Gene Herring/gTM

T. Boone Pickens' Hedge Fund Concentrates on Energy, Drops Basic Materials

T. Boone Pickens is a hair trigger guy who has been fortunate in a lot of circumstances but not all. He will live and die by his often quick decisions.

Game Changing Battery Technology: Is it Here Now?

Please do a little homework on harnessing of electricity. It was not Thomas A. Edison; it was Nikola Tesla who is responsible for alternating current used all over the world today. Edison fought the use of alternating current but Tesla and George Westinghouse finally prevailed. With alternating current it is possible to transform from one voltage to another that enables us to do a myriad of operations that are impossible with direct current. The alternating current power grid in use today that provides a system for delivering electricity to the end user would be impossible with direct current.

IBM To Research Smart Grid Tech

Replacing coal-fired power plants with cleaner energy sources, mostly renewables, simply willl not work even with a super smart grid. Renewable sources such as wind and solar are not base load sources for power. We are forced to rely on coal, gas and nuclear power for a large share of the base load until we can discover another power generation source that is available online 24/7. We should not diminish our present power sources without pursuing research for clean coal and modernized nuclear generatinig plants. In addition to a smart grid approach there must a serious upgrade of the entire transmission grid to mesh with new sources coming online in the future.

Combining the Pickens Plan and an Auto Bailout

T. Boone Pickens plan for wind farms as an alternate energy source for electric generation is great but renewable energy sources only supplement the electric grid with intermittent power that rarely matches the daily electrical demand. There is a "Capacity Factor" relating to all sources of power generation. This can be written CF = Actual Energy Output over a given period divided by Rated or Maximum Output. For wind a CF of 15-35% appears average. For stable base load generators (gas, coal and nuclear) the CF is well above 90%. Assuming a Cf of 35% for wind generation it would take 3 times the rated output to even get close to matching stable base load generators. This simply means that for every megawatt needed for base load it would require at least 3 megawatts of wind generation. The CF is something that a lot of "Green" people may not be familiar with.