How's that solar energy doing? SunEdison on the verge of bankruptcy

I was just outside, solar energy is strong.

 

SunEdison's financial issues have nothing to do with the solar energy industry. Other companies are going strong. SunEdison was just led by horrible management, that Chatila guy is a disaster.

 

One Of The Largest Coal Companies In The United States Just Filed For Bankruptcy
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/01/11/3737929/arch-coal-files-for-bankruptcy/

taxpayers aren't going to have to pay to clean up after bankrupt solar firms.

 

One solar company doing poorly equals the entire industry.....?

 

Solar Trolling is doing very well.

 

Has it has for millions and millions of years.

 

Uh huh... But what about the industry as a whole? Isn't that what you're thread titled asked?

 

Yeah, I've been following this story and the solar industry generally for a professional interest. The collapse has been quite entertaining to watch (though I feel sorry for the employees).

This. Though they aren't the only solar players in trouble. NRG, for example, quickly ramped up their solar business and are now trying to unload it because it's a giant money pit for them. It's a nascent industry and a dangerous place to operate. NRG's problem is they didn't have enough appetite to sustain losses to build scale. SunEdison had the opposite problem, too much appetite given their resources. SolarCity is still walking the tightrope though, with a management that has taken risk but not too much risk, and a shareholder base that understands and accepts the proposition. When SolarCity fails, then I'll worry about the industry. Right now, this is just capitalism doing its thing. Meanwhile, solar is still growing like crazy in markets where it has grid parity.

 

Great thread - aren't solar and wind energy doing great in the past decade or so?

When Crackpot Rojo starts ranting about something it's probably a good indicator that that thing has become widely validated.

 

Energy players are really trying hard to murder alternative energy. They already lowered down the prices to all time low... if they can only put e-coli like what was done to Chipotle, they'd do it.

 

The oil and gas industry is one of the largest consumers of solar panels... low oil prices have caused the energy sector to stop drilling and stop purchasing new solar panels.

 

Not been following lately, but thought wind was doing much better than direct solar as far as large scale. Considering how cheap oil has been, I would think the solar industry has to be sweating some...though that sweat is probably shared by a lot of sectors.

Caveat: My information is old.

 

None of those industries exist without oil and in most cases coal.

 

They aren't a good measuring stick. There was a shift in investor sentiment last summer -- a market correction, I'd say, where investors realized perhaps that the solar stocks were flying a little too high (and maybe they saw that because SUNE was getting so aggressive). SUNE and a couple of others saw stock prices drop because investors started to get skeptical. SUNE was probably flying the highest of all of them at that time, really stretched out with investments to grow as fast as possible and relying heavily on the continued high price of their stock to make deals happen. When the stock market drew back, it started this vicious cycle where bad news begot more bad news. Long story short, I'd say SUNE was a victim of its management taking too much risk, not some larger shift in the marketplace that made success harder. You don't question the industry over the fortunes of one company. Smartphones weren't dead, for example, just because RIM made bad choices.

I don't see that at all. For one, energy is a big place. You have oil & gas players, coal players, electricity generators, electricity utilities, electricity retailers, and others. I'd say most in the electricity business are trying to catch the wave, not kill it. The partial exception are utilities which see it as an existential threat, but the reaction is divided, with some utilities trying to fight it and others trying to leverage it.

Coal companies probably want to kill solar, but natural gas is already taking their lunch money right now, so they don't have any time to worry about solar.

Oil & gas may have incentives to not like solar, but neither do they seem to be opposing it (other than their obfuscations on climate change science). The low gas prices do slow the growth of solar, but I'm sure Big Oil wasn't targeting solar with that. A number of them are invested in solar or other renewables themselves (Total, Shell, and BP come to mind). If IRRs for solar continue to improve, probably more investments will follow.

 

Another negative side effect to Obama's Iran deal - lower oil prices which suppresses alternative energy.