Solar Sliding: A quick glance around recent news reports is pointing to an industry wobbling like a bowl of Jello.

Hotair ^ | 11/14/2023 | Beege Welborn

[SeekAndFind]

While it’s been a disaster in the wind industry lately (and fun as the dickens to cover) (Did I tell you Ørsted’s CFO and COO got the boot?), I hadn’t really had a chance to check in with the solar half of the big Green dream. You know, see if things are shaking out or just shaky?

A quick glance around recent news reports is pointing to an industry wobbling like a bowl of Jello.

Although I do like “clubbed like a baby seal” – that’s pretty descriptive.

And it’s once again all based on the fantasy that the Green energy sector is cheaper and will eventually be self sustaining – “eventually” being the operative word. It has been decades and billions and billions poured into the grift, with goverment mandates to ensure our cooperation, and still the second the environment shifts, the renewables are completely unable to cope, less mind survive.

They are too dependent on perpetual handouts and perfect conditions, having never made any moves to become real live businesses, who can adapt as needed to less-than-perfect conditions..

Shares of Canadian Solar were falling sharply after the company fell short on quarterly earnings and sales.

It’s the latest in a line of solar companies struggling in a high-interest-rate environment.

…The broader solar industry has been having a tough time lately—largely due to high interest rates, which have made it more challenging for consumers to finance solar installations. This year, Canadian Solar stock has dropped 36%, Array Technologies (ARRY) has fallen 23%, First Solar (FSLR) has declined 3.1%, Sunrun (RUN) was off 56%, and Enphase Energy (ENPH) has plummeted 67%.

Good Morning from #Germany, where another green stock gets hammered. SMA Solar falls to a new 2023 low due to an order slowdown which puts risk on 2024 estimates. Despite billions invested in the energy transition, all German green stocks have lost a lot of ground in 2023. pic.twitter.com/Cjx4dnYMw7

— Holger Zschaepitz (@Schuldensuehner) November 9, 2023

Surviving by feeding at the government trough alone.

Things were looking up for the U.S. solar-power industry. The Inflation Reduction Act, the climate legislation that passed in August 2022, boosted the savings of anyone looking to go solar, among its several clean-energy incentives.

A little over a year later, however, investors sentiment about solar, particularly residential solar, is at a trough, the IRA notwithstanding.

“After a painful earnings season, we look to pick up the pieces and move forward,” James West, a analyst with Evercore ISI, said in a note Tuesday.

Just about every major U.S. solar company had big quarterly misses. Invesco Solar ETF TAN is down nearly 40% this year, contrasting with gains of around 14% for the S&P 500 index SPX.

Around the country, folks are waking up, too. Much as opposition to wind has blown up organically, so, too, has citizen pushback to massive solar farms ruining the landscape and destroying valuable farmland for installations. Rural communities are passing “no renewable installations” regulations in order to protect their land from large scale renewable developers before they can get their hooks into landowners. This latest I found was in Kansas.

Companies will not be allowed to build wind and solar farms in Harvey County. The Harvey County Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to ban commercial wind and utility-scale solar renewable energy projects in the county.

The new regulation still allows personal wind and solar energy installations, such as those used at homes, and limited-scale solar construction.

That fact that these Green energy grifts gobble up so much territory for so little return really is the shocker when push comes to shove. There’s nothing uglier.

State governments – even those deep into the climate cult’s clutches – have been backstabbing the industries they themselves have pushed on their own citizens, and slipping the shiv into those very same citizens at the same time. California, one of the most rabidly renewable states in the union – if not the worst – has managed to shiv every solar panel purchaser in the state in the back. It’s now fixin’ to do the same to farmers and, say, like, apartment buildings who also have arrays that are shared.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has released a proposed decision that is expected to be harmful to the value of rooftop solar for renters in multifamily housing, farms, and schools.

The decision sets hard limits on how much electricity produced by rooftop solar can be self-consumed by multi-meter properties. The policy effectively forces customers to first sell their solar production to the utility, and then buy it back at higher rates.

…California’s rooftop solar market has already taken heavy blows to demand in recent months as Net Energy Metering (NEM) 3.0 was implemented, a move that dramatically slashed compensation rates for exporting excess solar production to the grid.

Despite warnings from the industry, environmentalists and California residents that the move would be a devastating blow to residential solar, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) moved forward with NEM 3.0, gutting the value of sending excess local solar generation to the grid.

And despite assurances from NEM 3.0 proponents that the industry would weather the storm and readily start attaching batteries to customer systems, demand is now forecast to fall by nearly 40% in California through next year, according to Wood Mackenzie. The problem has been exacerbated by rising interest rates that have worsened the loan packages offered to customers.

There is little point to taking on the excess burden of rooftop solar payments and maintenance if there isn’t some sort of benefit to be received from it besides #FeelGoodz .

Your electricity still goes off, but now you’re paying more, plus a hefty payment on the solar system you bought from whatever company?

That math doesn’t add up, at least for a rational consumer. As a cultist YMMV. I don’t see them selling them at the rate they were able to previously.

All of this is “endangering America’s environmental goals.” (And I know it’s paywalled – I just loved the headline)

Clean-Energy Stocks Have Collapsed. What Comes Next.
Stocks related to wind, solar and other forms of renewable energy have fallen by a third this year. Only a handful may be ready to rebound.

Clean-energy stocks are suffering through their worst slump in years, causing the industry’s value to tumble by tens of billions of dollars and endangering America’s environmental goals.

Major auto manufacturers like General Motors (ticker: GM) and Ford Motor (F) have delayed plans to roll out electric vehicles. Offshore wind developers are canceling or delaying projects that were expected to provide millions of Americans with carbon-free electricity. Homeowners, even in climate-conscious states like California, are buying fewer solar panels for their roofs. And green-power producers known for offering steady, reliable dividends have lost their veneer of safety. Rising interest rates have posed the gravest challenge to the industry, but supply-chain problems, inadequate electric transmission infrastructure, and competition from China are hurting, too.

Good. Because you know what else was endangered?

Us and our way of life.

And I’m 100% #TeamUS

[rllngrk33]

Major auto manufacturers like General Motors (ticker: GM) and Ford Motor (F) have delayed plans to roll out electric vehicles. Offshore wind developers are canceling or delaying projects that were expected to provide millions of Americans with carbon-free electricity. Homeowners, even in climate-conscious states like California, are buying fewer solar panels for their roofs. And green-power producers known for offering steady, reliable dividends have lost their veneer of safety.

Lots of good news in this little blurb at the end.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Best Feel-Good article of the day!

I love how towns and counties are passing laws preventing corporations from building wind and solar “farms.” Needs to happen everywhere.

[bitt]

p

[Lockbox]

Government giveth and government taketh

[Iron Munro]

Solar is just another leftist feel-good scam.

Millions of homeowners are going to be left owing money on marginal home solar installations that produce no savings.

Then there are all the holes in their roofs.

And the need to remove the solar panels when the house needs to be re-roofed.

And the thousands of ugly sight-sore solar farms that are a blight on the countryside.

[ronnie raygun]

Government scam gets everyone on board rich “remember solyndra”

[Blueflag]

Small scale solar has its role- powering remote devices and structures where utility power is a no go. It also does a fine job as an adjunct power source and a backup for residential applications.

Utility scale solar is a joke.

Ps we have solar + battery on our home and know it works quite well.

[EandH Dad]

This was pretty much inevitable because it was never market driven but government driven. Government can’t fund this crap forever.

[EandH Dad]

This was pretty much inevitable because it was never market driven but government driven. Government can’t fund this crap forever.

[Qwapisking]

“the best example of natural solar energy is contained in a cord of wood” L.Star

[GranTorino]

Great point about wood.
Could say the same for corn as food.
Not fuel.

[cymbeline]

“Ps we have solar + battery on our home ...”

How much capacity? Is it your only source of electricity? I’ve thought about getting some amount of solar+battery.

[Chickensoup]

You carbon producing beast!

[oldtech]

Well, I could see this coming some time ago,unless there had been some big breakthrough. If there are any broken solar arrays(and there are, I think) this might be a good time to just cut your losses & let them go. I think by now it’s been pretty well proven that the “green energy” hasn’t been consistent enough in sufficient quantity that it’s time to go back to something that works 24-7 & be done with it. Although I would admit that in certain smaller applications that there might be some niche markets where it could be satisfactory. It’s just not a source of power that can be depended on at all the times when you need it. Same goes for the wind generators.

[wita]

I love how towns and counties are passing laws preventing corporations from building wind and solar “farms.” Needs to happen everywhere.

In reality it should be State Legislatures and Public Utility Commissions that should be making rules and legislating against the obvious environmental insanity in all it’s forms that masquerades as scientific reality.

[cyclotic]

There was a solar manufacturer with plants in Michigan and Mexico that was a large customer of my former employer. I spent a lot of time at the Michigan plant as a technical advisor for the product we went them. I realized what a scam they were pulling when I asked how much manufacturing used solar power, especially when they could build their solar array for free.

Zero. They were 100$ on the grid.

They went belly up about 15 years ago. Good riddance.

[wita]

Government can’t fund this crap forever.

Government can’t fund a crap sandwich, unless you and I willingly or otherwise, provide the funds needed.

...and we are such willing slaves along with those in the Congress tasked with our protection, just going along with the scam.

They think fences around the Capitol, threats and intimidation will keep out two hundred and fifty million PO’ed Americans, wanting retribution for the crap sandwich they are going to eat before things right themselves.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

They do not need our taxes. They plan to just keep up the one to two trillion dollar deficits forever. We are at an accumulated debt of $34 trillion and the annual INTEREST is a trillion. The debt curve looks like the launch of Falcon Heavy.

They keep pretending this green crap will work. They keep teaching little kids in school about climate catastrophe. The kids grow into unthinking drone adults parroting the party line and supporting the trillions wasted on green energy. “Green” companies keep recycling their federal money to the Dem pols making them rich who, in turn, pass more “green” monstrosities like the IRA which pretend it will work if only there’s enough federal money thrown at it.

The whole system really stinks at every level.

[Blueflag]

I am out on errands. Will send you a proper reply later.