SunPower (SPWR) shares are trading sharply lower after CEO Thomas Werner said he expects prices for solar panels to drop by 10%-20% next year. Werner made the comment in an interview with Reuters at a solar conference in Valencia, Spain.
That forecast is consistent with Cowen analyst Robert Stone’s prediction last week that prices next year will be down 10%-15%.
SPWR today is down $5.18, or 5.7%, to $85.96.
Silicon prices drop by same or even more next year.
Very biased reporting again and again Eric.
***Photon mentioned the likelyhood of compromise, a higher Spanish PV cap in the next FiT revision of 500-600 MW as opposed to your earlier reported 300 MW cap.
***IRDEP, Paris, France announced an int'l call by scientists for the accelerated worldwide deployment of PV known as "the Valencia Call for Solar PV" echoing the Kyoto protocol.
Declaration so far supported by over 200 society personalities&cele...
YOU (including [lol] you Eric) are invited to join the initiative&sign the call by sending an email to PVCall@enscp.fr
Smart analysts factor this into their estimates. Solar is here to stay and when the US finally votes on the Renewables Bill, with increased solar tax credits by the way, the uncertaintly is removed and the demand floodgates will open.
Tax credits don't mean squat in a rising jobless environment. People will want to spend less not more.
You can cut down on a variety of things. Going Solar would involve a large upfront expenditure which when installed will not repay itself for many years regardless of incentives.
The Housing Market has to not only bottom but start to appreciate before Solar becomes a household item.
Meanwhile, Corporations will look for ways to trim before they look past the present. Utilities are the logical buyers but if a deeper recession is looming, even they will be hesitant since less of what they are already producing will be used.
Recessions don't increase demand.
Look what the price drop, perfomrance increase paradigm has done for the computer business!!!! Seems to have helped hasn't it.
Petya/s Solar Corollary to Moores Law: the price performance of Solar panels will continue to improve (doubling) every every 3 years with prices continue to drop and Ev output continuiing to go up. This will drive expanded demand, larger production volumes, and GROW unit shipments as well as increasing revenues and profits.
I was in the computer business back in 1971 until Ijust recently retired. Back then a computer (main Frame) cost about $2million and it had all the capacity - but not the power - of the laptop I am writing this on! My laptop cost me $2,400.
If autos did what computers did in terms of price performance, you could now buy a Ferrari for 5 cents.
Moore's Law was responsible for the growth of the computer business to the point computers are now ubiquetious!!!
Petya's Solar Corolaary to Moores Law will do the same in the Solar industry. Its great news. We will be buying Solar stocks on the dips.
The market has this backwards -for now IMO
Exactly, thank you! As we all should know - even the Ivy League educated - in the face of growing demand, as production volumes increase, and cost of production is driven down, and the price per watt continues to drop, this drives more shipments resulting in more revenues, and higher profits as 50% of costs remain fixed and 50% are variable.
Anyone who disputes this can go talk with GM, Ford, Chrysler and ask them about production volume, cost per unit production, selling price, demand,revenues and resulting profits.
This is GREAT news for Solar = see STP today, once again the short sellers are taking it in the shorts!!!!!!!!
I get revenue growth in excess of 55% a year, I get profitabiliy and improvements in profitability of 20% a year +/-
I get that ALL Presidential Candidates AND CONGRESS on both sides of the aisle = favors solar energy industry as an essential alternative to oil.
What do you get supershort = a Giant wedgie!!!!!!!
You are standing in the water trying to turn back the tide. Start swimming with the tide, because it ain't stopping for you.
IMO
Moore's Law? Where are the 5-10 G computers that were supposed to be on the shelves by now. That Law went into a different direction...the number of cores on a CPU.
Where will all of the material for the solar panels come from that will be needed to reduce the prices ala Moore's Law?
To your comment "where are the 5-10G computers that were supposed to be on the shelves by now"
That's why I saidthe "old computers had the capaicy but not the power of today's laptops.
The cheap price/performance of cheaps went into bigger chips, faste chips,more graphics capability, wireless etc. = and still the price continues to drop and price/performance improves, funtoinality increases and ever more units are sold.
IMO same will happen in solar, And already effeciency ratios are improving dramatically (1 sunny day of ergs in = much more useful watts out) That's Watt's it all about -as they say in physics.
PS th material for solar panels is abundant and it will come from the Earth - go take a walk in the Mojave desert and you'll figure out the answer to your question.
Every month, the Sun pours more energy onto the Earth than mankind has used up since the DAWN of his existence.
We have an abundant supply of Coal, big deal, without cleaning it properly, it may as well stay in the ground. The same thing holds for Solar, Sand is useless in its present form. It is a "feedstock". Think in terms of the costs surrounding 100% contamination free Clean Rooms and expanding these Rooms to Manufacturing Facility size. These facilities do not exist to provide all of the Panels needed for the expansion all of you seem to think is exponential.
That's why I prefer vertically integrated Solar companies which will produce for themselves first and sell excess production.
So is iron, copper, gold, silver, ALL ore requires refining. So why should sililcon "ore" be any different. Don't be so lazy... refine and pusify.
PS in the face of rising demand, and with essentially unlimited supply of raw ore, build the facilities to meet the demand AND = THEY WILL COME.
Seriously I do not understands the point of these comments of yours.
PS recycling "old panels" for their materials is also a growing and profitable business.
Who the heck is LDK and how did their poly plants become Fluor's largest project going on RIGHT NOW?
And who the heck is LDK to place the LARGEST ORDER EVER for wafer machinery with AMAT?
And who the heck is upstart LDK to sign a 10-yr, $10 B take-or-pay contract with Q-Cells with Q-Cells paying them 10% of the face amount IN ADVANCE to build the plants needed to deliver the wafers they agreed to buy from LDK?
If Fluor, Applied Materials, and Q-Cells all see LDK as a company that will be here for the long haul, why has short interest in LDK ballooned up to 50% of the float with over 9 months on the Threshold Securities List?
What are they thinking? Is solar power just like the dot-com bom that had AOL and YHOO shares climbing hundreds of dollars a year? Is solar power something like cold fusion or radiation hormesis?
Duh!