The Ontario Green Energy Act: What Can Alt Energy Legislations Do For Investors
Dedicated legislations have been at the core of some of the most impressive regional growth stories in alternative energy, most notably in Germany with the Renewable Energy Sources Act or in California with the various legislative solar initiatives. On Monday, the Canadian province of Ontario became the latest jurisdiction to join the fray as lawmakers introduced the Green Energy and Green Economy Act. Why should investors care? Because such legislations have been at the core of some of the most impressive regional growth stories in alternative energy. As a bit of a backgrounder on Ontario, there...
PV Micro Inverters and Optimizers: Not Just for Lazy Designers
by Joseph McCabe, PE More and more solar electric installations are using AC micro inverters and DC to DC optimizer electrical balance of systems (BOS) components. This BOS gear goes directly on the back sides of PV modules providing higher valued electricity than output from the PV cells alone. Two years ago I considered micro inverters as only necessary for lazy designs or bad installation practices. I’ve changed my attitude towards these approaches after organizing two years of forums as the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) Solar Electric Division Chairperson. These forums brought together experts who compared...
Sunny Day for Solar Stocks and the Shorts Come Off
L. Myron Clark Solar energy stocks took a huge jump today in U.S. trading. While the sheen faded slightly as afternoon skies turned overcast in the eastern U.S., as of the NYSE closing bell about half the sector was up 20% or better. Absent major industry news or earnings blowouts, short covering is the most plausible explanation for the sudden sharp rise. Among the biggest winners were: Hanwha SolarOne Co. Ltd. ADS (HSOL) +36.80% JA Solar Holdings Co. Ltd. ADS (JASO) +34.72% JinkoSolar Holding Co. Ltd. ADS (JKS) +31.86% ReneSola...
The Grid Impacts of Net Metering
Net metering describes the requirement that an electric utility buy electricity from any of its customers that generate their own electricity (usually with some sort of renewable energy, such as solar or wind) at the same price that they sell it to the customer. That seems fair, doesn't it? The Utility Perspective It doesn't seem fair to the utility. Utilities do more than just generate and sell electricity to customers. They also are responsible for transmission (delivering the electricity) and reliability (making sure that the lights work when you flip the switch.) Taking just the reliability requirement, suppose that...
How China Came To Dominate Solar Manufacturing
by Paula Mints
The PV industry is global, and its pricing function has a cultural basis. Particularly as it is dominated by China, without an understanding of China and its market motivations, it is impossible to understand why PV manufacturers today, all rational actors, willingly accept 15% or lower manufacturing margins when margins for like industries are higher.
Examples from other industries include: Coal 40% to 50%, Iron and Steel 20%, Construction ~30%, Appliances 30%, Aluminum 20%, Industrial Machinery and Components 40%, Aerospace 40% and Agriculture 8%.
In the PV industry the average margin is 8%. Congratulations PV, you are on par with agriculture.
Aside from significant government...
EU, LDK & Suntech Undermine Solar Recovery
Doug Young The war of words against Chinese solar panel makers is heating up from both sides of the Atlantic, with growing signs that Europe may reconsider anti-dumping duties as the US moves closer to imposing its own new duties on the beleaguered manufacturers. Meantime, 2 of the biggest Chinese victims of the sector’s recent turmoil have risen from the ashes, with LDK (OTC:LDKSY) and Suntech (OTC:STPFQ) both announcing new moves more than a year after each became insolvent. Among those 2 moves, LDK’s looks the most worrisome, potentially bringing major new volumes of polysilicon, the main ingredient in...
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...
Solar Storage Dream Becomes Reality
By Jeff Siegel While the solar industry continues to heat up, I maintain that one of the best plays in the space is SunEdison (NYSE: SUNE). This is an aggressive operation, run by incredibly smart people. The company is well-capitalized, fairly liquid, and well-diversified in the energy space, boasting both a top-notch, vertically-integrated solar operation, and a basket of healthy wind assets, too. The company is also now advancing on energy storage – the final obstacle to the creative destruction necessary to alleviate the world's reliance on fossil fuels. In a press release this morning, SunEdison made the following...
Price Pressure Will Squeeze Solar Inverter Revenues
James Montgomery SMA Solar inverter photo by Claus Ableiter In a new report, IHS says worldwide solar inverter unit shipments will rise 7 percent this year, but PV inverter revenues are heading the opposite way, a 9 percent decline this year to $6.4 billion, worse than the firm's earlier prediction of a 5 percent drop. (2014 will see a 9 percent rebound in revenues back to around $7.0 billion, while shipments will surge 19 percent to more than 41 GW.) That's because overall inverter prices are sinking fast, sliding to...
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...
SolarCity: Mixed Results But Good Prospects
By Harris Roen SolarCity (SCTY) has been one of the hottest alternative energy stocks since its Initial Public Offering five short months ago. Yesterday it shot up 24% in one day, on the largest one-day volume since it opened, in anticipation of its quarterly earnings release. It is up 95% in the past three months, and has more than tripled from its initial trading price. As of this writing SCTY has given back about a third of yesterday’s stratospheric gains. Now that earnings have been released, let’s take a grounded-in-reality look at this innovative solar company. ...
Channel Problems Keep BIPV Out of the Money
Dana Blankenhorn Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) is often in the news. There's a romance to it. Instead of having ugly solar panels on your house, your whole house could be an integrated solar system. It could use all the heat and light hitting it, from any angle, look like any other house, and pay for itself. Pythagoras Solar, an Israeli start-up, says its solar windows, cells sandwiched in glass, can both lower heating and cooling costs while they generate electricity, paying for themselves in 3-4 years. Pythagoras is private, but most publicly-traded BIPV plays are penny stocks, like...
Invest Where Solar Beats $10 Oil
By Jeff Siegel In Dubai, solar is now cheaper than oil at $10 a barrel. Yes, you read that correctly. As reported by the National Bank of Abu Dhabi: Dubai set a new global benchmark in December 2014: at 5.84 US cents per kW hour, the bid for Dubai Electricity and Water Authority’s 200 MW solar PV plant was cheaper than oil at US$10/barrel and gas at US$5/MMBtu. You see, while oil in the U.S. is used primarily as a transportation fuel, in the oil-rich Middle East, the shiny black stuff is used to generate electricity. In...
Canadian Solar Bags Another Module Sale
by Debra Fiakas CFA Last week Canadian Solar (CSIQ: Nasdaq) bagged another solar module supply agreement - this time on the home turf of some of its staunches competitors. Of course, the company has its own manufacturing foothold in China. Canadian Solar is to supply its solar modules to China Three Gorges New Energy Company to a 100 megawatt solar power project in Guazhou County in Gansu Province. The modules shipments will be complete by the end of the December 2013, suggesting all the sales will end up recorded yet in the current fiscal year. ...
Suniva, SunPower, Enphase, SolarBridge and SolarWorld – Six Degrees of Solar Separation
by Paula Mints
In June, Suniva crawled out of its badly managed grave courtesy of a request to the U.S. Bankruptcy court made by its partner-in-tariff-petition, SQN Capital Management, which had sought relief for itself and Suniva’s other creditors. A public auction will be held sometime between June and August for, what was described as, some of Suniva’s manufacturing equipment. Meanwhile, back on planet hope-springs-eternal, investment is being sought to restart manufacturing with whatever equipment remains. Lucky SQN now owns Suniva’s monocrystalline cell manufacturing capability, its module assembly capability and its licenses.
Comment: Concerning the upcoming auction … if you’ve got...
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...
