creativforce

Cost Effective Energy Storage: The Orphan Stepchild of Alternative Energy

Lost my power this weekend (due to tornadoes in the area) and realized again just how vulnerable the average Joe is to grid disruption (especially in cold climates). If the International credit markets froze up so bad that the local power company couldn't order coal from Canada, we northerners would become refugees. In the Great Depression, folks could burn their furniture in the boiler, but today everything runs off the grid. Can't even get my gas furnace to light without electricity. And of course the gas company relies on credit markets too! Cheap batteries and a home windmill could tide you over until things got better, but I haven't heard anyone talking about cheap home power storage appliances. Tied to the grid they could be win/win for power companies and consumers (government and power companies should subsidize the cost). The consumer is worried, and that sounds like a big market to me. Gas generators are useless in a gas shortage. They don't help the grid. And, they're not "green."

Long Live the Cleantech Revolution

John, I often make the mistake of investing in things as they should be rather than things as they are. Energy consumption, energy generation and energy transmission "should" change dramatically. The infrastructure changes we need are at least 30 years overdue.

However, there is no incentive for power companies to do anything about that. It's not like we as consumers can easily unplug if they don't meet our needs for reliable green energy.

The consumer market has always been the only place where dynamic change takes place. If it weren't for the break up of Ma Bell, we'd all be dialing phone numbers and listening to our neighbor's phone calls as we waited for them to get off the multi-party line. Instead, today, we get to interact with your blogs on our i-phones.

The gas and electric meter on the side of my house is the same one that was there when I was born in the 50s and the energy is delivered over the same pipes and lines. The electricity is generated at the same coal-fired plant. Do you really think they are going to make huge investments to become more reliable, green and efficient today because they should? Do you really think all that free government money pouring into Homer Simpson's power plant will get him up off his ass ... or will he just use the money to buy more donuts?

Look at where the changes are happening today in the US--wind mills and solar plants are popping up in rural cooperatives (where the public owns the utility), on military bases where they are forced to consider efficiency and where paranoia makes them consider becoming energy independent, and in CA where the mountains don't blow the coal smoke to Canada or the next state over (somebody else's problem).

Europe is making great strides because they have to buy their NG from Russia, and that's enough to scare anyone into being green.

The only other signs of progress are public relations stunts such as solar panels on the Children's Museum, etc..

What incentives will drive this sweeping revolution you keep talking about?

Battery Wars

Texaco is right.

Battery Wars

Thank you for one of the most interesting articles I have read on the subject. Everyone who has followed the plight of the electric car since the late nineties has wondered "Who Stole the Electric Car?" As an investor in ENER during those heady days of the electric revolution with the EV1 in California, I thought I would soon be rich as ENER ramped up production of the NIMH battery. When Shell (who later sold to Chevron) initially bought into the company, I assumed the huge infusion of cash ENER needed would soon be on the way. As we know this was the beginning of the end. CA mysteriously repealed their zero emissions requirement, and the stock price at ENER went to hell for a decade. Cobasys has been a joke and their leaky batteries have seemed like intentional screw ups. Last year Mercedes had to sue them for failure to deliver and GM who built one of the most remarkable cars of the 20th century (EV1) can't get access to the batteries they helped test and develop.

So now we learn that the NIMH battery revolution failed, not because of oil company interference, and a deep, abiding faith in the profit power of planned obsolescence at GM ... but because Toyota cornered the market on lanthanum? The story just keeps getting weirder and weirder.

It would make more sense if oil money paid everyone involved to keep the technology on ice for a decade...just think of the billion$ the lack of an electric alternative has saved Big Oil until now!!

Lockheed Martin also makes most of their money on war in the middle east, providing the funds to keep EESTOR locked up for another decade or two seems like money well spent to me.

It's not that I want to believe in conspiracies, but any detective will tell you to follow the money. So rather than all these back room dealings we suspect, we now must believe that it all comes down to profound stupidity at GM. Well, I guess that's not too hard to believe either.

Energy Storage Opportunities vs. Irrational Expectations

I couldn't agree with you more. Improved lead acid batteries have made sense all along. For about six years, I invested in and followed a bulletin board company that had a lead acid battery which supposedly had double power/weight than traditional batteries stock symbol PWTC, pwtcbattery.com. About a year ago it seemingly fell off the face of the earth ... no more press, no more news. This happened just after they had supposedly started manufacturing. Does anyone know what happened to them?