Lots of 💕 for Enphase at Saul's

[captainccs]

X-post:

Enphase, a new full position

My Take : Enphase is a great company. It’s a company with $2.33 billion (!!!) in revenue that is still growing revenue at 79% and 69% the last two years, and even accelerating in recent quarters with yoy growth the last 5 quarters of 56%, 46%, 68%, 81%, and 76% in the most recent quarter. Sequential Growth was 17%, 7%, 20%, 20%, and 14% in the most recent quarter. Now listen to this: At this scale ($2.3 billion), adj operating income for 2022 was $690 million !!! which was up 102% from the year…

The Captain

[XMFRob]

Enthralled with the thought of a profitable company.

Rob
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

[AlphaWolf]

@Enphase

At this scale ($2.3 billion), adj operating income for 2022 was $690 million !!! which was up 102% from the year…

Adjusted operating income? What’s wrong with good old fashioned operating income?

[buynholdisdead]

Adjusted operating income? What’s wrong with good old fashioned operating income?

They have that too!!!

Andy

[MarkR]

@Enphase

The secret sauce is the micro inverter, an inverter on every panel, as opposed to line inverters where the panels are all wired together into a line and there is one large ‘line inverter’ to handle them all. Line inverters are cheaper but have a huge downside, the low production panels hinder the whole line. Cast a shadow on one panel and all panels are degraded. The higher price of the micro inverters is more than offset by the extra efficiency.

Tesla does something similar but somewhere in between one inverter and one inverter per panel. They have multiple inverters, usually installed per “plane” of panels. So, for example, if you have a set of panels on a south facing roof surface, those all go to one inverter. And if you have another set of panels on a west facing roof surface, those would go to a second inverter. And so on.

But there’s another difference I just discovered between Tesla and Enphase. Tesla will give me a price estimate on their website, Enphase will not, they ask all the questions, and allow all the configuration steps, but then at the end refuse to display an estimate until you give them your contact information. I clicked the little ‘x’ and closed the tab instead.

[buynholdisdead]

@MarkR

Tesla does something similar but somewhere in between one inverter and one inverter per panel. They have multiple inverters, usually installed per “plane” of panels. So, for example, if you have a set of panels on a south facing roof surface, those all go to one inverter. And if you have another set of panels on a west facing roof surface, those would go to a second inverter. And so on.

That isn’t similar, Having one inverter per panel is very important. If one inverter goes out you still have the rest of your panels and can keep going while waiting for the inverter to come in. You lose an inverter on one side of your house, well that means you will be pulling power off of the grid.

Also Enphase warranties their inverters for 25 years, Tesla for 10 years.

Andy

[captainccs]

@AlphaWolf

Adjusted operating income? What’s wrong with good old fashioned operating income?

The good old fashioned operating income is no longer the same old fashioned operating income. It was was affected by the expensing of stock options which many consider an accounting abomination, including The Captain.•

Adjusted operating income reverses the expensing of stock options making it, the ‘adjusted operating income,’ equal to the original ‘good old fashioned operating income.’

In other words, the old gray mare is no longer the old gray mare of yore while the adjusted gray mare is the same as the old gray mare of yore.

The Captain
good old horse sense

• Warren Buffett likes expensing stock options and some people might value his opinion as more valuable. His estate sure is! Money talks.

[MarkR]

@buynholdisdead

That isn’t similar, Having one inverter per panel is very important. If one inverter goes out you still have the rest of your panels and can keep going while waiting for the inverter to come in. You lose an inverter on one side of your house, well that means you will be pulling power off of the grid.

I was replying to the comment that mentioned the problem of using one inverter for multiple panels reduces overall efficiency to the worst panel in the system. That’s why you (Tesla and others) would group them intelligently such that panels facing one direction are grouped together on their own inverter. Using an “inverter per panel facing direction” mostly eliminates this particular problem. One inverter per panel does help with the tree shading issue, but every solar installer will choose an area not shaded by trees or will instruct the customer to remove trees shading the area (you want to at least start with the best possible efficiency you can get).

Inverters breaking down is a separate problem, but a much MUCH rarer occurrence than the earth rotating around the sun changing direction of its rays.

@buynholdisdead

Also Enphase warranties their inverters for 25 years, Tesla for 10 years.

One of the articles I read said that Tesla warranties them for 12.5 years, a seemingly odd number, but exactly half the time they warranty their panels. In my experience, long warranties are worth very little because of multiple reasons including the backer of the warranty often doesn’t exist that long, or the actual use of said warranty becomes such a hassle that the customer gives up, and all sorts of other stories about long-term warranties not adequately satisfying the customer.

[MarkR]

@captainccs

May I suggest you are using the wrong perspective. Growth does not happen in a vacuum. It’s not Enphase growing on its own, it’s the adoption of renewable energy to displace fossil fuels. It started a long time ago, I had solar panels and a wind turbine on my sailboat 25 years ago but it was lithium, battery technology, battery storage that accelerated adoption by overcoming two hurdles, that the sun does not always shine and that the wind does not always blow.

In the USA this (the bolded part) isn’t really true for the products Enphase mostly sells. Less than 10% of home solar installations include battery storage (though that percentage is increasing with time). The MAIN thing that accelerated adoption of home solar in the USA is electric utilities agreeing (sometimes by regulation, sometimes by economics, and sometimes other) to take the power generated into their local grid and provide some sort of remuneration for it (either power in kind, retail price credit, or wholesale price credit, or some combination of them).

[buynholdisdead]

@MarkR

I was replying to the comment that mentioned the problem of using one inverter for multiple panels reduces overall efficiency to the worst panel in the system. That’s why you (Tesla and others) would group them intelligently such that panels facing one direction are grouped together on their own inverter. Using an “inverter per panel facing direction” mostly eliminates this particular problem. One inverter per panel does help with the tree shading issue, but every solar installer will choose an area not shaded by trees or will instruct the customer to remove trees shading the area (you want to at least start with the best possible efficiency you can get).

Mark the intelligent thing that all of us would do is have one inverter per panel. That solves all the problems everyone has talked about with inverters. Tesla bought solar city (which is a different discussion) and if Musk was really putting his mind to the solar problem I would suspect he would have gone with one inverter one panel. This might show that he has to much on his plate and why Tesla solar is doing so poorly, to where it is not even profitable.

@MarkR

One of the articles I read said that Tesla warranties them for 12.5 years, a seemingly odd number, but exactly half the time they warranty their panels. In my experience, long warranties are worth very little because of multiple reasons including the backer of the warranty often doesn’t exist that long, or the actual use of said warranty becomes such a hassle that the customer gives up, and all sorts of other stories about long-term warranties not adequately satisfying the customer.

Yes I have heard all kind of stories about warranties, but I have heard many more of " my warranty ran out just before my product failed". I do not think I have ever heard anyone say that a longer warranty is worse than a shorter warranty though. I will take the longer warranty.

Andy

[MarkR]

@buynholdisdead

and why Tesla solar is doing so poorly, to where it is not even profitable.

Tesla solar is doing poorly for various reasons, including bad service (terrible service in many cases), high prices, and lack of responsiveness. The last should probably be included in bad service, but they aren’t even responsive to potential customers. I worked with a guy who repeatedly asked to be contacted about a Tesla solar roof (would have been near, or even over, a $100k sale), and they never got back to him. This went on for a few years, every few months he would attempt to contact them with no success.

The engineer in me would also want an inverter per panel. But I would worry about all those inverters sitting up there in the sun and heat all day. That’s probably what the 25 year warranty is for … to reduce those worries.