Detwiler Fenton On Energy And Changing Landscape

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has given a deadline of May 2 to operators in wholesale power markets to document possible barriers to energy storage’s participation in wholesale energy markets. Detwiler Fenton’s Alex Arnold said that battery companies are likely to find that there are “ways to place a lot more storage into the system.”

Analyst Alex Arnold believes that this should be good news for storage companies like Tesla Motors Inc TSLA in the long term.

New Players In The EV Market

Tesla has already received 400,000 preorders for its Model 3. “Now it will be all about execution and delivering for late 2017,” Arnold commented.

With the Electric Vehicle, or EV, market beginning to mature and consumers paying more attention, other large companies are likely to play the field. Ford Motor Company F has announced plans in December 2015 to invest $4.5 billion in EV solutions, and could have 13 electrified cars on the road by 2020.

Project Titan, which is the EV initiative launched by Apple Inc. AAPL, is moving forward under wraps, although observers expect the first model to be released in 2019, the analyst mentioned. He added that Apple has appointed Chris Porrit, Tesla’s former VP of vehicle engineering, as part of an EV team that is estimated to have 1,000 employees.

“The real question will be whether the rising tide of EVs lifts most of the ships or if the apparent ripening of the market will create a major share war over the next several years,” the Detwiler Fenton noted.

Renewables Companies

The latest FERC development is indirect, decent new for renewables companies like First Solar, Inc. FSLR, “since more storage on the system will allow more renewables to be integrated into the grid,” Arnold wrote.

Shares of Solar Companies Rise

Shares of solar companies recorded gains, even while Sunedison Inc SUNEQ filed for bankruptcy, since this had been anticipated and priced into solar stocks for a while.