Solar is breaking out [FSLR] [SPWR]

As I believed would be the case, solar has finally put in a serious bottom and is now breaking out across the board.  FSLR is now at $48 and SPWR is pushing $16 again.  In this post I called nearly the exact bottom for Sunpower (and solar in general).  Of course, such calls are for financial entertainment only.  However, it was not a random call.  The main reason I thought SPWR was bottoming was that it looked like the 5th of a 5th wave down.  In other words, everyone who was going to sell (or go short) had already done so.  The price back then was $3.77.  The current 52 week range is $3.71- $16.04 so I missed it by 6 cents.  Of course there is a lot of luck involved in getting that close, but anyone lucky enought to have bought at that price is now showing paper gains of several hundred percent and I think the shares will go much higher from here over time.  The solar industry needed to shake out the weaker players.  And the smaller guys did get shaken hard. 

While solar is not going to replace fossil fuels anytime soon, there is something very elegant about the silent energy producing sentinals that I have always found compelling.  Clean, renewable, self-generated (and thus self controlled) electricity is never going to go out of style.  It not only lowers or eliminates your monthly electrical bill but, done right, it leaves you with lights and air conditioning while everyone else on the grid is threatened with rolling brownouts.  In fact, news articles are circulating in central Texas about that right now.  We are being told that we have almost no capacity margin to handle peak loads.  This is coming at a time when they are putting in smart meters.

Anyone who is paying attention should be able to see the setup coming.  First they keep electricity rates lower than they should be in order to get everyone accustomed to overconsuming.  Then, once everyone is hooked on gobs of cheap electricity, they stop increasing the capacity and then they put in the means to start billing based not only upon how much usage occurs but also when the usage occurs.  As soon as the economy gets better they will be talking carbon tax again.  Tax, tax, tax.  That's all these a$$holes know.  I can pretty much guarantee you that they are planning to stick it to the middle-upper middle class with high electricity rates over the next decade.  When that finally happens, the cost of solar will be affordable again on a relative basis with grid provided electricity and all of the subsidies will go away.  Poor people will just have to live with the heat like people used to do in the region before air conditioning.

In recognition of what I think is a foregone conclusion, I recently moved forward with a purchase of 15.3 kW of solar panels.  These are excellent quality Q-Cell 225 watt panels.  Sure, they don't have the power density of the new 260 or 280 watt units, but how does 59.7 cents per kW delivered to my back yard sound?  To me it sounds like a 30-50% savings or more.  I plan to pair these up with Enphase M215 inverters.  There is still a nice $1.20 per Watt subsidy ($10k max) from Encore and of course the federal government is giving free money away on these programs as well, up to 1/3 of the cost ($10k max) delivered as a tax credit.  So in other words, if you pay taxes you get to keep some more of your money.

The system will have a 25 year guarantee on solar panels and 25 years on the M215 inverters.  I'm working with a local solar installer who will basically be buying the inverters and doing the install for the cost of the rebates I will be receiving.  The first 10kW will go in at about $1 per watt.  I'm still trying to figure out if I really need the other 5.3kW so if it goes in it will be a 2nd phase.  I think that total cost of solar installations still has some downward room to fall, perhaps quite a bit.  Inverters are probably the main place where additional competition will bring prices down.  When I first started gathering materials, the Enphase was $150 + shipping.  Now, just a couple months later (and before I have actually purchased any) I am finding them on the web for $130 + free shipping.  That's a pretty rapid decline and so I suspect that new competition is going to drive these below $100 in the next 12 months.  Unfortunately, I probably can't delay the install for more than a few more months so I will probably have to over pay for inverters a bit in order to finish this project up.  Our biggest challenge right now on this is fighting the HOA Nazis who don't want any solar but who are up against a Texas law that disallows them from banning it.  So they are paper hanging us with requests for a bunch of stuff that ultimately won't matter.  We will have solar installed this year.