Solar Power and Batteries featured in Wall Street Transcript Energy Technology Report
Thursday August 11, 12:06 pm ET
[Snip]
TWST: What's happening on the solar side?
Mr. Nasdeo: Solar is a very interesting space. The problem with it right now is that there are very few pure play public companies that you can invest in. You see BP (BP), Sharp (SHCAY), Kyocera (KYO), these large companies that also develop solar. It's hard to play solar by buying BP.
One of the more mature companies in the US is Evergreen Solar (ESLR). I think there's a lot of upside opportunity there. They're in the midst of increasing their capacity by going into a joint venture with a company in Germany called Q-Cells, and they're building a facility over there that's going to have a 30-megawatt capacity.
There are some smaller public companies that I don't know as well. DayStar (DSTI) is a company that's got what I consider to be a fairly interesting technology multiple to it. It's still rather young and getting its feet underneath it, but it has an opportunity to also be significant going forward.
TWST: What makes solar interesting? Is it because the economics are finally becoming attractive?
Mr. Nasdeo: They're getting there. People love the fact that solar is renewable, it's sustainable, very clean, and it is very nice technology. So as the costs continue to come down, there's a line of folks who are willing to become involved with it.
Obviously, it's a great distributed generation or remote type of technology. Wherever you've got a decent solar band, you can put a solar array up. You can somewhat easily electrify small villages or remote types of situations like that.
TWST: Where does solar stand on a cost basis?
Mr. Nasdeo: It's getting better, but it's still not as cheap as it needs to be. One of the cost components right now that's a little challenging is the cost of silicon. At this moment, there's a constraint on capacity and consequently the cost of silicon has risen to near all-time highs. That's one of the issues we're dealing with.
Solar is still quite well-subsidized and when that happens, you can do residential solar and get a payback in a three-, five- or seven-year time frame, as opposed to 15 years if you were paying for it out of your own pocket. Those types of situations make it a little more compelling.
TWST: You mentioned Evergreen Solar. Is that the best way to play this space at the moment?
Mr. Nasdeo: I think so. I think that it's a proven technology
To be a real serious company, they need to be at 130, 150, 200 megawatts of output on a yearly basis, and they're just climbing to that right now. It's still a young company on the continuum of development, but I think the upside to it is pretty significant right now. And people understand the silicon solar space pretty well.
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