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Alternative Energy Investor Discussions
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Gtoffo
Member
I had miscalculated the start of the speech (damn time zones). Watching the graph jump like that so unexpectedly was an even sweeter surprise!
If that is a one story house then you will have more roof space than two story. You need southern facing roof space for best efficiency and you cannot have tree shade. East or West facing roof will deliver considerably less power.
A sunpower x-series panel delivers 345 W of peak power and takes up 17 sq. ft. If you want to put up a 10,000 sq. ft system on your roof you will need at least 500 sq. ft. of souther facing roof space. If you use an average Chinese panel that delivers 250 W, you will need 700 sq. ft.
To look at it differently: if you only have 500 sq. ft of space you can put up a 10,000 sq. ft. Sunpower System. But if you use Chinese 250 W panels, you can only put up a 7,200 W system.
Speaking of panel reliability: Sunpower just issued a press release about third party panel testing proving that they make the most reliable panels on the planet:
SunPower E20/327 Solar Panels Earn Unprecedented Rating for Reliability after Completing the Atlas 25+ Program - MarketWatch
Fortunately for Solarcity people don't really understand solar panels, LCOE, degradation, performance in extreme conditions, etc. Therefore Solarcity will do just fine, because people will never really understand this technology.
SunPower E20/327 Solar Panels Earn Unprecedented Rating for Reliability after Completing the Atlas 25+ Program - MarketWatch
Fortunately for Solarcity people don't really understand solar panels, LCOE, degradation, performance in extreme conditions, etc. Therefore Solarcity will do just fine, because people will never really understand this technology.
Haha, I don't hate solarcity. I love the company, their business model, and what they are trying to do; hence I own the stock. I just don't like that they use Chinese Panels. The Chinese solar industry went from basically nothing 5 years ago to something like 80% of the worlds capacity today. They dump their panels on the rest of the world putting other companies out of business. Sunpower shares used to trade at $160 and then went down to $3.71 in 2 years. First Solar went from over $300 to $13 in just 2 years. This is all because of Chinese dumping. Q Cells, the biggest solar manufacturer in the world (German) went bankrupt and out of business because of China.
China has basically decimated the world's solar industry all through dumping. They get $billions and $billion from the government and yet even today their gross margins are still negative (classic definition of dumping) and some companies have higher net losses than they do revenues.
Solarcity is indirectly supporting the Chinese dumping strategy by purchasing their panels, and that is the only thing I don't like about the company. I wish they would get their panels elsewhere.
If this keeps up then China will put everyone out of business and then the rest of the world will be stuck with cheap panels. There will be no more companies left to innovate and the solar industry will not take off as quickly as it should.
Solarcity is great, but China not so much.
I see. Makes sense. But at least here in the US, don't you think some of the domination by China is because of the extreme legislation that is blocked mostly by Republicans......Our polictians seem to be stuck in the past, sombody has to move the world forward. I remember reading months ago First Solar starting a project in Syria because they know oil will be depleted in years to come....or something like that.
Well, Sleepyhead, it might be that SPWR shares went from $160 to $3.71 because of those nefarious Chinese...
or it might be that because there was no way in Hades the stock should have been at $160 in the first place...
or it might be because, after all, a silicon cell is a silicon cell is a silicon cell....and, ya know...that dratted thing called Commodity Pricing comes into play and those who are in the commodity-supplying business ought realize that Fungibility is the order of the day and their product for turning photons into electrons really, truly is no different from anyone else's and so it will be the Least Cost Producer who rules the day and the devil takes the hindmost.
So, you can talk all you want about how Subpower's panels are better and longer lasting and more efficient than the next fella's....but talk don't hold much water. Not in the world of commodity pricing.
or it might be that because there was no way in Hades the stock should have been at $160 in the first place...
or it might be because, after all, a silicon cell is a silicon cell is a silicon cell....and, ya know...that dratted thing called Commodity Pricing comes into play and those who are in the commodity-supplying business ought realize that Fungibility is the order of the day and their product for turning photons into electrons really, truly is no different from anyone else's and so it will be the Least Cost Producer who rules the day and the devil takes the hindmost.
So, you can talk all you want about how Subpower's panels are better and longer lasting and more efficient than the next fella's....but talk don't hold much water. Not in the world of commodity pricing.
CyberDutchie
Active Member
Other than the huge run-up that happened for SCTY in May in anticipation of the SuperCharger announcement, over the last 6 months SCTY and SPWR are tracking pretty closely.
What you wrote about commodity panels is what most everyone thinks about solar panels; and that is why a company like Solarcity will be very successful at least in the near/mid term, and long-term if these commodity panels stand the test of time which at this point is not proven. All Chinese solar companies make ~15% efficient commodity panels, while Sunpower makes 21% efficient panel with significantly lower degradation, better durability and reliability because it is copper plated. Consider these slides:
For those that have a constrained roof (and a high percentage of homes do have constrained roofs) Sunpower is a clear winner. On Slide 2 you will see that a Sunpower panel can produce 55% more energy in year 1 and then due to lower degradation 100% more energy in year 25. Nobody really understands this and Sunpower is trying to educate people on this topic. Enough people understand this concept and Sunpower basically sells out all the panels it can make, which is 1GW/year but will expand to 1.5GW/year in 2 years.
I agree with you that cost is a big factor, and Sunpower is a little behind. But costs are falling so quick that in 2-3 years efficiency will rule. Right now a SPWR panel costs something like $1 and a commodity panel $0.60 to make. At 21% efficiency vs. 15% efficiency you might be better off buying a commodity panel TODAY. But Sunpower's roadmap is to reduce the x-series panel cost by 35% by 2015 and increase efficiency to 23%; so at $0.65 you will get a 23% efficient panel. If commodity panels go down even to $0.40 at 15%, Sunpower will be the clear choice. It costs about $5/Watt to install panels on your home today and once panels get that cheap in 2 years, efficiency will rule.
In order to make money in stocks you have to be able to look into the future. Obviously there are a lot of things than can go wrong for Sunpower in the mean time, but the way I see it SPWR will do very, very well and that is why I own the stock. Solarcity will do very well too, but it is a much more volatile/high risk play. I will put most my money in the less (but still highly) volatile SPWR, but I still own a good chunk of SCTY shares as well.
If you want to buy SCTY shares then great, you will probably make a killing. But if you want to put solar panels on your roof, Sunpower is a no brainer. Would you rather buy a Kandi/BYD or a Tesla vehicle if your only goal is to go from point A to point B over the next 20 years? Both cars will work, but which one has a better chance of performing 10 - 20 years down the road? I would bet that Tesla's battery degradation will be a lot lower than Kandi's/BYD's? Just like SPWR panels will have lower degradation vs. commodity panels.
Here is a link to Sunpower's Analyst Day event (first one in 4 years). If you don't want to listen then at least download the slides and take a look at them:
http://investors.sunpowercorp.com/events.cfm
Side note: Has anyone done any research on Sun Edison (SUNE) formerly known as MEMC something... (WFR?). I have a gut feeling that this might be a good solar play as well, but don't know much about the company.
CyberDutchie
Active Member
Ok sleepyhead, that convinced me to make a small initial investment in SPWR, now the race is on! :biggrin:
Is the "copper plated" technology proprietary and patented by SPWR?
Is it possible that the efficiency of the commodity pannels will increase the same 23% by 2015? If yes, the situation will be the same as today.
If/When SPWR panels beat the commodity panels, SCTY can just switch to SPWR panels.
So it looks like SCTY is a winner here. They can use the whatever panels they like. As you say yourself "you might be better off buying a commodity panel TODAY", so SCTY uses them TODAY. If it makes sense, they will use SPWR panels tomorrow. At any time, SCTY reduces the risk and increases the profitability, so SCTY looks like a winner to me, compared to SPWR.
Comparing Kandi/BYD glorified golf cars to Model S is ridiculous. There's no analogy that can be transferred to SPWR vs SCTY.
If you want an analogy, you can compare something like different roof materials. A more durable but more expensive roof material compared to a less durable but a cheaper one. Then it would be interesting to see which roof material is more successful in the market.
1. Its not just the copper plating that makes the panel; copper plating is just complementary to their design for longevity. I am not an engineer nor expert in this field. I just go off of independent tests, research, articles, company press releases, etc. I have done a lot of research on the solar market in the past year, since I had 100% of my money invested in Sunpower (I did pretty good). I am sure that they have intellectual property, but they use higher quality materials which are more expensive. There are some companies that have their own technology and make very efficient panels like Sunpower's (some Japanese Companies?).
2. Commodity panels are commodity panels and the only thing that really differentiates them is price. That is why there is such a race to "who can cut costs quicker". This leads me to believe that there might be some quality issues in the future (just my personal speculative opinion). They all have about 15% efficiency and will not go up much unless you complete change the technology which will lead to higher costs. Maybe they can get up to 16% or 17% (although I am not sure), but definitely not 23%. When it comes to solar panels, it is a lot easier to reduce costs than to increase efficiency.
3. First Solar makes something like 12% efficient panels, which are cheap. They are very competitive in the power plant business, but not so much in residential. They just purchased a startup called "Tetrasun", because they claim they can make 15-20% efficient panels at the same low cost as their thin film panels. They want to enter residential and distibuted generation business.
4. I agree that it would be great if prices go down and SCTY starts buying SPWR panels. I hope that this happens. Yes, this will make SCTY the clear winner, but only in residential and some commercial applications. But don't forget that SPWR has a power plant business (just sold one to Buffet for $2-$2.5bn). Obama yesterday announced 10GW of new power plants - clear winner here will be FSLR and SPWR in second place. SPWR will also leverage the contacts of its owner Total S.A. (French Oil Giant) to gain business globablly; especially in Saudi Arabia who wants to get electricity from solar so that they don't have to burn oil and can export it instead.
Yes SCTY will be the clear winner in residential, but SPWR will be better than SCTY in power plants and will do better globally as well. That's why I own both companies.
The biggest reason I own SPWR right now is that they just turned profitable and are expected to do about $0.80/share in 2013. This is about a 20x PE ratio, which is a steal for a growth company (note: these guys are sandbaggers just like Steve Job and Elon Musk, so I personally expect over $1 EPS for 2013). They have about $2.6bn in revenue and will only have about $100mn in net profit to get to $0.80/share.
If they can grow their revenue to $3bn and get $200mn in 2014 that will be about $1.60/share and a $40 stock price. If the economy doesn't tank (which unfortunately is a realistic possibility) they will have 50% more capacity in 2 years time and by 2016 they should be making $4bn in revenue. Imagine $500mn in profit and you have $4/share and a $100 stock price. That is my investment thesis behind Sunpower and it will materialize if we don't hit another major recession.
Chinese companies are losing money quickly and with recent tariffs in place, etc. they will have to start selling panels at higher average selling prices. They have negative gross margins and will go out of business soon if something doesn't change (STP, LDK). They have to start selling these panels with positive gross margins, because the Chinese government will stop subsidizing these companies to lose even more money. This should allow other global manufacturers to start increasing margins.
Edit: I agree that my analogy was bad. My point was that people ignore degradation on solar panels, but make a big deal out of it in their EV's battery. I just don't get why.
CyberDutchie
Active Member
Canadian Solar is one of the better Chinese Solar companies (don't know where the "Canadian" came from). Chinese solar companies are priced to fail and there will be many 10 baggers (900% returns in the future) in there. The risk is high though, since some may go out of business. I have owned chinese solar companies in the past but have not made any money. I think that Trina Solar might be a potential Chinese winner as well.
I keep trying to get into these Chinese stocks, but I just don't know when to get in. They are going to take off big time, but I feel that this is 1-2 years away. In the mean time I keep my funds in TSLA, SCTY, SPWR because those are winners right now. I don't want to tie my funds to chinese companies now and miss out on big returns from other companies.
I keep trying to get into these Chinese stocks, but I just don't know when to get in. They are going to take off big time, but I feel that this is 1-2 years away. In the mean time I keep my funds in TSLA, SCTY, SPWR because those are winners right now. I don't want to tie my funds to chinese companies now and miss out on big returns from other companies.
Citizen-T
Active Member
I think this is one of those industries where a rising tide lifts all ships. I'm spreading my investments across the whole industry. Solar has been coming for a long time (kinda like Tesla) but I think we are at an inflection point right now.
Zzzz...
Member
The whole talk about how SunPower cells are 21% efficient while rest of crowd is just 15%... It is very misleading and not close to reality.
SunPowers cells should be compared to monocrystalline solar panels, and they generally got 17%-19% efficient cells. With many actually exceeding 19% efficiency. Like cells from AOU, Sanyo, Jiawei...
And if you compare 21% to multiple cells on a market that are "only" 19% efficient, the difference is not that striking, as in the case if you would be comparing them to 15%. And yes, there are lots of offerings of monocristaline cells from China. But last time I have heard, most of SunPower cells were not produced in Western World too. Their biggest plant located in Indonesia or Philippines - somewhere there.
And such choice, basically sunpower lying outright, by choosing not the panels they actually compete against on the market, but lower end of polycrystalline solar panels, place a shadow on that whole crappy presentation SunPower pulled out...
SunPowers cells should be compared to monocrystalline solar panels, and they generally got 17%-19% efficient cells. With many actually exceeding 19% efficiency. Like cells from AOU, Sanyo, Jiawei...
And if you compare 21% to multiple cells on a market that are "only" 19% efficient, the difference is not that striking, as in the case if you would be comparing them to 15%. And yes, there are lots of offerings of monocristaline cells from China. But last time I have heard, most of SunPower cells were not produced in Western World too. Their biggest plant located in Indonesia or Philippines - somewhere there.
And such choice, basically sunpower lying outright, by choosing not the panels they actually compete against on the market, but lower end of polycrystalline solar panels, place a shadow on that whole crappy presentation SunPower pulled out...
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Norse
Active Member
Just wondering, what do you have? and have u researched alot? I myself have TSLA, SPWR, SCTY and REC(Norwegian)
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