Solar

By Jeff Siegel Hannon Armstrong (NYSE:HASI), one of my top picks for 2014, just made me very happy. Yesterday, the company announced its Q2 Core Earnings of $4.7 million or $0.22 per share. On a GAAP basis, the Company recorded net income of $2.9 million. Here are some other highlights. . . Raised approximately $70 million in April, 2014 in a follow-on offering. Increased the flexibility and expanded the capacity of its existing credit facility by $200 million. Completed more than $200 million worth of transactions, including the acquisition of a $107 million portfolio of land...

Universal Communication Systems Inc (UCSY) announced the execution of a new agreement with HELIOCOL (US). (www.Heliocol.com), granting them distribution rights for the US market for our unique range of Millennium Brand PV Solar Panels and related products. In addition, the agreement calls for HELIOCOL to purchase up to 200KW this year and 500kw early next year, for up to $2.5 million in value of PV Solar Energy Panels for the US market. This new export order is once again a major endorsement of the high quality of our Millennium Brand PV Solar Energy Panels.

Solar photovoltaics are suitable for both large grid-connected generation and small-scale applications. The report examines the status of the technology, its development, the size of the global market and its future development. Applications of Solar Photovoltaics are also outlined. Market sizes and future projections are provided, together with a break down of grid- connected and non-grid use, distributed generation, details of markets and production. Production is analysed by country and technology (single and poly cell silicon crystal, thin film and concentrators, with sub-categories). Exports are provided.

For the next two days I will be at the Solar Power 2005 conference in Washington DC. I'm currently deep in the bowls of the Hyatt and I'm finding that wireless internet (and also cell phone) coverage is spotty at best. I just finished the first session and will be posting conference notes later when I have a strong internet connection. It looks like there is about 300 people in attendance and the first session on Introduction to Solar was informative. If you happen to be reading this and you are attending the session, say Hello, It would...

Here are some additional notes I took from the Solar Energy conference. I was meaning to post this one earlier, but life and time got away from me. This session dealt with the Growth of Solar. It was not one of the more interesting sessions, but some of the people on the roundtable were very interesting. The first person to speak was Edwin Hill, President of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. His major focus for the reason why he and the IBEW was attending the conference is to state that they want to be a partner...

Subject line The recent announcement on June 2, 2008 , that Robert Bosche GmbH (privately-held) plans to buy German-based Ersol Solar Energy AG (FRA:ES6) provides another example of how global industrial conglomerates are carefully watching for opportunities in the fast-growing solar sector.   Bosch bought a majority stake in Ersol for 546 million euros from Ventizz Capital Partners at a 63% premium to Ersol’s closing price on May 30.  Bosch plans to make a public tender offer for the remaining 50.45% of the company, according to...

"Experts generally agree that our current reliance on fossil fuels is unsustainable. Already oil is near $50 per barrel, and the great millions of Chinese and Indians destined to take to the road in the next decades have not yet gotten behind the wheel." This week Newsweek has written several special reports about alternative energy in all its forms. All of these reports can be found at the following link.

Tom Konrad The 5.7 MW Solar Farm in Salisbury, MA is the largest solar farm in New England. The land under if was purchased by Power REIT (NYSE:PW) in December. Photo source: Power REIT I first wrote about Power REIT’s (NYSE:PW) plans to invest in renewable energy real estate in May 2012.  The intent was to buy the real estate underlying a solar, wind, or other renewable energy project, charging the project owners rent.  This can be done profitably because REITs often have a lower cost of capital...

Worldwater Corp (WWAT) announced the signing of contracts with homeowners in New Jersey and California to build photovoltaic solar electric systems to power their residences in parallel with their present electric utility company. The contract value of the systems in New Jersey and California is $160,540.

I'm going to be doing some extensive traveling this summer. While traveling I always need to power my various electronic gadgets so I can keep intouch with clients and my office. One of my trips this year is going to London and a photography tour of the English countryside. So I just ordered the Brunton Solar Port to keep all my various batteries charged. I purchased it from Amazon.com and I will do a review once I receive it in a couple days. The Brunton Solar Port 4.4 is available for purchase now at Amazon.com....

Privately held Konarka Technologies, Inc., announced the California Energy Commission is earmarking funds from its Energy Innovations Small Grant Program for Konarka. The grant will be used to accelerate Konarka's efforts to bring aesthetically integrated plastic photovoltaics to the roofing market. Over the next 12 months, Konarka will apply this grant to examining the potential for coating patterned power plastic roofing materials that mimic the appearance of traditional roofing products. Aesthetics and cost have been key hurdles in increasing market penetration for renewable photovoltaic power in the residential roofing market, but Konarka's materials will look like a conventional...

Hans Deuel at Clearfish Research presents some very good concerns about the possible manipulation of the shares of XSUNX Inc. (XSNX). I've received a number of comments about XsunX, all from the same person. I decided to look into them. They are working on transparent solar cells, have a weird history, and a weird structure. The only technological information I can find on them is all paid advertising (from IPODesktop and others) masquerading as research. Each of their press releases are misleading. They offer one key statement, and then go on about intentions. For example, the latest one...

Charles Morand The relationship - or lack thereof - between oil prices and the performance of alt energy stocks has been a long-time interest of mine. I discussed it last in late March when I looked at correlations between the daily returns of alt energy and fossil energy ETFs. At the time, I found that only a weak relationship existed between the two and that if someone wanted to make a thematic investment play on Peak Oil, alt energy ETFs were not an ideal way to do so.  Seeing as the popular press and countless "experts"...

Scientists from Toin University of Yokohama in Japan have designed a single, compact device that can both convert solar energy to electricity and store the electricity. "We succeeded in incorporating both photovoltaic and storage functions in a single cell with a thin, sandwich-type structure," said Tsutomu Miyasaka, a researcher at the University. The researchers' photocapacitor is also efficient at capturing energy from weak light sources like sunlight on cloudy or rainy days and indoor lighting.

SatCon Technology Corporation (SATC) announced that it has received multiple purchase orders from four new customers for 13 commercial grade inverters equaling 2.3 megawatts (MW), including an order from one of the largest photovoltaic integrators in North America. In addition, a customer that has been operating a trial unit issued a follow-on purchase order for 3 commercial grade inverters totaling 0.9 MW. These photovoltaic inverters trade named PowerGate(TM) are scheduled for delivery prior to the end of the current fiscal year.

German utility E.On AG launched a 29.1 billion euro ($34.72 billion) all-cash bid for ENDESA (ELE) on Tuesday, topping a previous offer from Gas Natural by more than 30 percent and threatening to disrupt carefully laid plans for Spanish power-market consolidation. Endesa said in a statement that the E.On offer was "clearly" the better of the two, but added that it still did not adequately reflect Endesa's true value. Shares of Endesa were up 15% in yesterday's trading.