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Wal-Mart, Home Depot to Push Green Products

Wal-Mart and Home Depot are signalling a change for other Fortune 500 companies to notice: make your products “green”. Wal-Mart is tracking customer purchases of a basket of green products as a first step toward increasing awareness of those products. The world’s biggest retailer said its Live Better Index is a barometer of customer attitudes, based on sales of compact florescent light bulbs, organic milk and baby food, extended-life paper products and laundry detergents in concentrated form or with reduced packaging. New Hampshire is the “greenest” state when it comes to buying products on the Live Better index, Wal-Mart said, with Connecticut, Rhode Island, North Dakota and California also performing well. Wal-Mart plans to become much more “bold” in making green products available to customers. The Home Depot Inc. said Tuesday it will put labels on products in its U.S. stores classifying them as environmentally friendly. Home Depot, the world’s largest home improvement store chain, is rolling out a green product labeling program – “Eco Options” – throughout the U.S. It started the program in Canada in 2004. Labels will point to some 25000 green products including natural insect repellents and organic plant food, front-load washing machines, and light bulbs. […]

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Evergreen Solar Announces Results, New Plant, New Critical Partnerships

Evergreen Solar, Inc. (Nasdaq: ESLR) made four major announcements today: a major polysilicon supply agreement, the construction of a new facility, an alliance with a utility partner to expand its solar reach, and its financial results for the first quarter of 2007. ESLR has signed a polysilicon supply agreement with DC Chemical Co., Ltd. that guarantees Evergreen enough silicon for 1 GW of PV modules through 2014. Shipments will begin in late 2008 and continue through 2014. DC Chemical agreed to purchase 3 million shares of Evergreen Solar common stock for $12.07 per share. Evergreen agreed to issue 4.5 million shares of restricted common stock and 625 shares of restricted preferred stock to DC Chemical. The transaction is expected to close within a week. “The investment of both our polysilicon manufacturing capacity and our financial resources indicates that we believe in Evergreen Solar’s technology, industry vision and management team,” said Hyunwoo Shin, Executive Vice Chairman of DC Chemical. “We hope that with our ongoing support as both a key supplier and a major shareholder that Evergreen Solar will be able to realize the significant market penetration and financial potential of its wafer technology.” Evergreen also announced it will significantly expand […]

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Solar Stocks on Fire

Solar Energy stocks are on a run right now. For Monday, here are some of the results: Canadian Solar (CSIQ) up 24.54% Daystar (DSTI) up 4.32% Evergreen Solar (ESLR) up 3.96% First Solar (FSLR) up 6.01% MEMC (WFR) up 3.52% Solarfun (SOLF) up 35.58% Sunpower (SPWR) up 3.05% Trina Solar (TSL – News) up 17.26% JA Solar (JASO) up 16.53% Chinese solar company Trina Solar and First Solar have outperformed the sector since their IPOs. Trina is up 270.8% since its IPO; First Solar is up 224.7% since its IPO. There was a similar run up in solar stocks in the first quarter of 2006. The sector crashed along with the May 2006 general market correction. At the time, solar stocks were tracking oil prices. That correlation seems to be waning. Sunpower (SPWR) stocks has doubled since July. Over the past four years, revenues skyrocketed from $5 million to $236 million. Earnings are expected to double, from 51 cents a share in 2006 to 98 cents in 2007, and then to $2 in 2008. Sales could reach $680 million in 2007 and $1.2 billion in 2008. David Edwards of ThinkEquity Partners, who rates SunPower a buy, says it ranks tops […]

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AMSC Receives Important Wind Energy Storage Order

American Superconductor Corp. (NASDAQ: AMSC), has received an important order for its power electronics solutions for the global wind power market. The company’s PowerModule(TM) power converter technology has been selected to manage power for a unique wind energy storage system – a new product that is expected to increase the uniformity of electricity from wind farms. AMSC also reported another new order for its D-VAR® reactive compensation product – in this latest case to enable connection of a wind farm in Scotland to the local power grid. AMSC’s PowerModule power electronic converters have been ordered by VRB Power Systems, Inc. (Toronto: VRB) of Vancouver, British Columbia and will be integrated into their energy storage systems. This energy storage technology, developed by VRB Power, has the ability to store excess wind-generated energy when the demand is low, and release it when the demand exceeds the available wind generated power. The storage system has the potential to increase the supply reliability of wind energy and reduce the cost of the reserve requirements from generation plants. This is a new application for PowerModules in the renewable energy space and expands the breadth of AMSC’s offerings in the wind industry. AMSC also reported an […]

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The Power of Green

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