Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Financially troubled solar businesses seem to be hitting the headlines a lot these days.
Solar Industry Slowdown Catches Up With SolarCity
By Mrinalini Krishna | May 5, 2017 — 11:04 AM EDT
After nice stretch of sunny weather, the last few months have clouded over for big solar. Declining prices for photovoltaic cells are hurting panel manufacturers and stressing solar installation businesses. This situation was in sharp relief this week in Tesla’s (TSLA) earnings, as its solar installation business, SolarCity, disclosed a big slowdown in builds. SolarCity commands 41 percent of the residential solar installation market, according to GTM. In its latest earnings, the firm revealed that it had installed 150 MW of panels in the first quarter, down nearly 39 percent y/y.
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There are companies that are doing well. First Solar (FSLR) just reported strong earnings while Vivint Solar (VSLR) announced is expansion into Rhode Island and is expected to announce financial results next week. However, the list of struggling companies in the sector is longer.
SunPower Corp. (SPWR) reported its sixth consecutive quarter of losses and laid off 25 percent of its workforce. Verengo Solar filed for bankruptcy last year, while Sungevity and Suninva did the same earlier this year.
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Read more: Solar Industry Slowdown Catches Up With SolarCity
United Power acquires former home of bankrupt Abound Solar
By Doug Storum — May 2, 2017
LONGMONT — Brighton-based United Power Inc., has acquired the former home of Abound Solar Inc., in east Longmont for $8.8 million, according to public records.
9586 LLC, an entity registered to Boulder-based real estate firm W.W. Reynolds Cos., sold the 130,117-square-foot facility on 7.6 acres at 9586 E. I-25 Frontage Road just south of Colorado Highway 119 in Weld County. The building has been vacant while an effort to remove hazardous waste left behind by Abound was tied up in insurance claims court.
Abound Solar went bankrupt in 2012 after receiving stimulus money from the federal government.
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Read more: http://bizwest.com/2017/05/02/united-power-acquires-former-home-bankrupt-abound-solar/
Some solar businesses have resorted to begging President Trump for import duty protection against cheaper foreign imports.
Suniva Creates the Latest Solar Debacle
Written by Anne Fischer 28 April 2017
Suniva filed for bankruptcy protection on 17 April, and then nine days later filed a trade case mechanism with the International Trade Commission (ITC) to try to impose tariffs and to set minimum prices on all imported solar modules. This would add tariffs to those already imposed on Chinese modules.
Who is Suniva?
Suniva is based near Atlanta, Georgia and has manufacturing facilities in Georgia and Michigan. On its website, the company claims to be the “leading American manufacturer of high-efficiency, cost-competitive PV solar cells and modules.” (Suniva is majority owned by a Chinese company, Shunfeng International Clean Energy.)
In the past two years, as prices on solar modules dropped and demand decreased due to oversupply, Suniva was losing millions. Ultimately the company filed for bankruptcy, placing blame on Chinese manufactures who flooded the US market with cheap imports.
Why file Section 201?
Suniva’s filing a petition under section 201 of the Trade Act of 1974 is a condition of its bankruptcy. If the ITC determines that Suniva was “seriously injured” by solar imports, it can recommend to the Trump administration provide relief to Suniva in the form of tariffs on all imports in order to curb competition from manufacturers in any country other than the United States. Suniva sees this as an effort to get back into business with American-made modules.
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Read more: http://www.solarnovus.com/suniva-creates-the-latest-solar-debacle_N10838.html
To anyone who thinks that President Trump is the cause of the solar slump, its interesting to note the wave of solar bankruptcies began well before Donald Trump won the presidency. Aside from the spectacular failure of Solyndra, another big US solar business SunEdison declared bankruptcy in April 2016.
In the Market for a Solar Farm? SunEdison Has Some for Sale, Cheap
The spectacular failure of what was once the world’s biggest renewable-energy company has turned into a smorgasbord of wind and solar farms being gobbled up by infrastructure investors, clean-power developers and even a vegan soccer team.
Since filing the largest U.S. bankruptcy of 2016, SunEdison Inc. has hosted the biggest-ever sale of renewables assets. It’s shed at least $1 billion of assets from Southern California to Chile to India– some through record-breaking deals–including projects that would have died without new owners. With wind and solar supplying more than 11% of global electricity, the company’s debt-induced collapse enabled competitors to strengthen their existing hands or enter new markets.
“Developers have been picking at the carcass,” Nathan Serota, a New York-based analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said in an interview. “As it turns out, the carcass was not so bad.”
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Read more: http://www.industryweek.com/energy/market-solar-farm-sunedison-has-some-sale-cheap
It is difficult to know for sure whether this apparent upswing in solar bankruptcy stories is significant.
What seems plain is that solar businesses, at least those which manufacture solar systems, are being squeezed between a flood of cheap cheap imports and cooling federal government enthusiasm for subsidising solar energy.
I believe the suggestions that China are dumping solar on the US market are credible – though if China wants to save the world by subsidising cheap solar for everyone, who are we to say no?
It is not all bleak news for US solar investors. despite federal indifference, there are still rich US states like California, whose legislature seems keen to continue pouring public money into the bottomless renewables money pit.
How long states like California can continue to ignore economic competition from low cost states is a different matter.
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If solar power can’t replace coal, gas, hydro and nuclear without stealing tax dollars,,,,,,OH! Yea, thats right, it is a scam to steal tax dollars not provide cheap and reliable power. Sorry, my bad.
Okay, there are a few nuclear plants coming toward completion after promising greater cost controls than past eras. Let’s see the ratepayer cost numbers for those new disasters now that Westinghouse is kaput.
Cost over runs have been because of delays and costs increases due to regulators and lawsuits by greenies, You can find this in the bankruptcy proceedings. The other part of the costs have been that delays resulted in penalties due to the fact that the nukes were prepaid and interest and cost to consumers resulted in penalties. Look for Toshiba bankruptcy filings. They were sent to me because I am on the large electric consumer list.
It has caused a 25% increase to date, and an expected 15% to 25% more if not built. Go team Green!
Wish we had all those solar and wind subsidies, instead of them using mine and other people’s money.
Does large scale solar grid generation get subsidies in the USA? How much as % of wholesale price to grid? Is it compulsory?
Subsidy for a fundamentally inferior and intermittent energy spource is regressive, it should be stopped and what works best on the money allowed to thrive. If it competes head to head with gas and nuclear, great.
Off grid in the desert it clearly makes sense. Not at 50 degrees NOrth where it never gets dark in the Summer and duty cycle is 11% of not a lot.
BUT, OVERALL -, why should on grid users subsidise it anywhere? OK. it’s not a significant amount of energy overall, so the relative few who choose to live off the grid can pay the higher cost, not those on the grid. DEveloped countries git that way aggregating in towns and cities we provide with infrastructure all share the cost and benfits of, etc.. That’s an efficient collective society’s deal = civilisation. Susbidising green cults and those well off who would impoverish the poorest with overpriced enrgy to profit themselves with the subsidies paid for by the poorest isn’t. IMO
I believe that the author of this article may have misinterpreted the current status of the solar power industry. My reasoning is that many potential Solar City customers may be waiting for the new Tesla integrated solar roofing system. If that system proves to be successful, Solar City’s share of the residential solar power market will increase significantly in the following year.
The solar shingles are vaporware. How are you going to wire it?
Won’t they come prewired in panels just like they do now?
Solar sounds a lot better than it really is, when you get into the details. No problem with soalr as long as 1) it is not allowed, by govt decree, to toxify the grid by dumping unused rooftop energy onto the grid (force roof owners to buy batteries if they don’t want to lose unused power), and 2) their electric bills are not being subsidized by their neighbors, many of whom do not live where they can employ rooftop solar. Utlities must be barred from accepting any power that is not available all the time and controllable by the grid masters. Florida does this now and that’s one reason solar roofs are rare in the Sunshine State. Solar subsidies to rooftop owners are what provided Solar City’s enormous profits, since they are the owners of the solar roofs and got the $7500 per roof Fed subsidy (over half the total cost). Owning a house with a Solar City roof solar system was often a nightmare, especially when trying to sell the house and stick the new owner with it. While solar cells have contiuously declined in price. installation costs have not been reduced nearly as much and inverters (which change the DC power coming from the cells to AC power for the home) often cost more than the solar cells. Then there is the big negative economic gorilla in the room : the need to reshingle the roof, which requires that the solar installation be dismantled, the roof reshingled and then the solar cells re-installed, the labor required to take care of the solar system more expensive than the reshingling. All in all, putting solar cells on a roof is a short-sighted (and stupid) idea,
unless the owner himself does all of the labor.
If any, the only feasible spot for solar cells are when laid out on the ground in a desert. That’s when they make the most sense, if ever. But molten salt nuclear reactors will make solar/wind (as well as all fossil fuel power) economically and environmentally idiotic. Any discussions of future power generation that doesn’t accept this rather obvious future cannot be taken as realistic or serious.
You mean like Ivanpah made sense?
arthur4563, wrote, “…as long as 1) it is not allowed, by govt decree, to toxify the grid by dumping unused rooftop energy onto the grid (force roof owners to buy batteries if they don’t want to lose unused power),…”
I agree with you, Arthur, except that, instead of batteries, it would be better to require rooftop solar owners to install “smart meters” or “smart hot water heaters” which could shut off their electric hot water heaters, as necessary, to balance the grid. There’s a lot more bang for the buck to be had that way.
(Caveat: it’s harder to make that approach work with the new, overpriced, heatpump-based water heaters, since, like computers, it’s unhealthy for them to be turned on and off at random, without going through an orderly shutdown.)
Batteries are just too darn expensive, and they go bad in a few years.
I suppose an alternative, perhaps required only for rooftop solar owners who don’t have electric hot water heaters, would be a “smart inverter switch,” which would only allow a rooftop solar array to sell power to the grid when there’s a need for it.
It is hard to imagine large scale solar power (“solar farms”) ever making economic & environmental sense, in most cases. I agree that molten salt thorium nuclear seems destined to eat solar’s lunch in most cases, for large markets.
However, I can think of some special circumstances where having some large-ish-scale solar capacity on the grid might make sense:
1. where local peak load is mid-afternoon in the summer, usually on cloudless days, which happens to be when solar works best; and
2. where electricity is very expensive, and seems destined to remain so for a long time to come, perhaps because nuclear is impractical for some reason: e.g., the practical “local” (grid-accessible) market is too small to justify a nuclear plant, or the locals are incapable of running it, or political instability.
It would also help if
3. there’s a substantial amount of on-demand capacity already available, perhaps hydro, which can be used to balance the fluctuations in solar supply.
Based on this hodge-podge of press releases, analysis, and extraneous comments, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the demise of the solar power industry is not only greatly anticipated, it is greatly esagerated.
The point is not to save all the players in this or any other sector. Of course Obama tried to and even seeded many more firms run by politicos. A good dose of trimming is in order and afterward you might be able to cite industry averages. Up to that point industry averages have been a mistake or false front.
This http://joannenova.com.au/ dramatizes the ludicrous idea of solar for commercial generation of electricity.
This on top of the grid stability issue. And besides, considering the total life cycle (manufacturing, installation, maintenance, administration, removal, etc.) solar (and wind) results in a net energy LOSS. Renewables can not exist without energy input from somewhere else.
See:
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/05/08/germany-breaks-solar-record-gets-85-electricity-renewables/
“Most of Germany’s coal-fired power stations were not even operating on Sunday, April 30th, with renewable sources accounting for 85 per cent of electricity across the country,” he said. “Nuclear power sources, which are planned to be completely phased out by 2022, were also severely reduced.”
Now, its fair to say that demand was low over the Mayday weekend in Germany, but also what electricity there was was 85% from renewables. Did the grid collapse at 85% renewables?
Grid stability is not judged based on “a day” or “a weekend.”
The claim that wind/solar accounts for 11 percent of electricity produced is almost certainly a figure provided by the never-tell-the-truth renewable industry. It most likely refers to nameplate capacity
(which the renewable crowd ALWAYS quotes, in order to mislead), which often has little relationship to energy produced. Solar nameplate capacity of 100 MW will generally yield roughly 20 MWs of actual power, and 100 MW of wind will generally yield 20MW to 30MW of actual power, depending largely upon land based vs ocean based units, which is assuming the more productive wind areas. A nuclear plant typically produces over 90% of its nameplate capacity, as do baseline gas and coal plants.
What’s more, if a fossil fuel power plant is running at a low capacity factor, it’s generally because of low or intermittent demand. That is good.
Wind and solar run with low capacity factors because of intermittent supply. That is bad.
When a power plant runs at a low capacity factor due to fluctuating demand, that’s evidence of an advantage: it’s a plant which is highly responsive to demand changes, so suppliers can ramp it up and down as needed. That increases the value of that plant and of the power which it generates.
When a power plant runs at low capacity factor due to fluctuating supply, that’s a problem. As you’ve written elsewhere, Arthur, it “toxifies” the grid. It decreases the value of that plant and of the power which it generates.
Nuclear provides very reliable, steady supply of supply, but it is slow to ramp up and down in response to demand changes. So it’s a particularly lousy match for solar & wind.
Hydro has a different sort of intermittency. It is responsive over the short term (hours), so it can go a long way toward fixing some of the problems caused by wind and solar, but it can have intermittency issues in the longer term (months/years), due to droughts.
While it is physically possible for hydro to ramp up quickly, it sometimes isn’t practically possible.
I remember reading about a hydro dam in N. Georgia. The area below the dam had become a popular recreation spot. The dam was required to start sounding sirens one hour prior to increasing the amount of release from the dam in order to give everyone time to get out of the river before the waters started rising.
Solar panels are great for marketing. Maverick convenience stores are showing on a power company ad how they are soooo environmentally friendly that they put up thousands of dollars of solar panels to save money on their electric bills and save the planet. (Yes, they still sell gas, but you’re not supposed to notice that.)
I forsee panels existing as far into the future as marketing departments can push them. It may be naive to think solar panels are for energy production when it appears they are probably a marketing tool.
They may have put up thousands, but so did taxpayers, and ultimately, ratepayers as well. As soon as those subsidies go away, poof, there goes Big Solar, up in smoke.
Renewables only exist thanks to cheap oil, cheap steel, cheap concrete, subsidies and the erronous believe that the planet and the the future of our children are at risk if we continue the use of….cheap oil. Idiots.
“Does large scale solar grid generation get subsidies in the USA? How much as % of wholesale price to grid? Is it compulsory? ”
I do not think anyone answered Brian’s question.
Like I said earlier, solar is Mickey Mouse. It is too small too worry about. There are token federal subsidies and unobtainable state mandates. If solar was viable, it would be by now.
I have been watching solar for over 30 years years. The best I could tell solar is about the photo op. A the nuke plant I worked on in California, the PV farm was in the foreground and the containment building in the3 background. I never got called in to work to keep the solar panel pumping out power.
Read the annual report for any utility with solar. Lots of information about generating cost of everything else but no info about solar.
Mandates are political. Politicians do not really care about performance.
I just scanned the comments, but it seems to me the big scandal of PV technologies is buried in the following excerpt:
“The building has been vacant while an effort to remove hazardous waste left behind by Abound was tied up in insurance claims court.”
How many PV environmental disasters have already been subsidized by previous administrations? CO2 is a pollutant, but PV technology is “clean”???!? And it doesn’t begin to tell the story of what is happening in certain areas of China.
I think one of biggest obstacles to solar and electric cars is that then tend to be self defeating.
What I mean is that if more people move to solar and electric cars this will reduce demand of oil and gas. With reduced demand, prices fall for oil and gas, making people less likely to buy an electric car or install panels.
An electric car might make sense as a commuting car or a car in a place where gasoline is heavily taxed. A gasoline tax is in fact a subsidy to electric cars.
Greens wouldn’t be happy even if everyone commuted to work in golf carts. Or even if they worked from their homes electronically.
Green elites will drive their $100,000 Tesla to work, if they don’t go by limo. They want YOU to take the bus.
We have to plant a plenty of those trees which produce electricity.
Does anybody have 2017 data about Crescent Dunes solar thermal plant near Tonopah, NV? While not yet fully operational, they went off the grid for a minor repair in October 2016.
http://pvtimes.com/news/tonopah-solar-plant-restart
Here in Virginia, in a sickening display of virtue signalling, Dominion Power is building a large 20 MW peak PV array south west of Washington DC to allow the greens to witness their piety.
Except one problem. Virginia gets large hail from severe thunderstorms with high winds and the plant is in the historical track of severe thunderstorms coming down from the mountains to the west.
The entire plant was recently seriously damaged, nearly destroyed by severe hail, and must be rebuilt before it was even finished. There was not a single news article on this debacle. ZERO. Dominion continues to tout the solar plant as “operational” when in fact, it is down. Potemkin villages need green power.
Please don’t demand an actual production. Capacity is all that counts. I hope Mr. Trump is listening.
JinkoSolar, Marubeni sign 25-year PPA for 1.177 GW Sweihan project at $0.0242/kWh (peak DC).
JinkoSolar now has 6.5 GWp / year production capacity!
How do you compete with a commodity business where the government backs it, seeking to establish global dominance, working towards a monopoly?
How does McDonald’s compete with a little girl’s Saturday morning lemon aid stand?
Answer: By being open after the little girls bed time.
Duke Energy is a world leader in making electricity. If you have a contract with them, they will deliver the power.
I checked JinkoSolar web site. They claim to be a world leader but failed to mention how much electricity they make.
China has achieved world dominance in ping pong. We can let them solar panels that do not work too.
The gauntlet continues in 2018 when First Solar undercuts the low cost, zombie Chinese firms in both panel cost and BOS system costs with new tech rolled out in volume and good rate of rerurn. The bankruptcies are only beginning now. The rooftop guys have reached peak scam and will be in decline.
“…The rooftop guys have reached peak scam and will be in decline…..” +1 the low hanging fruit consisting of those wealthy enough to make the significant investment with questionable total return is gone. All that remains are those that require it and can genuinely take advantage of the technology….. very few.
What about a solar lease that requires zero investment?
Buying PV is actually more cost efficient if you can . Leasing gotchas are numerous and my cynicism flag waves “if it sounds to good to be true it probably isn’t”. If you plan/must sell during the lease period it becomes an added burden controlled by the lessor. You never have equity in the system (might not be a bad thing). Contracts are designed for their profit, not yours so be aware of escalations. Maintenance agreements beyond warranty and accidental damage are written for the lessor’s advantage. Install subsidies go to the lessor and electricity sell back rates can’t/won’t last forever and in fact are drying up. I’m not against roof top PV because in the right environment they are definitely and advantage if your usage continues to take advantage of the technology. Got a roof that you’ll keep for 20 years and an electric car and use/need a lot of AC? It’s probably a good deal for you.
You said that “buying PV is actually more cost efficient if you can.” That is a generalized statement that is true for some homeowners and not true for others. First of all, not all leases are created equal. Most leases are crap. In fact, most solar companies are crap. Look up SunPower’s lease and get your facts straight before you lump all solar leases into one category. I implore you to find another company that matches SunPowers 25 year bumper to bumper warranty.
Not all homeowners qualify for finance options. So for some its not even an option. There are also times where the lease ends up being a lower monthly payment than the financing option. With SunPower, the system and warranty all transfer with a sale. Yes, the buyer has to qualify with their credit but with a lease its a lower requirement making a lease actually easier to transfer in the event of a sale. Most anyone buying a home has decent credit though anyways.
Sell back rates are under .05 cents per Kw but you can roll over any excess power your system produced to the next year which will help with degradation.
Also, if a homeowner doesn’t need the 30% tax credit that comes with the cash or finance option, SunPower will absorb that tax credit for you and structure the lease around that lower system price. This is a big reason why leases are so popular.
OK, I have read your comment twice, and the final conclusion is the only way “solar power” can work is if you suck people into a “scheme” to defraud tax payers. It fails unless you steal money from everyone else. And you stand there, puzzled Alfred E Newman expression plastered on your face, and wonder why everyone calls you liars and thieves? Here is a hint, you are liars and thieves. Stop stealing my money, and shut the f*ck up.
2hotel9, “solar power” has worked ever since they began installing glass windows on the south sides of buildings in cold climates.
Which can be done WITHOUT stealing money from tax payers. “Solar” is failure unless tax dollars are used to “subsidize” it. Stolen money.
With all due respect, this article lacks consciousness and true solar education. As someone who actually works in the California solar industry, let me shed some light as to why solar companies are downsizing and filing bankruptcy. I’d like to distill down the current symptoms mentioned to the root causes of this industry’s volatility.
In short were being screwed by two things here in California… cheaply-made, toxic, conventional Chinese panels and Greed. I’ll start with the conventional panels.
In this article he writes…
“I believe the suggestions that China are dumping solar on the US market are credible – though if China wants to save the world by subsidising cheap solar for everyone, who are we to say no?”
Do you have any idea how many toxic chemicals go into making Chinese solar panels? So that would be the opposite of saving the world. Now I’m not going to speak for every single Chinese panel manufacturer but a majority of Chinese panels that are being imported and slapped on faithful California homeowners roofs are straight toxic to the earth. Look it up for yourself.
On top of that, they rarely work longer than 5-10 years because they are made with a focus on profit instead of quality. Now do you see why so many solar companies are suffering and going out of business? Even the good solar companies are suffering because they have to compete with the cheap conventional panels. Is it ironic that the Governator launched our million solar roof initiative in 2006 and were now just over 10 years later. These conventional systems are failing and have been for years now just like a lot of solar companies. Like they say, a company is only as good as their product. We have clients that have been screwed over financially. They got sold on some conventional panel system years ago. Once their systems failed, the ones with warranties found those companies out of business. This leads to my next point of greed.
Companies are willing to trick homeowners into buying their solar systems because they are “cheaper.” Tricky salesmen know full and well that the homeowner is going to have a huge true-up bill with their electric utility 1 year after install. They also figure out that the warranty they sold that homeowner on were upheld by an outsourced panel producer that is no longer in business.
Man, I have to go to bed. ahhh forget it I’ll just start my own solar blog so people can actually learn the truth. In short though I believe the volatility is going to continue as more and more systems fail. I sure hope people stop buying conventional panels.
[Once that solar blog is started, let us know its address and ID. .mod]
One thing I’ve noticed with green warriors. They actually believe that profit is a dirty word.
It’s a ‘Holier than Thou’ thing – the indication being that their own motives are pure.
I call it self-indulgent, self-centered, elitist snobbery, but that’s me.
You realize you’re trying to make fun of me for caring about the earth?
Don’t speak for me. Profit is a beautiful thing when it actually profits the parties involved. In this case the companies are profiting and the homeowners are getting screwed.
There are companies that offer well made solar systems where both the company and the homeowner profit.
Why is it , that the Sierra Club gets all the biggest solar jobs? So many large commercial solar jobs these guys seem to milk…
I’m not very knowledgeable on commercial solar. My personal experience is in residential.
This is typical lobbyist/protectionist fraud argument and citing toxicity of this or that Chinese product is the dead giveaway for it.
This is what happens when government tries to micromanage a market – forcing technology on the public before it’s ready, rather than simply allowing it to evolve.
Yes, and in so doing the public also did not pick up on the fact that the industry leaders were ignored in the all the grants, loans, and other support efforts of DOE etc. The only time the Obama cabal used these sector leaders was in citing industry averages for industry gains and financial program performance as a way to hide the pathetic lot hidden within.
Before it’s ready? There’s solar companies that have been producing quality solar panels for over 30 years with no bankruptcies. Why would we stay on fossil fuels when we have better options now?
Expense and intermittency are sufficient problems.