Wal-Mart Could Give Solar Energy Tremendous Boost 21 comments
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Flying home from our conference in Victoria, and looking out the window of the airplane taking me home, I begin to understand the vast opportunity we have by looking over the rooftops of homes and business parks alike.
The thought that jumps to mind is that solar power isn’t going to be “alternative energy” for much longer.
In spite of the current economic malaise and market downturn we’re navigating through, solar energy is one of the few bright spots (pun intended) in the alternative energy space.
The reason?
- Continued advances in solar panel technology are resulting in cheaper, more efficient panels.
- Government subsidies at both the state and federal levels are making the installation of residential solar more compelling than ever.
Here’s why solar is looking brighter by the day, and a major retailer that could change everything.
The Solar Energy Industry’s Solar Cell Production
For the past few years, the solar power industry has been capacity constrained by the lack of polysilicon, the basic foundation on which chemicals are deposited to produce the solar cells used in panels.
But as in other areas of the semiconductor industry, technology marches on. The newest panels are based on thin-film technology, and don’t require polysilicon. No fewer than 143 companies are involved in some aspect of thin-film panel technology.
Thin-film is fast becoming the new standard in panel technology, and in a few years will render polysilicon panels obsolete. Right now, thin-film panels are averaging about $1.40 per watt, but that number will be halved in a year or two.
That alone will make thin-film panels competitive with their polysilicon predecessors, but panel efficiencies - currently around 9% - are rising, and will likely reach 18-20% in the next few years.
Combined, decreasing costs and increasing efficiencies will soon make solar panels the cheapest power source on the planet.
Like everything else, economics will ultimately drive the solar panel industry, just like it has in the computer industry. And one of the greatest modern companies to exploit economics of scale is getting into the act.
Wal-Mart’s Solar Energy Experiment
Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE: WMT) is already evaluating the feasibility of installing solar energy panels on the roofs of its stores. Consider it “dipping a toe” in the water to check its temperature.
- If an experiment involving a few stores pans out, Wal-Mart could decide to roll out panels to all of its stores. That’s about 35 square miles of surface area.
- Using a very conservative figure of around 3 watts per square foot, Walmart could realistically expect to produce in the neighborhood of 3 Gigawatts of power.
- That would make the low-cost retailer one of the largest power producers in the country.
Now replicate that scenario on every warehouse, and big box store in the country, and you begin to get the idea that solar energy could reasonably provide a significant percentage of the power we use, especially during peak usage times.
Storage when the sun isn’t shining is certainly an issue, but scientists and engineers are already designing load-shifting storage systems that will provide power during times of darkness or on cloudy days.
The entire sector recently got a boost when SunPower Corporation (Nasdaq: SPWRA) announced earnings and blew away analysts' estimates.
If Wal-Mart does forcefully enter the solar space, we’re going to see it use its tremendous pricing power to lower the cost of solar energy and gain mass production. The kinds of things only a company of that size and negotiating power can do.
And when that happens, consumers everywhere will be jumping aboard.
Investors who want exposure to the sector should view market pullbacks as opportunities to establish small positions in their favorite solar stocks.
Disclosure: None
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Research is on going,panels are getting more efficient,batteries/st... are getting better.An overnight success is just around the corner.The corner is just down the block and over the hill. Wal-Marts Pilot study is gutsy and instructive.
Good for them.
seekingalpha.com/artic...
Poly-si technology has chance for effiicency increase and thin-film is limited, if at all.
I agree! I said:
'at least in areas like the South-West it would seem a good initiative to install solar panels. '
That is about as enthusiastic as I get! I am a cautious kind of guy, who has been stung by a lot of bees!
BTW, Exide taking up Axion's advanced lead acid batteries sounds like a very positive development! ;-)
can you please email me? i wanted to talk to you about featuring this on solarfeeds.com
my email is sweitzman at gmail
thanks, and great work!
scott
I like solar but the author is going a little overboard. PV will likely never be the cheapest power on the planet though in 10 yrs beat most fossil fuels. Wind will usually beat the pants off PV. Thin film has a life problem too and I doubt it will be ever as eff as single crystal which will probably alway sell for more than thin film.
And in those same 10 yrs Walmart business model has to change as buying cr-- in china will be to expensive to transport and no one smart would want it anyway.
The new model they should go for is quality American products, that last thus being the real low cost choice. ON RE they could sell plug and play PV/inverter/mounting kits and much better CSP solar power/heat units though both are more likely at Lowes/Home Depot. Other things are Electric bikes, scooters that last or even EV's and more eff lights, batteries and quality clothes, etc.
Exide has always been a low quality company cutting corners, screwing their customers and some their officers even going to jail for some of their cons. Not a company to invest in or buy batteries from as they don't hold up we have found anywhere near as well as other companies do..
And reducing weight as little as Axion does is not a good enough advance compared to the many times better batteries available now, it will get lost among them as a so what..
As soon as the power generators no longer "worry" about sunk costs and idled capacity in all their fossil plants, they too will gladly go for the
- no moving parts,
- corrosion-free
- low to non-existant maintenace,
- nearly regulatory- free,
- basically no-personnel risk (coal mining to nuclear waste if we were to include nuc)
- and finally, basically, enviornmentally clean, throughout (sans some sand and Si processing).
Theirs not a power generator around that would not give up mining, processing, regs, water-wall repairs, bag houses, slag, generating system maintenance (and radiation workers, regs, NRC, etc., etc.,) FOR SOME SILENT, CLEAN, SIMPLE, UNCOMPLICATED POWER GENERATION.
The US Mission should be to teach the rest of the world all this instead of trying to sell them the stuff we already make to then have them go down the same yellow brick road we have, AND THEN UNDO IT!!!!
I'm all for solar on huts in hinderland - (and Wal-Mart rooftops!)..
-
Ummm yea. Name one place you can buy thin film PV for $1.40 per watt? This would be particularly interesting given only one mfgr can produce at below $1.40/watt (FSLR production cost last Q was $.93/watt +SGA, but FSLR's production capacity is already pre-sold so the author could not buy a single watt from FSLR) .
I'm all for rooftop PV installs, but lets be real about prices.
Nevertheless, covering flat rooftops with PV -- either thin film or crystalline -- is an efficient way of getting power to neighborhoods. Quite a bit more efficient than building power plants in the desert and transmitting all that power across country.
If Walmart really wants to be a leader they can stock plug & play AC solar panels in their stores so that people can install them on their own rooftops.
When I first looked at Google Earth I was amazed at the extent of rooftop America. When watching flood and hurricane damage reports on TV, I have the same reaction. I scan the houses and find NO panels. Same with the businesses. I can barely see mine in satellite images, but they are very small. I was going to add more last spring but I put the money in stocks instead. What can I say?
On those 2 who went minus rating to my post, Why?
My Exide comments are public record and I just checked Axion's website to see if I missed anything on them.
What I found were specs several good AGM batteries already meet easily and ultracap hype that is not justified. Neither the max amps or capacity was better than other lead batteries and one tech, thin film is far superior in max amps vs their carbon electrode tech.
Next their only discharge rating is over 7 hrs and again other batteries met or beat it.
I follow closely EV racing and we put batteries to the hardest tests by friends of mine where specific power is king as that is what gets you down the 1/4 mile fastest. They are now hitting 7.9sec, 168mph in the 1/4 mile with batteries that will put Axions to shame, A123's putting out 3x's the power/weight. And I'd bet the costs are the same though Axion did not give it as they don't give weight either, Why?
Even with lead batteries Axion's can be beat. Here are some Hawkers at aerobatteries.com.
Axion is just another hyped battery, nothing special.
On Jul 30 01:37 PM Steve Pluvia wrote:
> "Right now, thin-film panels are averaging about $1.40 per watt,
> but that number will be halved in a year or two."
>
> Ummm yea. Name one place you can buy thin film PV for $1.40 per watt?
> This would be particularly interesting given only one mfgr can produce
> at below $1.40/watt (FSLR production cost last Q was $.93/watt +SGA,
> but FSLR's production capacity is already pre-sold so the author
> could not buy a single watt from FSLR) .
>
> I'm all for rooftop PV installs, but lets be real about prices.
Mono is high-efficiency and has a long track record.
Poly- isn't as efficient as mono, but it's cheaper, and it has an interesting look to it.
I'm long SunPower and Suntech. Both have an array of products, good reputations for efficiency, good guarantees, and they've been around a while.
Thin film is too low-serial number for me.
FYI the Walton family was a founding investor in FSLR, they don't "own it". On this subject I found it curious the author didn't mention this relationship and the possibility for Walmart to use FSLR for roof-top installs. Given the author's obvious limited PV knowledge, I figured this was too much info for him to handle at one time.
On Jul 30 08:28 PM hotzand wrote:
> I'd be surprised if Walmart could not buy from First solar since
> the Walton family own FSLR
For these reasons, I would guess c-Si prices and fully installed system costs will rise from here while c-Si mfgr margins will stay very thin until they implement new technology that can reduce production costs.
On Jul 30 06:08 PM rooferguy wrote:
> Unlikely that thin film panels will make crystalline panels obsolete
> anytime soon. When you consider total installed costs, crystalline
> is generally cheaper on rooftops and thin film is cheaper on large
> ground mounted systems. And when the PV material (thin film or crystalline)
> gets really cheap, the bigger costs become glass, aluminum, installation
> and inverters.
> Axion is just another hyped battery, nothing special.
After looking at Axion a little closer, I got the same impression; Lots of claims about "hybrid supercapacitor" but I frankly don't see any capacitor in their system. The concept of combining a supercap and a hi quality lead acid battery seems good, but I don't see anything resembling this concept from Axion.
People in America need to realize jus what got America in this shape…”cheap” yes so-call cheap items from a foreign land.
quote*Wal-Mart firmly believes in local procurement. We recognize that by purchasing quality products, we can generate more job opportunities, support local manufacturing and boost economic development. Over 95% of the merchandise in our stores in China is sourced locally. We have established partnerships with nearly 20,000 suppliers in China. *end quote!
Now! if there be 182 country’s making items for the world to buy and they have only 5% of the pie in China…duh! This company makes the nice people of China support their currency(yuan) by keeping it in their country working for the people there…. but with the “yuan” going up in value and the US dollar going down…all the foreign items that the American consumer buys thinking it is cheap has went up in price.
People…its all about the currency and to keep a currency strong you got to keep it floating around the country you live in so it can work for you. For the past 12 years all them US dollars are being shipped overseas to a foreign bank and with the American worker not making anything for the foreigner to buy the “we the people” have to turn to the “second” largest employer in America(Uncle Sam) to sell “we the people” debt in order to get all them dollars back!
50 years ago a foreigner would had given their left nut for a US dollar or a Hershey’s chocolate bar and today the same foreigner has got Uncle Sam and the American consumer by both all the while Hershey is moving the chocolate factory to Mexico. Wake up! America and think “MADE IN AMERICA.”
quote*"Considering that there are over 30,000 ships at sea this morning," writes James Carlton, director of the Williams College-Mystic Seaport Maritime Studies Program, in an e-mail, "the total number of organisms and species in this global 'bioflow' on the morning your readers read your piece could be staggering - billions of individuals, and thousands of species."
Indeed, scientists have long considered ballast water the primary way invasive aquatic organisms are introduced. From the zebra mussel's arrival in the Great Lakes, to an American jellyfish severely disrupting Black Sea fisheries, the potential costs of accidental introduction of a species to new homes can be tremendous. Aquatic invasives cost the US $9 billion yearly, according to estimates by David Pimentel, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Zebra and quagga mussels (a cousin to the zebra) alone cost the $1 billion annually.*end quote!
tat is $9 billion a year in hidden taxes to all Americans...
cheap ain't chic and it cost America............jobs!
RG