frflyer

Five Top Solar Power Stocks

sdcougar

Here's what real scientists think of the kind of sources you rely on.

"The decline of Tim Ball: Denier champion reduced to railing at real scientists"

www.desmogblog.com/dec...

"The Washington Post, abandoning any journalistic standards, lets George Will publish a third time global warming lies debunked on its own pages"
April 2nd, 2009

climateprogress.org/20.../

The Heartland Institute's Skeptic Handbook - Get Out the Shovel.
30 March 09

www.desmogblog.com/hea...

"Of course a real scientist making such baseless arguments among their peers would be laughed out of the room. That is why you will never ever see climate deniers make their claims in the scientific literature – only in the mainstream media. Meanwhile the voting public remains dangerously confused by this garbage. As they say, tick tock goes the clock."


www.desmogblog.com/lor...

solveclimate.com/blog/...

"In Congressional Hearings, Amateurs Invited to Confuse Climate Science"


"Cato Institute
a key study Cato uses to argue we may see much less warming than the models predict comes to exactly the opposite conclusion."

climateprogress.org/20.../


"NY Times blows it again, printing more rubbish by a non climate scientist, Freeman Dyson."

climateprogress.org/20...

climateprogress.org/20.../

George F. Will

www.washingtonpost.com...

Rebuttal by Chris Mooney of Will's blatantly unscientific op-ed piece in the Washington Post

another rebuttal of same
Letter to editor by Michael Jarraud
Secretary General - World Meteorological Organization, Geneva

www.washingtonpost.com...

Five Top Solar Power Stocks

sdcougar

That meeting in NY of skeptics has about as much credibility as the meeting of flat earthers. It is not a real scientific conference. It's a propaganda event aimed at the lay audience. If they had any credibility they would have been submitting scientific papers at the meeting of the AGU in SF in December, the way real science is done and where such papers are absent.

The Heartland Institute has even less credibility. They were also in the forefront of fighting for the tobacco companies to claim that cigarettes aren't bad for your health.
They are a right wing propaganda mill that has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with advancing conservative agendas.
The way these conferences are run make real scientists laugh. Expenses paid, offers of $1,000 for any speech refuting the AGW theory, and $10,000 for papers, which typically aren't peer reviewed. This year, they didn't invite denier mouthpiece Tim Ball because they knew he was too discredited even for their dog and pony show. Especially after the world found out he's a complete fraud, faked credentials and all. The rest of them aren't much better.

Five Top Solar Power Stocks

So we are to consider STP, Yingli, Trina,LDK,JASO,SPWR
as has beens?
STP is moving into thin film and BIPV
What about Concentrated PV, which EMKR builds cells for? No future there?
Nanosolar and Heliovolt won't be big players? (not public yet, but should be, once the market is more hospitable to IPOs)
If the world demand is to be so high, how will thin film fill the demand by itself?
Will tellurium costs rise while the cost of silicon panels fall?
No solar thermal? (look for IPOs when market improves)
What about solar equipment makers GT Solar and Spire?
A lot more questions than answers here.

Why Is First Solar So Far Ahead of the Competition?

I'm not so sure about silicon solar going away. As long as silicon solar can compete with fossil fuels it should do okay. First Solar and the CIGs companies can't fill the entire world's solar demand and there are questions about supplies of tellurium. (I'm not claiming I know the answer to that question)
Also, there are differences in costs between existing power sources now. That hasn't eliminated any of them.

I'm also not sure all purchasers of solar will make their decision based only on cost per watt. If you want your house to be energy independent, you might want as much wattage per square meter of rooftop space as possible, provided the difference in price isn't huge.

There is also the issue of government intervention, like renewable energy standards, that are not totally market driven, and could boost any solar that can bring prices down to grid parity.

Further technological advances might eventully make this whole conversation moot. We'll see.

Shedding Light on the Coming OLED Revolution

ENER is the stock symbol for Energy Conversion Devices which is sometimes abbreviated as ECD.

This is an very innovative company, whose stock is far off it's highs, for the same reasons that other solar stocks are - the economy and credit worries mostly.

Besides their thin film solar, they invented the NiMH battery, which they still have an interest in through Ovonics, a joint venture with Chevron( original deal was with Texaco).
They also invented the phase change technology being adopted for memory devices. They are working on Li- ion battery technology. The roll to roll manufacturing process mentioned in the article was developed for their thin film solar cells. They develop amorphous metal technologies, with one application being hydrogen fuel tanks that are low pressure. And they work on fuel cell technology.
This is a company that spent a few decades in basic material science research before they had a revenue stream. The majority of the revenue is from solar, so far. Definitely worth watching.

Good article. I'd heard of OLEDs but didn't realize the lighting potential. I thought they were just for display screens. Could be a major energy efficiency solution.

Why Is First Solar So Far Ahead of the Competition?

I forgot to add this part.

Not all Republicans are as constructive as Bob Inglis.

Rep. John Behner and Sen. Mitch McConnell's Big Green Lie.

www.desmogblog.com/rep...

They used an MIT study for their claim of $3,100/year cost per family from cap and trade. A spokesman for the MIT study says these two are totally miscalculating and misinterpreting the study, and that their number is 40 times too high and wouldn't happen until 2015 .

Why Is First Solar So Far Ahead of the Competition?

Amouna

"When I see the current performance of the present administration in the US, one thing is for sure: Obama's efforts will FIRST focus on bailing out Wall street institutions for YEARS, before we see any real focus on National energy strategy"

How could you possibly arrive at that conclusion? Obama has done more in two months than Bush did in 8 years, IMO. And he took office with more on his plate than any President in recent memory. Critics on the right attack him for appearing on a TV show for less than an hour, while GWB spent a third of his term on vacation.

Energy is a top priority of the administration and Obama has appointed a dream team for energy and the environment. Not perfect, but a really really good team. A team that actually respects science and reason, unlike the last crew, who waged war against them.

One Republican makes a good argument for a carbon tax coupled with a tax cut on wages. There would be no net tax increase according to him. Congressman Bob Inglis, R-SC, addressing the Nationwide Town Hall on Energy

watthead.blogspot.com/...

It's good to see some constructive thinking from someone on that side of the aisle. He also argues for Republicans to acknowledge how strong the science is.
And it's good to see a Republican advocating tax cuts for someone other than the rich.

SAP: Integrating the Smart Meter Universe

There's a new startup company called Tendril that makes devices that convert existing electric meters into smart meters. About half the meters in the U.S. are the newer type that can be converted this way.
You can read about it here.
peakenergy.blogspot.co...

China's Solar Stock Rally: Avoid Being Burned

"The reality of the industry is that solar power is more expensive than conventionally generated electricity and the industry is entirely dependent on government subsidies to make solar power an economical alternative."

It's a little dishonest to argue against solar energy on the grounds of subsidies, when fossil fuels get much larger subsidies. The massive subsidies given to oil, coal and nuclear over the decades, are somehow always ignored in these assessments. 50 years of subsidies for nuclear and 90 years for oil. And then there is the fact that fossil fuels are the incumbant forms of energy that enjoy all the advantages of coziness with government, and of government policies that have helped them for decades in many ways other than subsidies. Oil has dictated govt. policy making for generations.
When was the last time the U.S. launched a war to protect solar panel shipments? When has solar gotten the equivalent of the give away oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico with no royalties owed to the government being collected, like oil has? This alone is worth $1 billion a year to the oil companies.

If fossil fuels don't enjoy a cozy relationship with government, how do we explain the coal fly ash sludge spill by Massey Energy in 2000, which the EPA called the worst environmental disaster in the history of the U.S. southeast, 30 times the size of the Exxon oil spill, which spread 75 miles to the Ohio River, contaminating the water of tens of thousands of people, and which Massey was fined a whopping $57,000 for? Lucky for them, this happened just before GW Bush took office, so the charges were mostly dropped, including possible criminal indictments, and the investigation quickly shut down, with the lead investigator fired.
This is part of what renewable energy is up against.


The $300 million dollar number for the Chinese subsidy is not likely to be the whole story.

From Eric Savitz' article yesterday...

“Recent announcements are just the tip of the iceberg.” He writes that contacts at the National Development and Reform Commission say the country is planning a $30 billion, four-year green stimulus program."

Economic and Technical Factors Create Winners and Losers in the Solar Cell Market

searcher

Yes, it is entirely possible. Solar cells overheat when the sunshine is concentrated and intensified 1000 fold by mirrors or lenses. They lose efficiency and can be damaged by the heat. They need to be cooled anyway, so it makes sense to capture the heat in the cooling water. Zenith claims a 70% solar conversion efficiency this way.

CSP can also be combined heat and power, or alternatively can desalinize water. Some CSP installations are just for the heat alone, for industrial or agricultural processes.

For what it's worth, there is a patented design for heat storage that claims to be even better than molten salt, as it allows CSP plants to operate at much higher temperatures.
The designer says he has much experience in industrial design, and his plan uses existing proven technologies that don't need any additional R&D. He just repackages them for his heat storage application. Uses alumina pebbles, with CO2 as heat transfer medium.

www.trec-uk.org.uk/res...

One of his ideas is a large solar trough type CSP plant, which then uses a smaller power tower CSP plant to raise the temperature of the storage medium, using his method for storage, and boost efficiency. Power tower CSP plants operate at higher temperatures than solar troughs.

Economic and Technical Factors Create Winners and Losers in the Solar Cell Market

billp37

" We're a bit suspicious that PNM claim that laws of thermodynamics do not apply to solar electricity generation."

Is this related to your idea that there isn't enough solar energy available for solar and wind to provide enough power to displace fossil fuels?

You might want to start your research at the National Renewable Energy Lab.

Here's what they say about solar's potential just in California deserts (using concentrating solar).

"The total generation
capacity as of 2004 for the state was roughly 58,000 MW"

DNI for high insolation (low cloud cover) areas of California ranges from
6.75 kWh/m2/day to 8.25 kWh/m2/day.

CSP Potential in California on comparably flat land outside of environmentally sensitive areas,
with and without heat storage, during summer months.

Parabolic Trough, no storage < 1 % slope
Capacity Potential, MW 661,000 Generation Potential, GWh 1,614,000

Parabolic Trough, six hours storage < 1 % slope
Capacity Potential, MW 471,000
Generation Potential, GWh 1,640,000

Power Tower, six hours storage < 1 % slope
Capacity Potential, MW 342,000
Generation Potential, GWh 1,233,000

Slopes of up to 3% are considered usable.

Now granted, these are probably somewhat high if they are counting every square meter, which in practice won't happen, but obviously the potential is huge.

The scientists at NREL must not know of that pesky law of thermodynamics. Give them a call.

Incidently, they say that heat storage will not add substantially to electricity costs.

" the trough plant with 6 hours of storage and
without storage have roughly the same cost of energy ($157/MWh vs. $154/MWh)"

These numbers will be lower down the road as the next paragraph illustrates.

"As shown in Table ES-2, CSP
plants installed in 2015 are projected to exhibit a delivered LCOE of $115/MWh,2
compared with $168/MWh for the simple cycle combustion turbine and $104/MWh for
combined cycle plants. At a natural gas price of about $8 per MMBtu, the LCOE of CSP
and the combined cycle plants at 40 percent capacity factor are equal."

[40% capacity factor is for plants with 6 hour heat storage, up to 70% capactity factor is possible with more storage, according to Desertrec]

It's also good for the economy.

"Each dollar spent on CSP contributes approximately $1.40 to California’s Gross State Product; each dollar spent on natural gas
plants contributes about $0.90 - $1.00 to Gross State Product."

"Operations period expenditures on operations and maintenance for CSP
create more permanent jobs than alternative natural gas fueled generation.
For each 100 MW of generating capacity, CSP was estimated to generate
94 permanent jobs compared to 56 jobs and 13 jobs for combined cycle
and simple cycle plants, respectively."

It's also likely that some of this area will be used for PV solar, either in arrays or as concentrating PV.
One Israeli company has shown that concentrating PV can provide electricity and hot water at the same time, substantially raising the solar conversion efficiency. Zenith Solar is just now ramping up for commercial production
www.haaretz.com/hasen/...

This idea could give a boost to companies like EMKR eventually.


rooferguy

"As an installer I can tell you that BIPV is the most expensive approach when installation labor is considered."

Interesting observation, could you elaborate?
Are you referring to installations on older houses or new houses? It would seem that a new house getting roofing for the first time would be more cost effective.

Suntech has made moves to branch out into BIPV products, with deals with Open Energy and Eagle Roofing.

Even Thin Solar Can't Weather Silicon Glut - Barron's

Responsible Citizen

The other comments are right, you have a negatively distorted view of solar's prospects and costs.
Go to the (NRL) National Renewable Energy website, where you will find
nrel-costs-graph-02 showing how far and fast solar prices have fallen over the last 20 years and how far and fast they are expected to fall up to 2020.

Solar electricity prices are already at grid parity in higher priced markets, especially sunny ones.
Solar produces when power is needed during the day at peak demand prices. This is particularly true in the hotter areas where air conditioning is used heavily. Prices are projected to reach grid parity over about 40% of the country in four to five years and everywhere in ten years or less.

Your comparison of solar and coal prices is also distorted for two reasons.

One, you are not counting the externalized costs of fossil fuels. environmental, health etc.
These are real costs even though they don't show up in fuel prices or electricity prices. And they are huge.

Two, you are criticizing solar for needing subsidies, when oil has been subsidized for 90 years and gets more than all the renewables put together, at $39 billion a year. Coal gets $8 billion a year, plus additional money now for carbon capture research. Gas is also subsidized, and nuclear as well. Fossil fuels total $49 billion/year.

The railroads, the internet and telecommunications, electrification of the country, and many other things were heavily subsidized.

Large companies are putting solar on rooftops etc. because it makes business sense, saving them money.
This isn't just greenwashing.

Utility scale solar will also be as inexpensive as coal and gas in the near future. Concentrating solar and solar arrays.

www.nrel.gov/csp/

Read the NREL report on (CSP) concentrating solar at their website.

Barron's Is Wrong: Solar Offers Good Value

Ferdinand
I agree with you that the real story for solar is long term.

However I believe there is probably some truth in the comment that called Barrons a shill for the fossil fuel industry. They are part of the same Murdock conglomerate as the WSJ, which is a blatant platform for dispensing quack science articles trying to question the science of climate change. We are talking extreme quackery, with absolutely no credible scientific foundation.

www.reall.org/newslett...

By the way, most of the media does a horrible job of covering the global warming issue, but some do it intentionally, like the WSJ.
The NYT has been widely criticized recently for printing rubbish as bad as that at WSJ.

climateprogress.org/20.../

climateprogress.org/20.../

climateprogress.org/20.../

By the way it is not just Climate Progress that criticizes the media on this issue, so does every credible climate science website.
for example:

"On the issue of climate change, journalists have consistently reported the updates from the best climate scientists in the world juxtaposed against the unsubstantiated raving of an industry-funded climate change denier - as if both are equally valid. This is not balanced journalism. It is a critical abdication of journalistic responsibility."

"The media, which in a lazy and facile attempt to provide "balance" is willing to give any opinion equal time as long as it is firmly in contradiction with another."

www.desmogblog.com/sla...

Unfortunately Congress is often as guilty of this as the media, especially when committees are headed by the likes of Sen Inhofe (R Oklahoma). He prefers the opinions of science fiction writers like Michael Crichton over actual climate scientists.


You said:
"The important thing here is not believing that in the short run solar (and wind) can substitute for nuclear"

NO! the opposite is true.

Nuclear power will play a small part in the future of energy (like 10-20%) as many studies have shown.
It is precisely in the short term that it can't help us, because it takes ten years to build, minimum.
It will not be cheap, in fact it is doubtful it will be able to compete with solar or wind in ten years. I understand that there are potential new technologies like thorium reactors, but again, they are far off in the future, if they become realities and are cost effective.

The recent study at MIT had similar conslusions.

www.sciam.com/article....

www.energyeconomyonlin.../

"The actual costs of new nuclear power, however, bring us face to face with a new "inconvenient truth" -- building new nuclear power plants will actually make global warming worse, because hundreds of billions (indeed, trillions) would be needed to build any substantial fleet of new reactors. If even a fraction of this money were instead spent on other low-carbon choices such as energy efficiency, wind, geothermal, and solar, vastly greater amounts of low-carbon kWh's and greenhouse gas reductions could be achieved."

climateprogress.org/wp...

climateprogress.org/20.../

climateprogress.org/20.../

The renewables sector should get a big boost when the U.S. establishes a national renewable energy standard.
Cap and trade will do the same, finally acknowledging the real costs of fossil fuels.

Why It's a Good Time to Consider Chinese Stocks

halftrack
Where do you get your information, the John Birch Society?
Michael Savage? The Enquirer? The Art Bell show?
You're wrong. Obama is actually in league with the Grays, you know, those aliens with the big eyes from planet zgeigwst in that other universe who keep slipping into ours to advance their galactic communist agenda.

Who Will Supply the Batteries for Plug-In Cars?

Steve

The article made the statement

"It also solves one of the biggest problems with solar and wind power: That they can’t be used as baseload supplies"

This kind of statement is made all the time. I will continue to refute this, as it is simply not true. Yes, I have been touting solar thermal, for a good reason. The vast majority of Americans probaby don't even know it exists. Very few people I talk to have even heard of it. How is the public to know what our alternatives are, when they are that uninformed? That is my motivation. A great many Americans still think solar and wind are hippie enviro-geek pipedreams with no hope of contributing substantially to energy demand.
Without the public support of climate change mitigation efforts, we're screwed. The support isn't going to materialize if they are that uninformed about what can be done.
I confess that my enthusiasm gets the best of me at times. Yes I'm passionate about it.

CSP is already a winner, even without the heat storage, since CSP power prices are already half of that of most photovoltaics.

Your comparison with fuel cells is completely off base however.
The only thing really new in CSP is the heat storage. Again, it's not rocket science.

The engineering issues involved are basically heat and salt resistant plumbing and pumps and heat transfer technology.
Mostly a materials handling issue.
Compared with what needs to be overcome with batteries, fuel cells, electric cars, CCS, advanced geothermal, new nuclear technology, tide or wave power, this is a pretty small problem.

I have found nothing to substantiate that there are any game stopping technology problems with CSP. I think what you are referring to has more to do with gaining experience in building them, a learning curve which the NREL sees as a short one.

The NREL certainly thinks CSP is ready for deployment. The following is from three years ago.

"Parabolic trough systems are considered commercially available for industrial
applications."

They said the first few CSP plants would be expensive, but that costs would fall quickly as experience grows and economy of scale sets in.

Indeed the cost of building some of these early plants is higher than projected, but that should not be seen as any kind of long term problem.

They also don't see any increase in electricity prices due to adding heat storage.

----------
CSP and NREL

NREL’s estimates are that we should see 7 cents per kWh around 2010 and 5 cents per kWh around 2020.

"A comparison of the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) revealed that the LCOE of
$148 per MWh for the first CSP plants installed in 2009 is competitive with the simple
cycle combustion turbine at an LCOE of $168 per MWh, assuming that the temporary
30 percent Investment Tax Credit is extended. The LCOE for the CSP plant is higher
than the $104 per MWh LCOE of the combined cycle combustion turbine plant."

"As shown in Table ES-2, CSP
plants installed in 2015 are projected to exhibit a delivered LCOE of $115/MWh,2
compared with $168/MWh for the simple cycle combustion turbine and $104/MWh for
combined cycle plants. At a natural gas price of about $8 per MMBtu, the LCOE of CSP
and the combined cycle plants at 40 percent capacity factor are equal."
--

Delivered Levelized Energy Cost and Economic Impacts for CSP
and Gas Technologies in 2015 ($2005)

Delivered Energy Cost
Simple Cycle* $187/MWh
Combined Cycle* $119/MWh
CSP with 6 Hours Storage** $115/MWh

*The 2015 MPR natural gas price of $8.00 per MMBtu escalating at 2.5 percent annually was
used.
**CSP assumes permanent 10 percent ITC.


"Investment in CSP power plants delivers greater return to California in
both economic activity and employment than corresponding investment in
natural gas equipment:
- Each dollar spent on CSP contributes approximately $1.40 to
California’s Gross State Product; each dollar spent on natural gas
plants contributes about $0.90 - $1.00 to Gross State Product."

[the NREL was predicting only 4 GW of CSP capacity by 2020. We are likely to see that by 2013.]

"Operations period expenditures on operations and maintenance for CSP
create more permanent jobs than alternative natural gas fueled generation.
For each 100 MW of generating capacity, CSP was estimated to generate
94 permanent jobs compared to 56 jobs and 13 jobs for combined cycle
and simple cycle plants, respectively."

"Trough and tower plants, with their large central turbine generators and balance of plant equipment, can take advantage of economies of scale for cost reduction, as cost per kW goes down with increased size. Additionally, these plants can make use of thermal storage or hybrid fossil systems to achieve greater operating flexibility and dispatchability. This provides the ability to produce electricity when needed by the utility system, rather than only when sufficient solar insolation is available to produce electricity, for example, during short cloudy periods or after sunset. This capability has significantly more value to the utility and potentially allows the owner of the CSP plant to receive additional credit, or payment, for the electric generating capacity of the plant."


9 pilot plants in the Mojave Desert (SEGS)

Solar Energy Generating
Systems (SEGS) I through IX parabolic trough plants in the Mohave Desert in southern
California. The SEGS plants were built between 1985 and 1991 and have a total capacity of 354 MW. These plants have generally performed well over their 15 to 20 years of
operation."

"The table shows that with CSP power generation technology there is the potential to generate many multiples of the current demand for electricity in California. The total generation
capacity as of 2004 for the state was roughly 58,000 MW


DNI for high insolation (low cloud cover) areas of California ranges from
6.75 kWh/m2/day to 8.25 kWh/m2/day.

CSP Potential in California on comparably flat land outside of environmentally sensitive areas

Parabolic Trough, no storage < 1 % slope
Capacity Potential, MW 661,000 Generation Potential, GWh 1,614,000

Parabolic Trough, six hours storage < 1 % slope
Capacity Potential, MW 471,000
Generation Potential, GWh 1,640,000

Power Tower, six hours storage < 1 % slope
Capacity Potential, MW 342,000
Generation Potential, GWh 1,233,000

Note: This is net summer capacity.

"Thermal storage, along with an enlarged solar field, also allows the CSP plant to operate at a higher annual capacity factor, about 40 percent with 6 hours of storage versus 28 percent for no storage. This gives the plant the ability
to generate higher revenues to off-set the additional cost of the storage system. The levelized costs in Table 6-2 reveal this, as the trough plant with 6 hours of storage and
without storage have roughly the same cost of energy ($157/MWh vs. $154/MWh)"

"While early CSP plants are more costly
than their traditional gas counterparts, subsequent plants are estimated to become nearly cost competitive on a levelized cost of energy basis."

"All of the SEGS plants (the 9 pilot plants in the Mojave, built between 1985 & 1991 ) are “hybrids,” using fossil fuel to supplement the solar output during periods of low solar
radiation. Each plant is allowed to generate 25 percent of its energy annually using fossil fuel. With the use of the fossil hybrid capability, the SEGS plants, during Southern
California Edison (SCE) on-peak hours, have exceeded 100 percent capacity factor for more than a decade, with greater than 85 percent from solar operation."