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I agree it's frustrating. But then again, it is so thinly traded that very small amounts can move the stock significantly. Also, lately it has been following oil very closely.
There is an interesting take on the YMB today, where a piece from December says that Eos got an award for a 10MW/40MWh project from PG&E. That should translate into 10*8 = 80 units of Ideal Power's 125kW converters, which in turn should translate into approx. $3m in sales. Adding to the 14.5MW order, equivalent to almost $5m in sales, announced in November, their 2016 expected sales is approaching $8m, granted that the PG&E project is built in 2016.
If so, it would mean a 100% growth from 2015 sales, with all other deals being counted as a bonus
But of course, nothing is certain, and a further drop in the market and/or oil will most likely destroy even more of IPWR's share price.
Patience is a virtue...
The silence is deafening
Seems that Mr. Alexander's disclosed plan to sell a small fraction of his shares may have been at least partly responsible (along with general market carnage of course) for the the drop share price, so thin is the volume on this stock!
I wonder what ever became of EOS's 8GWh of preliminary orders? It represented some ~$500m in revenue for Ideal, albeit over several years.
We can expect Q results within 3 weeks I guess, but I was hoping (expecting) a more proactive update from the company about backlog, their 125kW unit up-take, VFD application, and B-TRAN progress.
I have a pretty decent tolerance for price swings and realistic expectations on timeframes, but when both are bearing down on my investment.. it's more difficult to be optimistic.
News: Ideal Power Partners With Austin Energy on US DOE-Funded Projects to Integrate Solar PV and Storage for Commercial Sites
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/1240055.htm
Nothing particularly notable about this news, however...
Could Ideal Power be involved here?
http://powersource.post-gazette.com/powersource/consumers-powersource/2016/01/19/Nonprofit-offers-160k-for-sustainable-energy-solutions-West-Penn-Power/stories/201601190004
At least, they have a partnership with Aquaion.
I'd like to think it's fund unwinding its position given recent market turmoil, but the combined volume since the start of the year is peanuts.
The company has been pretty silent though.. and silence together with a slipping PPS, often doesn't bode well.
Yeah, it is really tough, especially because there is no news as far as I know. It could, however, be that a competitor is advancing. But then again, the volume is fairly low - I think a sell-off could even be triggered by a single fund liquidating it's position.
It could be really bad news looming, or it could be a great buying opportunity. But with no news, it's all a gamble.
Times like this make it tough to be long on a stock. I'd established a very decent position in IPWR over the months, but not at these prices.
I'm comforted by the fact that Ideal Power's market cap is only $53m at the current PPS, and that that is far far to low. I'm also comforted by the fact that the volume is still quite modest during this sell off, and that it's surely tied to the larger market slump we're seeing.
Still, a little good news out of the company wouldn't hurt -- if only to help dissipate the fear that somebody may be selling because they know something.
I hope so too, thanks for keep on posting here.
Ideal has been consistently saying they're not getting into the residential market because the numbers weren't there. And while I believe they meant that the business case for an installer or a home-owner wasn't strong to fund a solar+storage setup, it still seemed like a reasonable small (?) effort for them to release a sub-30kW inverter anyway, as they shouldn't much care about the ROI or financial viability of residential installations as long as they have acceptable margins on their products.
Here's an article that studied the financials of 4 and 6kW residential Tesla Powerwall installations in Australia. It's interesting to get the insight.
http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2016/01/tesla-powerwall-2016-pricing-number-crunch-and-payback-times/
The conclusion was for Solar+storage using Powerwall and net-metering, the payback was 21-23 years. Payback for off-grid entirely, was 17 years. All calculated with Australian electricity costs, of course, which are higher that in the US (but similar to some European countries).
It's been a while since we've had news. I hope there is something good very soon.
They get a good amount of money in shares Link
Maybe a little too much if the company doesn't deliver this year.
Interesting 4: Statement of changes in beneficial ownership of securities Link
Sonnenbatterie beats Tesla to the punch with US roll-out
Read more: http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/sonnenbatterie-beats-tesla-to-the-punch-with-us-roll-out_100022513/#ixzz3uhJik5YQ
Actually, Dynapower provides inverters for the Powerpack, which is the C&I to grid-scale battery storage solution from Tesla.
With that said, it's a thing I've noticed that there seems to be a lot of buzz about the residential scale energy storage, although it is the C&I market that is alive and kicking, along with some grid-scale projects. Why? I think it may be due to a lot of competition currently going on within the residential market to gain market share. We see several players making announcements on product releases, although players within the C&I space (including Ideal Power) say that the residential market is not profitable yet. But new releases typically take 6-12 months to hit the marketplace, and maybe then a year or two to ramp(?). Thus, to be up and running by the time the residential market is becoming profitable, one probably needs to get going by now. But what about Ideal Power? Well, they do not necessarily need market share now, because they may be able to simply replace existing providers at a later stage if their products are indeed superior. Thus, they can afford to wait a few years, as compared with the system developers, who need to grab market share already today.
Yes I really don't understand why Ideal isn't going after the residential space - since whether or not it makes economical sense doesn't affect them directly. As long as their pricing still provides them with normal margins....
Part of me wonder is Tesla is undercutting the market simply to get a foothold. In 10 years (or whenever the batteries need replacing), any customer with a Power Wall will surely need/want to buy replacement cells from Tesla. It's the inkjet printer revenue model.
75 MW backlog for competitor Dynapower due to Tesla Powerpack orders:
http://cleantechnica.com/2015/12/13/75-mw-storage-inverter-backlog-dynapower-energy-management/
That's encouraging. Even more encouraging is the spec of their 250 kW bi-directional inverter: 96% peak efficiency and the physical size is 1x1x2 m and weighing 1500 kg. If only Ideal Power can get their switch working! Size does not necessarily matter in all locations, but where it does Ideal Power could get a huge advantage.
From what I understand about the nature of the partnership between Ideal and GreenCharge, yes.. Ideal's inverters would be part of the package delivered to Duke.
Could Ideal Power also be involved here?
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/duke-energy-teams-up-with-green-charge-networks-for-behind-the-meter-batter
California added 11MW of behind the meter batteries in Q3
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/California-Added-11-MW-of-Behind-the-Meter-Batteries-in-Q3
The lack of licencing deals is a good point.
I assume that the stock would really start to take off if/when a licencing deal is struck with one of those behemoths.
There may be several reasons, but maybe they want to strengthen their worldwide IP protection first? Another explanation may be the lack of a working bi-directional switch. Or it could simply be that both testing and negotiating takes time.
Dan has been talking about the Bi-switch/BTRAN as being a key to open market verticals with "entrenched" players. I interpret that as huge licencing possibilities - if they succeed and are not beaten to it.
Thanks for your insight, vidar.
I guess I'm puzzled that Ideal hasn't yet bagged any big name manufacturers with an IP licensing deal (like ABB, Schneider, GE, etc).
The PPSA concept seems like it should be relatively easy to integrate into existing product lines.
There may be testing and IP talks underway, but I'd have expected results & announcements by now, beyond what's already been made public. Perhaps we'll learn of something soon...
In the short term, it shouldn't be too relevant for Ideal Power, because they and GE are obviously targeting different markets.
With that said, I also noticed some of the wording:
“In terms of technology, we are using technology from our medium-voltage drives, which is fairly standard technology, and scaling that up.”
“We would be using the same technology as we’re taking from oil and gas and marine and using it in a solar farm, so you would have solar farms with DC-AC, big inverters of 20-30MW.”
Thus, it does not seem to be new technology but rather existing technology. Therefore, I presume that Ideal Power has come a longer way in terms of innovative (and superior) technology. But I'm no expert, so I wouldn't be totally sure.
Then there was the talk about moving from silicon to silicon carbide. I find the last sentences to be very positive also with respect to Ideal Power's development:
“This will further increase the efficiency of the converters, reduce the losses by half, increase the power density by close to 50% and continue to drive the cost of the electricity down by 2, 3, 4% in both wind and solar,” explained Vlatkovic.
“So there’s a long runway for continued innovation to drive the cost down and the efficiency. It’s a very exciting time to be in this space, and we expect to continue to innovate,” he concluded.
This is exactly what Ideal Power is pursuing also, and they have already come a long way.
An article about GE's plans for a 30MW inverter.
http://www.pv-tech.org/news/ge-eyes-20-30mw-solar-inverters-as-it-outlines-next-gen-technology-plans
I've no idea of the relevance of this to Ideal's products and strategy. Is their PPSA IP applicable here, and could it still be licensed by GE for use in such behemoth inverters? Clearly at that scale, the unit size, weight (and noise?) are far less a concern, but does PPSA still provide an efficiency, cost, and safety advantage?
I know there are many reasons insiders sell shares, but to see Mr. Baum liquidate half his holdings was rather a bummer, given where I'd expect he knows this stock is headed in the next 24 months.
Then again, other directors with far far more shares are not selling.
Bullish article on from the Globe And Mail about the Germany solar+storage market that mentions Sonnenbatterie.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/sun-and-wind-power-are-great-until-the-weather-doesnt-co-operate/article27396400/
There is a similar report from RMI (Rocky Mountain Institute) about storage. A long and very detailed research paper about the trends, technologies, and economics of storage (grid-tied and non). It also paints a very rosy future for a tech like Ideal has that works with all solutions.
I'm happy to continue waiting. Discovering a stock like this one too early can be frustrating, but is still better than discovering it too late.
Reading material for the weekend...
Lazard just recently came out with a report which is interesting reading and quite relevant to our little company. I haven't been able to dig into it too much yet, but I thought I'd share it with the rest of you.
https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-storage-analysis-10/
Some snippets:
“Although in its formative stages, the energy storage industry appears to be at an inflection point, much like that experienced by the renewable energy industry around the time we created the LCOE study eight years ago,” said George Bilicic, Vice Chairman and Global Head of Lazard’s Power, Energy & Infrastructure Group. “Based on our analysis of storage technologies and our experience with LCOE, we expect to see rapid declines in the costs of energy storage.”
Highlights from the study include:
Even without subsidies, certain storage technologies are already cost-competitive with certain conventional alternatives (for example, lithium-ion batteries for certain power grid support applications). Other storage technologies are close to being cost-competitive in other applications, and costs are expected to decline in coming years.
The transformational scenarios envisioned by some renewable energy advocates – such as residential energy storage systems paired with solar panels to take consumers “off the grid” – are still very expensive without subsidies.
If industry projections materialize over the next five years, cost-effective energy storage technologies will have increasingly broad applications across the power grid, such as providing an alternative to conventional gas-fired peaking plants in certain areas.
(emphasis added by myself)
I find it interesting that Lazard seems to agree with IPWR management that residential implementation has a ways to go before it pencils out financially. Focusing on industrial applications seems to be the way to go here.
IPWR is still flying under the radar to most. I only expect the SP to remain at these levels for another quarter, maybe two. As such, I consider it a gift and am continuing to add to my meager position when able.
Cheers to those of us who found this company during the "formative stages" of the energy storage industry, and to those who have the patience to see it through.
Good luck to all.
ffoggy
re Sonnenbatterie: In re-reading the CC transcript, it occurred to me that the following paragraph may possibly portend something relating to the upcoming "surprise" Sbatterie announcement:
"Our new partner Sonnenbatterie also progressed into volume orders and during the quarter provided their first volume order totaling 1.5 megawatts for deployment in the U.S. and we expect that relationship to continue to scale in 2016."
I had not realized previously they had placed a "volume" order. That in itself is good news. Just speculating -- we'll see.
Interesting article on testing of vehichle-to-grid (V2G):
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/uc-san-diego-nrg-to-test-electric-vehicles-that-can-charge-the-grid
The question for IPWR investors, of course, is: is Ideal Power involved?
I don't know, but these excerpts offer room for speculation:
UCSD now hosts 23 Level 2 chargers and three fast-charging DC stations on campus, Washom said. That number will rise to about 70 in the coming months
and further:
But it’s still not going to make much of a dent in the microgrid’s overall operation. On a typical 42-megawatt load, “a population of 70 EV chargers operating simultaneously at 30 kilowatt-hours is not that significant,”
That correlates well with IPWR's latest order including the grid-resilient 30 kW converter and also including deliveries to California. But it could also be, if it is indeed Ideal Power converters, belong to another part of the backlog (I assume the kilowatt-hours is just a misunderstanding).
As of today, of the 4 analysts now covering IPWR:
Oppenheimer as "Outperform" with a target of $17 (+112%)
Roth Capital as "Buy" with target of $17 (+112%)
Craig Hallum as "Buy" with target of $18 (+125%)
not sure who the 4th one is...
Crazy. Down 4% today before the earnings report, and another 1% after hours. The market is completely oblivious to this company's potential. I'm freakin' delighted to have been able to take such a substantial position in this company at these prices. IMO, 2016 will see Ideal Power thrust onto the global stage and finally receive the attention of the investor community.
This stock is an easy double from here by EOY 2016 (I'd expected much sooner but they are still soooooo undiscovered). And it still packs a potential 10x in 4-5 years from now.
Great conf call today -- the company is firing on all cylinders. Wake up Mr. Market.. you have a giant in the making....
Well done Tyk!
The only thing I might add was that (as I surmised earlier --see post 243) Gexpro was evidently behind the recent large 14.5MW order, which portends an increasing order flow from them. Their previous was 5MW approx 3 months ago, so a 3-fold hike in a short time frame. And now with a customer financing partner & a potential foothold in Hawaii, its looking good for them.
Of course many other irons in the fire, as you noted. Dan did also mention Sonnenbatterie in passing, not mentioning anything in particular that I recall other than them being "a powerhouse BESS player in Germany", but I remembered Vidar's recent post about them making a surprise announcement later this month. I'll be interested to hear to what extent IPWR will be involved with it.
A few snippits from the call just now:
Backlog as of yesterday is 22MW (so including the 14.5MW recently PR'd)
power conversion market today is $50bn, will be $70bn by 2020
BESS payback is typically 3-5 years
project financing is a key enabler for turn-key solutions, most partners that don't have it already are working on adding it
GexPro just added this, and will soon announce their "Fortune500 partner" to cover project financing for their clients
will announce "additional channel partners in the coming weeks, and their names will be familiar to those who follow this market"
expect 125kW units to be the majority of the backlog from now on
a new customer in Asia will be announced by EOY
Asia TAM will likely rival that of the US, but not for another couple of years
Solar integrators are adding BESS to their mix, and expected to start placing orders soon. They bring an existing pipeline of business to the table.
Took a multi-unit order from Enerdell for mobile power military app
Boeing project for distributed generation: testing done, customer demo in Q4
VFD demo underway at UofTexas (doing a direct comparison with world leader in VFD). Results of that will impact their go-to-market strategy
First EU B-TRAN patent expected tomorrow
No need to raise capital .. orders are "self funding"
4 firms covering IPWR now (incl C. Hallum, Roth, and recently Oppenheimer)
Have "IP licensing discussions underway with another potential licensee with significant market opportunity", may be several months before this closes, if at all.
Will seek Australian certification in early 21016 -- see much C&I opportunity there
BTRAN: initial results expected in early 2016, getting more excited about its potential as they progress.
Some of the new/forthcoming partners will rival GexPro in terms of their order pipeline
More Tesla people to join Sonnenbatterie in Germany:
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/top-members-of-teslas-german-team-defect-to-sonnenbatterie
Sonnenbatterie clearly scaling up their sales team before they are to make a major announcement on November 25th. It would have been brilliant if they announced an integated product featuring "Ideal inside", but I don't expect it. Instead, maybe Ideal can get inpass into their product globally if they deliver the goods in the US?
Thanks for the advise!, they also have configurable email alerts, very useful.
The company has a shiny new website. And in their 125kW datasheet they've noted the CEC efficiency as "best in class" (at 96.5% average).
Very nice move up. slow and steady, just the way I like it. I am contemplating an additional purchase, lets watch and see how it responds the morning after. will there be a pull back or a continuation of that steady push forward.
I wonder why the customer's name was not revealed.
My 1st guess would be Gexpro, since if I remember correctly, they placed a 5MW order 3 months ago, for which the market took a loud, drawn-out yawwwnnnn. If so, the 3-fold expansion in a few months would indicate meaningful traction going forward from just one source.
Alternatively, I would second-guess that, because IPWR revealed their name on the previous order, but not this time -- and why would that be? Soooo, my 2nd guess would be Enerdell, given that today's PR indicated Hawaii as one of the destinations, which is a haven for micro-grids, one of Enerdell's speciality areas.
Either way, the market seemed to be more engaged with the news than previously, or at least since the secondary offering.
Incidentally, the company has quoted a range of between 2000 and 4000 annual units sold (of the 30kW units) in order to reach cash flow positive (ref: http://seekingalpha.com/article/2675555-ideal-powers-ipwr-ceo-dan-brdar-on-q3-2014-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single )
That's 60MW (to 120MW) annually.
Assuming the same numbers can be applied for their 125kW units (i.e. margin per W is the same), at the low end of that guidance today's PR was precisely the amount they need to sell each quarter to generate positive cash flows.
$1.16 OK too?
Up 15% on 10x volume is a good sign. And IMO 15MW orders will not be PR worthy in a few more quarters.. it'll be just SOP.
Looking forward for the call on Nov 10.
Yes, I agree with tykundegex. I consider the lack of exposure a gift which will not last very much longer. I've been adding as much as I can afford over the last few months.
Yes, this company is very much under the radar. Most people here, IMO, aren't surprised by the news or the rise is share price today. Personally I'll be yawning until we pass $15...
I belive we could see a $1 today. That would be a nice advance.
Welcome to the board ADVTECSOL! I believe 2016 will be a very good year for IPWR, and the rest of us as their business ramps up. I foresee some upward revisions from the analysts as the numbers come out.
Been on the sidelines for a while watching. I took a some what small position this morning (1K shares)
lets see where she goes.
Nice: http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/1226674.htm
14.5 MW from existing clients for CA and HI. So that adds about $3.5 million to the 2016 backlog. Nice to see this traction!
The article does not contain any date, so I'm suspecting that it might be discussing the Powerwall and Powerpack pre-launch way back in March.
Regarding inverters, if I remember it correctly, Straubl claimed that they were aiming to produce everything in-house, even the inverters, and that the economy of scale would bring the price of inverters down more than 50%. With that said, Dan Brdar said at the same time that when Ideal Power enters the residential market, they may either compete with Tesla - or cooperate with them. And as I understand it, the Ideal Power multi-port converter is superior to any inverter, especially if you want your system to also connect to the grid, because you would then need two inverters to get bi-directionality and two more for multi-port capability, thus four inverters. But I am no expert, so I might get it wrong...
Tesla is getting into the C&I / utility space now too:
http://greenvirals.com/this-new-tesla-battery-will-power-your-home-and-maybe-the-electric-grid-too/
Unless I'm mistaken, Ideal's IR replied that the Israeli converter company that Tesla had chosen was incapable of providing > 20kW, multi-port or bi-directional capabilities, which would surely be required for this new offering. If that's the case, surely Tesla needs a new power converter partner, no?
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