Solar Stks Rally; Citi Analyst Calls Bottom
Solar stocks are headed higher Tuesday morning after Citigroup analyst Timothy Arcuri this morning asserted that there are signs that the beleaguered sector is nearing a bottom. He raised his rating on Sunpower to Buy from Hold; for Yingli Green Energy he goes to Buy from Sell. Arcuri maintains his Buy ratings on Trina, MEMC Electronic Materials and Advanced Energy Industries.
“Our field work indicates product sell-through – particularly in Europe – has increased significantly in the past 1-2 weeks and utilization rates at Tier 1/2 cell/module producers have begun to spike higher,” Arcuri writes in a research note. “This indicates a clearing of inventory and suggests Q2 should ultimately represent a cyclical bottom in margins at cell/module producers. This is being driven in part by pull-ins ahead of mid-year feed-in tariff cuts in 6 European countries; typically, this might result in a falloff in demand for Q3 but this time we see other markets with demand elasticity that can more than offset any Q3 European softness. These include China, India, US, Japan (new FiT in July is among the highest in the world) and many other smaller countries where free market economics, rather than FiTs, are driving demand elasticity.”
Arcuri adds that while “headline” cell and module supply will continue to far outstrip demand, he contends there is only about 15 GW a year of integrated capacity to turn polysilicon into solar modules. He contends that with demand likely to grow from 4 GW in Q1 to as much as 8 GW in Q3, demand should start to outstrip integrated supply. “This should not only provide pricing stability, but also allow major integrated producers to realize ~20%+ cash margins – enough of a catalyst for stocks in light of such negative sentiment,” he writes.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/05/01/solar-stks-rally-citi-analyst-calls-bottom-ups-spwr-yge/?partner=yahootix
= new reply since forum marked as read
Friend... if you think that solar PV will ever make sense on "every rooftop", you've been drinking too much coolaid.
I'd be willing to bet that the pumps that end up keeping Spent Fuel Pools full of circulating water for the next 100 years
Still stuck on that error?
Care to point to the pumps for circulating water on this image?
...if the power comes from the sun and the solar storm comes from the same place?
As if the sun god blesses any power that (s)he provides and protects it from his/her wrath? 
You have a better idea for when the grid goes down for a year as expected?
Yeah... the better idea is to do more than accept internet conspiracy theories and actually learn a thing or two about science. There is no "expected" grid loss for a year. And that isn't because people are sticking their heads in the sand.
How many times is it now that you've made a definitive statement about reality only to disapear when called to back it up? If there's really a "consensus" (outside of your imagination of course) that they'll need power for 100s of years, surely you could find one?
Say... you could come up with an interview of the folks at Chernobyl who must have been pumping water there for decades now, right?
Yeah... we'll all pretend that you could have supported that BS... but just didn't want to.
Still that's a laugher that will stick. You see a category five hurricane killing people and think that solar power would have saved the day.
For the record, plenty of PV systems are designed to withstand lower-level hurricane-force winds... but nothing close to Katrina.. and that's before flying debris is thrown into the mix.
Baggins wrote,
Louisiana Rebates and Incentives Summary
These days you can’t talk about Louisiana without talking about at least some of the destruction it’s seen as a result of Hurricane Katrina or the more recent Deepwater Horizon oil spill. But within that destruction there is also hope, and a lot of that hope lies in solar power. To help encourage more homes and businesses to adopt renewable energy and to help protect this coastal state from experiencing more of the devastation wrought by the hurricanes of 2005, the state is offering rebates and other incentives to make its citizens more energy independent.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, solar became a primary power source, since the grid was down and getting adequate fuel to run diesel emergency generators was nearly impossible. Now, as part of the rebuilding effort groups like Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation, Mikhail Gorbachev’s Green Cross International and neighborhood associations are rebuilding New Orleans homes with sustainability and solar in mind. Louisiana’s economy is largely a fossil fuel-based economy, but British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon fiasco in the summer of 2010 highlighted problems with continuing to rely on fossil fuels as an energy source.
Most of Louisiana gets more than 5 kilowatt hours of sunlight per square meter on a daily basis. That’s more than enough to justify a photovoltaic (PV) system, although the solar isn’t as rich as that hitting the Southwest. Still, Louisiana’s electric supply is dominated by natural gas power plants, which produce nearly one half of the state’s power. Coal-fired power plants produce another quarter of the state’s energy needs and two nuclear power plants provide an additional fifth of Louisiana’s energy needs. Per capita electricity use in the state is high. The state has hot, humid summers, residential use of air conditioners is high, and most homes use electric heaters in the winter.
http://www.cleanenergyauthority.com/solar-incentives-and-rebates/louisiana/
To quote Baggins again,
