The first solar report published by Merrill is called 'The Sun will shine, but pick your spots' and includes stock ratings and recommendations of solar energy manufacturers. These include a positive assessment of SunPower, a Californian solar firm, and a neutral one Evergreen Solar, based in Massachusetts. The bank already covered some solar stocks in Asia.
According to the bank, one of the main reasons for the high prices of PV material that demand far outpaces the supply of energy grade silicon. Analysts do not agree on the expected timeframe in which this problem will ease, however most of them point at some moment during 2007 or 2008. Other factors cited by the bank as crucial for the solar market are well known by the industry: tax incentives, other government subsidies (such as feed-in tariffs) and cell capacity growth.
"There is enormous potential in this market" recently said J Peter Lynch, a solar energy Analyst. "You could double the industry yearly and it still wouldn`t be a blip on the world energy market". The total electricity capacity installed worldwide is today some 2,500 times the solar photovoltaic yearly production, so the growth potential is obviously huge.
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