Last week, Suntech Power--the world's fourth-largest solar cell maker--opened its U.S. headquarters in San Francisco.
According Investor's Business Daily...
The U.S. was the third-largest market for solar panels last year... But China-based Suntech says abundant sunshine and leadership from states such as California will propel the U.S. to the top of the market within five years.
Suntech's sales in America are still small, accounting for just 3% of its $599 million in revenue last year.
But that could change in a heartbeat. With oil prices spiking above $90 a barrel, US companies are increasingly seeking alternatives to save on energy costs. And that means a long, sustained bull market in solar energy in general, and Suntech in particular. Just take a look at the Suntech chart below:
California leads the U.S., with an 11-year, $3.4 billion initiative to subsidize solar panels on up to a million roofs. Other states have weaker incentives. Analysts say it will take a large national incentive program to drive more U.S. demand.
In fact, by 2011, solar panels must be offered as an option on all new homes built in California.
And that is providing Suntech with an opportunity to take the solar market mainstream.
A Solar Panel on Every Roof
You see, Suntech is pushing building-integrated photovoltaics. What is BIPV?
According to wikipedia:
Building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) are increasingly incorporated into new domestic and industrial buildings as a principal or ancillary source of electrical power, and are one of the fastest growing segments of the photovoltaic industry.
The idea behind BIPV is to reduce the installed cost of a PV system by making a photovoltaic module (solar panel) in the form of a building element such as a roof tile, roof membrane or facade panel. In general BIPV modules are designed to look nicer.
Here's an example of BIPV in the image below:
The CIS Tower, Manchester, England, was clad in PV panels at a cost of £5.5 million. It started feeding electricity to the national grid in November 2005.
BIPV is still a small part of Suntech's business and the overall solar market. But that's rapidly changing for this BIPV stock.
It's also one of the reasons why Suntech opened its US headquarters in San Francisco.
Suntech's 2 Major BIPV Projects
San Francisco is the site of two of Suntech's key projects in the U.S. In addition to its recently completed 500kW solar system at the San Francisco International Airport's Terminal 3, Suntech has also partnered up with a smaller California-based solar technology company to provide a glass-on-glass building integrated PV (BIPV) solar system at the California Academy of Science which demonstrates growing traction for the company's BIPV products in the U.S.
This is huge. And like I said, it's only going to get bigger.
Just this week, the former oil production chief of Saudi Arabia, Sadad al-Huseini said that global production has reached its maximum sustainable plateau and that output will start to fall within 15 years, by which time the world's oil resources will be "very severely depleted."
In an exclusive interview, the former head of exploration and production at Saudi Aramco, said that oil production had reached a structural ceiling determined by geology rather than geopolitics, and that the technical floor for the oil price will rise by $12 annually for the next 4 to 5 years as new fields become increasingly costly to exploit.
This is the golden era for alternative energy, especially solar. In fact, the world is going through an epic energy transition. As the world leaves the Age of Cheap Oil, other sources will make up the shortfall. Solar will be one of the main sources of energy that makes up that shortfall, and Green Chip Stocks readers will profit from the leading solar energy stocks .
To learn more about BIPV, and the stocks we're scrutinizing, I've prepared a special report on one of the best opportunities available in the market: [http://www.angelnexus.com/o/web/2968]
Sincerely,
Jeff Siegel
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