Dave Marsh

The Economic Benefits of Climate Legislation

"electric cars in those states at the moment probably result in as many greenhouse gases as regular cars because of power plant emissions. " This is an incorrect statement, and surprising, coming from an entity call "Greentech Media". Electric motors using in EVs have a mechanical (thermal) conversion efficiency of greater than 95%, vs, combustion engine efficiencies around 25%. This inherent higher efficiency means that even powered by 100% fossil fuel power, an electric car will result in at least three times less CO2 per car-mile; the ratio just gets better and better as the percentage of source power from fossil fuel decreases.

Lessons of Medicare Dis-Advantage

I also have Medicare Advantage (through Healthnet). It cost $67/month, but that puts me in a PPO category and my level of care is very good. Yes, it is a network, but there is a huge group of providers in that network, (the Participating Provider Directory is the size of a midsize phonebook), so I still have a lot of choice. In my PPO, I do NOT need a referral to see an in-network specialist, contrary to your article's statement. I looked at the Medigap plans, and they varied hugely in price beteen different companies, and were typically $250 - $400 /mo. If my cost for Medicare Advantage were to double to ease the costs to the government, I would still be satisfied. When I was still working as a private contractor, I paid $600 a month for insurance that was not as good as what I have under MA, and it still had a $2500 annual deductible. Perhaps it is because you are not on Medicare and don't have personal experience with Medicare Advantage that your article's point is fuzzied if not missing.

On EESAT and Energy Storage Opportunities on the Smart Grid

Well John, right after your response to me about ZBB and your mention of it being your near-term choice in the sector, it shot up 10% on >100K volume. Coincidence, or correlated, it's nice to see.
Also, you may have noticed the go-ahead for BCON's 20MW frequency reg. project in NY was announced this morning.

On EESAT and Energy Storage Opportunities on the Smart Grid

One of your previous articles had a graph showing projected storage demand by type, and it showed the greatest future growth in flow batteries and ultra capacitors. Investors seem to have bought into the ultracap idea in a big way, as evidenced by Maxwell's meteoric rise, especially in the last two months. So I took the flow battery route and bought ZBB, thinking their day would surely come. Well it hasn't, yet, and it barely trades at all some days. Any thoughts on why ZBB, and for that AXPW, just aren't attracting much volume at all, though AXPW is "sort-of" on the radar now, post-XIDE deal?

LED Lighting for the Masses

Thank goodness for competition. Remember the Pulsar watch? It had a red LED display and cost $250. Now LCD watches are a few dollars. More recently, the first LED laser pointers were $200, now they are keychain novelties, and even green LED lasers, which used to cost $150 only 3 or 4 years ago, can be had online for $30 (e.g. Buy.com). The same will happen with these, only more rapidly. Continuous under-cutting will rapidly lay waste to the the ridiculous margins, and price them with a commodity-type margin as companies scale up production in the space of two or three years. Since most CFLs can't be dimmed, they will coexist for some time in the overhead "full-on" lighting market. LEDs will take hold first because of the dimmer ability, then become ubiquitous as the prices plummet.

Crude Oil and Alt Energy: The Non-Relationship That Won't Go Away

Thanks for reiterating something that makes me cringe on a regular basis. Since the U.S. generates less than 1% of its electric power from oil (only old peaker units), and there is essentially zero use of grid power in electric cars at this point, there simply cannot be a real correlation between solar/wind economics and oil price. Alternative electric power competes with grid price of electricity, and only widespread adoption of electric cars would link the two (grid electric price and oil transportation cost). I've tried emailing CNBC to educate them on this, but few get it. Occasionally you will hear "Well the correlation is largely psychological" from someone regarding say, oil price and solar stocks, but for the most part the media perpetuates the myth, every time.

Chinese Solar Stocks Become More Attractive on First Solar Deal

FSLR will soon be hurt by a new entrant - privately held Nanosolar. They just announced full production of their thin-film panels which are a few percent more efficient than FSLR's, and cheaper. According to NY Times, they have already booked $4 billion in orders. And they don't use toxic Cadmium, like FSLR. No word of an IPO, yet.

China's Solar Wafer Production Seems Out of Control

I thought Renesola bought a module maker so they could supply poly internally, moving it more towards a Trina vertically integrated model. Kelvin: Was I misinformed? Why sell poly at a loss when you can supply your other (module) half with your own cheap supply, then sell the modules with some kind of positive margin.

PHEVs and EVs: Plugging into a Lump of Coal

Thanks for the link John. Still, getting from $500 - $1000 per kWh down to $100 is by itself a task that may not be accomplished in the next 50 years. Meanwhile, we have the nexgen nuclear capability in-hand, today. Much of what Chu and company apparently want to do is to miraculously leap-frog all things current and base this country's energy future on largely unproven (and mostly not-yet-invented) technologies. That seems hugely irresponsible. I guess I foresee a day in the U.S. where we regret having not gone for the clean "sure-thing", and the other countries going nuclear now will be saying "We don't have a problem, why do you?"

PHEVs and EVs: Plugging into a Lump of Coal

Self-correction: meant 2.2 billion dollars for one night's storage - still absurd.

PHEVs and EVs: Plugging into a Lump of Coal

John's last sentence about will power goes equally for nuclear power. It is not cost prohibitive when done properly, only when re-starting a dormant program as we have here. China is building 45 reactors, and twenty or so other countries are building nuclear plants also. I believe John spends time in France, where they derive >80% of their power from nuclear, have the cleanest air in Europe, and if they are not laughing at us, they should be. One hundred fifty two-unit plants could eliminate coal-burning completely. Staggered over twenty-five years it's completely possible, as is restarting fuel reprocessing which will close the loop on the nuclear fuel cycle, and qualify nuclear power as largely renewable. Onl then will your EVs become CO2 free and not "plugged into a lump of coal." Grid-scale storage for intermittent wind and solar is not going to be economically viable in our lifetimes, if ever. Storing a single ten-hour night's worth of power from a single two-unit nuclear plant (e.g. Diablo Canyon - two 1100 MW reactors) would require 22,000 Megwatt-hrs of storage, i.e. 22 million kilowatt-hrs. Even at $100/kW-hr, that's 2.2 trillion dollars. How absurd. No amount of Rube Goldberg "smart grid" shell-gaming will get around this. We need nuclear power to make things like pure EVs - largely recharging at night - viable over the long haul. As has become all too common, the rest of the world is passing us by, and we will deserve our fate. Step up to the plate Energy Secretary Chu.

PHEVs and EVs: Plugging into a Lump of Coal

I'm re-posting my comment from another article in April here, where it actually fits the discussion better:

The "other" electric car starts to sound more reasonable in the long term. The "other" is the hydrogen fuel-cell powered electric car. Yes, I know, the production and distribution infrastructure needed is immense, but in the long run sounds more feasible in light of Mr. Lifton's arguments. (Those were arguments against the viability of economical Li-ion batteries over the long term due to supply constraints).

My personal grand energy plan has always been and still is based on nuclear energy. Nuclear plants would be designed and built as three-way machines. A three-unit plant would have one reactor for electricity, one for reverse osmosis clean water production, and one for electrolytic hydrogen production. Crossover capability would allow all three reactors to produce power for peak time of day, but would divert increasing power to the hydrogen and water trains as night fell. At that point, the vast available clean baseload of two reactors produces clean water and hydrogen gas all night with (of course) zero CO2 production. In the battery (vs fuel cell) EV scenario, as discussed in previous SA articles, the nightime charging of all those extra batteries would have to come from more baseload coal plants, which makes your battery car dirtier, despite the efficiency gained from the inherent electric motor high energy conversion efficiency. What battery EVs there are would also retain their "CO2 cleanliness" if the nightime charging were from new nuclear baseload units, which run at 100% all night anyway (no one really does nuclear "load following" and they aren't designed for that).

Building nuclear plants that can cleanly fill in the nighttime demand valley with massive fresh water and hydrogen production, while at the same time giving a clean charge to the battery EVs, is an alternative whose time will have to come.

Sorry for simply re-posting, but it's 5:30am on Sunday, and I'm incapable of real thought yet. And besides, since your semi-infinite series of (good) articles, I realize there's nothing wrong with incessantly beating the same drum, as long as it's a good drum to beat.

Yingli Green and Trina's Day in the Sun

I wonder how low FSLR will go before Cramer eats crow and admits he has NEVER looked at any Chinese solar player on it's own merits. He knows NOTHING (about solar)...

Domestic China Companies Offer Investment Opportunities

The increase yesterday was because the company "entered into a new agreement with Shanghai Nine Dragon Co., Ltd. (www.ninedragon.com.cn) to undertake the major projects located in the Nine Dragon Resort, Zhejiang, including a seven star hotel, a marine park and luxurious villas. " Didn't mention a rail system in the news release. If you like rail and nuclear buildout in China, look at HLS Systems (HOLI), specializing in automatic control systems specifically for high speed rail and nuclear power plants. Forward earnings look fantastic. Lightly traded right now, but tends to just go up. I'm long CAEI, APWR, and HOLI.

Axion’s Lead Carbon Batteries: Sweet Spot for Micro-Hybrid Vehicles?

Nice to see someone other than Dennis Peterson write about Axion. The company may be worthy of merit, but it's stock is barely traded (6700 shares today as I write this). Apparently it has garnered no interest in the investment community since it's pop on the Exide news. I bought a little based solely on Peterson's seemingly infinite string of articles on it, and I even had to call my broker to do it, because Ameritrade's platform wouldn't even allow an e-trade on it. They didn't know why; the guy just said "a few stocks are like that". All I know is this stock is currently dead money, that has only gone down sice the Exide deal, on infinitesimal volume the likes of which is hard to find anywhere.