Suntech: The Sun's the Limit

With oil prices sky high, it only seems appropriate to look to the sky for an energy solution. If you are not in an office all day as I am, your gaze towards the heavens provides you an often times blinding solution... the sun (don't try the exercise at night, it won't work). No longer a creation of overactive sci-fi minds, solar power is quickly emerging as a valuable alternative to more traditional, and limited, resources. While more people are beginning to recognize and appreciate the value of alternative energy of the solar sort, it can become difficult to determine which companies investors should consider a smart buy.

For more traditional and conservative investors it can, at times, be difficult to back a sector in which the technology is completely alien. While I am neither that traditional nor conservative, I too have a difficult time actually understanding what solar companies are doing. Don't get me wrong, I completely understand that somehow energy from the sun is being converted into actual energy that can power my computer... but how this is actually done is as foreign to me as television would have been to Cleopatra. Luckily for me, it is not necessary to understand all the minute details of how the technology works; instead I can focus on which company's business model works the best.