While doing some related LinkedIn research, we found out that Ben Hill, Trinasolar’s President of Europe and Africa, recently left the company to lead Tesla’s Energy division in same the markets.
There’s a big reckoning happening in the solar inverter space right now. SolarEdge, an Israeli startup that we’ve profiled previously just announced bigger than expected earnings, sending their SEDG stock price up 5 points or a whopping 30% in today’s trading… Expand Expanding Close
The discrepancy between first and third-world energy supplies is incredible. Nearly 20% of the world’s population lives without access to common amenities that many of us take for granted. Panasonic has set out with a new line of solar storage products, under its eneloop collection, that aims to provide lasting energy from the sun.
While it will fill an obvious need in electricity-poor countries, it also might not be a bad idea for your own shed or garage. Solar powered batteries have come a long way in recent years and Panasonic plans on leveraging that technology around the world.
On Thursday, Off Grid Electric announced that it had raised US$25 million in a series C round led by the venture capital firm DBL Partners. Previous investors in the company SolarCity, Microsoft co-Founder Paul Allen and eBay Founder Pierre Omidyar’s fund Omidyar Network joined DBL in the financing round. Off Grid Electric, which also advertises under its M-Power brand, offers solar energy as a service in Africa, starting with Tanzania and recently in Rwanda. Expand Expanding Close
Tesla Motors, SpaceX and SolarCity – three companies influenced by Elon Musk – are currently on a massive hiring spree around the US. They already have a combined headcount of over 32,000 employees and the total is set to increase significantly in the coming months. We learned that Musk’s companies are holding joined private recruiting events, the latest of which held last weekend at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
Recruiters from each company select students recommended through university programs and invite them to the relatively secretive events to interview with SolarCity, SpaceX or Tesla. Expand Expanding Close
SolarCity, the biggest solar installer in the U.S., will attempt to hire 500 new employees in a single day on October 21. The company already employs over 14,000 workers in the U.S. and is adding more than 500 per month on average.
PR stunt? Maybe, but nonetheless the move is highlighting the importance of the solar industry in the U.S. job market. Expand Expanding Close
Solar Team Eindhoven is a group of 21 students from the Technical University of Eindhoven (Netherlands) who put their studies on hold for over a year to work on what became the Stella Lux; an energy positive solar car.
Energy positive means that the solar panels on the roof of the vehicle can actually produce more energy than the vehicle consumes while driving. Expand Expanding Close
A senior Chinese official speaking to the government’s news agency on Tuesday said that the country will increase its solar capacity from 35.8 gigawatts to 150 gigawatts by 2020. The push would represent a fourfold increase in solar power generation for China, which is already the biggest producer of solar in the world. Expand Expanding Close
Yale University announced the purchase of a 4,400-solar panel installation from SolarCity for its West Campus. The panels are spread on the rooftop of a 350,000 square feet warehouse. Expand Expanding Close
Jim Chanos is a famed billionaire hedge fund manager known for short selling companies. He is also a regular market commentator for CNBC and Bloomberg. Chanos recently disclosed having a short position on solar installer SolarCity (SCTY) and although he refused to disclose his position on Tesla Motors (TSLA), he doesn’t have good things to say about the company.
During an interview with Bloomberg on Monday morning, Chanos explained why he thinks both companies are overvalued, but the “facts” he used to support his opinion are misleading. Expand Expanding Close
Earlier this month SolarCity announced details of a new high-efficiency solar panel it plans on producing at its 1 GW module factory under-construction in Buffalo, NY. The company claimed that the module’s 22.04% efficiency was enough to make it the “most efficient rooftop solar module” ever made. The claim apparently sparked a “war” of high-efficiency solar panels because in the week following the announcement two other solar panel makers claimed to have surpassed SolarCity’s record. Expand Expanding Close
SolarCity announced today a new project with the Temecula Valley Unified School District to install 6 MW of solar energy capacity and 2.6 MWh of energy storage at a total of 19 schools in the district. The solar installations will mainly consist of carports using the company’s ZS Beam system (see picture above). Expand Expanding Close
According to a new report from GTM on Sunday, SunEdison sent out an internal memo last Friday to announce an important restructuring process which will include laying-off about 10% of the company’s workforce. The restructuring comes amid investor concerns about the company’s strategy which has been “all over the place” lately. Most notably, the company’s acquisition of the residential solar installer Vivint for $2.2 billion earlier this summer.
The decision to buy a residential solar provider was out of SunEdison’s core business, which mostly consist of developing utility-scale solar projects. Now the company might have to sell some of these projects in order to get rid of mounting debts (~$10 billion). Expand Expanding Close
SolarCity announced today that it has built the most efficient rooftop solar module with 22% efficiency according to a third party tester: Renewable Energy Test Center. Until now, SunPower’s X-Series panel was considered the most efficient rooftop panel with 21.5% efficiency.
SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive says that the new modules will produce between 350 to 360-watt compared to the company’s current 260-watt panels. Expand Expanding Close
Recent pictures of SolarCity’s ‘Gigafactory’ show that the solar panel plant is, at least from the outside, looking close to be ready for production. The Buffalo News managed to get a bird eyes view of the plant and compared the progress with pictures from a year ago. Expand Expanding Close
Although India probably isn’t a large market for Tesla’s luxury Model S/X and even the $35,000 Model 3 will be a tough sale for normal Indians, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the company’s Fremont car plant does have some immediate ramifications. According to the Indian Foreign ministry, Musk gave the PM a tour of the plant and paid particular attention to the Tesla Powerwall which the CEO noted could, when used in conjunction with Solar, help India’s rural communities bypass the electric grid.
Tesla (and Space X CEO, Solar City Chairman) CEO Elon Musk made some important remarks yesterday at the “Business for Tomorrow” summit at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy yesterday. While the translations and the moderation/questions at the end are frustrating, Musk’s comments at the beginning are poignant.
On Refugees:
“Today’s refugee problem is perhaps a small indication of what the future will be like if we do not take action with respect to climate change. Today, the challenge is in terms of millions of people, but in the future, based on what the scientific consensus is, the problem will be in the hundreds of millions and much more severe.”
On taking action:
I think it’s very important that we take action today to recognize that we are making a very significant change to the chemical constituency of the atmosphere and oceans. One that is almost impossible to reverse…
And where you could really feel some emotion:
If you go 20, 30, 50 years in the future, what do you say to your kids or your grandkids? It’s almost, like, scientists have all said that these bad things are going to happen, it’s, like 97 percent… So, to say to your kids or grandkids, like, ‘Did nobody tell you?’
No, everyone was telling us. ‘
So why didn’t you do anything?’ What’s the answer?
…I think it’s very important that we do something.
SolarCity, the biggest solar installer in the US, announced a new program to install solar for affordable housing communities. Under the new program, SolarCity will finance and install solar arrays for affordable housing developers, and then the company will distribute the energy produced by the solar panels to individual housing units. Expand Expanding Close
Sungevity is on a roll lately. Earlier this week, the company announced a partnership with Viridian and today it introduces a new program with PlugShare to offer free charging stations for electric vehicles when buying a solar installation with the company in the Bay Area. Expand Expanding Close
SolarEdge announced a significant upgrade to their smart inverter line this today called “HD-Wave” which will have a profound impact on the solar industry. Further followup from SolarEdge yields a nice (HDWave PDF) Deck as well outlining some of the bigger upgrades.
In short, SolarEdge has done for the inverter (a critical piece of the solar ecosystem which turns DC powered Solar/Wind/hydro electricity into AC which is used by homes and long poweline distance travel) what flat panels did for the TV just a decade or so ago. The new technology uses 16 times fewer magnets, smaller thin film capacitors and much less cooling to yield a 99% efficient power transformation. That not only makes solar installs less expensive, more productive and easier, it makes Tesla’s Powerwall a whole lot smaller… Expand Expanding Close
Energy retailer Viridian announced today a partnership with solar provider Sungevity to offer solar energy though its network of associates. The arrangement is not new for Viridian which had a similar deal with SolarCity. Expand Expanding Close
SolarCity announced today that the company signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Kaua’i electric utility (KIUC). SolarCity already built a 12-megawatt solar array for KUIC which went into operation in September 2014 and now supplies 5% of the island’s electricity, but under the new deal, the California-based solar installer will develop a new solar array and a massive 52 MWh energy storage system to provide electricity when the sun is down. Expand Expanding Close
GTM Research is out with a new report on the US solar industry’s second quarter 2015 and according to the firm, by most metrics the industry had its best quarter ever. The firm says that 40% of new electricity generation installed in the US in 2015 is from solar energy. Expand Expanding Close
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