Time Is Energy

200 MW of PV panels, not a big deal?

I am sometimes fascinated by the markets, and what makes them tick, or in this case yawn.

This morning I noticed that SPWRA was up about 65 cents (~3%) on low volume. SPWRA can trade up/down 10% in a day so this was not a big move, but at least it was up! There was a news item--so I clicked on it and up pops a major news story:

SunPower wins a 200MW order for PV panels from Southern California Edison.

I did a double take...a 200 MW order?

"SunPower Corp (SPWRA.O) will supply 200 megawatts of solar power capacity to Edison International"

Yup that says 200MW. And I found a few other new services confirmed the report.

The two largest solar plants in the US are located at Arcadia FL ~25MW (finished in 2009) and at Nellis AFB ~17MW (finished in 2007?).

This one purchase is 5 times as big as the two largest plants currently in the US combined! (The largest international solar plants are about 50MW.)

The panels will be put on various SCE customer facilities in 1-2 megawatt installations over 5 years.

SunPower's total sales in the most recent reported 12 months were $1.4B, and this order is worth at least 0.4B or 30% of last year's sales...it will be spread over several years but this still strikes me a major win.

Considering that SunPower is trading only ~10% above its 52 week low, I'd expect a win like to really move the stock...I keep checking the stock throughout the day. It drifts slowly upwards ending the day plus $0.92 (up 4.5%) on volume ~1/3 less than average.

Talk about a fizzle...and a yawn. Did other people just not see this?

posted by Daniel @ 2:47 PM