By Jeff St. John

So GridPoint bought another company on Monday. What else is happening in the world of smart grid?

Q3 2009 Earnings Call Transcript

November 4, 2009 5:00 pm ET

Green energy experts accept that solar panels are one of the least cost effective ways to reduce your carbon footprint. Nevertheless, many buy solar stocks. They should rethink their investment strategies.

I recently spoke on "Stock Selection in the Era of Peak Oil and Climate Change" at the ASPO 2009 International Peak Oil Conference. Whenever green energy enthusiasts find out that I analyze green energy stocks professionally, they react in one of two ways. Many want to know my top stock pick in general (New Flyer Industries NFI-UN.TO/NFYIF.PK) or in their favorite sector (see below). Others tell me about their own green energy investments.

Smart grid plays are one of the green energy plays currently being boosted by stimulus grants. The difference between smart grid systems and other renewable energy plays is that the former are already easily implemented as compared to solar and wind, which currently have large technological and distribution barriers to overcome. Tuesday, President Obama named the utilities that will benefit from $3.4 billion in stimulus grants to implement smart grid systems.

Today I want to focus on the possibilities for change in our enormous electric power grid, an animal that is so complex–and so rooted in ancient technologies–that it is rife with inefficiencies. To me, this spells opportunity.

We all know how the grid works in general. All across the country, power plants burn coal or oil or natural gas or combinations of the three. Others burn wood, or generate nuclear power, or use hydropower, or take in trickles of power from little wind power farms and solar panels. And all across the country, people like you and me go around flicking switches off and on whenever we want something … light, heat, dinner, communications, clean clothes, entertainment, etc., pretty much without regard to the effect our actions will have on the grid as a whole. And because electricity can’t be easily stored, the power companies have to continually adjust their inputs to meet our demands.

By Jeff St. John

Big Spanish utility Iberdrola (IBDRY.PK) - much like its fellow giants Enel (EN) of Italy and EDF (EDFEY.PK) of France - appears to be settling on its own powerline communications standard to link its 18 million customers or so with smart meters.

By Jeff St. John

Echelon (ELON) has a new partner to bridge the gap between its smart meters and home energy controls – Eaton Corp. (ETN).

My Quick Clean Energy Tracking Portfolio has produced unexpected out-performance. Is it because of high beta (β) in a rising market?

I recently asked why two portfolios which I had designed to track green energy mutual funds ended up out-performing them by a wide margin.

My Quick Clean Energy Tracking Portfolio continues to outperform all benchmarks and expectations... is it luck, or did I stumble onto a better way to invest in green energy stocks?

I continue to be stunned at how the portfolio which I intended as an easy way to duplicate green energy mutual fund performance at much lower cost continues to blow those green mutual funds out of the water. I last published an update on this portfolio at the end of May, and was shocked to find that it had beaten the funds it was intended to replicate by over 20% in 3 months. The trend continues... it's now almost 7 months later, and the portfolio has widened its lead over the mutual funds by 30%.

In this post is a list of 13 stocks that I'll be keeping an eye on for the week ahead. All of the stocks mentioned in this post are stocks that have broken out to the upside on unusually large volume. The table below shows the company, ticker, Friday's per share % increase, and Friday's volume increase (% increased compared to 50 day average).

Many of these stocks are up big on earnings announcements, therefore it may be a good idea to wait for some profit taking and purchase the stocks on weakness. The stock which is most attractive to me this week is Tiffany & Co (TIF). Below is a trade idea which I may be using in the week(s) to come.

By Jeff St. John

Fresh on the heels of landing its first big smart meter deal with a U.S. utility, Echelon Corp. (ELON) has added another name to its long list of European deployments.

4:09 PM, Aug 10, 2009 --

• NYSE down 21.43 or 0.33% to 6,564.93.
• DJIA down 34.16 or 0.36% to 9,335.9
• S&P 500 down 0.58 or 0.06% to 1,009.9.
• Nasdaq down 2.25 or 0.11% to 1,998.00.

GLOBAL SENTIMENT

By Jeff St. John

Echelon Corp. (ELON) has gotten its foot in the door to expand its smart meter business with utility Duke Energy (DUK), with a $15.8 million order for Echelon’s smart meters and supporting services.

I started my "Clean Energy Shopping List" series on the premise that the market was near a peak, and it would be better to wait than to buy now. My market call turned out to be premature (or just plain wrong... time will tell) and the market has since advanced more than I thought it would. But I feel the challenges facing our economy and financial system are too grave not to bring down the market from its current heights eventually, so each rise simply makes me more bearish.

However, I feel the shopping list series is getting tired (or at least I'm getting tired of it), so I'm going to end it now, with just a list of stocks in the series and the articles that cover them. In addition, I'll throw in the few companies I've been thinking about using but have not made it in so far.

Q2 2009 Earnings Call

July 30, 2009 5:00 pm ET

By Jeff St. John

The case for smart grid technology that saves energy on the distribution grid is growing.

Although the market has risen above where it was in early June, when I said "We're near the top," I'm still bearish. And I'm still making lists of stocks to buy when prices seem more favorable.

The Strong Grid

by Jeff St. John

Smart meter makers are finding that the economic slowdown - and the slowdown that's come as utilities wait for billions of dollar in stimulus funding - is taking its toll on their short-term sales.

By Jeff St. John

Tuesday's smart grid news includes a report casting a dim light on publicly traded smart meter makers' prospects for the rest of 2009, as well as a win for smart grid networking startup Silver Spring Networks in landing a renowned economist as a board member.

I've been writing about the smart grid and its potential since before I joined AltEnergyStocks, in 2007, although at the time, I wasn't using the term: I mostly called it "Smart Metering." Now, Smart Grid is a central part of federal stimulus plans, and the term is firmly ensconced in the popular lexicon. GE even created a Super Bowl ad around the Smart Grid (video).

It was far past time to create a Smart Grid category in our Alternative Energy Stock List, but now we've done it. The companies in the Smart Grid Stock List were previously categorized as both Energy Efficiency Stocks and Electric Grid Stocks. Now, they are in the Smart Grid and Electric Grid categories, but only in the Energy Efficiency category if they also have a more conventional energy efficiency business. The broader Electric Grid category contains both Transmission and Distribution companies, like the ones in my Transmission Shopping List, as well as companies more narrowly focused on the smart grid. A few of the IT companies which have been moving into smart grid (such as IBM, Cisco, and Google) are in the Smart Grid category, but not in Electric Grid.