Canadian Solar (CSIQ) Inks Solar Deal With Cero in Europe
Canadian Solar Inc.’s CSIQ subsidiary, CSI Energy Storage, recently inked a supply agreement with Cero Generation and Enso Energy involving the delivery of 49.5 megawatts (MW)/99 megawatt-hours (MWh) of turnkey battery energy storage solutions. The company’s SolBank products will be part of Cero’s and Enso’s collaboration in the battery energy storage system.
Apart from SolBank, CSI Energy Storage is also accountable for full commissioning and integration services for the projects, along with long-term operations and maintenance, warranties and performance guarantees.
Such deals will assist the company in expanding its footprint in the energy storage realm of the European region. It also opens avenues for CSIQ to penetrate the European battery storage market and increase its customer base for its new products.
Canadian Solar’s Take on Battery Storage
To expand in the global battery storage market, Canadian Solar has been investing significantly in developing its battery storage proprietary products, technologies and manufacturing.
Canadian Solar launched SolBank with up to 2.8 MWh of usable energy capacity, specifically engineered for utility-scale applications, in 2022. Its battery storage total annual manufacturing capacity for SolBank was 2.5 gigawatt-hours (GWh) as of Mar 31, 2023. CSIQ aims to expand the total annual capacity to 10.0 GWh by December 2023.
The company also launched the residential battery storage product, EP Cube, in the U.S. market, Europe and Japan. Such advanced products and capacity expansion plans allow Canadian Solar to gain a larger market share in the battery storage market and expand its revenue generation prospects.
Peer Prospects
The increased penetration of the solar market is instrumental for battery storage market growth. Underpinned by increased investments by nations in solar development projects, the battery storage market may parallelly gain traction. In such a scenario, other than CSIQ, solar players that may be expected to benefit are as follows:
Enphase Energy ENPH enjoys a valuable position in the solar market by manufacturing fully integrated solar-plus-storage solutions. The company expects to ship between 80 and 100 MWh of batteries in the second quarter. It also plans to introduce batteries in a couple of European markets.
Enphase boasts a long-term earnings growth rate of 26%. ENPH shares have risen 16.8% in the past month.
SolarEdge’s SEDG Energy Storage division offers highly efficient DC-coupled batteries that store excess solar energy for powering the home when rates are high or at night. In January 2023, the division commenced the shipment of its new battery cells designed for energy storage applications being manufactured at the company’s new battery cell manufacturing unit in South Korea, Sella 2.
The long-term (three to five years) earnings growth rate of SolarEdge is 33.4%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for SEDG’s 2023 earnings has been revised upward by 13.7% in the past 60 days.
SunPower’s SPWR SunVault offers advanced battery technology that stores solar energy for maximum efficiency and allows more charge cycles than conventional storage systems. In September 2022, SunPower expanded its product portfolio by introducing 19.5 kilowatt-hour (kWh) and 39 kWh SunVault battery-storage products.
SunPower’s long-term earnings growth rate is 26.3%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for SPWR’s 2023 sales suggests a growth rate of 19.6% from the prior-year reported figure.
Price Movement
In a year, shares of Canadian Solar have soared 21% compared with the industry’s growth of 9.2%.
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Zacks Rank
Canadian Solar currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
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