Evergreen Solar
Evergreen's costs are running at more than $2 per watt, which just doesn't cut it these days. Photon Consulting says the industry's average crystalline silicon PV module cost is running around $1.67 today. Evergreen's Chinese manufacturing operations are poised for a mid-year commercial launch, which should help bring costs to a more competitive level, but I continue to fear that it's too little, too late for this old timer. Despite my concerns, someone out there is still willing to throw more money at this company, with Evergreen placing $165 million of 13% convertible notes later in the week.
Several firms came out with forecasts for 2010 global solar installations over the past week. Gartman sees a range of 8 to 10 gigawatts (GW), Barclays is calling for 11GW, and iSuppli projects 13.6GW installed. Worldwide PV installations last year came in around 7.2GW, so iSuppli is really sticking its neck out on this one.
On Tuesday, Canadian Solar preannounced its results, and surprised some people by the magnitude of its euro foreign exchange losses. Some analysts, like Mark Bachman, foresaw this issue, but Canadian Solar's projected gross margins of 13% to 13.5% undercut even those cautious analysts' low expectations. Canadian Solar shares are down around 17% on the week.
On Wednesday, concentrating PV player Amonix raised $129 million in additional venture capital. The solar developer has been around since 1989, making the company almost as old as SunPower
Wrapping up the week was an announcement by SunPower that it's partnering with Flextronics