BlackRock says coal is dead as it eyes renewable power splurge, page-48

Great question. I have sort of been following developments on this front but its all a bit complicated really due to how fast things are moving.

There are so many areas of development its a bit of a minefield to wade through.

Firstly there are the solar system installers who are retailing to houses and businesses. Some just sell direct outright and some are on plans (where the installer pays for the capital outlay and the purchaser pays them a monthly fee to repay - I have heard there are some cases where the payment is of the order of 70% of what the system purchaser was previously paying in power) but there are many.

Next you have those who have been in the renewable area for some time and are expanding into more solar now. One I have my eye on is Carnegie Clean Energy (formerly Carnegie Wave Energy) ASX:CCE

They developed wave energy (and desalination) technology and are now moving into solar as well with a recently announced 10MW facility at Northam in WA to be commissioned by the end of 2017.

I don't hold them, but at 6c its an interesting one to follow. Caveat: I used to know the MD, but I haven't spoken to him in 25 years.

The third main area is the big guys like AGL etc who have announced they are getting out of coal, and have further announced that "Gas will no longer be a transition energy fuel because renewables+battery is already cheaper than gas can ever expect to be" so they are developing plans to divest from gas in a timely manner, and get their kW from renewables.

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To give you an idea of just how confusing it is, AEMO (Australian Energy Market Operator) CEO Audrey Zibelman has said that they were receiving 1000+ inquiries a month for new wind and solar projects, up from 20/month a year ago.

So what do we do as people looking to invest?

Try to read as much as possible, and try to find a pattern that many be followed.

But one thing is for sure, all those projects need solar panels, so perhaps the manufacturers and distributors might be worth a look too. I am yet to do any digging in that area, but I do know that China has ramped up panel manufacturing to a massive degree, so Australian manufacturers will have to be tough to battle it out.