Solar Panels Raise Interest in CA & AZ Residential Areas

Story first appeared in Forbes.
Morgan Stanley is backing a $300 million fund to finance installation of residential photovoltaic systems – yet another sign that the turmoil roiling solar panel manufacturers has been a boon for installers.

Plummeting costs for solar panels have driven several solar manufacturers and developers into bankruptcy in recent months but the 75% price plunge of photovoltaic modules in the past three years have made rooftop solar increasingly attractive to homeowners and financiers like Morgan Stanley.

On Monday, SolarCity, a Silicon Valley solar installer backed by Tesla Motors, said it plans to file for an initial public offering. And two weeks ago, Sungevity, SolarCity’s cross-Bay rival, revealed plans to expand into the Australian solar market.

In the deal announced Thursday, Clean Power Finance – a San Francisco startup that offers software tools and financing to solar installers – Morgan Stanley’s MS Solar Solutions Corp, Zions Bancorporation and solar installer Main Street will create MySolar, a lease program to finance up to $300 million of rooftop solar arrays and solar carports for homeowners in California and Arizona.

The MySolar lease gives Clean Power Finance’s qualified network of solar professionals another affordable option to help homeowners immediately save money on their electricity bills.

The success to date of the five-year-old startup backed by Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers itself indicates that software and financial engineering is driving the solar industry as much as advances in photovoltaic panels.

Clean Power Finance never gets near a homeowner’s roof but provides a software platform to solar installers so they can design solar systems, generate price quotes for clients as well as financing options.


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Bankrupt Solar Panel Manufacturer Pulled from Stock Market

Story first appeared in The Detroit News on March 14th, 2012.

The stock of Energy Conversion Devices. Inc., the bankrupt Auburn Hills-based solar panel manufacturer, was pulled from the Nasdaq Stock Market on Feb. 24, according to a filing on Wednesday.  The company primarily makes, sells and installs thin-film flexible solar products and systems to the building and rooftop markets.  These panels are useful in the construction of Solar Carports and solar roof structures.

Energy Conversion filed for bankruptcy protection Feb. 14, when its stock price closed at 29 cents a share from $1.46 the day before. Nasdaq told the company Feb. 15 that it no longer qualified for listing on the stock exchange, according to the company's filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

When the company did not appeal the decision, the stock was suspended from the exchange Feb. 24, when Energy Conversion Device's stock closed at 16 cents a share. The delisting will become official 10 days after the Nasdaq files the paperwork, according to another filing made Wednesday with the SEC.

The company's stock — now traded on the over-the-counter "Pink Sheets" under the symbol ENERQ — closed Wednesday at nine cents a share.

The Auburn Hills-based firm said in May that it would lay off 300 workers, including 115 in Michigan, as it restructured amid cutbacks in government solar incentives overseas and after posting a large quarterly loss.

US Industries Expanding: Solar and Wind

First appeared in USA Today

Despite last year's bankruptcies of several solar manufacturers, including government-backed Solyndra, the U.S. solar and wind industries continue to expand in the face of obstacles this year. There is even increasing production of Solar Carports.

Newly installed solar panels produced 109% more electricity nationwide last year than in 2010, reaching a record 1,855 megawatts, as the price of these panels plummeted by more than 50%, according to a report today by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), an industry group, and GTM Research.

"The U.S. remains the innovative center of the solar industry worldwide," says Rhone Resch, SEIA's president. He says "run-of-the-mill" panels may increasingly be made overseas, but the U.S. still will make the most advanced solar components and post double-digit annual growth. He expects solar power, which now produces less than 1% of U.S. electricity, to generate 10% by 2020.

"There's no bubble" bursting in the clean-tech sector, Resch says, although he cautions that more companies likely will fail as the industries mature and cope with decreased government subsidies.

Other recent reports indicate that the U.S. clean-tech sector remains strong despite Republican criticism of President Obama's half-billion-dollar loan guarantee to Solyndra and his other support for renewable energy. Some are looking to Oil & Gas Expert Witness for information.

Wind power increased 31% last year, says the American Wind Energy Association, and venture capital invested in clean technology grew from $3.8 billion in 2010 to $4.3 billion last year, the National Venture Capital Association says.

Still, even advocates see challenges ahead.

"It's not all rosy. … There have been growing pains of late," says Ron Pernick, managing director for Clean Edge, a research firm. He expects "considerable consolidation."

A federal "production tax credit," which lowers the wind industry's cost of producing power, is slated to expire at the end of 2012. Also at issue:

·         A Treasury Department program, which Resch says helped many solar start-ups, expired at the end of last year. On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate rejected an effort to restart the Section 1603 program, which allows companies to take upfront cash grants in lieu of tax credits.

·         The Department of Commerce is likely Monday to decide whether to impose duties on solar panels made in China in response to an unfair-trade complaint filed by Oregon-based SolarWorld and six unnamed solar manufacturers. If it imposes duties, Resch expects a slight increase in panel prices.

·         Low natural-gas prices are threatening the economic rationale for renewable energy. Pernick says the wind and solar industries will still grow, because more than two dozen states now require utilities to produce more of their power from renewables. Sometimes a Natural Gas Expert might be necessary.

Apple Will Be Solar Powered by SunPower

First appeared in Mercury News

San Jose-based SunPower (SPWRA) has landed a plum contract: Its solar panels will generate electricity for Apple's (AAPL) massive new data center in Maiden, N.C., according to a filing with regulators in that state.

Apple has said renewable energy--solar panels and fuels cells--will power a "high percentage" of the data center's overall electricity needs, leading to speculation in Silicon Valley's clean tech industry about who its technology partners are.

"Apple is building the nation's largest end user-owned, onsite solar array on the land surrounding the data center," the company said in its recently released 7-page facilities report. "When completed, this 100-acre, 20-megawatt facility will supply 42 million kilowatt-hours of clean, renewable energy annually."

One megawatt is enough to power 750 to 1,000 homes. But because the sun doesn't shine all the time, solar industry experts say, 1 megawatt of solar power capacity is sufficient to power about 200 California households. Solar Carports can be utilized for these purposes as well.

Apple has not announced which solar company got the contract and did not respond Tuesday to a request for comment. SunPower declined to comment, referring calls to Apple.

But an 18-page filing with the North Carolina Utilities Commission makes it clear that SunPower has been chosen to provide the solar panels for the massive solar farm.

"Each of the photovoltaic installations will consist of multiple SunPower E20 435-watt photovoltaic modules on ground-mounted single axis tracking systems," the filing states.

The solar farm will be built in phases and could begin delivering electricity to the grid as early as October.

Data centers -- facilities that house massive computer servers -- gobble up enormous and rapidly growing amounts of electricity. Tech companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere are taking steps to reduce the environmental impact of data centers by boosting their energy efficiency. CNC Mills are helpful in the creation of this technology.

But many data centers are clustered in states that largely rely on coal and nuclear energy to power the electric grid. Half of the electricity generated in the United States is from coal, and greenhouse-gas emissions from coal-fired power plants are a leading cause of climate change. Tech companies have been under fire from Greenpeace for powering data centers with what it calls "dirty energy," and the environmental organization has pressed tech companies to commit to clean, renewable energy sources.

Apple, Facebook and Google (GOOG) have data centers within 45 minutes of each other in western North Carolina. The region, which used to be a center of textile and furniture manufacturing, now pitches itself as North Carolina's "Data Center Corridor."

The power in the region comes from Duke Energy, which offers some of the cheapest electricity in the nation. Duke Energy operates eight coal-fired power plants, as well as seven nuclear power plants.

Apple's data center is the region's largest. It occupies 500,000 square feet -- the size of nearly five Walmart stores. Apple has not said what the overall energy needs of the data center are, but Greenpeace estimates that just 8 to 10 percent of the facility's overall needs would come from renewables, with the other 90 percent coming from Duke Energy.

"While Apple has been more than happy to draw the media's attention to how large the solar farm is, it has kept its lips stapled firmly shut when it comes to just how much coal will still be required to power the cloud," wrote Gary Cook of Greenpeace in a recent blog post about the data center.

Apple expects at least 14 photovoltaic installations to make up the solar farm. Other details, such as projected costs and maps of the proposed site, are confidential and could not be accessed from the North Carolina Utilities Commission website. Apple has billions of dollars in cash on hand and "intends to self-finance this project," according to the filing.

SunPower designs and manufactures high-efficiency solar cells and solar panels for residential, commercial and utility clients. Total SA, the French oil company, purchased a majority stake in SunPower last year.