More solar stories from China

Nantong Qiangsheng Photovoltaic Technology Co Ltd (QS Solar) has launched a $400 million project to build three 25 MW amorphous silcion thin film production facilities in Nantong in northern Jiangsu province. QS Solar has intentions of an IPO in the U.S. sometime next year, joining the highly successful league of Chinese solar companies listed on U.S. stock markets. This piece speculates that QS solar is getting its supplies of production equipment from the likes of GT Solar or Applied Materials.


An industry observer predicts, however, that the sunny days of Chinese solar companies may cloud in the face of international foreign competition, as China's advantage of low labor costs slowly erodes. Chinese companies, whose products are predominantly exported out of China, need to seize the opportunities of tapping into its domestic market, although that would entail overcoming serious challenges in grid connection and pricing which Chinese policy makers are still grappling with as they try to implement the country's new renewable energy laws.


Finally, an uplifting rags-to-riches expose on China's Mr. Solar Water Heater--Huang Ming, founder of China Himin Solar Energy Group, the world's biggest producer of solar water heaters. The company had revenues of 2 billion yuan last year. Of the other 3,000 solar heating companies in China, only 10 earn 200 million yuan annually. More than 2 million sq m of Himin's heaters alone are installed on rooftops every year, nearly twice the total of Europe and North America. Huang Ming's solar dreams look set to expand as favorable government policies seek to expand the use of solar water heaters.

China--the solar water heating capital of the world

My friends at China's Green Beat did a podcast (click image on right) on solar thermal heating last month. According to the self-dubbed "Green Brothers" of China's Green Beat, China has 40 million solar water heating systems covering 90 million square meters and accounting for two-thirds of the world's market share. The Chinese government intends to more than triple such surface area to 300 million square meters by 2020. The podcast takes a closer look at the city of Rizhao (日照）(which literally means "sunshine") in the northeast province of Shandong, the producer of 15% of China's solar water heating systems. According to Worldchanging, solar water heaters are currently installed in 99% of all buildings in Rizhao’s urban area, and in more than 30% of residences in rural areas.

Often mentioned in the same breath as Rizhao is the city of Kunming in the southern province of Yunnan, as this Worldwatch Institute story describes.












Solar water heating systems in Kunming, Yunnan.
Source: Worlwatch Institute

Google's "RE less than C" Initiative

Google has launched a new initiative to make renewable energy cheaper than energy derived from coal. The internet giant will invest "hundreds of millions" into solar thermal, wind and geothermal technologies and businesses, and hire its own engineers and researches for its own R&D team. Wall Street analysts who just don't know any better have quizzically scratched their heads and called into question this is a diversion at the expense of shareholder value. From a New York Times story on the initiative:

“My first reaction when I read about this was, ‘Is this a joke?’” said Jordan Rohan of RBC Capital Markets. “I’ve written off Google’s competition as a threat to Google’s long-term market share gains. But I haven’t written off Google’s own ability to stretch too far and try to do too much. Ultimately, that is the biggest risk in the Google story.”

Robert Peck of Bear Sterns agreed that “the headlines were a little scary at first” and said investors were initially worried that this was another example of Google “trying to bite off more than they can chew.”

Those of us who have followed Google's green ways know better. The company has had a fine tradition of green:

• Founder's Sergey Brin and Larry Page were early investors in Nanosolar, one of the hottest Silicon Valley solar startups, and in Tesla Motors (which incidentally was named by Greentechmedia as one of the Top 10 clean tech startups of the year)
• Google has developed cutting-edge energy efficiency technology to power and cool its data centers in the U.S. and around the world and joined other industry leaders to form the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a consortium that advocates the design and use of more energy-efficient computers and servers.
• Generating electricity for its Mountain View campus from a 1.6 Megawatt corporate solar panel installation, at the time the largest, and still one of the largest in the U.S.
• Accelerating development and adoption of plug-in vehicles through the RechargeIT initiative. (See also previous post)
• Working on policies that encourage renewable energy development and deployment, such as a U.S. Renewable Energy Standard, through Google.org, its philanthropic arm.

Bottom line, renewable energy, while admittedly not Google's core business, is a tune that the Company and its founders have been singing consistently for some time. And to those who think the internet and renewable energy have tenuous links at best, try telling that to Tom Friedman or Fat Spaniel (which also incidentally made Greentechmedia's list)

Let's cut the justifications and get down to what this blog is about--Solar. One of Google's flagship partnerships under this initiative is with eSolar, California-based company developing solar thermal technology for utility-scale deployment, which boasts ease of transportation and installment, modularity, scalability, redundancy, and resilience against wind tear.

An eSolar windfarm (source: eSolar)

India Starts to Shine

China has received much attention for its emergence as a leading player in the solar industry, but its important to start paying attention to India, and specifically, the high-tech cluster of Hyderabad. The world's most famous venture capital fund, Kleiner Perkins, is targeting India for its next green tech opportunities (including solar). And 50% of the commercial space available in the new "Fab City" in Hyderabad has been taken up by solar companies (at the expense of semiconductor companies, the article explains).

Indeed, the authors of Clean Tech Revolution, a book I've highlighted previously, list Hyderabad as one of the ten emerging clean tech hubs of the world, noting that it is home to the likes of solar-power lantern maker, NEST, and seller of solar hot-water systems known as solar geysers, Photon Energy Systems.

Finally, it should be mentioned that India is also a destination for several notable rural electrification projects, as this one by the German energy company, Conergy, the Solar Electrific Light Fund (SELF), and the UNEP India Solar Loan Programme, demonstrating the usel of microfinance to achieve sustainable development.

Nov 30, 2007 follow up:

A German company thinks India has the chance to become one of the top four generators of solar energy after Germany, Japan and China.

Arup to Build Solar City

Arup, the global design and engineering firm which has garnered headlines in the sustainability world in recent years for its ambitious and ground-breaking eco-city project in Dongtan (东滩）near Shanghai, China, has announced plans to build the world's first solar city in Phoenix, Arizona, USA. The solar city will consist of a 33,000-acre mixed-use development of housing for 300,000 people as well as high-tech and commercial schemes. As the article points out, it will be interesting to see how Arup deals with the efficiency limitation that the PV panels will run into with the high ambient temperatures in Arizona. This is really the paradox of PV--while conventional wisdom would suggest that the sunniest regions are ideal for the utilization of PV, there exists a trade-off as PV efficiencies decline when ambient temperatures,which are high in sunny regions, exceed a certain point.

Saving on Silicon

IBM is tapping on solar's door again (see previous story about IBM's flirtations with entering the solar industry). This time, IBM has devised a way to recycle slicon from discarded semiconductor wafers for ultimate utilization in solar cells. From IBM's website:

The new wafer reclamation process produces monitor wafers from scrap product wafers - generating an overall energy savings of up to 90% because repurposing scrap means that IBM no longer has to procure the usual volume of net new wafers to meet manufacturing needs. When monitors wafers reach end of life they are sold to the solar industry. Depending on how a specific solar cell manufacturer chooses to process a batch of reclaimed wafers - they could save between 30 - 90% of the energy that they would have needed if they'd used a new silicon material source. These estimated energy savings translate into an overall reduction of the carbon footprint -- the measure of the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases emitted over the full life cycle of a product or service -- for both the Semiconductor and Solar industries.

Separately, MIT Technology Review reports that Clean Venture 21, a Kyoto, Japan-based has developed a novel way of making solar cells that cuts production costs by as much as 50 percent by reducing the amount of silicon needed. The photovoltaic (PV) cells are made up of arrays of thousands of tiny silicon spheres surrounded by hexagonal reflectors. These spheres work like car headlights but in reverse, ensuring that any light hitting the reflector is directed toward the sphere--essentially acting as mini-concentrators. The hexagonal shape of the reflectors allows them to be slotted together without dead space between them.

Source: Clean Venture 21 website

Of course, the whole basis of the thin-film solar boom is the avoidance of silicon as a raw material. This piece by Popular Science (it has a cool slide show and animation too!) talks about Silicon Valley-based Nanosolar's silicon-free thin film technology.

Singapore's Green Ambitions

We were waiting for this to happen...or at least I was. Finally, an announcement that signifies that the island-state is ready to leverage its strengths as an international business center, source of highly educated and skilled labor, and perhaps a little more symbolically, a place with abundant sunshine...the Singapore government has successfully court Renewable Energy Corporation of Norway to build the world's largest solar wafer manufacturing facility with a production capacity of 1.5 gigawatts a year, or three-quarters of the world's total output last year. Singapore was reportedly chosen from over 200 possible global locations.

The announcement is part of Singapore's larger ambitions of becoming a clean tech leader, as it enacts a slew of energy efficiency initiatives described in this article. Also take a look at this government website (the Economic Development Board) outlines the country's clean tech plans. Finally, this other article in IHT discusses Singapore's joining of the second generation biofuels race.

Solar Power 2007 and Chinese Solar

The Solar Power 2007 conference in Long Beach, California recently concluded. I wasn't there, but some people, like John Addison and Ed Gunther (Parts one, two, three and four).


A little bit about China...

Separately, this article discusses the China solar boom on the US stock market, observing that unlike that tech bubble, solar companies are able to ramp up production quickly, produce real products, and earn real profits. The article does a great job of summarizing the different specialties of the various U.S.-listed Chinese solar companies, however, perhaps inaccurately attributes this proliferation of Far Eastern solar enterprises to the enormity of China's environmental problems ("This [long list of U.S.-listed Chinese solar companies] is no coincidence. A mad rush to clean up the country before the Olympic games isn’t going to be enough to permanently squelch China’s pollution epidemic. If the country is going to get the problem under control it’s going to have to count on alternative energy technologies like solar power for contributions").

The fact is that the main markets of most of these Chinese companies are in the west, predominantly Europe, not its domestic market. Until the proper micro-incentives for renewable energy implementation (and proliferation) are set in place, such as solar tax credits and preferential feed-in tariffs for solar-generated electricity, then only can Beijing's macro policy aspirations (such as their proposed renewable portfolio standard of generating 20% of their energy from renewable sources) be realized. Just imagine how great these Chinese solar companies will do if and when the domestic market gets going....Throw in you life savings into these companies now!!

The Chinese should get there...I am cautiously hopeful. They have to...the costs of environmental degradation to human welfare will start to take their toll. In Hong Kong where I am currently at, I've been noticing an increasing number of newspaper articles on climate change and clean energy, and high level central government officials pledging to get tough on greenhouse gases.

Then again, as a counterpoint, I've also seen a fair number of articles in the business section about large coal companies having successful public share offerings...against a backdrop of increased incidents of mining disasters.

Will the real China please stand up?

I'm Back!

I'm back! Sorry for the extended absence, but I've had to deal with a continental shift (literally and metaphorically!). I am now back in Asia, ready as ever to cover the solar beat in this important market and the rest of the world.

But first, some tidbits about the latest in large scale solar thermal (aka Big Solar) in the US. PG&E, FPL and venture-backed Ausra are all are bullish on Big Solar and getting into the game, particularly in the open desert regions of California, as this article reports. Look, too, at the Green Wombat's September '07 postings, as he covers in more details the projects that the likes of the above and others like BrightSource are looking at in California, the "Saudi Arabia of solar" and Florida, the self-billed (and increasingly fittingly so) "Sunshine State."

Here's the wiki on what solar thermal is all about.

In the meantime, U.S.-listed Chinese solar companies--LDK, Yingli and Trina--were busy striking deals and other arrangements over the past week. Its worth noting that solar plays, at least on on the NYSE and Nasdaq, have been doing particularly well over the past month.

Non Solars Going Solar

Wells Fargo said it has made the largest equity investment in solar energy in the company's history -- in Nevada Solar One, a 64-megawatt Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plant southeast of Las Vegas. The $266 million project developed by Acciona Energy is the largest solar energy facility built in the world in 16 years.

Last month, we caught wind of IBM's possible foray into PV. Now, murmurings are swirling that chip maker Intel and electronics manufacturer Samsung are seeking to expand into the solar business. Intel is reportedly looking at acquisitions in Germany, while Samsung plans to open a solar power plant in Greece by the end of the year.

Solar Boom, All Over the World

A Chinese company has entered into a Sh9 billion partnership with a Kenyan firm to build the first solar panel factory in East Africa. The move is expected to reposition solar as a key source of energy in Kenya by making it more affordable to millions of consumers who depend on the national electricity grid for their energy needs. It is estimated that the Beijing Tianpu Xianxing Enterprises and Electrogen Technologies venture could see the prices of solar panels drop by up to 65 per cent. The project will be implemented through Pan African Technologies, a jointly owned company in which Beijing Tianpu has a 70 per cent interest and will raise $100 million (Sh7 billion) from internal resources. Its local partner is expected take up the remaining fraction of the financing plan in cash and kind, including $40 million (Sh2.8 billion) in cash and three acres of land along Nairobi's Mombasa Road where the factory is to be erected by a local company of Chinese origin. Construction of the facility is set to start in October for completion in March 2008. Once built, the factory will source the materials required locally and employ a minimum of 100 Chinese trained staff.

In the Czech Republic, a 2005 renewable energy law modeled after Germany's has spurred on the Czech solar industry. Last year, the country as a whole generated only 540 MWh of solar energy. Korowatt’s solar plant, which began operating in January, is expected to outdo this total on its own, with 628 MWh expected this year. Another Czech-based company, HiTecSolar, announced completion of its own “largest solar power station in Central Europe,” located in east Moravia.

Japan, already amongst the world's leaders in solar cell production and where solar adoption exist without subsidies, may need to increase reliance on solar, particularly thin-film solar, to fight its pollution woes.

In the mean time, despite turbulence in the stock markets, publicly listed solar names do not seem to be experiencing a slowdown, but are instead ramping up with expansions plans. SunPower (Nasdaq: SPWR) inked up new ingot, wafer and polysilicon deals; LDK Solar secured a three year wafer supply agreement; and China-based Canadian Solar (Nasdaq: CSIQ) set up its new U.S. head office in Phoenix, Arizona.

U.S. House Passes RPS and Extends Solar Tax Credits

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a tax bill (HR 969) Saturday that would extend renewable energy tax credits and encourage energy efficiency, paying for itself by repealing $16 billion in tax breaks to oil and gas companies. The House passed the tax provisions by a vote of 221-189. Earlier it had approved, 241-172, a companion energy package (HR 969) aimed at boosting energy efficiency and expanding use of biofuels, wind power and other renewable energy sources through a federal Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS). The two bills, passed at an unusual Saturday session as lawmakers prepared to leave town for their month-long summer recess, will be merged with legislation passed by the Senate in June.

HR 2776 extends renewable energy production tax credits to 2012, costing around $6.6 billion over 10 years, and extends a 30% tax credit for solar energy and fuel cell investment for eight years to 2016, costing around $563 million.

On one of the most contentious and heavily lobbied issues, the House voted for HR 969 to require investor-owned electric utilities nationwide to generate at least 11% of their electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind or biofuels and a maximum of 4% for energy efficiency for a combined 15% RPS, or perhaps more accurately a "REPS" (Renewable energy and Efficiency Portfolio Standard). More than 20 states have similar standards in place (see the Database for State Incentives for Renewable Energy or DSIRE) or under development, but proponents say a federal standard is needed to rapidly drive increased use of renewable energy.

With the Senate version of the legislation already complete (but lacking an RPS or solar tax credit provisions), passage in the House leads to a conference committee stage in the fall and possible final passage of a reconciled bill in late October or early November.

IBM Solar: the next "Big" thing

Big Blue is going Big Green. According to Neal Dikeman on Cleantechblog, all signs are pointing to IBM (NYSE: IBM) entering into the solar market in the next 18 months or so. Based on conversations with insiders and research which has uncovered (i) a number of vague references to solar research in recent press, (ii) sophisticated scientific journal articles on solar dating way back to 1978, and (iii) a string of solar-related patents filed by IBM, it looks like IBM is poised to leverage its competency in semiconductor manufacturing (reminiscent of Cypress Semiconductor's, NYSE: CY, foray into solar with its SunPower unit that was eventually spun off in the currently publicly listed SunPower Holdings, NASDAQ: SPWR) to achieve breakthroughs in PV manufacturing in advanced crystalline, thin-film/nano/CIGS technologies.

I am looking forward to it.

Israel-based Solel to build world largest solar farm

Spurred by state mandates for utilities to product 20% of generated power from renewable sources, California-based Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) entered into a landmark renewable energy agreement with Solel-MSP-1 (subsidiary of Israel-based Solel Thermal Systems) to purchase renewable energy from the Mojave Solar Park, to be constructed in California’s Mojave Desert. The project will deliver 553 megawatts of solar power, the equivalent of powering 400,000 homes, to PG&E’s customers in northern and central California. The Mojave Solar Park project is now the world’s largest single solar commitment.

The plant utilizes Solel’s patented and commercially-proven solar thermal parabolic trough technology to concentrate solar energy onto solar thermal receivers that contain a fluid that is heated and circulated used to generate steam that powers a turbine to produce electricity. When fully operational in 2011, the Mojave Solar Park plant will cover up to 6,000 acres, or nine square miles in the Mojave Desert. Solel is working closely with URS Corporation in the development of the Mojave Solar Park, which when commercial will rely on 1.2 million mirrors and 317 miles of vacuum tubing to capture the desert sun’s heat.

Perhaps the most environmentally satisfying aspect of the project is that the electricity generated by Mojave Solar Park will use some of the transmission infrastructure originally built for the now dormant coal-fired Mojave Generation Station to deliver the power to PG&E’s customers.

This Red Herring article considers the PG&E-Solel agreement as a signal of the of a CSP (concentrate solar power) boom, as PG&E seeks to make other utility-scale solar farm deals with the likes of BrightSource Energy, Green Volts and Cleantech America (here's an interesting expose on Cleantech America and the ambitions of this 2-year-old startup to capitalize on the solar farm boom).

Elsewhere, PG&E is also making aggressive moves in wind and wave energy, reports the Green Wombat.

New Efficiency Record of 42.8% Achieved

A Univeristy of Delware(UD)-led consortium has achieved a record-breaking combined solar cell efficiency of 42.8% from sunlight at standard terrestrial conditions, eclipsing the previous record of 40.7% set last December by Boeing's Spectrolab. In November 2005, the UD-led consortium received approximately $13 million in funding for the initial phases of the DARPA Very High Efficiency Solar Cell (VHESC) program to develop affordable portable solar cell battery chargers. As a result of the consortium's technical performance, DARPA is initiating the next phase of the program by funding the newly formed DuPont-University of Delaware VHESC Consortium to transition the lab-scale work to an engineering and manufacturing prototype model. This three-year effort could be worth as much as $100 million, including industry cost-share. According to the article in the first link above:

The consortium's goal is to create solar cells that operate at 50 percent in production, Barnett said. With the fresh funding and cooperative efforts of the DuPont-UD consortium, he said it is expected new high efficiency solar cells could be in production by 2010.

The highly efficient VHESC solar cell uses a novel lateral optical concentrating system that splits solar light into three different energy bins of high, medium and low, and directs them onto cells of various light sensitive materials to cover the solar spectrum. The system delivers variable concentrations to the different solar cell elements. The concentrator is stationary with a wide acceptance angle optical system that captures large amounts of light and eliminates the need for complicated tracking devices.

The VHESC would have immediate application in the high-technology military, which increasingly relies upon a variety of electronics for individual soldiers and the equipment that supports them. As well, it is hoped the solar cells will have a large number of commercial applications.

Separately, a US-Korea team announced an efficiency record for organic solar cells at 6.5%.

Who's side is the government (and private equity) on???

Andrew Revkin of the New York times had a big splash on the promises and perils (with emphasis on the latter) of relying on solar as a solution to our global energy pickle. The problem cited is of the often heard, "broken record"variety--that solar technology is too expensive for mass market. If you had to point fingers, you would think that the U.S. government (underinvesting in renewable R&D and oversubsidizing fossil/nuclear energy) is in bed with the fossil/nuclear lobby:

In the current fiscal year, the Energy Department plans to spend $159 million on solar research and development. It will spend nearly double, $303 million, on nuclear energy research and development, and nearly triple, $427 million, on coal, as well as $167 million on other fossil fuel research and development...“Coal and nuclear count their lobbying budgets in the tens of millions,” said Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association. “We count ours in the tens of thousands.”

The New York times also had interesting side bars on solar thermal and storage of solar power.

A rural solar initiative in the Phillipines faces the challenges of the high costs of solar panels and realted maintenance.

A little more good news to ease the pain of the global polysilicon (feed stock of conventional silicon-based solar cells) shortage--Wacker Chemie (talk about a wonder stock!), one of the world's leading producers of polysilicon, is planning to build a new granular solar polysilicon site in Burghausen, Germany.

In terms of state policies, solar power prosptects are looking sunny in Arizona (read also Vote Solar's analysis on Arizona) and Oregon (50% solar tax credit).

Finally, some recent venture capital transactions: SoloPower (thin filim CIGS) raises $30 million; MWOE Solar (thin film amorphous silicon) raises $7 million; Solaire Direct (French designer and installer) raised €6.1 million and Heliatek (organic solar cells) raises €3.2 million. But this article warns that private equity money directed to solar is drying up due to slow development of certain startups, slow shift towards higher solar conversion efficiencies, the threat of China entrants producing cheap yet high quality solar cells, and the continued expansion and increasing market share of the public solar companies (e.g. BP Solar's Frederick expansion). This is substantiated by a Red Herring article describing the increased caution that venture capitalists are taking towards cleantech investments.. Are we entering a PE/VC money dry spell?

China Sunergy Announces Approval of N-type Cell Patent

China Sunergy's (NASDAQ: CSUN) shares were trading up 6% within the first hour of trading this morning on the announcement that has received N-type cell patent approval from China's State Intellectual Property Office. The approval covers a period of 20 years and further solidifies China Sunergy's unique position in commercializing N-type cell on top of its existing technological capabilities. China Sunergy has also submitted a patent application to SIPO for P-type selective emitter cell technology and currently expects to get the approval in 2009.

Sunny Days in Singapore

Singapore, my homeland, is entering the solar manufacturing race. Two deals for thin-film solar manufacturing facilities were announced in the past few days.

It is reported that SGX Sesdaq-listed Equation Corp Limited through its newly-acquired subsidiary Solar Morph Pte. Ltd., a Singapore-registered company will undertake the construction and operation of a thin-film amorphous silicon plant in Singapore, commencing with establishing a 20MW manufacturing line by mid-2008 and continue to expand to its full 60MW annual capacity by 2010

Separately, Germany's SolarTec AG is firming up plans to gain a presence in Singapore, including the setting up of a $100 million 45 MW thin-film solar module manufacturing plant and a listing via a reverse takeover on the Singapore Stock Exchante.

The Solar Bulls are Raging!!!

Solar stocks on the U.S. markets surged across the board today.

First Solar (NASDAQ: FSLR) closed at $119.34, up an unbelievable 23.95% (after an already torrid year!--it has quadrupled since the start of the year) in the wake of announcing 5 new contracts worth $1.3 billion, its board approval of new a new Malaysian plant.

Trina Solar (NYSE: TSL) closed at $67.37, up 16.0%, on the announcement of several contracts to supply European customers with 99 MW worth of PV modules over the next 2-3 years.

JA Solar (NASDAQ: JASO) surged 14.8% to $42.76 after announcing that it has commenced production on four additional 25 MW per annum solar cell production lines in its Ningjin, Hebei, China site increasing its manufacturing capacity from 75 MW to 175 MW per annum.

The combined news created for a bullish sentiment across the solar board, lifting up other solar stocks which did not have any announcements of their own, including Yingli Green (NYSE: YGE, up 15.9%), Solarfun (NASDAQ: SOLF, up 11.4%), Hoku Scientific (NASDAQ: HOKU, up 13.7%), Canadian Solar (NASDAQ: CSIQ, up 8.9%), LDK Solar (NYSE: LDK, up 8.5%), Evergreen Solar (NASDAQ: ESLR, up 6.1%) and Suntech Power (NYSE: STP, up a "mere" 4.1%).

As a Forbes article explains, First Solar and Trina Solar's new contracts target end users in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Canada, among others, reflecting the continued growth of solar in these markets as the European Union and the Canadian province of Ontario enact legislation and standards to replace their fossil fuel based energy sources with renewable power.

Full Disclosure: The author owns some shares in First Solar and Suntech Power.

Polysilicon Shortage Exerts Pressure on China Sunergy

Shares of China Sunergy Co., Ltd. (Nasdaq: CSUN) tumbled 19.26% or $2.69 to $11.28 in Tuesday (June 3) trading after the specialized solar cell manufacturer announced before the opening bell that it continued to experience tight polysilicon supplies in China's solar market in the second quarter ended June 30, 2007. This bring's CSUN's share price back nearly to its IPO price of $11 after hitting a peak of $16.70 shortly after it went public in May. Read this Forbes report.

Bioplastics and Quantum Dots: The Next Generation in Thin Film

The world's first thin-film solar cell built with bio-based components has been developed by BioSolar, Inc, the company announced last week. The bio-plastic components developed by BioSolar replace petroleum-based plastics, that not only bear the burden of its environmental implications, but also lead to upward pressures in PV panels as the price of crude oil escalates. Previously, bio-plastics made from renewable plant sources have not been able to withstand the high temperature involved in the manufacture of PV systems. BioSolar has developed a proprietary process to produce bio-plastics that are not only able to withstand the high temperatures, but also possess all the physical and eletromaganetic characteristics of conventional petroleum-based plastics.

Also reported last week, Menlo Park-based Stion raised $15 million in Series B financing. The company is keeping its thin-film technology under wraps, but a CNET article speculates that the basis of Stion's technology lies in quantum dots--nano particles that are sensitive to physical phenomena and can be used to trap electrons.

$60 Million Solar Grant by U.S. DOE

The DOE will make available nearly $60M to increase the use of solar power across the country. Secretary Bodman announced: up to $2.5 million for Solar America Cities cooperative agreements, in which thirteen selected cities will receive awards to promote increased use of solar-powered technologies throughout each city; the issuance of a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for up to $30 million for universities to research near-term improvements in solar products; and the competitive selection of ten cost-shared Photovoltaic (PV) Module Incubator projects that will receive up to $27 million in DOE funding over 18 months. Click here for more.

Third Party Financing Gains Traction
Morgan Stanley has gotten into the solar third party financing game. Last week, it was announced that Morgan Stanley has agreed to own and finance solar electric power systems totaling more than four megawatts that SunPower will deploy on seven Wal-Mart facilities in California. Wal-Mart will purchase electricity generated from the solar power systems from Morgan Stanley through a long term purchase power agreement. Click here for more.

The Red Herring reports that San Francisco-based solar-energy services company Recurrent Energy received $10 million in a first round of funding from venture capitalists. Like Tioga Energy (see previous post), Recurrent installs, owns, and operates the solar power systems for property owners and sells the solar-generated electricity through a PPA.

...and So Does Thin Film
New Jersey-based Energy Photovoltaics, a manufacturer of amorphous silicon thin-film solar modules has raised $77.5 million in its Series B financing.

According to this story, GE's foray into the thin-film market has it purchasing thin film products from two California-based companies, DayStar Technologies and Miasole, both specialists of CIGS thin-film technology.

SANYO Electric Achieves 22% Solar Cell Efficiency in the Laboratory

A smattering of solar news...

Solarbuzz reports that SANYO Electric has broken its own record for what the company says is the world’s highest energy conversion efficiency in practical sized (100 cm2 or more) crystalline silicon-type solar cells, by achieving an efficiency of 22% at the research level for its proprietary HIT solar photovoltaic cells. The previous highest efficiency had been 21.8%.

Action on Capital Hill: The Gavel reports that the House Committee on Science and Technology’s Subcommittee on Energy and Environment today explored means to advance solar energy research and technologies. The Subcommittee addressed the topic in the context of pending “The Solar Energy Research and Advancement Act of 2007” bill, authored by Subcommittee Vice-Chair Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), which will soon be introduced to establish several important research, education and training programs to facilitate the adoption of such technologies.

A number of financing deals were announced:

• Advent Solar (adopter of "emitter-wrap-through" technology) raises $70 million in Series D financing;
• Silicon Valley Solar (manufacturer of cells with internal concentrator technology to amplifies the effect of the sun) raised $10.2 million for its acquisition of NuEdison;
• Deli Solar (USA), Inc. (OTC BB: DLSL.OB) (seller of hot water and space heating devices in China) raised $2.75 million in Series A financing.
• Engine manufacturer Infinia announced it has raised $9.5 million in venture funding to develop solar-based, non-combustible stirling engines.

In other news, San Francisco is set to launch a solar mapping web portal, using Google Maps as a visual platform, that estimates solar energy potential for commercial/residential structures in San Francisco, and allows building owners to visualize the potential environmental benefits and monetary savings resulting from installing solar energy panels on their property. Click here for the San Francisco Solar Map!

Google and Ascent

It was reported today that Google turned on the switches on their 1.6 MW rooftop solar infrastructure that will power up to one third of its Mountain View, California campus' energy needs. Learn more about Google's solar panel project.

On the same day, its philanthropic arm, Google.org, as part of its climate change initiatives, launched its RechargeIT program to beta test new plug-in hybrid and vehicle-to-grid car technologies. One angle Google is exploring is the use of renewable energy sources such as solar in plug-in hybrids; it will be connecting its test fleet of plug-in cars to solar charging stations on campus to demonstrate the role that renewable electricity can play in replacing gasoline and other fossil fuels in the transportation sector.

Relatedly, Akeena Solar, one of the U.S.'s biggest solar system integrators, announced that this Thursday on June 21 it would unveil solar-powered electric car-charging stations, the equivalent of gas stations dispensing solar energy instead of gasoline.

Ascent Ascending

Meanwhile, shares of Ascent Solar (Nasdaq: ASTI) edged up 9% last Friday after shareholders approved the options Ascent granted to Norsk Hydro (NYSE:NHY) which will enable Hydro, the third-largest integrated aluminum supplier in the world, to increase its equity stake in Ascent Solar from its current 23% to up to 35%. Ascent's stock price rose to $8.02 today, up substantially from $2.45 earlier this year. Hydro's relationship with Ascent is expected to be enhanced. Already, it is reported that the two companies are collaborating in the joint development of a building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) product line

A Haiku for Hoku

Polysilicon
Build it and they will cometh
Sanyo then Suntech!

I admit, the above haiku is not exactly mindblowing...but Kapolei, Hawaii-based Hoku Scientific's (NASDAQ: HOKU) 46% surge in the stock market earlier today certainly is!!

The reason for the surge? Hoku signed up a 10 year agreement to supply Suntech Power (NASDAQ: SPWR), one of the world's leading manufacturers of PV panels, with polysilicon, the raw ingredient to crstalline-based PV panels that is currently in short supply, starting mid-2009, for a total contract value of $678 million (read press release for more details of the agreement). The Bard I am not, but Hoku's energy transformation is poetic to solar bulls like me.

Hoku has historically been in the fuel cell business. The Company is currently expanding its business to manufacture polysilicon and install solar modules for the solar market. Hoku doesn’t currently make silicon and doesn’t operate any silicon plants but according to Red Herring, Hoku estimates it will cost $260 million to build its first polysilicon factory, which is scheduled to begin operations in Pocatello, Idaho next year. T he company also said it wants to raise $150 million in debt capital to finance construction. The plant will be capable of producing 2,000 metric tons of polysilicon per year in Pocatello, Idaho.

This news comes on the heel of Hoku's annoucement in January of the signing of a seven-year polysilicon supply contract with SANYO Electric Co., Ltd. that would provide for approximately $370 million in payments to Hoku over the term of the agreement.

The polysilicon bottleneck has forced the hand of leading solar players like Suntech and Sanyo to enter into long-term supply contracts and locking in the price for polysilicon at today's prices.

This strategy may or may not pan out to be wise in light of the forecasts that polysilicon shortages will start to ease as early as 2008 as more production capacity come online, such as that from Hoku's, start to come on line. But it is precisely such long-term contracts that spur investment in polysilicon production and entice enterprising companies like Hoku to be part of the solar solution.

Europe's Solar Manifesto

RenewableEnergyAccess.com reports of the release by the European Photovoltaic Technology Platform of an authoritative report dubbed the Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) , which will serve as a roadmap for short-, medium- and long-term research priorities for Europe in order to consolidate its global leadership position in the solar industry. The overarching goal is to make photovoltaic solar electricity competitive with conventional electricity in Southern Europe by 2015 and in most of Europe by 2020.

The SRA states in no uncertain terms that it is afraid of China's emerging success in the PV industry and the threat it poses to Europe's solar industry. Specifically, it describes China as the second country (after Japan) with an industrial policy specifically focused in the solar industry, with a goal of covering the solar value chain from silicon feedstock to complete systems. Hence, the SRA outlines the R&D priorities across the full spectrum of PV technologies, including crystalline-based, thin-film and concentrated solar technologies, as well as balance-of-system components.

The SRA also discusses non-technological issues such as standards, quality assurance and government R&D policy, although not to the same degree of detail and thoughtfulness as Solartech's white paper for turning the Silicon Valley into Solar Valley.

Fat Spaniel: Increasing Solar Adoption by Reducing Information Asymmetry

In the advocacy of renewable energy, it is useful to think about the market failures which stand as obstacles to the adoption of renewable energy such as solar. One notable market failure in solar adoption is the lack of information in the hands of consumers, installers and utilities on just how productive solar panels are at producing electricity (and accordingly, how cost-effective solar power is compared to conventional power).

But one San Jose, California start-up, Fat Spaniel, which recently announced a strategic alliance with DRI Energy, aims to change all that with a small device that links up to existing solar equipment and monitors energy collection. The data the device gathers is fed into servers at Fat Spaniel, where it's digested and distributed live via PC or cell phone to the consumer, the utility company, the solar installer and/or others who need to know the information. User can get real-time and historical information about amount of solar power produced by their solar systems, and even what that translates to in terms of avoidance of greenhouse gas emissions (see above pictured example of web interface).

With this technology, utilities of solar financiers like SunEdison can more accurately better monitor a solar energy system's productivity and more accurately monetize their power purchase agreements in an arrangement where it purchases, installs, owns and maintains the systems while charging its customers periodically simply for the purchase of solar power.

System installers can use the technology to ensure that the systems have been properly installed and remain effective and productive throughout its lifespan, or undertake necessary maintenance work if it is not. In an interview with Green Wombat, founder of Fat Spaniel, Chris Beekhuis accounts:"[Our clients] want to be able to forecast and guarantee performance. But it is very difficult to monitor those remote sites. We have an installer in Southern California who is approaching 100 installations. They can see a problem online and then go out and fix it. They leave a door hanger that says, 'I’ve improved performance of your array.' "

Individual users of the technology can benefit by becoming more conscious about their energy usage in the context of the supply of power generated from their PV systems. As Chris Beekhius, founder of Fat Spaniels, explains in his article in RenewableEnergyAccess, "real-time access to these types of data helps maximize system efficiency—you can't improve the efficiency of a system for which you have no data."

Ultimately, the increased information serves to heighten transparency in the renewable energy markets, and reduces the risk premiums for investments in such technologies. This is best described by Beekhuis himself, in the following excerpt from his article:

As the U.S. moves into a national regime of renewable energy standards and regulated carbon markets, system owners and operators will want to maximize the financial value of their investments in renewable generation. The best way to track a system's real energy output to ensure accurate Performance Based Incentive Payments, protect ratepayer investments in capacity-based or expected performance-based rebate programs, and to grow vibrant and trusted financial markets for Renewable Energy Credits and Carbon Credits, is through independent metering and monitoring.

While no one would question the good intentions of the clean energy community, financial markets do not run on good intentions. In fact, a fundamental economic tenet is that markets don't function at all without meaningful, verifiable information that comes from trusted sources. If buyers and sellers are uncertain about the products they're trading, or can't reliably compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges, they have no way to accurately assign a value to those products.

Tioga Energy and Enervision

Two innovative solar companies made venture financing news this past week. The Red Herring reported that California-based Tioga Energy launched operations with $10 million in venture financing from NGEN Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Rockport Capital Partner, DFJ Frontier and Kirland Ventures. Tioga Energy's business model is to serve as an intermediary by financi Posting ng, purchasing, installing, owning and operating solar panels while bringing solar power to its customers through 20 year power purchase contracts, thereby reducing the upfront capital costs of solar panels that have made it so prohibitive for prospective solar power consumers. As mentioned before, MMA Renwewable Ventures and SunEdison are other notable companies that engage in this form of third party financing, which will further SolarTech's goal of encouraging solar adoption.

San Diego based Envision Solar has one of the coolest solar array concepts that I've seen in a while--"Solar Groves." According to Rob Day, author of blog Cleantech Investing, Envision raised $600,000 as part of a $2 million Series A round. Partnering with PV module maker Kyocera, architectural firm Tucker Sadler, and construction firm Midwest General, Inc., Envision Solar provides solar shading structures composed of "Solar Trees" from design through construction. A "Solar Tree" consists of a central pole that supports a "canopy" of solar panels, which are designed to be built above cars in parking lots to create shade and generate solar power without encumbering the parking spaces. The first Solar Grove was completed in May 2005 in San Diego at the car park of Kyocera (see picture). Consisting of 25 Solar Trees, the Solar Grove has produced more energy than predicted, about 427,000-kilowatt hours the first year, the equivalent requirement for 68 average homes for a full year.

Non-Technological Cost Reductions to Solar Power

Last week, SolarTech, a collaborative initiative of a dozen solar technology companies in the Silicon Valley, launched the Solar Center of Excellence, with the goal of transforming the Silicon Valley into a Solar Valley, and serve as a model of solar power adoption to the rest of the U.S. and the world. It released a highly informative white paper outlining the areas and issues where opportunities for cost reductions exist.

Most interestingly, the paper starts with the proposition that PV installation costs in the US are twice of that in Germany and Japan, and that building permit and utility interconnection costs in the U.S. are also significantly higher than in Germany and Japan, and proceeds to focus on primarily on non-technology issues (i.e. the price of silicon or increasing conversion efficiencies) such as harmonizing standards for PV performance installation, utility interconnections and building permits; promoting workforce training in the PV industry; and promoting third-party financing mechanisms (through power purchase agreements) to reduce upfront capital costs of solar installation for consumers. It is the hope that the combination of these measures will substantially reduce installation costs and also reduce installation times from 29-50 weeks (as is the case now) to as little as 9 weeks. [See related blog post by the Spicy Solar Guy on why solar installation in Germany significantly lower than that of the U.S.]

An interesting side note is that solar modules only account for 50-60% of the costs of a solar system's price. The remainder consists of installation, as well as various "balance of system" components such as the inverter and mounting systems. Thus, apart from increasing conversion efficiencies of PV cells and reducing installation costs through the above measures, a meaningful opportunity exists in reducing the costs of inverters and mounting systems, components that are hardly as sexy or get the press attention as solar modules themselves. Indeed, the white paper reports that the "learning rate" for inverters is only about 10%, compared to 20-25% of PV modules and other balance if system components. One of the paper's recommendations is thus increased R&D in inverters.

Another paper (titled "What the Solar Industry can learn from Googel and Salesforce.com"; free registration required) by The Topline Strategy Group discusses the challenges that must be overcome to make solar power a "short fuse technology" (i.e. a technology that has a shorter early adopter period and achieves widespread mainstream adoption far faster than traditionally thought possible). This paper covers makes many of the same proposals as the SolarTech white paper, including harmonizing standards, streamlining utility interconnection and permitting processes, and increasing innovative financing mechanisms to reduce upfront capital costs of installation. Another proposal unique to the Topline paper is to create a secondary market for solar equipment (this way a homeowner won't feel stuck with fixed costs of a PV system which lasts 30 or more years when such homeowner doesn't think he'll stay in the home for that long a time) by making the accompanying warranties to the PV system transferable (currently they are not transferable).

All these kinks suggest how very much in infancy the solar industry is (even thought the technology has been around for decades), and how much opportunity lies ahead to proliferate PV's use.

I'm salivating.

Note: Thanks to the Green Wombat for first bringing Solartech's efforts to my attention.

Last one there is a rotten egg!!

Everybody's doing it!!

In what's becoming a trend of retailers, Macy's announced today that 26 of its stores in California will be going solar, with the help of PowerLight, subsidiary of Sunpower Corp (Nasdaq: SPWR). According to the press release:

For 15 of the 26 stores, Macy’s will purchase solar-generated electricity under
the SunPower Access™ program, a solar services agreement that allows the
retailer to purchase just the electricity generated at its stores – not the
solar power systems themselves — from a third-party financier. At the end of a
10-year term, Macy’s will have the option to renew the agreement, transfer the
equipment to a new site, or buy the system. Macy’s will buy solar power systems
for the remaining 11 stores through an outright system purchase.

According to greenblog Environmental Leader, other retailers going yellow recently include Kohls, Target, BJ's Wholsale Club, Costco, Staples, Tesco and of course, Walmart.

Automaker Nissan also announced today that it will install 606 solar panels (480 PV, 126 solar thermal) in its Barcelona plant. This is part of Nissan's plant to reduce its carbon dioxide emisssions by 7% of 2005 levels.

But if a clearer message about solar being the right thing to do needed to be sent, then the Vatican's move to go solar will be heard loud and clear.