technology, it has yet to post a profit. Codexis delivered a smaller than expected loss in the...
Solar Gainers and Losers
By Harris Roen Five solar stocks announced key updates – three show improved prospects, and two warn of danger. Power REIT (PW) More Info Power REIT will acquire 100 acres of land underlying a 20 megawatt solar array to be developed. The leasee will sell electricity to Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and Southern California Edison (SCE), which should then provide a steady income stream to PW shareholders. The stock price is up 11% for the year, in addition to a yield of 3.9%. Press release ...
RGS Energy: Troubling Inconsistencies
Garvin Jabusch About three weeks ago, I posted a piece called "RGS Energy, Tempered, Opportunistic Growth," an optimistic bit of coverage on one of our holdings, (RGSE), that included an 18-month price target of $10.00 per share. Since then, several developments and pieces of information have come to light that have caused us to revise our assessment of the company. Thursday, July 3, a quiet half-market day, RGS Energy released a statement announcing plans to monetize its previously filed potential shelf offering; "RGS Energy (NASDAQ: RGSE) has entered into a definitive agreement to raise approximately $7.0 million in a...
Bankruptcy Fears for China’s LDK Solar
Marc Kenneth Howe Chinese photovoltaics leader LDK Solar (LDK) is headed for bankruptcy according to industry observers within China, due to its immense debt burden and a global downturn in the solar energy market. China’s Nanfang Zhoumo reported on May 26 that bankruptcy rumors have plagued LDK in recent months, causing investors to seek to divest themselves of shares in the company and regional clients to suspend orders for the company’s products. One of LDK’s leading investors, Guokai Jinrong, is believed to have sought buyers for its stake in the company since the start of 2012, with...
Tesla’s Buffalo Solar Tiles: As Hot As They Seem?
by Paula Mints
In August, Tesla (TSLA) announced that production of its roof tiles at its not-yet-a giga-factory in Buffalo New York would be delayed until late in 2017. Wait ... it is late in 2017. Tesla indicated that production on the tiles was continuing at its 25-MWp pilot scale facility in Fremont, California. The Fremont facility was the former home of the dearly departed Silevo. On August 31 Tesla announced that it was now manufacturing solar cells at its facility in Buffalo and indicated it would have 2-GWp of cell capacity eventually. During Tesla’s earnings call Mr. Musk showed pictures...
LDK Melts Down, Solar Default Signs Grow
Doug Young One of China’s 2 major meltdowns in the solar panel sector has taken a big step forward with word that trading in shares of LDK Solar (NYSE: LDK) has been suspended and the de-listing process formally begun as the company liquidates. Meantime, word of a missed interest payment by a building materials maker is sending the latest signal that China will let more companies in ailing sectors default on their debt rather than pay off their creditors. That’s an important signal for the solar sector, which relies heavily on such debt to finance its operations and where...
3 Stocks For The Coming Solar Shortage
By Jeff Siegel An impending glut of solar panels was going to be the death knell for the industry. Or at least that's how the solar bears framed the argument just a few short years ago. Today, however, it's a different story... A shortage of solar panels is now going to kill the industry. Or at least that's how the bears are framing the argument this time. Meanwhile, I'm grinning ear to ear. Because just as opportunity existed during the great solar glut, opportunity exists as the solar industry gears up for a potential shortage. So don't...
Where To Next For Solar PV Stocks?
Charles Morand There was an interesting post in Barron's tech trader daily on Monday discussing how solar PV stocks are coming under pressure, in part because product prices are falling further than expected. About a month ago, I discussed the potential return effect for households in given states of removing the $2,000 ITC cap. Such measures, it seems, are failing to kickstart demand, and solar recovery might end up being significantly slower than many had been expecting. Case in point, since hitting a high of $11.49 on June 11, the TAN ETF is down about 12%. KWT, for...
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...
