First Solar Goes Deeper Into Canada (FSLR, ENB)

First Solar, Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR) has news on the wires this morning that the company and Enbridge Inc. (NYSE: ENB) have entered into an expanded agreement on the Sarnia Solar Project from 20 megawatts of capacity to 80 megawatts.  The total system cost is being put at $300 million Canadian Dollars (or $about $283.5 million US today) for the expansion.

The companies noted that this should be completed in the second half of 2010, and also noted that this is expected to be the largest photovoltaic solar energy facility in North America.

The existing 20MW project achieved full commercial operation on December 7, 2009.  Enbridge claims this gives it interests in more than 470MW of green power capacity from its various projects.  First Solar will construct the project for Enbridge under a fixed price engineering, procurement and construction contract with its own thin film photovoltaic technology. First Solar will also provide operations and maintenance services to Enbridge.

Construction will start in December and is expected to be completed by December 2010.  In short, most of First Solar’s revenue recognition from this project will be in Fiscal-2010.  Thomson Reuters has 2009 revenue projected at $2.0 billion, and it has $2.4 billion as the target for 2010.

So far this not helping First Solar shares this morning, but that is on a weak stock market indication and on weak oil prices this week.  As we have noted, solar stocks may effectively be highly leveraged bets on the price of oil.

Jon C. Ogg
December 8, 2009