Solar Power Rundown for Monday, March 8

Happy Monday, everyone. It’s all about the lending this morning, as we relay news on solar energy financing programs in three places: Hawaii, Sonoma County and Cambodia. Now let’s get down to business…

Hawaii may become the next state to offer a property-assessed financing option for homeowners who install renewable energy systems, reports The Honolulu Advertiser. Under the program, the state would loan funds to cover the upfront cost of installing, say, a solar electric or solar hot water system. The homeowner would then repay the borrowed sum through an added assessment on their property taxes. The loan — along with the solar power system — would be attached to the property, not the owner, and would remain if the property is sold. A growing number of states, counties and municipalities (like California and San Francisco, to name two) are adopting this approach, broadly called Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing, in an effort to make clean energy systems available to a larger number of property owners.

In related news, this story from the North Bay Business Journal shows that a government’s ability to lend depends largely on investors’ willingness to buy its bonds. Case in point: In a bid to maintain appetite among bond investors, the Sonoma County Energy Independence Program (SCEIP), the county’s PACE program, has set a new requirement limiting the amount of debt homeowners can hold when applying for the program. The new rule stipulates that, to qualify for a loan, a homeowner may not owe more than 110 percent of the market or assessed value of their homes, including energy program loans. Bottom line: investors are wary of underwater properties, i.e. those on which the borrowed amount on a property’s mortgage is greater than the property’s value. Homeowners interested in photovoltaic (PV) installations will likely be the most affected by the SCEIP’s change: “Solar contractors in Sonoma County reacted with surprise to the change.’It was a sudden and extreme change,’ said Nate Gulbransen, president of Westcoast Solar Energy in Rohnert Park. Solar projects, he said, are the hardest hit by the ruling because they are the most costly of energy upgrades.”

The third solar energy finance story comes to us from Cambodia, via Simon Marks of Green Inc. Blog: “With access to solar-powered energy products for Cambodia’s rural poor extremely limited, the solar energy company Kamworks and the Cambodia Mutual Savings and Credit Network are partnering to provide low-interest loans to customers hoping to outfit their homes with solar panels, while Kamworks will provide and install the equipment. Directors at the two companies said the scheme — the first of its kind in Cambodia — will help the country’s rural poor gain access to renewable energy.” It’ll be interesting to see how many Cambodians sign up. I hope many will. But the new joint initiative won’t come without its challenges. Similar programs in other countries — like India’s Noble Energy Solar Technologies (NEST), a maker of solar lanterns — have sometimes struggled with user adoption. It’s difficult, in other words, to convince individuals to stop paying for their lighting and/or energy on a per-use basis, and instead borrow to cover the relatively high upfront costs of solar power. This is particularly true, I’d imagine, when it comes to households living on several dollars a day.

Finally, Chinese solar-panel maker Yingli Green Energy (NYSE:YGE) today announced Q4 results, beating consensus estimates on revenue growth but falling short of earnings expectations, via Reuters. Investors were underwhelmed. Shares were down about five percent in mid-day trading.

That’s all for today — be sure to stay plugged in with GetSolar.