ENTIRE ELEC UTIL BIZ DOWNGRADED BY SUN

Barclays Downgrades Electric Utility Bonds, Sees Viable Solar Competition

Michael Aneiro, May 23, 2014 (Barron’s)

Barclays Bank’s bond rating service has downgraded the entire U.S. electric utility sector bond market rating against the U.S. Corporate Bond Index due to the challenge from ratepayers’ increasing opportunities to cut grid electricity consumption with solar and battery storage…Barclays recommended investors move out of utilities’ bonds wherever solar-plus-storage is becoming cost competitive, including in Hawaii now, California by 2017, New York and Arizona by 2018, and “many other states soon after…” because solar-plus-storage could “reconfigure the organization and regulation of the electric power business” in the next ten years…Electric utility bonds are nearly 7.5% of Barclays’ U.S. Corporate Index by market value but the U.S. utility industry is facing real competition in the cost-effective delivery of electricity for first time in its hundred-plus year history and the industry and regulators are ignoring the risks of “a comprehensive re-imagining of the role utilities play,” Barclays wrote. click here for more

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