Solar

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....

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...

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...

Dana Blankenhorn Any hot investment field is ripe for scams. It's that time for solar energy. Sun Energy of Australia says it has been making “solar inverters”  since 1987. Its directors appear to all be legitimate businesspeople. But look a little more closely. What is a stock photo of the old Merrill Lynch bull doing there? A flower? The Earth, seen from space? And click the “language” icons on the home page. They don't lead anywhere. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has told the Sydney Morning Herald it suspects stock fraud, adding the same outfit...

Citing recent success in alternative power, GE Energy, a subsidiary of General Electric Co (GE) is hoping to boost its solar energy sales to $1 billion annually by the end of the decade, the head of GE's solar business said.

Tom Konrad CFA Think low solar panel prices drive a renewed boom in solar installations? Consider inverter companies as a way to play it. I don't usually follow solar stocks because I think solar is just a little too cool, and the space is too well covered by other analysts for me to feel like I can offer new insights.  Nevertheless, the sharp decline in solar stocks this year has been tempting me to dip my toe in the golden stuff.  Since I'm no solar stock expert, I've...

Spire Corp (SPIR) announced that it has entered into a contract with J.v.G. Thoma GmbH, Spire's sales and service representative in Germany, to provide Prisolartec GmbH of Perleberg, Germany, with Spire's multi-megawatt entry level, turnkey photovoltaic (PV) module manufacturing production line. The production line includes equipment for solar cell stringing and lay-up, lamination, framing, and module testing. Prisolartec selected Spire Corporation as their equipment supplier based on Spire's superior experience, the quality of its equipment, Spire's competitive offering, and its proven ability to provide training assistance to establish their operations.

John Petersen During the fourteen years that I've lived in Switzerland, the Germans have been the world's staunchest supporters of green power and alternative energy. Their aggressive development of wind power was breathtaking, as was their warm embrace of photovoltaic power. Over the last few weeks, however, there has been an ominous change in the mainstream German media's tone as the political class finally comes to grips with the unpleasant reality that rooftop solar panels are worthless on short, grey winter days and "For weeks now, the 1.1 million solar power systems in Germany have generated almost no...

Distributed Energy Systems Corp (DESC) announced that it has entered into an agreement to design, engineer and construct a 400 kW solar power system at Timberland's 429,000 square-foot Ontario distribution center in Southern California. The 401.8 kW photovoltaic (PV) system will be installed on a new "TruckPort" steel mounting structure next to Timberland's warehouse, leveraging an unused area of the facility's truck yard by providing storage space for the facility as well as shaded parking for employees. A total of 1,960 PV modules will be mounted on the structure in strings of 14 each. The high-efficiency modules and...

by Paula Mints Potentially stranding a significant number of solar development plans as well as some assets, SunEdison (SUNE) finally took the step that many expected and filed for bankruptcy. Pondering where things went wrong for the troubled firm leads to a winding road of overexpansion, debt and the traditional sidekick of highly visible companies and people, hubris. Hubris, of course, happens quite often in the corporate world and there is a long list of companies that were swayed by it – who knows, one is probably being swayed at this very minute. In the solar...

Privately held Konarka Technologies, Inc. announced it has acquired Siemens AG's organic photovoltaic research activities. The acquisition brings together two leading efforts to develop and commercialize a new generation of photovoltaics that are inexpensive, easy-to-manufacture and versatile. These new plastic power cells will make it possible for any electronic device or structure to carry its own on-board source of renewable energy.

Magnetek Inc. (MAG) announced that Manhattan's largest functioning Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) power system recently began harvesting energy from the sun.

Tom Konrad, CFA Prospective investors in solar manufacturers should consider the competitive forces that constrain the industry's long-term profitability. In the first part of this series, I showed how a competitive analysis of the corn ethanol industry in early 2007 illuminated the forces that soon caused ethanol company stock prices to collapse in late 2007.  I also implied that the solar cell manufacturers, including industry leaders such as Sunpower (SPWRA) and First Solar (FSLR) are vulnerable to these forces and may not be able to maintain high returns on capital over the long term. I'm not...

Evergreen Solar Inc (ESLR) announced that the company was named to the prestigious New England Technology Fast 50 list. The annual ranking, conducted by Deloitte & Touche LLP and Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, designates the fastest-growing companies located in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine and Rhode Island by revenue growth.

Universal Communication Systems Inc (UCSY) announced that the company will launch its new complete range of Patented PV Solar Chargers for the consumer electronics market in May. The new products are all fitted with new exclusively developed "Battery On Board" (BOB) technology, enabling the consumer to apply "charging" to his/her electronic device 24 hours per day, all year round. The entire range of our products is designed to operate both in sunlight, and indoors.

Spire Corp (SPIR) received a Nasdaq Staff Determination indicating that the Company is no longer in compliance with the $10,000,000 minimum stockholders' equity requirement for continued listing set forth in Nasdaq Marketplace Rule 4450(a)(3), and that its common stock is, therefore, subject to delisting from the Nasdaq National Market. While this type of event is never a good thing, it certainly doesn't ring the death of this stock. They will just start trading OTC.