Tomas Martin's Comments RSS Syndication from SeekingAlpha.com http://seekingalpha.comuser/284467/comments http://seekingalpha.com/article/105283-my-u-s-infrastructure-and-employment-plan?source=feed#comment-302818 302818
Natural gas, like hydrogen, is a blind alley for transportation. Neither solves the problems we have with oil. Convert to natural gas and in fifteen years we'll have to convert again. Convert to hydrogen and all you're doing is generating electricity and then wasting some of it making hydrogen. Pickens is only promoting the natural gas angle so much because he owns a load of companies in that sector, as Californian voters thankfully saw when they voted down props 7 and 10.

Electric cars are the future and all these stopgap measures do is keep the current oil infrastructure happy. It's a short term measure that will give us the same problems further down the road. Investing in electric trains and cars will be a far better longterm use of the cash.

The rest of it, I strongly agree with.]]> Tue, 11 Nov 2008 08:56:00 -0500
Natural gas, like hydrogen, is a blind alley for transportation. Neither solves the problems we have with oil. Convert to natural gas and in fifteen years we'll have to convert again. Convert to hydrogen and all you're doing is generating electricity and then wasting some of it making hydrogen. Pickens is only promoting the natural gas angle so much because he owns a load of companies in that sector, as Californian voters thankfully saw when they voted down props 7 and 10.

Electric cars are the future and all these stopgap measures do is keep the current oil infrastructure happy. It's a short term measure that will give us the same problems further down the road. Investing in electric trains and cars will be a far better longterm use of the cash.

The rest of it, I strongly agree with.]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/101384-the-long-case-for-solar-energy?source=feed#comment-289364 289364
Technology takes time to develop and CCS is at least ten years behind solar, in my opinion. We have so far only seen small lab demonstrations of the technology and this stage of development is where the most delays occur. By the time a few hundred MW of test CCS are installed in the middle of the next decade, solar, wind, geothermal and even marine renewables may be too established and have come down so much in price that CCS is no longer a finanically attractive option. I think a lot of dirty coal plants capable of upgrading to CCS will be built and eventually converted but in terms of actually CCS-enabled plants, I'd guess we are 8-10 years away from even early commercial installations, equivalent to where wind was in the early nineties and solar was at the turn of this century.]]> Fri, 24 Oct 2008 05:33:44 -0400
Technology takes time to develop and CCS is at least ten years behind solar, in my opinion. We have so far only seen small lab demonstrations of the technology and this stage of development is where the most delays occur. By the time a few hundred MW of test CCS are installed in the middle of the next decade, solar, wind, geothermal and even marine renewables may be too established and have come down so much in price that CCS is no longer a finanically attractive option. I think a lot of dirty coal plants capable of upgrading to CCS will be built and eventually converted but in terms of actually CCS-enabled plants, I'd guess we are 8-10 years away from even early commercial installations, equivalent to where wind was in the early nineties and solar was at the turn of this century.]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/101384-the-long-case-for-solar-energy?source=feed#comment-289025 289025 Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:39:52 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/101384-the-long-case-for-solar-energy?source=feed#comment-288764 288764 www.futurepundit.com/a...)

These devices are a lot more expensive however, and need the light entering the cells to be concentrated by a set of mirrors or lenses, so called 'concentrating photovoltaics' or CPV. Another concentrating tech focuses the light onto molten salt, which heats steam and drives a turbine. This Concentrated Solar Thermal (CST) technique has the advantage of storing the energy in hot salt reservoirs for 7-9 hours or longer after the sun sets, reaching close to 24 hour generation in desert areas. 400MW is currently installed but 14 times that is planned to be in place by 2013.

Photovoltaics is similarly booming. Efficiencies are as much as 23% (SunPower are I think the most efficient using normal silicon) and thin-film is at around 10-12%.

The key issue is not efficiency but cost. Solar thermal is booming because with salt storage it is already cheaper than nuclear and gas turbine plants and this price is expected to drop further. thin-film is less efficient but cost-wise is much closer to the target of $1 a watt. Some firms such as First Solar may reach that goal in the coming months.

As silicon supply increases (silicon manufacturers have made vast investments in recent years to catch up with the demand from PV) the price of PV will come rapidly down and then many analysts predict PV will really start to take off, although thin-film may become less attractive if silicon panels begin to match them in price competitiveness. Either way, Solar (which is around 7 years behind wind in growth cycles) will become a major player in the next five years.]]> Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:32:20 -0400 www.futurepundit.com/a...)

These devices are a lot more expensive however, and need the light entering the cells to be concentrated by a set of mirrors or lenses, so called 'concentrating photovoltaics' or CPV. Another concentrating tech focuses the light onto molten salt, which heats steam and drives a turbine. This Concentrated Solar Thermal (CST) technique has the advantage of storing the energy in hot salt reservoirs for 7-9 hours or longer after the sun sets, reaching close to 24 hour generation in desert areas. 400MW is currently installed but 14 times that is planned to be in place by 2013.

Photovoltaics is similarly booming. Efficiencies are as much as 23% (SunPower are I think the most efficient using normal silicon) and thin-film is at around 10-12%.

The key issue is not efficiency but cost. Solar thermal is booming because with salt storage it is already cheaper than nuclear and gas turbine plants and this price is expected to drop further. thin-film is less efficient but cost-wise is much closer to the target of $1 a watt. Some firms such as First Solar may reach that goal in the coming months.

As silicon supply increases (silicon manufacturers have made vast investments in recent years to catch up with the demand from PV) the price of PV will come rapidly down and then many analysts predict PV will really start to take off, although thin-film may become less attractive if silicon panels begin to match them in price competitiveness. Either way, Solar (which is around 7 years behind wind in growth cycles) will become a major player in the next five years.]]>