ytterbius

China Solar Safari: Hunting for Five Value Companies

BryBry, you should do more research before you blindly follow Jim Cramer in his FSLR right off the road and into the ditch. FSLR is in trouble, only the same analysts that love to put sell ratings on Silicon-based technology continue to refuse to talk about the real issue for FSLR, which is their dependence on Tellurium.

Solar Industry's Long Term Outlook

Excellent article!

Solar's Warm, But Not Hot - Barron's

CLH - We're very close to parity right now in some place, like Italy. If the Asian Economies continue to grow and to increase demand for Oil and Coal, then Grid Parity will rise, just as manufacturing costs of Solar (and Wind) are decreasing. This is not to mention Climate Change responses like Cap and Trade, etc. Emitting Carbon is going to get very expensive soon.

Solar's Warm, But Not Hot - Barron's

Sorry "to FSLR is producing their own poly at $35/kg next year?" = "to FSLR, when LDK is producing their own poly at $35/kg next year?"

Solar's Warm, But Not Hot - Barron's

Oh, and BTW:

Under FSLR, you have the following claim:

"It is not exposed to poly pricing, because it uses cadmium telluride, which produces cheaper electricity than poly prices and will continue to until poly hits $70/kg."

If $70/kg is the parity point, then what happens to FSLR is producing their own poly at $35/kg next year? LOL!

Tellurium will get more expensive, while at the same time Silicon will be getting cheaper, and the efficiency in the use of Silicon will be increasing, not only as Silicon-based thin-film takes off (See AMAT), but as wafer-makers are cutting them thinner, and wasting less in the process.

Solar's Warm, But Not Hot - Barron's

Eli, you don't mention your positions on any of these companies.

Based on previous articles you've written, I'd gather that you're short as hell on the Industry.

As for your link to Barrons, I won't be subscribing, so I can't argue any specific points of FUD that they might be passing on. In any case, Barrons has already done a number on their credibility on Solar, since Bill Alpert completely blew it on LDK Solar.

Investing In a Resource-Constrained World (Part V)

I have a BS in physics, and I know absolutely nothing about cold fusion. I do know quite a bit about Solar, though, and you're wrong on it.

Ok, there are a tremendous number of arguments that could be used to support Solar, and in particular, Silicon-based Solar, but I'll stick with one directly related to your article; Peak Oil.

You want to support thin films over Silicon, but that contradicts your peak-based reasoning.

Which is a stronger company in a post-peak world?

Would you bet on super-high-tech company depending on rare elements from the corners of the world, as well as incredibly specialized equipment and infrastructure for the development of their product; or would you rather support a company that uses well-known technology (silicon-based), and the second-most most abundant material in the Planet's crust (silicon) for the production of their product?

The particular Silicon-based company that I mention is LDK Solar. They're building the World's largest Polysilicon Factory in the World. They've got local supplies of raw Silicon to process. They even are buying their Ingot Crucibles from a Chinese Company right across the street, as opposed to ordering them from Europe or the US, as other companies do. Plan has LDK capable of producing 2 GW of Wafers per year after 2009 (much sooner than any cold fusion process will produce a GW). You can bet that if any company will be insulated from the problems of Peak-whatever, it's going to be LDK.

When you're talking about peak-resources, the obvious solution is to make best use of the most common of resources, as you well know by your assaults (deserved INO on FSLR for their Te dependency).