The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Investor Alley => Topic started by: Dancin'Dog on September 13, 2017, 12:35:05 PM
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I'm curious about investing in solar energy. Are there any funds that invest in solar? If so, how have they been performing?
If you have any info or advice about solar please share it here.
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I'm sure there are some ETFs but I've put a little money in solar at joinmosaic.com. At the time, it returned a fixed rate.
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There is the Guggenheim Solar ETF $TAN.
Currently priced at about $22 with ~20% growth over the past year and over ~20% over the past 3 months.
As an added bonus Guggenheim is a fun word to say.
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I invest in GEX. It has solar exposure, but also wind and other clean tech.
I'm also in LIT which has done gangbusters this year. Auto companies keep saying they're going full electric within the next 10 years so lithium demand is way up. Electric cars and solar are convergent technologies. I think the solar bonanza will be a few years behind. So I'm not planning to get way in until 2020 or so.
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I put $32k on my roof. Made about $15k back the first year, then around $5500 each of the next two years. Should be the same for the next three years, then drop considerably as the tax breaks expire.
It's profitable, but more like a high yield bond than a stock market investment. I would have made more money by now by putting $32k in the market index in 2014. Fortunately I did that too.
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Solar City sells bonds directly or through a brokerage account.
https://solarbonds.solarcity.com/
They don't currently have any offerings, but I would hope that's just a temporary thing. From my understanding, they use the bond offerings to provide financing for Solar City customers who choose to finance their solar purchase. I've been keeping an eye on them for a while, and the interest rates are around 7-8%. I've never made a purchase though, but plan on it in the future.