Alternative Energy Investor Discussions

[sleepyhead]

Solar city is a utility company. They are a clean distributed utility company. There is nothing about their business model that sets people free from the utility, empowering them to make their own energy.

Anyone that has the sense to run the numbers can see that they can get a way better deal buying their own system. Leasing is not owning. Leasing is allowing another utility to borrow space on your roof to take all the clean energy credits and tax incentives. And their systems are overpriced at that.

Couldn't have said it better.

This comes from a guy who works in the residential solar industry BTW.

 

[tslafan123]

Addressed in previous page last post. Here

 

[InTheShadows]

Alternative Energy Investor Discussions (formerly SCTY thread)

The maintenance of solar panels is a joke, unless you have a tracking system there are no moving parts. Not even a fan motor. Lease companies pitch maintenance to breed fear to get people to lease the system.

Excluding enphase systems (which we do not install anymore and neither does SCTY) and customers messing with their Internet settings we have had one maintenance call and it was a bad Square D disconnect switch which could have been picked up by any other HVAC or pool contractor. And was not solar specific related.

If we had .40/kWh electricity here we would see payback times of less than 4 years. Then free electricity for 20-30 more years.

 

[TSLAopt]

The maintenance of solar panels is a joke, unless you have a tracking system there are no moving parts. Not even a fan motor. Lease companies pitch maintenance to breed fear to get people to lease the system.

Excluding enphase systems (which we do not install anymore and neither does SCTY) and customers messing with their Internet settings we have had one maintenance call and it was a bad Square D disconnect switch which could have been picked up by any other HVAC or pool contractor. And was not solar specific related.

If we had .40/kWh electricity here we would see payback times of less than 4 years. Then free electricity for 20-30 more years.

If not SCTY, what would be a good solar company to go to to buy/install solar panels in the northeast?

 

[InTheShadows]

Alternative Energy Investor Discussions (formerly SCTY thread)

And people do care about getting free from the utility. We ask everyone that we come in contact with why they want solar and by far the number one response is freedom from or to stick it to the utility company.

Energy is a necessity in most countries and there is a monopoly on where you can get it from. You are paying big oil and the utility companies or you can choose solar and an EV and own your own energy instead of having to buy or rent it every week/month.

Solar and ev are so hot right now because the world is seeing a chance to get free from the people that are holding them in bondage to energy.

If gas goes to $30/gal tomorrow what can you do to avoid paying that? If electricity doubled next month, what can you do to avoid paying that.

Why isn't solar city in my market area? It's because we pay .10/kWh for electricity and their model doesn't work here. But I can sell solar in this market because my installers are super efficient, but no where near as efficient as solar city's and we charge a fair price for solar. Not the double inflated price that solar city charges so they can get their investors a bigger tax credit and more MACRS depreciation.

I pretty sure we are installing solar for half of what SCTY is charging and I know they are getting way better material pricing than we are and their installation labor costs are probably 2/3rds our cost if not better and I'm sure their installers are getting 50% more per hour than our guys are just because they are mostly in CA.

If our company was as efficient as SCTY and we had their material pricing I would probably be installing solar for 1.50-2.00 per watt and making 25-30% gross margins. That's less than a 3 year payback in California.

 

[kenliles]

The maintenance of solar panels is a joke, unless you have a tracking system there are no moving parts. Not even a fan motor. Lease companies pitch maintenance to breed fear to get people to lease the system.

Excluding enphase systems (which we do not install anymore and neither does SCTY) and customers messing with their Internet settings we have had one maintenance call and it was a bad Square D disconnect switch which could have been picked up by any other HVAC or pool contractor. And was not solar specific related.

If we had .40/kWh electricity here we would see payback times of less than 4 years. Then free electricity for 20-30 more years.

Shadows , what portion of that would you assign to tax and other credits. In other words, if there were none what would the equivalent story read. 6 year payback to free power? Less? No doubt state dependent, but what would estimate based on your experience?

 

[InTheShadows]

Shadows , what portion of that would you assign to tax and other credits. In other words, if there were none what would the equivalent story read. 6 year payback to free power? Less? No doubt state dependent, but what would estimate based on your experience?

I'm not sure I understand your question. What would the payback be with no incentives for .10/kWh and .40/kWh?

 

[kenliles]

I'm not sure I understand your question. What would the payback be with no incentives for .10/kWh and .40/kWh?

Yeah, I was just curious if the payback would appreciably take longer without the credits under the same conditions. Trying to get a general understanding of the impact of the current govt support and the impact if it went away. On a large scale utility level, my understanding is we're getting close to parity with current rates without incentives. I was curious (in a very general sense) on a residential install, if no tax or other incentives were available what would the payback be compared to applying those credits today

 

[InTheShadows]

Yeah, I was just curious if the payback would appreciably take longer without the credits under the same conditions. Trying to get a general understanding of the impact of the current govt support and the impact if it went away. On a large scale utility level, my understanding is we're getting close to parity with current rates without incentives. I was curious (in a very general sense) on a residential install, if no tax or other incentives were available what would the payback be compared to applying those credits today

I just sold a 14kw system for $33k tonight. It will make roughly 15.5mwh/ year.

At .11/kWh (this customer) with no inflation and no incentives is 19 years.

At .40/kWh with no incentives and inflation at our solar irradiation level is 5.3 years. With the tax credit it is 3.7 years.

This site has a .96 orientation factor and a .95 shading factor, so this is realistic production and not optimized.

 

[kenliles]

I just sold a 14kw system for $33k tonight. It will make roughly 15.5mwh/ year.

At .11/kWh (this customer) with no inflation and no incentives is 19 years.

At .40/kWh with no incentives and inflation at our solar irradiation level is 5.3 years. With the tax credit it is 3.7 years.

This site has a .96 orientation factor and a .95 shading factor, so this is realistic production and not optimized.

Perfect. Just what I was wondering. Thanks Shadows

 

[Mario Kadastik]

To some extent you guys are lucky with net metering or what ever it is you call where you produce kWh credits and then use those credits when the sun ain't shining. In Estonia the scheme is different. If you use for your own usage, then of course that's free electricity. If you sell to the grid you actually sell it at the hourly price. If you buy back you buy at the hourly rate + all the other fees of which the biggest of course is the utility line transfer fees + connection fee + various taxes. So you sell say for 5c / kWh and you buy back in the night for ca 3c/kWh + ~4+5c/kWh of fees. Therefore making it a net loss. To alleviate that a bit there is a subsidy for all kWh sold to the grid where you get 5.4c/kWh that should balance out the transfer fees and you original sold electricity is probably more expensive than what you bought it back for. But the end result is that the true savings only come for power you yourself use, the rest is a measly 2-3c/kWh at best with the subsidy. With the irradiation lower than what you guys are talking about (at my location I get about 860kWh per installed kWp per year) the economics don't really work out that well. If I did my math right my break even price is 40 years assuming continuation of current electricity prices. Of course if the prices were to go up a lot that changes, but right now it's not really cost effective to install PV's unless there is some major subsidy by the government in addition to the ones already in place (the per kWh subsidy).

 

[FluxCap]

Should have bought JASO calls yesterday when I considered it.

 

[sleepyhead]

Should have bought JASO calls yesterday when I considered it.

Analysts are finally catching up to what I have been saying about JASO for months now:

Northland Capital initiates JASO with outperform rating and a $19 PT (87% upside):

http://www.streetinsider.com/Analys...s+Co.,+Ltd.+(JASO)+at+Outperform/9336142.html


Now lets see how long it takes the market to figure this out and finally give JASO a price it deserves...

 

[The Blue Owl]

Should have bought JASO calls yesterday when I considered it.

I got lucky with my April 19 calls. I sold half today for 100%. I'm gonna let the rest ride a bit longer as a continuation of my speculative bet. I'm okay if I lose it.

Yeah, it's gambling, but within reason gambling can be fun (when you win ).

On edit: Now I feel bad, I didn't mean to gloat, but after the scolding I got when I announced my original buy, I earned it

 

[c041v]

I got lucky with my April 19 calls. I sold half today for 100%. I'm gonna let the rest ride a bit longer as a continuation of my speculative bet. I'm okay if I lose it.

Yeah, it's gambling, but within reason gambling can be fun (when you win ).

On edit: Now I feel bad, I didn't mean to gloat, but after the scolding I got when I announced my original buy, I earned it

I got rid of my 21JUN JASO10's for something less than that, but still a decent gain. I'm taking Sleepy's "Buy n' Hold" advice and will start accumulating shares on the next dip... assuming there is one :d In hindsight, I could have gone more aggressive with the strike, quantity and, expiration but, I've started to become more principled lately avoid short-term expirations. Less gain, sometimes less pain.


I also sold some Covered 19APR CSIQ 36's and 19APR SPWR 35's today. Not worth a whole lot, but this is a page out of the Curt Renz playbook.

*I accidentally entered my 4 digit password into the "Limit Price" category and got a first ever "Your limit price is far off the current market price" warning. Hehe.

 

[sleepyhead]

I got lucky with my April 19 calls. I sold half today for 100%. I'm gonna let the rest ride a bit longer as a continuation of my speculative bet. I'm okay if I lose it.

Yeah, it's gambling, but within reason gambling can be fun (when you win ).

On edit: Now I feel bad, I didn't mean to gloat, but after the scolding I got when I announced my original buy, I earned it

Nothing wrong with buying a very small amount (relative to your portfolio) of short-term calls as a "gamble" just for fun, as long as it is significantly less than 1% of your portfolio or more like less than 0.1%; and because you are doing it after the stock has tanked significantly and you think that it is due for a short term bounce.

What I don't like to see is that some people are "investing" in solar stocks using short term options, because they are "undervalued" and should go up. I don't think that is the right way to play it for many reasons that I pointed out: wide bid/ask, time value, max-pain, MM manipulation, etc.

The key is to be able to know when to cash out once your options are ahead and this is the really hard part. You did a good job to cash out half of your Apr. $12's IIRC, but do not be surprised to see the other half expire worthless. I hope to be wrong, but max pain is at $12 and getting closer to $11, so I don't think the $12's will finish ITM.

 

[The Blue Owl]

Nothing wrong with buying a very small amount (relative to your portfolio) of short-term calls as a "gamble" just for fun, as long as it is significantly less than 1% of your portfolio or more like less than 0.1%; and because you are doing it after the stock has tanked significantly and you think that it is due for a short term bounce.

As a percentage of my total holdings, it's on the lower end of that range. But it's half of an experimental account that I started with very little cash. I am taking much higher risks there (with respect to the total in that account), in order to have a shot at turning it into real money relatively quickly (i.e., without waiting 30 years.) As I said, it's an experiment.

What I don't like to see is that some people are "investing" in solar stocks using short term options, because they are "undervalued" and should go up. I don't think that is the right way to play it for many reasons that I pointed out: wide bid/ask, time value, max-pain, MM manipulation, etc.

The key is to be able to know when to cash out once your options are ahead and this is the really hard part. You did a good job to cash out half of your Apr. $12's IIRC, but do not be surprised to see the other half expire worthless. I hope to be wrong, but max pain is at $12 and getting closer to $11, so I don't think the $12's will finish ITM.

I agree with all you've said.

I don't plan to hold until expiration, I'm just hoping for the rise to continue in the following days (yes, my calls are $12 strike). If it doesn't, I lose most of the profit, but I'm okay with that in exchange for the possibility of a higher return.

BTW, forgive my ignorance, but when you speak of max pain, are you referring to the strike with the maximum open interest?

 

[sleepyhead]

Max pain refers to the option expiration day closing price of the underlying security that would inflict maximum pain (minimum gain) for all of the put and call option holders for the expiration date.

It is not necessarily the strike with most open interest. You have to look at all strikes to calculate this number. There are many websites that will do this for you. But max pain is a moving number as new contracts exchange hands every day.

Those who sold the options (market makers) have an incentive to move the stock price towards max pain; and solar is very easily manipulated, so that is why it is very hard to make money with short term options.

You made money on your $12's because you bought them when JASO was $9.50 - $10, and max pain was $12. But this theory does not always work, so you can't use it to your advantage either. One day max pain is $12, but then the MM sell a bunch of $9 calls or $10 puts and all of a sudden max pain can shift towards $10 in a heartbeat.

 

[The Blue Owl]

Thanks, I learned something new today.

 

[kenliles]

Max pain refers to the option expiration day closing price of the underlying security that would inflict maximum pain (minimum gain) for all of the put and call option holders for the expiration date.

It is not necessarily the strike with most open interest. You have to look at all strikes to calculate this number. There are many websites that will do this for you. But max pain is a moving number as new contracts exchange hands every day.

Those who sold the options (market makers) have an incentive to move the stock price towards max pain; and solar is very easily manipulated, so that is why it is very hard to make money with short term options.

You made money on your $12's because you bought them when JASO was $9.50 - $10, and max pain was $12. But this theory does not always work, so you can't use it to your advantage either. One day max pain is $12, but then the MM sell a bunch of $9 calls or $10 puts and all of a sudden max pain can shift towards $10 in a heartbeat.

that does sound painful-
stick with stock and/or LEAPS for solar imo
(discounting very small known casino plays of course)