Investors are dumping solar energy shares in the same way users discard worn out panels after their brutally short and punishingly expensive lives.
Any ‘industry’ that relies for its existence on other people’s money never lasts all that long. As Margaret Thatcher put it: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
Having sold inferior product that can only ever produce inferior electricity, panel makers are feeling the full force of the market.
In the US some operators have seen their share prices slashed by more than 70% after booking losses in the hundreds of $millions.
The team from Jo Nova takes a look at the inevitable collapse of the grand solar scam.
Solar Stocks crashed in the last quarter too, down 40% so far this year around the world
Jo Nova Blog
Jo Nova
8 November 2023
Just as the quarterly reporting season revealed crippling losses for wind power and EV’s, so it is with Solar energy.
The general US S&P shares index gained 15% this year but The Invesco Solar ETF (Fund) which invests in solar energy stocks around the world — fell by a dire 40%. Even the US “Inflation Reduction Act” couldn’t save the solar sector. As finances tighten with rising interest rates, apparently solar panel orders are among the first to be cancelled.
Some of the worst performers in the whole US share market are solar shares, with SolarEdge and Enphase losing 70% each this year. A few weeks ago, the CEO of SolarEdge said revenues this quarter were about half of what was expected. He blamed “unexpected cancellations” from European distributors. But US demand was down too. Indeed, the bad news started in California, the largest market in the US, when the government slashed home solar “net metering” payments in April by about 75%. Suddenly, it was going to take 10 years to pay off the panels. Solar panels were a luxury item.
If only solar panels were cheaper, in tough economic times, everyone would want them.
Solar Stocks Shaken By High Interest Rates And Supply Chain Issues
by ZeroHedge, Oil Price
The renewable energy industry is in full collapse mode this week. First, Orsted A/S, the world’s largest offshore wind farm developer, abandoned two major US projects due to supply chain and interest rate impacts, and now solar stocks are being clubbed like a baby seal in US premarket trading on Thursday after solar equipment-makers SolarEdge and Sunrun reported dismal guidance amid waning demand.
That’s a nasty surprise:
Let’s start with solar equipment maker SolarEdge Technologies. The company said current quarter revenues are expected between $300 million to $350 million, far below analysts’ estimates of $718.9 million, as per Bloomberg Consensus data.
This has been a sharp turnaround in the solar industry. The rocket-like growth of 2020 has collapsed. And as long as interest rates are high, nobody is talking about a fast recovery:
What happened to solar stocks? Investors ‘pick up the pieces’ after a brutal earnings season
Claudia Assis reports at Marketwatch,
Just about every major U.S. solar company had big quarterly misses…
Shares of Enphase Energy Inc. ENPH, which sells microinverters widely used in solar-power systems and can stand in as a barometer for solar, among other wares, are down more than 70% in the year. As recently as 2020, the stock drew triple-digit yearly gains; it rose 45% last year.
SolarEdge Technologies Inc. SEDG warned late last month that starting in the second half of the third quarter it experienced “substantial unexpected cancellations and pushouts of existing backlog” from our European distributors, a dip it said wasn’t related to the Israel-Hamas war.
Some residential solar companies in the US are down 55-70% too. These are terrible numbers.
Solar Stocks Still Searching For A Bottom
Beth Kindig, Forbes
Solar is arguably one of the market’s most sold-off industries at the moment,…
SolarEdge and Enphase are among the S&P 500’s worst performers this year, falling more than 70% each; a significant weakening in US demand starting in Q2 worsened with weakening European demand in Q3, causing revenues to nosedive. Residential solar companies SunPower, Sunrun, and Maxeon have all declined more than 55% to 70%, as well.
The decline was sudden in Quarter 3. What was a 25% growth in quarter two, became a 34% fall:
Enphase echoed SolarEdge’s commentary about weakening EU demand, as European revenues fell (34%) sequentially in Q3, after recording +25% QoQ growth in Q2. That’s a pretty swift QoQ decline in European revenues, which Enphase attributed to “high inventory at our distribution partners along with a softening in demand in our key markets – the Netherlands, France, and Germany.”
The near-term outlook for solar has definitely taken a hit from high rates impacting demand – a forecast from Wood Mackenzie/SEIA is pointing to a YoY decline in US residential solar installations in 2024, weighed down by a sharp contraction in California. Overall, the group expects installations to drop (4%) in 2024, dragged down by a (38%) contraction in California primarily due to the shift to NEM 3.0.
STOP THESE THINGS 
Bad news for landfill!
If rooftop solar were practical, it would drive utility-scale power producers out of business… and then where would you be when several cloudy days ensued? It’s Liberal-driven insanity
This article in today’s press says exactly that – the utility-scale solar and wind farms are in dire financial trouble because of the large input from residential roof-top solar in the middle of the day. Current policies are simply not workable. https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/why-the-energy-transition-is-the-end-of-markets-20231115-p5ek30
And the auctioning continues. And, even as Orsted and other OSW developers are pulling out of project contracts, they continue laying submarine cabling in the areas they now say they are not going for award with. As they prepare to rebid on some of the same areas at a higher price.
Please, how does this work? How can our federal government get away with continuing to promote these industries, OSW in particular? Can you help your readers make sense of this seemingly complete disconnect between the fiscal realities (setting aside the catastrophic environmental ones) and the Biden Adm push to have these monstrosities cover our ocean and land—at all cost?
On one hand, it is heartening to read about the fiscal collapse of solar and wind. But at the same time, BOEM is listing call areas and is auctioning off more and more of the Atlantic Ocean to OSW developers. And the feds and states are trying to figure out ways to pump more $ into these industries. How do you reconcile the collapse of wind and solar equities with the continued expansion of these industries across the country?
Thanks for the link discussing the NEM 3 program in CA. The time of delivery (TOD) factor that occurs in September sure brought home the difficulties of keeping the grid up during the afternoon ramp of the duck curve. The Mosquito fire started north of old place on a fine sunny September afternoon.
Someone is going to have to pay all the administrative costs for the new billing system discussed at the end of the talk too. We gave back our PG&E smart meter in 2013 or so as it couldn’t detect our short-term load shifting….. Glad we don’t have to make sense of our bills in CA anymore.
Mark