HOKU Goes Higher
Hoku is still going higher today, after winning a 10 year supply contract, the stock has blown over above 100% just last week.
The stock is moving steadily all day, and reaching +28% as of today.
The chart looks like this:
Jun's 14 HOKU original news:
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Shares of Hoku Scientific Inc. (HOKU.O: Quote, Profile, Research) rose before the opening bell on Thursday after the supplier of silicon used in electricity-generating solar panels said its unit, Hoku Materials, received a 10-year contract worth about $678 million to supply polysilicon to Chinese solar panel maker Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. (STP.N: Quote, Profile, Research).
Labels: HOKU
Solar Stocks Performance 2007
Here is the performance of the leaders within the solar energy sector, for the first 6 months of 2007:
(as predicted, the small solar sector outperforms the rest of the market sectors)
FSLR - NASDAQ - First Solar Inc
+183%HOKU - NADSAQ - Hoku Scientific
+151%TSL - NYSE - Trina Solar
+70%
SPWR - NASDAQ - SunPower Corp
+60%
WFR - NYSE - MEMC Elect. Mat.
+35%
DSTI -NASDAQ - Daystar Tech.
+18%ESLR -NASDAQ - Evergreen Solar
+13%STP and
CSIQ are almost neutral since the start of the year, and the only loosing stock from this list is
ENER at -19%
Adding up, this group of stocks is up
51,4 % on average.
For benchmark comparisons, the
S&P500 is up
6,35% for the last six months.
Here is the top performer 6month chart, FSLR:
Labels: DSTI, ENER, ESLR, FSLR, HOKU, Solar Stocks, SPWR, STP, TSL, WFR
CSIQ - Canadian Solar Inc.
Latest news:
Construction on Canadian Solar's new solar module project to beginShanghai. June 5. INTERFAX-CHINA - Canadian Solar Inc. will begin construction of a new solar module manufacturing line with an annual capacity of 250 megawatts at its Changshu plant in Jiangsu Province in mid-June, an official from the company said today.
CSIQ is down 2% and is still the under performer in the solar industry sector, when compared to other stocks like STP, TSL and FLSR.
Other recent news from CSIQ:
Canadian Solar and city Solar AG partner on large-scale solar farm projects in Germany and Spain Co has commenced delivery of solar modules to City Solar AG, Germany for a series of large-scale, ground-mounted solar farm projects. The deliveries are part of an annual project sales contract CSI signed with City Solar in January, 2007 to supply approx 31 M.W of solar modules to 7 specific projects in Germany and Spain. About half of the projects are expected to be completed before Dec 31, 2007. The contract is worth approx 80 to 90 mln Euro. The co expects to deliver 4.2 M.W solar modules by July 2007 for the first project in Germany. Deliveries for the other projects are expected to start in June and July, 2007.
Labels: CSIQ, Solar Projects
40% efficient solar cells
Scientists from Spectrolab, Inc., a subsidiary of Boeing, seem to have broken the latest performance record of efficiency in photovoltaic solar cells.
The solar energy industry keeps growing not just in producing capacity but in technology achievement and cost efficiency, probably surpassing the other alternative green energy methods in the following years.
Full news article from
physorg.com:
40% efficient solar cells to be used for solar electricity By Lisa Zyga
Scientists from Spectrolab, Inc., a subsidiary of Boeing, have recently published their research on the fabrication of solar cells that surpass the 40% efficiency milestone—the highest efficiency achieved for any photovoltaic device. Their results appear in a recent edition of Applied Physics Letters.
Most conventional solar cells used in today’s applications, such as for supplemental power for homes and buildings, are one-sun, single-junction silicon cells that use only the light intensity that the sun produces naturally, and have optimal efficiency for a relatively narrow range of photon energies.
The Spectrolab group experimented with concentrator multijunction solar cells that use high intensities of sunlight, the equivalent of 100s of suns, concentrated by lenses or mirrors. Significantly, the multijunction cells can also use the broad range of wavelengths in sunlight much more efficiently than single-junction cells.
"These results are particularly encouraging since they were achieved using a new class of metamorphic semiconductor materials, allowing much greater freedom in multijunction cell design for optimal conversion of the solar spectrum," Dr. Richard R. King, principal investigator of the high efficiency solar cell research and development effort, told PhysOrg.com. "The excellent performance of these materials hints at still higher efficiency in future solar cells."
In the design, multijunction cells divide the broad solar spectrum into three smaller sections by using three subcell band gaps. Each of the subcells can capture a different wavelength range of light, enabling each subcell to efficiently convert that light into electricity. With their conversion efficiency measured at 40.7%, the metamorphic multijunction concentrator cells surpass the theoretical limit of 37% of single-junction cells at 1000 suns, due to their multijunction structure.
While Spectrolab's primary business is supplying PV cells and panels to the aerospace industry (many of their solar cells are used on satellites currently in orbit), the company envisions that this breakthrough will also have applications in commercial terrestrial solar electricity generation.
The research that led to the discovery of the high efficiency concentrator solar cell was funded partly by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and will play a significant role in the government’s Solar America Initiative, which aims to make solar energy cost-competitive with conventional electricity generation by 2015. The company has said that these solar cells could help concentrator system manufacturers produce electricity at a cost that is competitive with electricity generated by conventional methods today.
The Spectrolab scientists also predict that with theoretical efficiencies of 58% in cells with more than three junctions using improved materials and designs, concentrator solar cells could achieve efficiencies of more than 45% or even 50% in the future.
Citation: King, R. R., Law, D. C., Edmondson, K. M., Fetzer, C. M., Kinsey, G. S., Yoon, H., Sherif, R. A., and Karam, N. H. “40% efficient metamorphic GaInP/GaInAs/Ge multijunction solar cells.” Applied Physics Letters 90, 183516 (2007).
http://www.physorg.com/news99904887.htmlLabels: photovoltaic, solar cells, Solar Energy Products
