As Obama made history tonight with his acceptance speech for President Elect of the United States of America one of our favorite companies (along with many others in the solar industry) has shot up to $50 from its low of $33 on October 8th. This company is SunPower Corporation (SPWRA) and you can follow the data chart from Google Finance here.
Energy strategist Elliot Gue was quoted as saying “An Obama administration is likely to be very aggressive in subsidizing
and promoting alternatives, including a windfall tax on oil firms to
support development of alternative energy” and Obama himself has made similar claims in his speaches and political debates with John McCain.
Energy plans under Barack Obama’s administration will call for producing 10% of the United States’ electricity from renewable energy by 2012 and then grow to 25% in 2025. Currently America only produces 3% of its electricity from renewable resources (not including hydroelectric plants).
SunPower has been a great stock, albiet suffered in recent months due to the economic downturn and earlier this year as energy stocks were devaulated after they rose so high. SunPower designs and manufactures photovoltaic (PV) solar panels and produces some of the highest efficiency technology in the industry, averaging 22% across all of their models while the industry standard is closer to 15%! Furthermore, their panels are used in the residential, commercial and utility-scale markets which means that they benefit from tax incentives at all levels. Their All-Black panels especially, are favored among home owners for their visual appeal, and SunPower recently won a contract with a Florida-based utility company called FPL to
build the largest PV plant in North America in DeSoto County.
Many other solar stocks have soared over the past few days (and are looking bright for the weeks to come) including Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd (STP), JA Solar Holdings Co Ltd (JASO), and First Solar Inc (FSLR), not to mention Google which has been investing heavily in alternative energy and has been way down since May and has a five star rating by Standard & Poor’s.
