frflyer

ADR Overview - Which Stocks Look Good, Which Don't

Ellito

No dividends from solar companies means next to nothing. Dividends are almost never paid by fast growing companies, who plow profits back in, to finance expansion. It's not good use of capital at that stage of their development.

A-Power Energy Generation Systems: Headwind or Tailwind?

"Wind power business is very capital intensive. To build a wind power turbine business from scratch, it takes significant upfront capital outlays to acquire land, equipment, technology licenses and other necessary manufacturing facilities. For example, Beijing-based wind turbine new entrant Shengguo Tongyuan recently invested RMB 460 million ($65million) in the first phase of a wind turbine project with annual output of 1,000 units of 1.5MW wind turbines."

"The second phase will cost an additional $90 million."

I'm a little confused by the above paragraph. How is $155 million dollars expensive for 1.5 GW generating capacity? A nuclear plant of same size would be about 50 times that much, at maybe $6.5 billion to build.

Or am I just misreading what is being said here?

China's First Round of Solar Project Applications

wind4me

China recently upped their intentions for wind energy, from the 30 GWs that you mention, to 100 GW by 2020.
I am bullish on APWR also. I got my foot in the door at about $6.75 and so far haven't regretted it.

ReneSola's New Business Model Is Designed to Beat Wall Street

I forgot to add that CSP (solar thermal) needs the stimulous to get to commercial scale faster. It is more capital intensive because of the size of the projects, and hasn't had as much time to develop on a commercial scale. The costs are expected to drop dramatically once economies of scale are reached.

I also believe CSP will change how people think about renewable energy, when they realize the huge potential for power and the potential for low electricity prices from CSP, which are already lower than from PV. Too many people still think renewable energy is an unrealistic pipe dream. How many have even heard of CSP? Not many, if my own experience of talking to people is any indication.
When they understand the huge potential of CSP combined with that from PV and wind, they start to see things a little differently.

ReneSola's New Business Model Is Designed to Beat Wall Street

Windsun
You may be right about the stimulous money, but IMO, stimulating solar thermal growth is a good thing. It will even help to integrate the intermittent energy from PV and wind into the grid. It's dispatchable power ( with heat storage) will better facilitate this, than base load power from coal and nuclear. And it is best suited for replacing the base load power from coal plants. There will be oppurtunities to invest in this when the market becomes more favorable for IPOs.
A price on carbon emissions, as well as a national renewable energy standard should stimulate the solar and wind sectors.

Evergreen Solar: ROE & FCFE Analysis

No, Keynesian economics worked, and Milton Friedman economics has been a dismal failure for the majority of Americans, like 80%.

In the 50s and 60s, while government grew and taxes as % of GDP grew; savings, real wages, home ownership, and productivity all grew, to create the working middle class as we know it today.( or used to know) Poverty among the elderly went from 6 in 10 to 1 in 10 during this time.
This was the greatest economic growth anyone could expect or hope for, all while Friedman was writing his supply side economics theory, which have now had over 25 years in which savings, real wages, productivity, economic mobility, and the ability to afford a home have all gone down and poverty has gone up. The federal deficit has grown by about $11 trillion, a savings and loan disaster, a credit disaster and a real estate bust all have resulted as well. Friedman has been proven wrong coming and going. Real wages haven't risen in 30 years, while the piece of the pie owned by the top 5% and the income of the top 5% has gone through the roof. During the 50s and 60s, one wage earner could support a family quite well. Now it takes two wage earners, who are deeply in debt, to do the same thing.

The mixed economies of Europe are more proof that big government and higher taxes are not anithetical to economic growth.
Tax cuts for the rich are a scam to reward the few at the expense of the rest of us. 80% of Americans have not benefited from any economic growth since Reagan. But in 2005 alone, the INCREASE in income of the top 5% was more than the TOTAL income of the lowest 20%.

Americans resoundingly voted against the failed economic policies of supply side economics in November. Get over it.

Solar Energy Continues to Shine

Ignore the spamming by billp37, same old nonsense


As far as intermittency that the grid can handle; what the author says about a 20% limit only applies to a non-smart grid and to one with no energy storage technology. Sweeping generalizations like his are misleading.

Burgeoning Bioplastics: Metabolix's Breakthrough

solar jim is right.

MBLX, with their PHA, is on the cutting edge of bioplastics. Their process has far fewer steps than those for producing PLA, which requires several fermentation steps and needs to be heated to about 150 F to be compostable. Metabolix uses genetically engineered bacteria to digest plant sugars and starch, producing PHA plastic that is simply harvested.
They have another technology that infuses the bacteria into the germinal stage of switchgrass plants, which then grow with the plastic already in the leaves and stems.
Their new plant in Iowa will use corn as the feedstock, but they expect to use swithgrass in the future.

As Solar Sector Flies, Pay Attention to Values

I think the question of which type of solar will do best is a false dichotomy. They should all do well, IMO.
They are apples and oranges. Solar thermal with heat storage is centralized dispatchable power which the NREL expected to be rather expensive for the first handful of plants, but to rapidly fall in costs as experience and economy of scale come into play.
Thin film and normal silicon should serve different markets as well. The more efficient silicon panels should do well where available space is an issue, like rooftops. Thin film should do better where space is less an issue.
For investors, there are no solar thermal stocks so far.

Investing in Wind Energy: When Will Growth Peak?

I cut off most of my comment by mistake.

CLH
"it seems that only nuclear makes any sense."

It will take 10 years, at least, to build any new nuclear power plants. In those ten years, we will have built 100 GW of wind and hundreds of gigawatts of PV solar and solar thermal. Not only are wind and solar two to three times faster to build, the electricity prices for wind and solar will be much cheaper than from new nuclear. Estimates for new nuclear power are 12-17 cents/kWh. Solar thermal is already at that price, and will be below 10 cents in about 4 years, and from 4-8 cents/kWh when the industry gets up to scale in ten years or less.

Subsidies? You must be kidding. Nuclear has received about $500 billion over the last 50 years. Oil and gas get $39 billion every year and coal gets $8 billion/ before the new subsidies in the recent economic bills.
Oil has been subsidized continuously since 1919.

There couldn't be a worse argument against renewable energy.

westcoastclimateequity...
Global Warming Solutions for Governments

"Behind fossil fuels’ global dominance lies the shocking fact that governments still subsidize them with tax-breaks and price supports, some dating back to World War I. The total global give-away to fossil fuels comes to more than $210 billion a year."

"In 2006, Earth Track estimated that the US oil and gas industry received $39 billion in federal energy subsidies, and the coal industry a further $8 billion."

Investing in Wind Energy: When Will Growth Peak?

"In 2006, Earth Track estimated that the US oil and gas industry received $39 billion in federal energy subsidies, and the coal industry a further $8 billion."

Deal for World's Largest Offshore Wind Farm Finalized

Windsun93

I think Freya answered your question about wind and oil.

buoy

I agree that smaller countries, that have more homogenous demographics and are generally not as complex as the U.S., have an easier time making decisions. However, we have far more potential for wind and solar energy than they do, because of our vast wide open spaces. And of course, we have more geothermal potential than most also.

The U.S. doesn't lead in installed wind or solar, but we increased our wind energy by 8.3 GW last year, the world's biggest increase, with China second at over 6 GW.
If we can improve on that rate of growth, we'll have a substantial amount of wind energy by 2020-2030.
8.3 x 11 years =91.3 GW by 2020.

8.3 GW x 30% capacity factor for wind = the equivalent of building 2.5 nuclear power plants of average size in one year. Try doing that with nuclear.

Ferdinand
I'm not sure what you are getting at. What doesn't make sense? Wind energy created lots of jobs in the U.S. last year, a 70% increase to 85,000, which is more people than employed mining coal and running coal plants.

Solar Industry's Long Term Outlook

Retiredtraveller

"As for solar, I think the best market for it is rooftop for individual homeowners."

We need both the distributed energy of rooftop solar and the utility scale solar of CSP CPV and PV, as well as wind. It's not an either or, but all, IMO.

CPV can run factories, schools, office buildings, etc. at or near the end user. Not in all climes, but where there is good radiance. A company in Israel is producing hot water and electricity from CPV. CPV cells need cooling. They use water to cool the solar cells and thereby get hot water as well as power. They say they are getting over 70% solar conversion efficiency.

CSP (solar thermal) is unique among renewables, because with molten salt heat storage, it can provide steady dispatchable power. This can replace base load power that we now get from coal plants. In one way, it's better than baseload - dispatchability. See at this link:

www.altenergystocks.co...

And CSP w/storage can produce electricity at night or during cloudy periods. Plants are being built with 6 hours heat storage and twice that much is feasible.

Power prices from CSP are already much lower than from PV and are expected to fall quickly to under 10 cents/kWh. My bet is that this will happen in 4 years(based on NREL and other estimates and observations of current rate of CSP projects approved already, which is happening faster than the NREL predicted, although the credit crunch is holding up projects right now).
4-8 cents/kWh is projected for when the industry gets up to scale, probably in less than 10 years.


rooferguy

"When ratepayers and Public Utilities Commissions realize that the costs TO THE CUSTOMER are higher for central solar compared to DG solar there will be renewed emphasis on installations on commercial and residential rooftops."

I want to see a renewed interest in both.

There is a need for more than just distributed energy.
And CSP can be day and night. If you read the article at altenergystocks.com above, you will understand why we need CSP in the mix for balancing the grid. We can have less baseload as a percentage of the total grid, and achieve a smarter, better balanced and more efficient grid. CSP is the best tool we have to achieve that.

related article:
climateprogress.org/20.../

and check out Desertec or Trec

www.solarserver.de/sol...

www.desertec.org/

www.trec-uk.org.uk/


www.trec-uk.org.uk/ima...

Look at this map (link above) showing red blocks superimposed on North Africa, that represent how much area it would take to power Europe or the Mid East and North Africa, or the World.

The Desertrec plan would provide power to Europe, North Africa and the Mid East using CSP plants. Some of the plants would also provide hot water, and sea water desalinization. - Combined heat and power.
HVDC transmission lines would distribute the power over long distances with low line loss. I think the loss is 3% over 1000 kilometers.

Energy Conversion's Earnings and My Long and Sordid Past with Solar

I have posted this info at another article but I find it to be an eye opener for the debate about wind energy.

www.eurotrib.com/story...

Excellent article on costs and economics of wind energy and why feed in tariffs make sense. How wind integrates into the grid. Wind energy stabilizes electricity pricing, lowering the overall cost of electricity to consumers.

Based on this article, I think we need to look seriously at feed in tariffs for wind and maybe solar.

"studies in Germany, Denmark and Spain prove that the net cost of feed-in tariffs in these countries is actually negative, i.e. a apparent fixed cost imposed on consumers ends up reducing their bills!"

"as noted in my text, wind is already cost-competitive with other technologies; it is its high fixed cost, lower marginal cost which makes it require a feed-in tariff, not its lack of competitivity. But there is no subsidy per se: as I note, the overall effect of the feed-in tariff is to lower the price paid by the rate payers who are bearing that tariff."

Energy Conversion's Earnings and My Long and Sordid Past with Solar

billp37

You keep posting this nonsense, why?

"Solar Thermal and Photovoltaic methods capture 5 to 6 watts per square meter. There is no economy of size in either technology. Dividing the watts you need by those values gives the land area in square meters needed to produce the juice. The numbers are astronomical "


I'm speaking of the statement that there is no economy of scale. That is flat out wrong. I have explained to you before, that solar thermal is more cost effective, the bigger the plant size. That's because the central plant costs are shared by more and more solar collectors. This means adding more capacity has a diminishing cost. The NREL sees economy of scale playing a large part in quickly reducing the cost of building solar thermal plants. Large scale manufacturing of plant components also brings economy of scale. The first factories to mass produce components are still being built.

As far as area used, solar thermal could power the whole country with less land than used for coal mining and coal plants. That is effective use of land by any measure. And it would take about a million times as much land to produce the same energy growing corn for ethanol.

I'm sure your 1.2 watts per square meter for wind, is counting the 97.5% of the land between the turbines.
They only use 2.5% of the land where they are sited.
A 2 or 3 MW turbine sits on land about the size of a parking space. The area between turbines can be productively used for agriculture, left to nature, or even filled with solar panels.