Stop-start Idle Elimination Crossed The Chasm While Everyone Was Distracted

John Petersen John Lennon once quipped, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." A classic example of the phenomenon is the quiet emergence of stop-start idle elimination as standard equipment on new vehicles while politicians, pundits, the media and mechanical monkeys beat the drum and played the kazoo for the amazing EV sideshow. Stop-start is more than a vague promise of hope and change. It's a reality that's sweeping through the auto industry today and will conserve more gasoline in 2013 than all of the worlds HEVs and plug-in vehicles combined....

Electro Energy Inc. Announces New Development Agreement With In-Q-Tel

Electro Energy Inc (EEEI) and In-Q-Tel, a private, not-for-profit venture group funded by the Central Intelligence Agency, today announced a new technology development agreement for advanced rechargeable bipolar lithium ion (BPLI) batteries. The resulting BPLI battery is intended to exhibit both high-specific energy and high-specific power, due to the efficiency of the EEEI bipolar cell and battery design. In previous work, EEEI has demonstrated BPLI cells with a specific energy greater than 200 Wh/kg and an energy density greater than 400 Wh/l. The development will be conducted at EEEI's battery manufacturing facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado. ...

Maxwell Technologies Provides Ultracapacitors for General Hydrogen

Maxwell Technologies (MXWL) announced that General Hydrogen Corporation, a leading developer of hydrogen fuel cell-based power systems for electric forklifts, has placed a 200,000 unit, three-year, purchase order for BOOSTCAP® ultracapacitors to enhance performance and energy management in its Hydricity® Pack technology. The purchase order is part of a strategic supply agreement through which General Hydrogen will source ultracapacitors exclusively from Maxwell and receive strategic pricing if volume thresholds specified in the purchase order are reached.

Alice in EVLand – Cracks in the Looking Glass

John Petersen In his 2006 State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush said: "Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. And here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through technology." What a crock of balderdash! If you compare US fuel prices with those in other industrialized countries, gasoline is a screaming bargain and the same can be said for electricity. It's not the energy we use that's a problem. The problem is the...

Lead-acid Batteries and How Cheap Beat Cool at Google

On April 1st CNET News published a story about a previously secret technology that Google (GOOG) has patented and implemented system-wide. The technology, which Ben Jai of Google reportedly described as their "Manhattan Project," builds a 12-volt battery into each server to provide backup power. The point that fascinates me is Google's choice of small format valve regulated lead-acid batteries to keep its servers running. When an ultra-sophisticated company like Google picks cheap over cool for a mission critical function, I think it speaks volumes about the future direction of the energy storage industry. Stephen Shankland of...

When Will Polypore Payoff?

by Debra Fiakas CFA   Diagram of a battery with a polymer separator. Lithium ion batteries make it possible to recharge your smart phone, camera and a multitude of other have-to-have-with-us-every­-moment devices.  Yet the average person knows very little of the inner workings of something so important to our daily lives.  One little item in a battery is a highly specialized membrane that fits neatly between opposing electrodes  -  the positive and negative poles that make an electrical charge.  This membrane manages the charge and discharge process. ...

Energy Storage Performed Poorly in the First Quarter of 2010

John Petersen The first quarter was unkind to publicly traded companies in the energy storage sector, which saw their stock prices fall by an average of 16.22% over the last three months. While the shares of Enersys (ENS) and C&D Technologies (CHP) posted gains of 12.8% and 3.2% respectively, all of the others in my universe of 17 pure play energy storage companies traded down. The following table summarizes first quarter performance and provides some important valuation metrics. The following table summarizes the portfolio performance a hypothetical investor would have realized over the last three...

War With Iran? Buy Alternative Energy Stocks.

September is starting out as the month of speculation about a massive three day air strike on Iran.  Is Bush ready to attack Iran while our troops are still trying to stabilize both Afghanistan and Iraq?  In February, administration officials were denying it.   The preparations now going on could simply be the stick part of a negotiating strategy; the bad cop to Russia's good cop.  But Bush's chances of successful cooperation with Putin could be better. What if? If Bush does launch a massive three day air strike on Iran, what will that mean for alternative energy stocks?  I...

Anti-Hype in Lithium-ion Batteries Foretells Doom for Electric Cars

John Petersen Despite billions of dollars in private investments and public subsidies, lithium-ion battery technology has progressed at a snail's pace for years and battery developers have recently started to emphasize the importance of baby steps. For the first time in memory, anti-hype is becoming a dominant theme in stories about lithium-ion batteries. Examples from this month include: An interview with Wards Auto where the business manager of the DOE's Kentucky-Argonne Battery Manufacturing Research and Development Center explained that it takes about ten years to put a battery innovation into production and all of today's...

Magnetek to Purchase Eighty, 5kW VRB Energy Storage Systems for Telecoms Market Applications

VRB Power Systems (VRB.V) announced that Magnetek's Telecom Power Systems Group (TPS) has entered into a Letter of Intent to purchase eighty 5kW VRB Energy Storage Systems to be sold to telecom market operators in the U.S. VRB Power will supply the core-technology for the VRB-ESS units, which will generally include the overall design, cell stacks, electrolyte, tanks and the balance of the battery system, whereas TPS will be responsible for supplying the electronics, including the rectifier and controller, and assembling and integrating the components into finished VRB-ESS units. TPS will market and sell these VRB-ESS units to...

Micro-hybrids And The Multi-Billion Dollar Battery Battle

John Petersen Last week the stock of A123 Systems (AONE) soared 52% in a day after it announced that an enhanced chemistry would improve the cold and hot weather performance of its LiFePO4 batteries, reduce the need for ancillary temperature control systems and make them more competitive in a rapidly evolving micro-hybrid battery market that's dominated by lead-acid battery manufacturers like Johnson Controls (JCI) and Exide Technologies (XIDE). Investors seem to understand that micro-hybrids will generate several billion dollars of incremental annual revenue for battery manufacturers by 2015, but they haven't quite figured out who the winners will...

Interview: Ted Hollinger of Hydrogen Engine Center

The following is an interview with Ted Hollinger, President of Hydrogen Engine Center. In a nutshell, what is Hydrogen Engine Center’s (HEC) main technology and what are its principal applications? Development of proprietary electronic controls and other technologies to allow for the use of hydrogen and other gaseous fuels for the generation of power. These technologies have applications in many areas, including but not limited to the distributed power industry, airport ground support, co-generation with certain manufacturing processes, buses, marine engines and agricultural irrigation pump systems. One of the main drivers you identify as necessary...

An Elephant Hunter’s Theory About Axion Power’s Price Surge

An Elephant Hunter's Theory About Axion Power's Price Surge John Petersen Over the last few days I've been inundated with questions from readers who want to know why Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) has smoothly surged from a low of $0.25 on December 30th to a closing price of $0.58 yesterday. The short answer is the stock is finally emerging from the mother of all supply and demand imbalances and the persistent sellers that punished the price over the last 20 months are almost out of the picture. Since I believe we're witnessing the beginning of an entirely...

A123’s Planned IPO Moves to the Front Burner

John Petersen   After six months of regulatory silence and $100 million in new funding, A123 Systems amended the SEC registration statement for its proposed IPO on June 23rd. While this latest filing may simply be A123's way demonstrating its ability to raise matching funds for a scaled back ATVM loan request of $1 billion and pending applications for $438 million in direct Federal grants, my sense is that the proposed IPO will probably come to market in early September. Since ATVM loans will require 20% cost sharing and direct Federal grants will require 50% cost...

Battery Investing For Beginners, Part 4

John Petersen In "The Sixth Revolution: The Coming of Cleantech," Merill Lynch strategist Steven Milunovich heralded cleantech as a new investment theme and forecast a period of gut wrenching change followed by an age of plenty. A few days later venture capital icon Vinod Khosla warned his audience “500 million people on earth enjoy a lifestyle that 9 billion people will want in 2050.” The differences between these two informed viewpoints are more than a little stark, but they highlight a frightening truth about cleantech: for the first time in human history the fundamental drivers of a technological...

Investment Ideas From the One-House Grid

In June, I wrote how intermittent power sources such as photovoltaics and wind would have to compete with baseload technologies such as IGCC "Clean Coal" and nuclear for capacity on the grid.  The key problem is that neither baseload technologies nor intermittent technologies are able to match themselves to the fluctuations of demand.  This creates a need for technologies which can fill the varying gaps between supply from these sources, and normal energy use.  From the comments, it seems like I was not completely clear how intermittent and baseload power cause problems for each other, so I will start...
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