Battery Recycling Realities for Energy Storage Investors
John Petersen One of the most fervently debated and poorly understood topics in energy storage is the subject of battery recycling. What percentage of the raw materials that go into a battery can be economically recovered from used batteries with existing recycling technology and infrastructure? While the details are quite complex, this article will offer a high-level overview of the economics of battery recycling for energy storage investors. Lead-acid batteries are the most recycled products in the world. The process is both straightforward and cost-effective. When batteries arrive at the recycling plant, they're put through a shredder...
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...
Congratulating A123 Systems On Its Very Successful IPO
John Petersen This morning Reuters is reporting that A123 Systems, Inc. (AONE) increased the number of shares offered in its IPO from 25 million to 28.1 million and sold those shares at a price of $13.50. If the underwriters exercise their overallotment option, which is usually the case in IPOs of this size, the total IPO proceeds will be $437.5 million before costs, commissions and discounts. This IPO has been a long time coming but it was worth the wait. I want to congratulate the A123 team and the underwriters on a job well done. Assuming full...
Active Power – A Solid Investment Opportunity And A Valuable Object Lesson For Investors
John Petersen In December 2008 I went hunting for opportunities in the energy storage sector and selected six pure-play stocks that seemed seriously undervalued. I bought Enersys (ENS) at $6.00, Exide Technologies (XIDE) at $2.00 and Active Power (ACPW) at $0.26. While Enersys and Exide have been fabulous performers with appreciation to date of 442% and 397%, respectively, Active Power has been the runaway champion with appreciation to date of 923%. My other three picks have performed poorly. C&D Technologies (CHHP.PK) is down 96% and finalizing a restructuring that will give 95% of its equity to...
NanoMarkets LLC Forecasts $8.3 Billion Annual Market For Smart Grid Batteries By 2016
In August of last year I wrote an article titled "Grid-based Energy Storage: Birth of a Giant." Over the last 12 months I've written a series of follow-on articles that discuss the principal classes of manufactured energy storage devices and the companies that are making or planning to make products for smart grid energy storage applications. My entire archive of articles on the energy storage sector is available here. One of the biggest problems I've encountered over the last year has been a dearth of reliable third party information that can help investors understand the breadth and...
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...
SunEdison Adds Batteries to Its Arsenal with Acquisition of Solar Grid Storage
Meg Cichon The renewable energy market has been slowly strengthening ties with energy storage, and it now seems to be tying a secure knot. Wind and solar developer SunEdison (SUNE) announced today that it bought the energy storage team, projects and 100-MW pipeline of Pennsylvania-based Solar Grid Storage (SGS). SunEdison is now able to offer integrated battery storage solutions for its renewable energy project portfolio, and delve into an energy storage market that is set to grow 250 percent in 2015, according to a new report from the Energy Storage Association and GTM Research. The solar plus battery...
Lesser Known Battery Chemistries
by Debra Fiakas, CFA
The last post Vanadium Flow Battery Companies, featured several companies bringing vanadium redox flow batteries to the market for large-scale energy storage projects. These highly efficient and long-lived batteries take advantage of the unique properties of vanadium. There are other interesting chemical mixes on the battery market that could yield returns for investors.
Sodium-sulfur
There are at least eight different installations of sodium-sulfur or NaS batteries around the world. One of the largest is the Yerba Buena Energy Storage System owned by Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PCG: NYSE) in California. Rated at 4 megawatts or 24 megawatt hours, the system can provide backup electricity...
Earnings Season Surprises In Energy Storage
John Petersen Now that the earnings season is almost over, a review of surprises in the storage sector seems appropriate. Before digging into performance surprises, however, I want to share a surprising excerpt from "Reinventing Capitalism: How to jumpstart what the marketplace can’t," an interview with Bill Gates that served as the closing presentation at this month's Techonomy 2010 Conference. While I commend the entire video for those who have 50 minutes to spare, I was particularly intrigued by Mr. Gates response to a question about whether we could reasonably hold out hope that Moore's Law class gains...
Geneva Motor Show Highlights – The Revenge of the Internal Combustion Engine
John Petersen March is Motor Show time in Geneva and it was fascinating to witness the shift in emphasis away from plug-in vehicles as European automakers highlighted their accomplishments in fuel efficiency technologies like HEVs, micro-hybrids and dual fuel drivetrains that can switch back and forth between gasoline and compressed natural gas. While there were modest displays for Tesla (TSLA), Fisker and other emerging brick-makers, and space was set aside for the obligatory plug-ins that most real manufacturers are toying with, the substantial majority of front-line vehicles at display entrances and halo cars on turntables were HEVs...
Understanding the Development Path for Li-ion Battery Technologies
Last Tuesday a reader who works as a consultant in the energy storage and hybrid electric vehicles industries and sent me an unpublished "pre-decisional draft" of a DOE report titled National Battery Collaborative (NBC) Roadmap, December 9, 2009, a high-level policy analysis that discusses the merits, risks and expected costs of an aggressive eight-year initiative to foster the development and facilitate the commercialization of Li-ion batteries. The draft roadmap was written during the last days of the Bush administration, has since been partially implemented in the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 and has never been officially released...
Vehicle Electrification – Press Releases, Production Decisions and The Hype Cycle
John Petersen Writing an investment blog on hype-riddled sectors like vehicle electrification and energy storage is tough because the topic is emotionally charged and expectations are often based on political promises, issue advocacy, press releases and mainstream media stories that never tell the complete truth. As a result I spend a huge amount of time debunking popular mythology that's 180 degrees out of sync with business realities and responding to commenters who refuse to believe cars with plugs will be: Five to six times less efficient than HEVs when it comes to reducing national gasoline consumption; Nine...
Energy Storage: Q3 2012 Winners and Losers
John Petersen I usually write a quarterly recap to summarize what happened in the energy storage and vehicle electrification sectors, but Q2 was a tough enough period that I don't see much sense in dwelling on the bloodletting. So instead of focusing on the past, I'll offer a quick summary table with lots of red ink and turn my attention to Q3, which is shaping up as a time of bright opportunity for some companies and profound risk for others. I expect three companies in my tracking group to perform very well in Q3 –...
Altair Nanotechnologies Achieves Milestone in Development of Nano-Powered Batteries for Electric and Hybrid Electric...
Altair Nanomaterials (ALTI) announced it has completed a safety testing cycle for lithium ion battery products that represents a significant step forward in the effort to develop lithium ion batteries that are safe enough to be used in electric-powered automobiles. Although lithium ion batteries are the predominant power source for cell phones, laptop computers and many other small electronic devices, safety concerns related to the potential for explosion, typically caused by charging malfunctions or extremes of temperature, have so far proved to be a vexing obstacle to using lithium ion batteries to power electric and hybrid electric vehicles...
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...
GE and EnerDel: Obvious Bedfellows
by Debra Fiakas CFA In April 2015, General Electric (GE: NYSE) won a contract to supply Con Edison Development with an 8-megawatt-hour battery storage system at a solar project in California. The system will incorporate GE’s Mark IVe control system and Brilliance MW inverters. However, instead of GE’s Durathon sodium-ion batteries, GE will be outsourcing or acquiring lithium-ion batteries for the project. Where will GE source the lithium-ion batteries for the Con Edison Development project? So far, spokespersons have been non-committal on the name. GE has had a number of...
