SolarCity’s recent purchase of the solar panel manufacturer Silevo appears to have been interpreted quite positively by the market, based on the accompanying surge in solar stocks.
While SolarCity’s own stock of course saw the largest rise, other significant rises accompanied it — with many no doubt being, at least partly, triggered by the acquisition.
SolarCity’s stock price has risen by about 25%, ReneSola by about 10%, Canadian Solar by about 9.3%, Yingli Green Energy by about 8%, JinkoSolar by 6.8%, JA Solar by about 6.7%, and Trina Solar by about 6.6%. Of course there are other factors that played into these rises –for instance, Yingli’s advertising presence at the World Cup.
The most interesting part of the acquisition, and perhaps responsible for much of the gain, was Elon Musk’s announcement that SolarCity will be funding the creation of a new 1 GW manufacturing plant in Buffalo, NY, that will allow Silevo to benefit from greater economies of scale.
Musk’s specific wording on that subject was that, with the construction of a larger plant for manufacturing Silevo’s high-efficiency solar panels, solar power would become “way cheaper” than power from fossil fuels.
Hmm.
In other “Elon Musk news,” it appears that California is still a possibility with regard to the location of Elon’s Gigafactory. The populous state recently made aggressive new moves intended to attract Tesla’s big prize with the introduction of California Senate Bill SB-1309.
Said bill will/would remove a great many of the bureaucratic and legal obstacles that led to Tesla looking elsewhere to begin with. It’ll be interesting to see what happens — my bet would still be that Nevada and Texas appear to be the most likely locations, though.
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