Monday, October 6, 2008

Eclipsed: Solar Power’s Celebrations Cut Short by Market Carnage (FSLR; SOLF; STP; TSL)

Ask and ye shall...
On Friday I had a comment at Environmental Capital:
With all the sturm und drang about the subsidies and having a link-vault overflowing with opinions on “The Credit Crisis’ Effect on ‘Green’ Investment”, usually referring to V.C., M&A and P.E.,

I’ve seen very little commentary on the current action in the solar stocks.
(crushed. then pulped)
I’m thinking of starting a service about what it is telling us.
Maybe call it “The Customer’s Afternoon Letter” or somesuch.
Have a great weekend.
.
P.S. the recent action probably doesn’t mean what one would first surmise.

Comment by Climateer - October 3, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Today, Keith Johnson brings us one of the smarter Instanalyses of the solar sector that I've seen in quite a while. From the Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital blog:
For the solar-power industry, it was the best of times and the worst of times—all in the space of a long weekend. On Friday, after the passage of the Wall Street bailout bill that included juicy tax breaks for solar power, champagne was the order of the day. By Monday, as stock markets went south and some of the implications of the new tax breaks sank in, solar companies expecting to cash in saw their prospects turn as gloomy as anybody’s....
...Headwinds in the rest of the economy—and some potential impacts from the new law—appear to be to blame for the sector’s woes. Now that homeowners can finally get tax breaks for 30% of home-solar installations—breaking down hefty upfront costs, one of the biggest barriers to solar power—the credit crunch means homeowners are struggling to land loans to cover the other 70% of the cost of installation.

And now that utilities can take advantage of the tax credits, the solar-power lobby expected a rapid explosion of big solar-power installations. Under the old law, power companies had to buy solar-generated electricity from independent developers...MORE