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Overview of the renewable energy industry

Investing in renewable energy: The solar power industry (Part 1 of 24)

Before you begin

This series follows up on last week’s series about the thermal power generation equipment industry. This is the equipment used in coal-fired, natural gas-fired, and nuclear-power-based electricity generation.

In that series, we discussed the current state of the industry, opportunities, and some of the challenges of thermal power generation technologies. We also reviewed how companies like General Electric (GE) and Siemens (SIEGY) are positioned in the industry.

In this series, we’ll focus on the solar power equipment industry.

Renewable energy

Before we zoom in on the solar power equipment industry, let’s have a quick look at the main renewable energy sources. As the name suggests, renewable energy sources are those that are recurring:

  1. hydroelectric – electricity generation from flowing or falling water

  2. wind power – electricity generation from flowing wind

  3. solar energy – energy derived from sunlight

  4. biomass and biofuels – energy derived from plants and animals

  5. geothermal energy – energy trapped in the earth’s core

Since renewable energy sources act as alternatives to fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, you’ll also hear them called alternative energy sources.

Companies and ETFs

As stated, we’re going to focus on solar energy in this series. Many public companies such as SunEdison (SUNE) and First Solar (FSLR) produce solar energy equipment. SUNE and FSLR are a part of the Guggenheim Solar ETF (TAN).

In the next part of this series, we’ll look briefly at the history of solar energy.

Continue to Part 2

Browse this series on Market Realist:

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