More bloggage and quotes from Intersolar in SF...

SunPower. Suntech. And Abound Solar. At least two winning PV suppliers.

Andrew Beebe Managing Director Energy Solutions SunTech America

• "There will be no concentrating photovoltaic market at all."  Beebe has years of experience in CPV (prior to his current c-Si firm) and declared that the price of high accuracy tracking in HCPV is just too expensive when polysilicon is at $50/kg. "You just can't do it," he said
• Andrew wanted to know why Travis foreacast an enormous number for the CIGs solar market.  Travis threw the hot potato to Shyam Mehta (my colleagues, now possibly no longer talking to me).  Shyam, ranted about binomial distributions and declared that the chance of one or two of the CIGS companies will succeed is quite high. 
• "Ultimately, utilities are one of the most risk-adverse entities in the world. They are driven by policy and regulators."
• "We are in the domain of the big now. We are not massive but getting into the wind size.  A couple of things change then – as you get in to the domain of the big – vertical integration of the business is a necessity. We are going to see a de-verticallization of the industry."

Julie Blunden, VP Public Policy and Corporate Communication at SunPower

• "U.S. business is about half of our global business."
• "Years ago, we decided to verticallly integrate and we decided to diversify geographically."
• "We have the largest dealer network in the world"
• "We need to have our defensive gloves on as people recognize that we are a disruptive technology. The volatility around friction and disruption of politics is hard to predict."
• "Module price alone does not a systems price make."
• "The horse race on LCOE between thin films and c-Si is not over."

Travis Bradford, is the solar industry's Delphic Oracle.  He's been covering the solar market (through the Prometheus Institute and PV news) since long before solar was a global multi-billion dollar market.

He set the stage for today's sold-out event at Intersolar show in San Francisco.

The State of the Solar Industry: Re-Defining the PV Market

Here are some of his observations:

On Foreacasting in This Turbulent Market

• "Solar really has come into its own."
• "Now that we're moving from a supply constrained world to a demand constrained world – we needed a methodology to understand the nuances of that – the tricky part is figuring out the demand side."
• "2009 was forecast to be a rough year due to price drops and due to the fact that the Spanish program fell off the cliff."
• "We fully expect a 10-gigawatts global market by 2012."
• "We also think that Germany is the biggest risk in the forecast."

United States of Solar

• "While California is considering a feed-in tariff, Germany is moving to a "California based model."
• "The U.S. is now potentially the world's largest demand market."
• "Half of the world's polysiicon is manufactured in the U.S."
• "The reason why the U.S. is such a good story is because we are rapidly approaching unsubsidized grid parity."
• "People at the state level are realizing that the jobs are at the installation level – unexportable jobs"
• "By 2015, with a 1 percent rise in grid electricity pricing,  some two-thirds of the U.S. market will be below grid-parity
• "The U.S. is going to be an extraordinary market."
• "If this industry is going to be a revolution – now is the time."

More to come from today's event...

While Suntech, Kyocera, Sharp, Samsung, First Solar, SunPower, and the others jockey for leadership position in the solar panel market, SMA has quietly become the dominant force in the $2 billion dollar PV inverter market.

Inverters are the heart of a solar installation. Here's a quick review:

The inverter is the connection between the solar array and the electric grid. DC power produced by photovoltaic solar panels must be converted to AC power in order to be harnessed and matched to the electrical grid, whether at the residential, commercial, or utility level.  DC-AC inverters perform this function.  The inverter:

• Converts DC power to AC power

• Controls the PV system

• Reduces potential voltage interruptions

• Provides some level of performance monitoring

SMA's Monster Market Share

SMA Solar Technology is the leading pure-play PV inverter vendor with deep technological acumen, a wide-ranging product line, and a strong global sales-channel.  SMA has a global market share of greater than 35 percent, is ramping up production and will continue to win market share due to a strong patent position, aggressive R&D (5 percent of sales goes to R&D) and industry-leading inverter efficiencies of up to 98 percent. It builds inverter systems for grid-tied as well as off-grid systems.

According to charts in a recent SMA report (and if my three months of German lessons are any help)  SMA's 38 percent market share gives them more market share than the combined shares of the next four vendors (!). Those four vendors are Ingeteam, Fronius, Kaco, and Siemens.  It also looks like most of those Tier 2 players lost market share to SMA in 2008. And the "other" vendors, all 169 of them, are left to split up the remaining 35 percent of the market.

There is no player in the panel market with anything close to that dominance.

According to this chart from the same June general meeting at SMA – its 2008 annual sales were $954 million, more than double the previous year.

The Biggest Inverter Factory

Just recently SMA inaugurated its new 18,000 square meter solar inverter factory, which takes its annual production capacity to 4 gigawatts. SMA claims that the new factory has the lowest possible energy requirements and includes its' own 1.1-megawatt solar installation (to capitalize on the Alaska-equivalent German sun).

The CEO of SMA, Günther Cramer, is right to gloat that: "The inverters being the heart of every photovoltaic system already significantly contribute to an emission-free energy supply.  With our CO2-neutral inverter production we even go one step further. Today we can show that an advanced production on industrial level can be done with a minimal environmental footprint. As the worldwide leading producer of solar inverters we now intend to initiate a trend towards CO2-neutral factories."

Any aspirant in the centralized inverter market is going to have to go through SMA.

If you were a business owner and wanted to take steps to reduce your carbon footprint – it would be helpful to actually assess and understand your carbon footprint in order to get a baseline measurement.  

The business of estimating, monitoring, reporting, and reducing greenhouse gases (GHGs) is known as Enterprise Carbon Accounting and there's a bit of a land rush in this emerging sector.  It's a software-as-a-service function and a lot of firms have jumped into the fray - all of them attempting to automate and simplify the carbon and energy accounting process for the home and business.

There has been a lot of activity from software giants (Microsoft's Hohm, SAP's acquisition of Clear Standards, Google's interest) as well as plenty of VC investment (KP's investment in Hara, etc.).

According to Groom Energy, a consulting organization in this field, 3000 organizations worldwide have calculated their firm's carbon emission and the number of organizations using ECA software is expected to quadruple in the next three years.  

One of these ECA software firms is Noblis. Noblis, amongst other things, is a nonprofit proponent of environmentally sustainable business practices.  They have been a relatively quiet player in this field but are now starting to make some noise.

I spoke with Mile (pronounced Millie) Corrigan, principal systems engineer and principal architect of Noblis' TEAL (Total Emissions Analytics) ECA product.  TEAL is a suite of analytic tools to help organizations assess and plan their sustainability strategies in order to reduce their carbon footprint and reduce their energy usage.

"The quicker businesses can automate their GHG accounting, the quicker they can manage their cost savings." says Corrigan. 

The software model generated by the Noblis software provides the user with "sliders" that allow the enterprise to play with the variables that influence their carbon footprint.  For example, the firm could use the software to see how increased telecommuting would affect the firm's footprint.  The software can be used to evaluate "what-if" scenarios and examine the emissions impacts of changing corporate practices and policies.

TEAL also has a return on investment (ROI) component for analyzing investments in greening IT equipment and lighting.  According to Corrigan, their software "is like Turbo-Tax and will help companies get the info they truly need." 

Businesses usually want to do the right thing but there's a lot of confusion on how to get this carbon footprinting thing done.  Software like that from Noblis can make this process a little simpler.

Some more ECA resources:

Green.Noblis.org – a resource for news and information on climate and sustainability topics.

Groom Energy has written a report on this nascent market with 51 vendor profiles here.

Most of the methodology used to calculate carbon emissions comes from the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).

In a solar market burdened with shrinking margins, pressure to vertically integrate, and looming consolidation – how does a startup survive?

Please forgive the blatant self-promotion – but I am moderating a panel at Intersolar next week aiming to answer those questions and wanted to give you the low-down.

Executives from six solar startups across the value-chain are going to be speaking, a few for the first time in a public forum. We'll discuss their technologies but we'll also delve into their strategies for overcoming the current economic malaise and for scaling-up to meaningful volumes.  We'll talk about the challenges they face, the new funding options available from the feds, and how they're going to make their mark in the solar industry.  There will be time to ask questions and opportunity to engage these folks one-on-one.

We'll hear from startups working in:

• CIGS (AQT)
• c-Si (1366)
• CdTe (Primestar)
• Balance of System Electronics (Tigo)
• Medium Concentration Solar (Skyline Solar)
• High Concentration Solar (Soliant)

Date: Thursday, July 16, 2009, 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Location: San Francisco's InterContinental Hotel  Level 3 – Grand Ballroom C

Speakers include:
 
Applied Quantum Technologies – A practical pathway to high volume, low cost TFPV production  
Brian Bartholomeusz, VP, Operations and Business Development, AQT

PrimeStar Solar – Thin Film Technologies 
Dr. Brian R. Murphy, Chairman, CEO and Founder, PrimeStar Solar
 
1366 Technologies – Enabling Terawatt Photovoltaics 
Craig Lund, Director of Business Development, 1366 Technologies
 
Tigo Energy – Optimizing Solar PV Installations and BoS  
Jeffrey Krisa, Vice President Marketing and Sales, Tigo Energy
 
Skyline Solar – Advantages of High Gain Solar (HGS)  
Dr. Bob MacDonald, CEO, Skyline Solar
 
High Energy Density Virtual Grids for Municipalities  
Marco DeMiroz, CEO, Soliant Energy

More details here

I hope to see you there!