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Electrek green energy brief: US solar capacity to triple in 5 years, $200B in clean energy in 2016, Sunrun +39%, more

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US Solar total solar capacity expected to triple in next five years – If we were to double every 2.5 years, solar would take over all energy on the planet in about 20 years, tripling every five years is a bit slower of a rate – but still awesome. We are still in the early stages of solar power – it might be hard to believe that with the amount of money and the headlines every day – but 70GW a year globally is not enough to change the planet – we need 500GW a year of solar and the same amount of wind to do that…but we’re getting closer.

$200B in clean energy in 2016 – Since it seems political America doesn’t care about cleaning the planet unless they make money, here’s $200B a year that will triple by 2022. And guess what we’re going to use that leverage to put a crowbar between politicians and their US tax payer paid jobs.

“Do you think you’ve dreamt too big?” “Yes, but I do not regret it.” – The way the solar was deployed is too expensive, yeah – this is true. Years ago when this guy started, we were nowhere near where we needed to be cost and technology wise to make his vision economic – but slowly that is changing. People doing weird things sometimes brings us into the future. Rock on buddy.


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Electrek green energy brief: Battery storage doubles, Rhode Island for 1GW, Solar panels to ¢25/W in ’17, more

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California’s record breaking battery banks drive doubling of energy storage in US 2016 – And the chart seems to predict a tripling of that volume in 2017 to 1GWh. 300% growth in 2017 is going to make a lot of manufacturers step their game up. Wonder what percentage of that 1GW Tesla will be delivering? We know Samsung SDI is also big.

Rhode Island going for 1GW by 2020 – While 1GW of renewables for a lot of places isn’t that great (remember there are single projects larger than 1GW popping up these days). 1GW for a state that takes 45 minutes to drive across is something to consider – not to mention that to get to 1GW by 2020 it will involve growing almost 10x from today’s deployed volume in less than 4 years. I work in Rhode Island on a regular basis – got a sales call there today. The businesses and private people are interested – paying $0.16/kWh with healthy demand fees adds up quickly.

Solar panels at ¢25-26/W by the end of the year – If the volume of manufacturing keeps increasing, but the global demand stays flat in 2017 (expected to happen) – something will have to change. This aggressive pricing driven by the Chinese will give Indian manufacturers another year of hell. Chinese panels are ¢10/W cheaper than Indian.


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Electrek green energy brief: Oil stocks for solar?, Solar=grid stability in California, battery charging by light, more

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Saudi Aramco selling $500B (?) in stock, investing $5B of it in solar – Groups representing $60 trillion (wow) in investment capital have pledged ‘to incorporate environmental, social and governance factors, known as ESG, into their investment decisions.’ Aramco is hoping to draw a slightly greater portion of these folks by making an investment in the largest oil company on the planet slightly solar powered. This is seperate from the countries $30-50B in solar power that is coming. $5B out of a valuation from $400B to $2T (estimates for the value of the oil company) represents 1.25% to 0.25%, respectively. Purist investors think its foolish to mix these investments, however – I’ll argue that the world is more complex than one line descriptions of what an IPO should be – and I am glad to see this, even if it is a slight manipulation of ‘clean’ to get what they want.

Solar power being requested in strategic locations to INCREASE grid stability – That’s right, none of this ‘solar power is bad for the grid’ crap – that’s 1999 talking. The utilities of the more advanced solar states in the USA – California in particular – are already mapping out where solar need be. And now, officially, Southern California Edison is ready to pay you extra if you build a plant that connects to the grid in predetermined places. Strategic solar power can lower the cost of grid upgrades – can lower voltage loss far from the factory – and with the right hardware, can offer additional services that the grid needs to keep it stable. Brave new world.


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Electrek green energy brief: 10 Gigafactories to replace US auto fleet, Smart meters need get smarter, 74¢/W for 1.17GW, more

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Smart meters of a certain type have an issue dealing with variable voltages on LED lightingLighting makes up 10% of residential electricity in the USA at 129 billion kWh. If we all had smart meters installed – and we all had LED lighting that was using unique features to lower the energy usage – we could be paying a $100M more than we should. The scientists seemed to pinpoint the exact hardware causing the over/under reading. If every socket knew what hardware was plugged into it a software fix at the utility side could manage it.

Abu Dhabi aims to close $872 million solar plant financing in April – 74¢/W is what you pay for 1.17GW in the desert. It wasn’t too long ago that solar panels themselves cost 74¢/W — actually like two years ago. I wonder if JinkoSolar is being given partial ownership in exchange for the solar panels – long term cash generation?

Utility sued by solar power users who believe net metering credits not properly applied – Taking this article, plus the lead regarding smart meters, pushes me further to think there is a need in the marketplace for better energy usage knowledge. Every item plugged the house can be better managed – and we ought be tracking usage on that level. If we’re doing that – then we’ll be able to know exactly what our electricity bills should look like every single month. Check out Sense.com for one such product.


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Electrek green energy brief: Investment in solar power funds, climate science in 1859, solar 1.4% of US electricity, more

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Foresight targets new 250MW UK pipeline with fresh placing – In essence, the group is selling shares in a cross section of solar projects. I don’t know exactly how it pays out – but it would seem logical to get some sort of payment for the electricity being sold in a near real time basis. What is the global appetite for investing into solar funds? We know hundreds of billions. Trillions? It’d be interesting to buy enough solar power in your initial offerings that the collected energy revenue would be enough to considerably grow the solar portfolio over time, versus paying out for, say, the first five years. A 30 year investing that grows itself for the first five yeas before it starts to draw down. In the US making use of tax credits and depreciation would mean tax free electricity revenue to reinvest in new solar projects.

The basics of climate science were lain in 1859 by John Tyndall – ‘Tyndall’s most striking discoveries were the vast differences in the abilities of “perfectly colorless and invisible gases and vapours” to absorb and transmit radiant heat.’ Using the machine pictured above, Tyndall discovered that complex molecules like water vapor and carbon dioxide (plus others) were the best absorbers of heat. We knew the fundamentals of how we were going to heat our planet in 1859 – 158 years ago. Darwin published The Origin of Species that year…another ‘controversial’ idea.

Tyndall announced some of his early results on May 26, 1859. 93 days later, in Titusville, Pennsylvannia – Drake struck oil and the ‘first large-scale commercial extraction of petroleum” was underway.


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All new net electricity capacity in the USA has been from clean energy sources since 2009

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On Monday, the US Energy Information Agency released a report on utility-scale electricity capacity additions. The report’s focus was on the significant capacity growth in 2016 – the largest year since 2011. This capacity growth was pushed by natural gas, with wind and solar right behind (this excludes about 7 GW of distributed solar volume). What else was shown in the report are the retirements of capacity – the lower half of the graph in the header image.

When subtracting retirements of coal and natural gas from additions of these fossil fuel sources, we get all the way back to 2009 before capacity additions starts to outpace capacity retirements. In a simple way, all of the utility-scale electricity generation capacity added to the United States grid since 2009 has been clean energy.


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Electrek green energy brief: Amazon going big solar, 3 million advanced energy jobs, Military continuing its green march, more

Two reason I like sharing articles about the US Military doing green related technologies – 1. If the military is greening it will help the CO2 situation as the US Military might be the single largest energy user on the planet. Yes, I know many in the military are only greening because it makes them a more efficient killing machine, but I’ll take what I can get. And 2. The US Military is pushing the politicians and voters who care about military positions. These groups tend to not be as environmentally minded day to day, and – again – I’ll take what I can get.

Amazon to install 50 solar power systems, 15 in 2017 – Corporate America needs to save money and clean up their emissions. Solar power offers unique opportunities to box retailers and warehouse companies – a sq foot of rooftop can generate (not cost) $1-4/year and cover the investment cost in as few as 12 months. Buildings today are built considering integrating solar power from the first moment – this is something that didn’t happen significantly even five years ago. The Amazon facility being built nearby me in Fall River, MA was talking solar power long before a shovel broke the ground.

Georgia utilities offer solar power at 1¢/kWh premium – Would you sign up? I would. Polls in the past have shown Americans willing to pay up to $200/year for renewable energy. I remember about 10,000 Floridians signing up to give FPL an extra $10/month to invest in solar. Average household uses about 11,000 kWh/year – meaning this would increase an electricity bill by, on average, $110/year. You still willing to sign up?


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Electrek green energy brief: Shell had a hockey stick before Gore, Politician ‘shocked’ people like solar, more

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Energy pricing increase slowed down in Australia where more renewables installed – The standard argument you hear from the politicians employed by the fossil groups is that renewables drive up the price of electricity…except – they don’t. In Australia this very simple analysis shows exactly the opposite. What’s going on here? You and I know…its called competition from an energy source taking no prisoners.

Kentucky political ‘shocked’ people give a damn – It should be a national law that any politician that wants to submit a law against net metering, and is going to use the same stale excuse of, ‘solar…business plan needs to be subsidized through the average ratepayer,’ need be first educated on the complex reality of that statement. There are dozens of studies done by professionals showing that this is mostly garbage in our low penetration world that is peddled by the utilities to scare mom and pop. I’m shocked this excuse is still being used.

ARPA-E projects receive over $1.8 billion in private funding – Who says government funding can’t help capitalism? Two data points to end the argument: 56 ARPA-E projects have turned into private companies and received almost $1.8B in funding. And remember – every time someone talks crap about Solyndra, the Solyndra program made billions for tax payers.


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Electrek green energy brief: RMI saves 40% on community solar, Japan going wind, India building transmission, more

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Rocky Mountain Institute expands Community Solar across the country – The article is a good read because it gives guidelines on how to get better pricing for community solar projects. The main drivers – get a competitive RFP versus a single quote (and write the RFP well!), bundle your project with up to 20MW of other projects, increase contract length, and work with utilities when placing the system. RMI was able to work pricing down from 8.5¢/kWh to as low as 5¢/kWh – a 40% savings. I agree with this model – its easier said than done to collect and organize 20MW, but it happens.

Japan developing wind market – What’s an island with zero natural resources to generate energy to do? Surround itself with wind farms is one way to go. The goal is to get around 10GW by 2020 – an amount that would represent 4.5% of electricity capacity. Currently, Japan has about 45GW of solar power installed and manufacturers are looking to expand the volume of energy storage installed to better manage the intermittents.

India’s powergrid getting $500M to upgrade transmission – The Asian Development Bank is putting the money up. I am sure the government of India is backing the loan, and I’m betting that the solar developers who are hoping to build 40GW of solar are going to be paying off the loan at a rate of around 0.1¢ to 1.0¢/kWh to transport their electricity from the fields to the cities. What’s more important than anything though – this is being built and the machines and expertise to create this type of hardware will grow globally.


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Electrek green energy brief: JinkoSolar going for 9GW in ’17, USA has lost a trade battle, mapping the grid, more

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JinkoSolar gives 9GW of guidance for solar panels in 2017 – In 2015, the USA installed 7.3GW of solar power. In 2017 – this one company will manufacture 20% more than the US’ 2015 needs. In the 4th quarter 2016 – Jinko shipped 1.7GW of solar panels. Jinko, while the largest solar panel manufacturer, is one of many.

USA losing jobs to South Korea/China in polysilicon manufacturing as a result of trade war – When the USA decided to tax solar panels and cells coming from China, they knew that somewhere China would respond. In 2013 the USA was proud of being a net exporter of solar power related technologies – led by polysilicon. That is no longer the case. Check out the chart of volume shifting from the USA. Taxing solar from China has led to a loss of jobs and production capability in the USA for polysilicon, increased the price of imported solar panels, lowered the number of installation jobs and slowed our progression toward cleaning this planet. Of course, I get that the purpose of the tax was because we wanted to protect American jobs manufacturing solar panels…how’d that work out in reality though? Much Chinese manufacturing is now building in Vietnam and Thailand to send to the USA anyway, skipping the tax.

I guess today is the day to announce your rate electricity rate increases – Philidelphia, Central/North California, and Hawaii made it into my feed yesterday. A few weeks ago I saw my home state of Massachusetts pushing for 7 and 11%. Anything in your news feed – or, more importantly, real life? Price of US energy have been down three years.


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Electrek green energy brief: largest grid tied battery installed, solar power + drones, South Carolina solar?, more

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30MW/120MWh lithium battery system online in California – world’s largest grid-tied system: Key quote, ‘California Public Utilities Commissioner Michael Picker said, “I didn’t expect to see these kinds of prices in batteries until 2022, 2024 …we are far in advance of where we expected to be.”’ This pricing, along with utility-scale solar power being at least half a decade ahead of its predicted price falls, means we ought to expect significant volume come online because of economics alone.

South Carolina solar developers pushing for state level tax benefit – A few interesting data points from the article, 1. ‘Landowners earn on average about $750 a year per acre in rental income,’ 2. 91 potential solar farm projects in South Carolina are on hold pending legislation, 3. Those 91 projects on hold would generate about $217 million in one-time property taxes for hardware sales 4. and $12.6 million in annual property taxes, up from the roughly $21,000 that they now pay as agriculture properties, 5. Solar companies had invested $5.4 billion in northern neighbor North Carolina and $1.9 billion in the southern neighbor Georgia. One number that was missing – how many MW installed would those 91 projects be?


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Electrek green energy brief: 850MW of solar from space, Bubba loves solar, customized solar panels, more

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NASA takes a cool picture – Link is to NASA’s website, with an easy before and after comparison system. 850MW of solar PV, some mountains, and a river from space. Pretty cool.

Co-location of solar & pollinator friendly plantsNREL did a great presentation, and now it is becoming a thing in real projects. This technique is new to me – but it reminds me greatly of other co-location techniques like solar+fish, +parking lots, +vegetables, +pathways, +roadways and more. Each of these co-location partners are worth money and increase the return on investment of solar projects. I’d like to see low-light vegetable farms built on top of parking lots outside of supermarkets or apartment complexes.

GA politicians wants to remove power from Public Utility Commission – When electricity companies were given publicly approved monopolies, the Public Utility Commission was created to balanced out the natural greed of self interest. The electric utilities, still, have many times violated the public’s trust. Now, a politician in Georgia thinks the Commission ought not have influence on how much renewable energy a power company should purchase. Of course, they use the excuse of freedom and market capitalism – but I bet they’re not considering a carbon tax to balance out ignored externalities. Watch the news as renewables now grow at 200GW clips in the coming years – you thought the politicians were getting strung about before?


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Electrek green energy brief: Exxon carbon tax blog post yesterday, Norway being pushed to invest, NC county bans solar farms, more

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Exxon, again yesterday via its blog, pushing for carbon tax and *government intervention* – Exxon wants a carbon tax because internal combustion vehicles will slowly disappear while natural gas, which Exxon is heavily invested in, replaces coal. A carbon tax on coal is about double natural gas – and Exxon is losing serious money on expensive oil investments. Plus an interesting phrase from a company that constantly attacks government: At ExxonMobil, we’re encouraged that the pledges made at last year’s Paris Accord create an effective framework for all countries to address rising emissions; in fact, our company forecasts carbon reductions consistent with the results of the Paris accord commitments. Governments can help advance the search for energy technologies by funding basic research and by enacting forward-looking policies. If you’re Exxon, you can doubly win – support a carbon tax that hurts your competition, while also making it look like you’tr supportinf international climate change agreements (many say a $40/ton carbon tax will mean we meet both Paris and Clean Power Plan goals). My prior thoughts on this topic.

World’s largest wealth fund urged to consider infrastructure investments – If $900B worth of investment money were pushed to invest 5% in renewable infrastructure, then we’d get the equivalent of 50GW of solar power from Norway alone. Money like this would flow from many soverign wealth funds globally, and it will join private capital from groups like BlackRock. These renewable investments are being considered for two reasons – they’ve shown long term stability, and they align with the fund’s general do no harm matra. Good, clean money being made.


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Electrek green energy brief: Electric utilities need fight the auto industry, MA attorney general sued, big batteries, more

How the electric utilities can survive by become a public darling – It is time for the electric utility to fight for its life, and it must fight the automobile industry that is trying to hold onto internal combustion engines. Electricity usage is falling in the USA and moving away from centralized management – so how does a utility grow? They begin to fuel electric vehicles – and in order to win that game, they’re going to have to fight for electric vehicles by lobbying politicians. If the utilities do fight for electric vehicles, and this is where you need see the graphs shown in this article, then they have a chance at truly helping climate change. Right now, in the USA, if we cleaned up 100% of our electricity infrastructure – we’d still be serious polluters because transportation is a bigger polluter than electricity – but if we took out transportation and electricity…

Attorney General getting sued by Exxon over climate change – First off, #ExxonKnew knew climate change was human caused in the middle 1970s. Their own scientists told them. The key is, they then told the world’s public that there was doubt – that climate change wasn’t real. Tobacco Companies had for decades engaged in “a pattern of racketeering activity” geared to “deceive the American public about the health effects and addictiveness of smoking cigarettes.” Now, change out references to tobacco and health, for oil and climate. Now – Exxon is attacking in order to limit the effectiveness of Massachusetts Attorney General Healey. Just letting you know – I’ve put $$$ toward her re-election campaign.


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Tesla’s (TSLA) first earnings announcement post-SolarCity integration: cash positions, solar tile roof production this year, more

Tesla has made its first quarterly announcement since it purchased SolarCity in late 2016. Understandably, it seems SolarCity’s own Gigafactory has been renamed Gigafactory 2. The SolarCity integration being an ongoing process warranted notice in the header lines of the document  – with this first page quote reiterating the logic in purchasing SolarCity:

With the acquisition of SolarCity, we have created the world’s only integrated sustainable energy company, from generation to storage to transportation.

Multiple references were made to bettering the cash positions of the company by focusing solar power sales on cash deals that generate immediate revenue versus lease sales. It was stressed that Tesla’s plan to do this was strongly underway – cash sales increased from Q3’16 to Q4’16 from 13% to 28%, while from increasing 7X from the 4% in Q4’15. Of the 203MW installed in the quarter – 56MW were cash sales totaling $77 million. Those $77M were added in only six weeks – $500-667M in cash sales for 2017 (low end adjusted as there is always a bump in 3rd/4th quarter)?


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Electrek green energy brief: California talking about 100%, Mexico at 2.69¢/kWh, The Residential Electric Utility, more

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California going for 100% renewable electricity by 2045 – A California politician has submitted a bill requiring the state to go 100% renewable electricity by 2045. California is the largest US state by population and GDP, and if it were on its own it is often said it’d be among the top ten economies in the world. With a Massachusetts politician also pushing for 100% electricity by 2035 and renewable energy by 2045, we might have two states totaling 47 million people (plus Hawaii sometime in the 2030s) investing in research, technology, and installation of whole new power systems for decades to come.

Mexico solar bid at 2.69¢/kWh – I remember back in 2011-2013 when I worked for Beghelli, and was training the Mexico sales teams on solar power. The country has great sunlight resources, especially in the northwestern desert that is located just south of New Mexico, Arizona and California – some of the best photons in the world. Residential electricity is expensive – with a progressive pricing form that has four to five tiers that get increasingly more expensive with more total usage. Located all over the country were black cisterns on the roofs of homes to heat water. Less than three cents a watt – with no incentives, just south of the US border. That means those prices are coming here soon.


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Electrek green energy brief: Australian residential solar+battery 7yr ROI, German renewables limited, Solarworld batteries?, more

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Australian residential energy storage systems increased from 500 to 6,750 – Key data point: payback in 7 years. Major factor – electricity in Australia is expensive. Retorts – solar + energy storage is going down in price, while prices of energy seemingly forever increase. Long term prognosis – Australia, a country with one of the highest levels of residential solar installation volume in the world, will grow their energy storage market significantly as prices of energy storage fall further. We’ve already crossed the economic point – 7-10 year ROI – where residential customer exhibit strong buying signals. This is already spreading to other high cost areas (Hawaii, Southern California, Germany, Massachusetts, etc).

Germany limiting renewable development – Main reason: too much intermittent energy, not enough tools to manage its flows and storage. Germany know that it needs to build new transmission lines to move the large amounts of off shore wind to the south – but there are plenty of political arguments against. Energy storage is coming hard – so that will help, but goals of nearly 100% renewable/clean by 2050, lots of work is needed.


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Solar electricity at 1.99¢/kWh? Saudi government offering ‘motivating terms,’ expecting ‘record bid’

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Saudi Arabia has officially launched a request for proposals (RFP) for 300MW of solar power – the RFP sits at the front end of a 9.5 GW solar rollout by 2023. The proposed project’s site has gone through full pre-development work with those site assessments will be made available to qualified parties. Bid due date is March 20th.

Earlier this month, Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih said that “the terms on renewable contracts will be motivating so that the cost of generating power from these renewable sources will be the lowest in the world.” The previous lowest bid was by a Japanese-led group in Au Dhabi for 2.3¢/kWh as part of a ‘side bid’ of 1,170MW.

As we saw in India’s recent bids, government support and intelligently designed programs will lead toward record low prices when expectations scale to the multi-gigawatt level.

With the continued increases in solar panel efficiency, and falling solar module and utility-scale power plants, we expect that someone will bid 1.99¢/kWh or lower.


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Electrek green energy brief: 70% Mongolian herders with solar, bifaicial solar cell plants, green bonds, more

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70% of Mongolian herders have solar power – If the planet goes to crap because we’re fools and allow it to, its people like this – living as close to the land as possible – who will keep the species alive. And now they have access to electricity. When I traveled in China/Pakistan back in the summer of 2008, I saw a yurt with solar power. They have a radio and a refrigerator for medication. As well, fresh yak yogurt/milk is a taste that must be acquired.

Why liberals should support recently suggested carbon tax – The two main argument by liberals against the recently suggested carbon tax by Republicans in the USA are that 1. $40/ton is 1/5th what academics say the true cost is and 2. Its revenue neutral – without investing in infrastructure we’re just going to spend our carbon dividend on more oil and natural gas because we have no alternative opportunity. The article models that suggest $40/ton will meet current legislative goals set forth by the Clean Power Plan and the Paris Agreement – if that is the case, then I would have to grudgingly accept…however – I won’t stop pushing for infrastructure incentives. If we don’t build infrastructure to replace natural gas/coal/internal combustion – we won’t win the planet back.


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Electrek green energy brief: 1.5GW RFP in AZ, Perovskite at 30% in two years (!?), Apple backing energy storage, more

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Arizona County put out Request for Proposal (RFP) for 1.5GW of solar power – Personally, this is the largest RFP I’ve seen in the US. There are headlines for projects in the Middle East at 5GW, one in India at 7.5GW and China sorta has an RFP of 20GW a year – but these nation-state led bids feel different than a county in the state of Arizona. 8,800 acres of desert (less than .005% of the more than 1.8 million acres of federal lands controlled by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in La Paz County). This project will cost $1/W’ish – $1.5B in cost. And there is already a transmission line project in development to move the power. I’d love to get a commission on $1.5B…

23.6% achieved with perovskite – plus stability increases: The real reason I grabbed this article, other than a fascination with base level research, was this quote – ‘“The best silicon solar cell alone has achieved 26.3% efficiency,” says Zachary Holman, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. “Now we’re gunning for 30% with these tandem cells, and I think we could be there within two years.”’ I’ve never heard of someone seriously considering hitting 30% with a silicon solar cell efficiency. Yesterday, we saw SunPower at 25% on a production line and how that was 50% greater than average panels – imagine the labs being at double average panels in two years with a cheaper product like perovskite…wow.


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Electrek green energy brief: SunPower at 25%, ‘carbon dividend’ anyone?, solar is investment grade, more

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SunPower hits 25% average efficiency – Getting to a certain efficiency in the lab is great, as setting that record tells us what is possible. More important in the real world – when your production line averages that high level efficiency. Not every solar cell that comes off the line is the same – during the binning process a solar manufacturer will test individual pieces to see how they turned out. The most efficient solar cells get put into the high-end, most expensive panels – the cells that test lower go to a different line of products. Something to consider – SunPower’s highest solar panels are in the 24% range, while the average panel being installed at the super cheap numbers you hear me talk about are at 16%. SunPower can fit 50% more electricity production in the same area. Also in article are quarterly/annual results.

Would you be interested in voting for a carbon dividend? – If the PR people can spin the term up – and help everyone ‘forget’ that it is a carbon tax, we’re all going to start singing the praises of a revenue neutral carbon dividen. The term itself won’t be the reason a carbon tax will win – broader society is in support of doing something, and broader society knows doing something costs money. However – for that extra 5-20% of the voters needed to boost it over the line, it’ll get the job done.


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Electrek green energy brief: 650MW solar plant construction video, world’s largest solar facade, and more

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Danish School Has Installed The World’s Largest Solar Facade – When the building is made of electricity generation material, from day one, we change the perception of what a building is. It’s no longer simply a structure to feed material, food, energy for hot, cold and light, etc. In soon time, a building without solar power will be the aberration. Check out the image and the different colored solar panels.

A quote for Wall Street from a CEO – SunPower expects that, “The intensity of competition will continue.” SunPower is taking a beating as the price difference between its market leading efficiency and the uber-economical spot market of 16% polysilicon gets wider. The competition is rough for the 16% manufacturers as well – Yingli might get delisted, and SolarWorld is cutting back employees to move up market. I recently asked a stock analyst to look at a solar cell equipment manufacturer – he said, ‘tight margins, lowering product values, global competition, rising Chinese products, etc.’ Sounds like every story on solar panel manufacturers.


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Electrek green energy brief: US solar power doubles, Solar panel manufacturing in California, NE USA energy politics

US solar market grows by 95% – Led by an enormous expansion of the utility solar power market, and complemented by solid growth in both the residential and commercial-industrial sectors, the solar power industry installed approximately 14,625MW. The average household – 2.6’ish people – needs about .01MW (10kW) to meet their home electricity needs. Installations of 100MW or more occurred in 20 states – the market is widening. The US is now home to 40GW of solar power spread across 1.3 million installations.

Sunergy, a Chinese solar panel manufacturer, building module assembly plant in California –  200 local jobs and 400MW of solar panels per year from this manufacturing line. Sunergy has spread manufacturing facilities around the planet in order to work around various tariff schemes. In order to not have product taxed by the Feds, the article suggested Sunergy would have to import solar cells from its facilities in Vietnam or South Korea. I wonder if that means there are going to be 400MW or really well priced solar panels available in the US soon? I’ll let the boss know.


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