Solar

Joseph McCabe Many people ask me, “which CIGS company is going to emerge as winner in the race towards high efficiency thin film PV’s? To provide an enlightened perspective to the question, some historical perspectives are needed. First Solar (FSLR) has helped the Thin Film PV Industry by proving that respectable solar to electric area efficiencies can be achieved in a low cost manufacturing processes, with respectable performance over time. First Solar’s technology is cadmium telluride (CdTe) on glass. Previously, amorphous silicon was the thin film leader, with the highest commercially available thin film area efficiencies; currently they...

Ryan Hubbell Despite healthy expected returns, finance-related challenges remain the largest barriers to renewable energy development, according to NREL's Renewable Energy Finance Tracking Initiative (REFTI). Two recently released reports on solar and geothermal technologies show greater than 10% expected returns for both developers and tax equity investors. Yet roughly half of both geothermal and solar respondents (350 in total) reported financial issues (project economics, PPAs, creditworthiness, and raising capital) as the largest barriers to development. In light of this, only 11%-13% of respondents reported abandoning their projects. Figure 1. Expected returns...

Energy Conversion Devices Inc (ENER) opened up trading this morning with a gap down to the $33 level. For the last hour it has been steadily rising up from this point. As I said in my earlier post, I have been looking for a good entry point in this company and feel that the near term support of $33 is an ideal area to place an order. The stock has been on a run for several months and it is always hard to take a new position in a stock that has already seen dramatic increases...

by Corporate Bonder The global bond market is huge. Data from the Bank for International Settlements shows that the total size of the global debt securities market (domestic and international securities) was $99.5 trillion as at June 2011, of which $89.9 trillion were notes and bonds. Governments accounted for $43.7 trillion of outstanding debt securities, financial organizations $43.8 trillion, corporations $11.0 trillion and international organizations $1.0 trillion. Against that, Bloomberg has estimated that there are $230bn outstanding of fixed-interest securities that meet their “green bonds” definition. And of course the IEA talks of $1 trillion of investment a...

L. Myron Clark A two-day surge on Feb. 8-9 took at least thirteen solar energy stocks more than twice their recent lows.  These names represent about half the publicly traded companies in the industry (on an unweighted basis).  The "two-bagger" stocks follow somewhat different patterns, as indicated in the two graphs below.  Several of them hit their 52-week lows in late September or early October 2011, close to the bottom in the broad market.  Those lows ranged from 80% (YGE) to 86% (JKS) below the respective 52-week highs.  The companies include: Jinkosolar Holding Co (JKS), ...

As the solar industry struggles to reduce costs, it stands to reason that the more successful in the group will turn to lower-cost solar concentrating technologies - even as simple as such technology might seem in comparison to solar cells. It makes sense to include solar concentration properties like patent-rich Opel Technologies in a solar portfolio.

by Clean Energy Intel This past Friday, the 30th September, was the final day for approvals under the Department of Energy's 1705 Loan Guarantee Program. This was of course set up as part of the 2009 stimulus law and extended an existing Energy Department loan guarantee program. Activity at the DoE under the program has also now of course become a highly political issue in the aftermath of the move by Solyndra into Chapter 11 - leaving the program exposed on its $535m loan guarantee, extended to the company in September of 2009. In...

Debra Fiakas CFA Image by Olga Palma via Wikimedia Commons On the first word of an initial public offering investors flock to the Securities Exchange Commission website to get financial details on the heretofore private company.  Earlier this week solar energy solutions provider SolarCity Corporation announced its IPO plans, but investors will have to wait a while to get a look behind the SolarCity curtain.  The company is among the first to take advantage of a new “confidential” registration for emerging growth companies. The process...

"America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world" Thanks to Mr. Bush's state of the union address last night, we should see some nice gains across the board in the Alternative Energy sector. Some of the big winners may be the Ethanol companies like Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Pacific Ethanol, Inc. (PEIX). The EnergyStockBlog.com has a nice write up on the potential for ADM. GreenCarCongress.com has a nice summary of the important parts of the speech. In his State of the Union 2006 address, President...

The London Accord took a look at what portfolio theory would suggest as the most effective ways to address Climate Change.  Knowing which technologies don't make the cut is at least as useful as knowing which technologies do. Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA I recently looked at a paper from the London Accord which used portfolio theory to recommend the best mixes of technologies to deliver different levels of carbon abatement.  The most useful technologies to achieve the needed levels of carbon abatement were Forestry, Hydropower, Biofuels, Wind, Efficiency, and Geothermal. I suggested stocks that investors might consider to invest in...

Steve Leone Germany's Q-Cells, a solar industry giant that helped usher in a new era of solar energy, announced Monday that it will file for bankruptcy, but that it will continue to work to restructure. In a statement released by the company, “the Executive Board and the preliminary insolvency administrator will work together to secure the continuity of the company within the insolvency proceedings.” The move follows an unrelated higher court ruling on Friday that Q-Cells says limits its ability to move ahead with a debt restructuring plan. The filing is the most prominent to date in...

And I'm not talking about gold, but I liked the play on this title. Last December, I wrote about a report that claimed that solar stocks were the best play on the cleantech revolution. In that article, I analyzed the two solar ETFs: the Claymore/Mac Global Solar Index ETF (TAN) and the Market Vectors/Van Eck Global Solar Energy ETF (KWT). At the end of the article, I said I had an open buy order on TAN. That buy order expired unfilled in January as the suckers rally progressed, but TAN then dropped to the...

Tom Konrad What will the New Year hold for Clean Energy?   For the people who manage clean energy portfolios, mutual funds, and indexes the question is more than idle curiosity.  Getting the answer right means finding the stocks which will put a shine on your solar portfolio’s returns.  Getting it wrong means the competition will blow away your wind stocks. I asked my network of green money managers what they thought, and they gave me a lot more than I expected.  This is the start of a series on the predictions and stock picks from my...

AutoWeek has an article about one man's quest to travel the entire United States using anything but gasoline to power his variety of alternative fuel vehicles. Featured are bio-diesel Hummers and RVs, a solar-powered canoe, and an poop-powered scooter

Tom Konrad CFA Clean Edge's Clean Energy Trends 2012 contains some disturbing predictions for solar stock investors. Clean Energy Trends 2012, the annual report from Clean Edge by Ron Pernick, Clint Wilder, and Trevor Winnie, was released today. On the surface, it seems like good news for the solar sector.  Although headlines in 2011 featured much bad press for Solar PV, the industry has not been "withering on the vine." Here are some key points in the report:   Combined global revenue for PV increased from $71.2 billion in 2010 to $91.6 billion...

Acciona's financing of Nevada Solar One, and a recent series of a financing, a prominent hire, and a big announcement from Concentrating Linear Fresnel Reflector (CLFR) developer Ausra has been keeping long-underappreciated Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) technology in the news recently.  I consider this great news, because the potential for cheap thermal storage of CSP and the gigantic size of the available resource means that CSP is likely to provide the backbone of reliability for any future decarbonized electric grid where the clear skies which it requires to operate properly and sufficient transmission are available. But CSP is...