Residential solar makes little sense

Residential solar makes little sense compared to larger forms of solar energy such as utility-scale solar (building solar farms in non-urban areas) and commercial solar (solar panels on the roof of commercial buildings).  The economics are inferior for various reasons:

1. Economies of scale in labour costs (engineering, installation) and in equipment costs.
2. Larger scale solar tends to place solar panels in areas with the best sunlight conditions and other economic factors.  Some residential roofs are obscured by trees or are not strong enough to support solar panels.  There are some frictional costs when people waste time figuring out that a particular residential roof is not a good place to place solar panels on (e.g. customer service, engineering).

Larger scale solar projects have inherent advantages over residential solar.

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March 2014 portfolio update: Feeling the squeeze…

Unfortunately, I’ve had a bad start in 2014.  My long positions and my short positions are moving against me.  I suppose that this is bound to happen because stocks are never perfectly correlated.  (If they were perfectly correlated then there would be no point in trying to pick stocks or to profit from short selling.)

While I have a large number of short positions (30+), I have managed to find many stocks (mainly Chinese and solar stocks) that have quickly moved against me.