Smart Grid Sector Gaining Traction from Stimulus Funds
Digi International Positioned for Growthby Joyce Pellino CraneCaught between a maturing sector and a nascent one, Digi International, Inc., (Nasdaq:DGII) is stirring opposition among research analysts, who view its recent acquisitions as either a brazen entry into an emerging area, or a compensatory cover for poor performance.Over the past five years, the company has ventured into the smart grid sector through several acquisitions of wireless and cellular technology companies. One industry observer, who did not want to be quoted, said acquisitions artificially increase revenues during a down economy. Another, who asked not to be identified, said the Digi...
Energy Storage on the Smart Grid Will Be 99.45% Cheap and 0.55% Cool
7.17.09 Storage Week John Petersen Infocast’s Storage Week was all I had hoped it would be, and more. While I thoroughly enjoyed serving on three discussion panels and was warmly received by roughly 250 attendees, including executives of companies that I've occasionally criticized, the most important value for me came from the opportunity to hear four days of high-level presentations by industry executives, national thought leaders and policymakers who repeatedly stressed that: From a utility perspective grid-based energy storage is the functional equivalent of an instantly...
Smarting Up Electrical Grids
by Debra Fiakas CFA My recent post “Bull Case in Rick Perry’s Grid Study” highlighted efforts by U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry to help the coal industry with a study of the U.S. electrical grid. Coal has long claimed advantage as a ‘dispatchable’ power source, i.e. a consistently available power source suitable to supply power for the base load. Technology is making base load less important. Indeed, modernized or ‘smart’ electrical grids are making it possible to take advantage of low-cost renewable power sources even though they produce power intermittently and are therefore considered ‘not dispatchable’. ...
Grid-based Energy Storage: Widely Misunderstood Challenges and Opportunities
John Petersen The most widely misunderstood subject in the field of energy storage is the potential for grid-based applications. They fire the imagination because the grid is so pervasive and the need is so great. They also present immense challenges to storage technology developers because the fundamental economic value per unit of grid-based energy storage is very low. While the subject of grid-based storage provides rich fodder for media reports and political posturing, the reality bears little relation to the perception. On March 9th, Lux Research published a sorely needed reality check in a new report titled "Grid...
Alternative Energy Storage: Enabling the Smart Grid
America’s electric power grid is subject to immense inefficiencies that arise from the interplay between centralized power generation, local power consumption and on demand utility service. To put things into a broad perspective, the nameplate capacity of U.S. generating facilities is about 1 million Megawatts (MW), so if all of our power plants ran 24/7 we would have a theoretical annual generating capacity of 8.7 billion Megawatt-hours (MWh). Since demand for electricity fluctuates on both a daily and seasonal basis, total electric power generation in 2007 was only 4.2 billion MWh, or less than 50% of nameplate...
SMA Solar’s Transformerless Inverter Provides Power During Outages
Ed Gunther From Solar Light Flashes: SPI12 Edition Sunny Boy TL-US Inverter SMA Solar Technology AG (ETR:S92) will begin limited shipments of the transformerless Sunny Boy 3000/4000/5000TL-US-22 inverter series for 3 to 5 kiloWatt rated AC power PV systems in 4Q12. The TL-US series has added a unique Emergency Power Supply feature providing daytime power to a dedicated power socket in the event of a grid power outage. The power socket is isolated from the grid during the outage and supplies up to 12 Amps so long as...
List of Electric Grid Stocks
Electric grid stocks are publicly traded companies whose business involves electric infrastructure, including transmission, distribution, pricing, conversion, and regulation. Includes the list of smart grid stocks.
This article was last updated on 8/12/21.
ABB Ltd (ABB)
Advanced Energy Industries (AEIS)
AMSC (AMSC)
Avangrid, Inc. (AGR)
AZZ Incorporated (AZZ)
China Ruifeng Renewable Energy Holdings Ltd (0527.HK)
Companhia Paranaense de Energia - COPEL (ELP)
Custom Truck One Source, Inc. (CTOS)
Digi International (DGII)
Echelon Corporation (ELON)
EMCORE Group, Inc (EME)
ESCO Technologies, Inc. (ESE)
Fortis, Inc. (FTS, FTS.TO)
General Electric (GE)
Hammond Power Solutions Inc. (HPS-A.TO, HMDPF)
Hubbell, Inc. (HUB-B, HUB-A)
Itron (ITRI)
Landis+Gyr Group AG (LAND.SW)
MasTec Inc. (MTZ)
MYR Group Inc. (MYRG)
National Grid PLC (NGG)
Prysmian S.P.A (PRI.MI, PRYMF)
Quanta Services Inc...
Understanding Manufacturing Economics for Grid-Scale Energy Storage
John Petersen I have a new favorite word AGGREGATION! At the risk of sounding like a reporter, I’m going to summarize a pre-holiday news story you might have missed but need to know about. In late November the PJM Interconnect, the largest of nine regional grid system operators in the US, announced that it had begun buying frequency regulation services from small-scale, behind the meter, demand response assets in Pennsylvania. The first resources brought on-line by PJM were variable speed pumps at a water treatment plant and a 500 kW industrial battery array...
How Are We Doing On Our Stimulus Plan Stocks So Far?
A few weeks ago, I wrote a series of two articles on the yet-to-be-unveiled Obama stimulus package for the economy, arguing that things pointed in the direction of massive infrastructure spending with a green twist. I argued that this would benefit a certain categories of rail-related stocks and electric grid stocks. How am I doing relative to the market as a whole, which has had several positive trading days for the past while on the back of the eventual stimulus plan? Railway Stocks I discussed four railway stocks in an article published on October 18....
Solar Inverter Shakeout: 3 Survivors, 2 Buyers, a Loser and a Wildcard
Tom Konrad CFA Inverter for a solar array. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Solar inverter stocks are looking cheap, but until the weaker players are forced out, they are likely to get cheaper. The major publicly traded solar inverter companies are Power-One (NASD:PWER), Satcon (NASD:SATC), SMA Solar (OTC:SMTGF), Siemens (NYSE:SI), Advanced Energy Industries (NASD:AEIS), Schneider Electric (OTC:SBGSF) and upstart Enphase Energy (NASD:ENPH). Over the last year the industry has faced eroding margins and an increasingly competitive environment. This parallels the problems of solar manufacturers: the industry has too much...
Clean Energy Stocks Shopping List: Five Electricity Transmission Stocks
We may be headed into a renewed market slump. If so, it will pay to wait before buying, but when the time does come to buy, here are 5 electric transmission stocks I have my eye on. Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA On June 2, I wrote that I thought the market was near its peak. That day, the S&P 500 closed at 944.74. On June 12, it closed up 0.15% at 946.21, and has since trended down, currently trading down 5% as I write. I expect further declines this year, either with the market heading straight down from here,...
MasTec (MTZ): Connectivity to the Smart Grid
By Harris Roen An important part of the smart grid will be devices that connect the user to the grid, or “reading points”. These reading points go way beyond the current meter reading system that just monitor the amount of energy used. The long held belief that meter reading was the only way to monitor household and business’s consumption is quickly being replaced with alternate ideas. MasTec (MTZ) is a contracting firm with $2.1 billion in annual sales focused on utility and communications infrastructure. It specializes in communications, high-speed Internet and electric distribution, as well as...
If I Could Own Only One Alternative Energy Stock, It Would Be . ....
Bill Paul My friend Consuelo Mack, host of "Consuelo Mack's Wealthtrack" on PBS TV, asks her guests for their "one investment pick." What's my one alternative energy stock pick? A year ago on Consuelo's show, I recommended LED lighting developer Cree Inc. (Symbol CREE), because the LED lighting market (part of the burgeoning energy efficiency sector) is expected to hit upwards of $5 billion by 2013 v. $600 million in 2008, according to investment banking firm Merriman, Curhan, Ford, and because Cree was then an attractive takeover candidate. It still is; however, since the stock has since risen something...
Smart Grid Stocks For The Obama Stimulus Package
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how a new Obama administration would renew with Keynesianism (i.e. large-scale counter-cyclical infrastructure spending) but with a green twist to: (a) get the US economy out of its funk and (b) propel America into the 21st Century by providing a massive push for its green industries. I discussed certain rail stocks and electric grid stocks that could benefit as a result. By-and-large, I've been right on both counts about the President-elect's strategy (i.e. Keynesian and green), but I did forget to mention an important part of the plan's focus:...
Hidden Gems? Why Green Investors Should Look at Daewoo Shipbuilding and Ener1
Part 2 of 2 Bill Paul Neither Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. Ltd., which trades OTC under the symbol DWOTF, nor Ener1 Inc., which trades on NASDAQ under the symbol HEV, is an obvious candidate for having hidden potential. Heck, Daewoo isn’t even a green energy stock. Or is it? Lost in the hubbub of Copenhagen and Congress, there’s been important news about both these companies that strongly suggests – at least to me – that each has plenty of undiscovered potential that will really start paying off over the next 18 to 24...
The Best Peak Oil Investments Meet the Smart Grid: Telvent GIT SA (TLVT)
Tom Konrad CFA I'm bullish on Smart Transportation, which is my term for applying information technology to make our transportation system more efficient. The majority of my list of Smart Transportation Stocks focus on GPS navigation. I've been a fan of GPS navigation ever since 2001, when I first experienced the relief using one while driving in an unfamiliar city. But I'm much less enthusiastic about GPS Navigation stocks: I feel the industry is too competitive, which is great for the consumer, but not so great for the shareholder. Hence, I'm drawn to the three Smart...
