Today’s news from the world of alternative energy highlights several stories from the solar sector, some pushback on wind farm development in Maine, and a change to BLM rules related to solar farm siting.

LDK Solar Co. Inc. (NYSE: LDK) is reported to be planning an IPO on the Hong Kong stock exchange for as much as $1.3 billion. The company’s US ADRs are valued at about $1.6 billion, and LDK’s P/E ratio for the trailing twelve months is just 11.09 while its forward P/E ratio is an even lower 4.16.

Maybe that’s why the company’s COO is predicting a market rebound for solar PV in the next two to three weeks, according to Digitimes. Overall demand has increased year-over-year and the lower forecasts for 2011 resulted from predictions of oversupply that have now caused some makers to slow down manufacturing. LDK also believes the spot price for polysilicon will rise soon because there is no oversupply of either polysilicon or wafers.

SunEdison, a subsidiary of MEMC Electronic Materials (NYSE: WFR), has obtained an investment of $120 million from subsidiaries of Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) to fund solar PV power project installations in the US. SunEdison is MEMC’s entry in the downstream portion of the solar PV market. Other solar module makers with downstream businesses include First Solar Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR) and SunPower Corp. (NASDAQ: SPWRA).

Our last bit of solar news for today is related to technology that promises to raise the conversion efficiency of solar PV modules. A start-up called Solar3D is working on what it calls 3D micro-cell technology that captures more of the sunlight that hits a solar panel, thereby increasing the amount of sunlight converted to electricity. This is a new wrinkle on what is referred to as concentrating solar PV, where a Fresnel lens captures more sunlight and focuses it on the solar cell.

Solar3D plans to focus on silicon-based solar cells, but says its 3D technology can also create multi-junction cells that could result in 50% conversion efficiency in concentrated solar applications. That’s more than double the current best conversion efficiency available.

It seems the only people happy with wind energy development in Maine are those whose livelihoods depend on installing wind farms. Residents have begun to organize around health and quality of life issues related to the state’s development of wind energy.

Several bills have been introduced into the state legislature to make it more difficult to obtain a license to build a wind farm, including one which would guarantee compensation to property owners if their property values decline as a result of the nearby turbines.

Finally today, the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is publishing proposed rules that would give the agency the right to segregate lands in a wind- or solar-energy right-of-way (ROW) application from other land appropriations, most notably mining claims. Under existing policy, a ROW application for a renewable energy development on federal land is not closed to competing claims, such as for mining.

Since 2006, the BLM has located mining claims in 2 of 24 renewable energy ROW applications after the applications were submitted. In the past two years, 653 new mining claims were located within solar and wind ROW application areas. What the BLM is proposing is that when a renewable energy ROW application is filed, the area is temporarily closed to competing land appropriations such as a mining claim.

The proposed rules will help the BLM administer competing claims on public lands, but the rules won’t make mining interests happy. The rule might sound reasonable and fair, but the only thing that tops fighting over minerals in the west is fighting over water. There are likely to be some fireworks surrounding these proposed rules.

Paul Ausick

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