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Author Topic: The Big Picture of Renewable Energy Growth  (Read 50253 times)

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AGelbert

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    • Renwable Revolution
Big FINANCIAL Innovation Emerging in Renewable Energy!
« on: November 15, 2013, 09:17:48 pm »
The Next Big Innovation in Renewable Energy Won't Be Technological
It will be financial.

Todd WoodyNov 11 2013, 3:30 PM ET

Silicon Valley solar company SolarCity last week quietly did something that could revolutionize renewable energy in the United States. No, the company did not invent a radically more efficient or cheaper photovoltaic panel. Rather, it announced it plans to sell $54 million in asset-backed securities. :o

And that is a very big deal, even if the dollar amount of the notes on offer is rather small. That’s because the assets backing the securities are leases for some of the rooftop solar systems it has installed on homes across the country. Hundreds of millions of dollars in solar leases have been signed in the U.S. in recent years.

If those leases can be bundled and sold to pension funds and other investors, “solar securitization” could open up a potentially huge new pool of capital that could be tapped to finance the expansion of renewable energy as federal and state tax breaks for renewable energy begin to expire.

For homeowners and businesses, solar securitization could translate into cheaper electricity. A SolarCity spokesman declined to comment on the securities offering. ;)

Much of the innovation responsible for the solar industry’s explosive growth has been financial rather than technological. Half the U.S.’s solar capacity, for instance, was installed just in 2012. Driving those sales was the ability of homeowners to avoid the five-figure cost of a photovoltaic system by leasing it for a monthly payment that often is lower than what they’d pay their local utility. Anywhere between 75 and 90 percent of all solar systems are now leased as a result.

That’s a lot of demand sitting around waiting to be monetized. After all, Wall Street for years has packaged leases for planes, trains and automobiles and sold them to investors. The risk is considered manageable as rating agencies like Standard & Poor’s evaluate the credit-worthiness of such investments can rely on decades of data on the value of those rolling assets as well as the credit scores of people who sign the leases.

Solar panels, on the other hand, are a relatively new technology and have only become a mass market over the past few years. Then there’s the specter of the subprime mortgage debacle that crashed the global economy when the value of both the homes securing mortgage-backed securities and the credit-worthiness of the homeowners proved an illusion.

The risks of subprime solar is probably low. Solar installers like SolarCity, Sungevity, and SunRun only sign leases with customers with high credit scores. And most homeowners are likely to continue paying their electricity bill even if they can’t make their car payment.

The big unknown, however, is the long-term performance of solar panels.  Manufacturers typically offer 20-year or more warranties. But as I wrote earlier this year in The New York Times, the extreme financial pressures faced by Chinese solar industry, which supplies most of the world’s photovoltaic panels, has led to cost-cutting and growing incidents of defective solar modules.  ::) Whether that is a short-term blip or indicative of a more long-term problem won’t be known for years. (SolarCity chief executive Lyndon Rive, however, told me his company has not experienced any issues with its Chinese-made panels.)

Agelbert NOTE: OF COURSE they haven't experienced any "issues" with Chinese-made panels BECAUSE the hit piece in the New York Times was overblown THEN and has proven to lack substance. I can provide links to anyone interested in seeing that there was NEVER an actual quality control problem above a tiny (less than 3%!) of production and that was ONLY for a few months. The article was a scare tactic, not a balanced piece of industrial quality control problem news.

That makes Big Data companies like kWh Analytics crucial for the success of solar securitization. The Oakland, California, startup analyzes the real-time performance of some 10,000 solar systems—including 3 million photovoltaic modules—to help investors evaluate the risk of putting money into solar assets.

The U.S. Department of Energy recently awarded kWh $450,000. Richard Matsui, kWh’s chief executive, told The Atlantic that his company will use that money to build out a comprehensive database similar to one assembled to analyze home mortgages by a company called CoreLogic.

“Today's solar investors are flying blind, accepting unknown risks   in exchange for the promise of financial returns,” Matsui said in a statement. “Understanding risk is essential to making investments, but is difficult without aggregated data on panel quality, inverter reliability, and customer default rates.”



http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/the-next-big-innovation-in-renewable-energy-wont-be-technological/281345/

Agelbert NOTE: Matsui is obviously talking his book so he can milk the "pricing renewable energy" cash cow to hilt!  >:( I think the risks are overblown. Here's why. PV is NOT a new technology; it has been tested to beat the band. We have had PV in outer space for over 40 years! Yes the efficency has improved but the durability, unlike what this article is sweating, is an establishe MTBF (mean time between/before failure) born of no nonsense testing. They will probably last longer than 25 years. Planes, trains and automobile securitized leases are FAR more risky and yet Wall Street securitizes these rapidly depreciating assets that are simply not in the same league as PV (or wind turbines, for that matter).

Renewable energy, from wind turbines to PV to geothermal to hydropower has been MUCH MORE scrutinized than dirty energy fossil fuel power plants or nuclear power plants ever were in regard to cost-benefit. So these jitters are simply NOT justified.

The securitization gate has been opened. Unlike the CRAP securitization for mortgages SCAM, this is the real thing and, if priced correctly, should be quite popular. With this financial boost the Renewable Energy "Genie" is out of the bottle! Enjoy the death of fossil and nuclear fuels!


He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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