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...
Hypersolar: Hydrogen In A Baggie
by Debra Fiakas CFA The last post “Man Makes Mother Nature Look Like a Lazy Maid” featured the work of Harvard scientists who have developed a breakthrough ‘bionic leaf’ system that uses sunlight to split water into hydrogen and then combine it with carbon to make isopropanol, an alcohol that can be used as fuel. It is very much like reverse combustion. Kudos to Harvard! However, the good folks at Harvard are not alone in their quest to outsmart Mother Nature. In the late 1990s, the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado had reported progress...
Electric Vehicles and the Natural Resource Cliff
John Petersen We all love to whine and complain about oil prices because we buy gasoline regularly and that makes the price changes obvious. To solve this overwhelming problem, myopic visionaries with rose colored glasses propose a simple solution – convert personal transportation from vehicles powered by oil to vehicles powered by clean, free and renewable electricity from the wind and sun. Like most fairy tales, it can't happen in real life which means it won't. This is not a technology issue. It's a raw materials issue and electric vehicles cannot solve the problem. In the first...
Can ZBB Grab a Piece of the Energy Storage Pie?
by Debra Fiakas CFA There are a lot of different technologies in the energy storage space. ZBB Energy (ZBB: NYSE) has staked its future on zinc bromide. Batteries using zinc-bromide consist of a zinc negative electrode and a bromine positive electrode with a porous separator in between them. Unlike conventional batteries, these electrodes do not take part in the reactions but merely serve as substrates for the energy reactions. Thus there is no loss of performance from repeated cycling causing electrode material deterioration. The zinc-bromine battery can provide two to three times the energy density...
Beacon Power Delisting Stayed by Nasdaq
Beacon Power Corp (BCON) announced that on November 17 it received a letter dated November 16, 2004 from the Nasdaq Stock Market, stating that the Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Panel has granted the Company an additional 180 days to regain compliance with marketplace Rule 4310(c)(4). What this means is that Beacon is going to do everything in its power to get the stock price back above $1. They had a nice run up to .80 in October but have since fallen back down to the .40 range. Shares in BCON are up 10% today on this reprieve.
The Coming Bull Market In Lead-Acid Batteries, Part II
John Petersen On June 8th Switzerland's ABB Group Ltd. (ABB) announced an agreement to buy UK-based Chloride Group PLC (CHLD.L) for £860 million in cash, or approximately $1.26 billion. This stunning purchase provides the best evidence yet that lead-acid battery manufacturers including Enersys (ENS), Exide Technologies (XIDE) and C&D Technologies (CHP) are woefully undervalued and offer outstanding opportunity for patient and risk tolerant investors. ABB is the gold standard in the secure and efficient generation, transmission, distribution and use of electricity in utility, industrial and commercial applications. Its portfolio ranges from light switches to robots, and from...
Electric Vehicles – The Opportunity of Which Decade?
John Petersen Hardly a day passes without some talking head breathlessly describing electric vehicles as the opportunity of the decade. The fine point most investors miss, however, is that the decade they're describing won't begin until 2020 and for the next seven to ten years electric vehicle manufacturers like Tesla Motors (TSLA) and lithium-ion battery manufacturers like Ener1 (HEV) and A123 Systems (AONE) will hemorrhage cash as they try to traverse the trough of disillusionment that runs through the cruel black heart of the valley of death. The following graph is a stylized view of the...
Vanadium Flow Battery Companies
The recent post “Lithium Technology Dominates Large Energy Storage Projects” featured companies offering utility-scale lithium battery systems. Industry research firm Navigant estimates that lithium-ion technology accounts for almost 30% of non-pumped storage capacity developed since 2011. This might be due in part to the dramatic decreases in cost for lithium ion batteries. A study completed by Bloomberg New Energy Finance found that the ‘levelized’ cost of energy for lithium ion batteries has fallen by 76% to $187 per megawatt hour in the first quarter 2019 from $800/MWh in 2012.
Is the story over for utility-scale storage? Should investors look for lithium ion battery manufacturers and forget...
Solar Storage Dream Becomes Reality
By Jeff Siegel While the solar industry continues to heat up, I maintain that one of the best plays in the space is SunEdison (NYSE: SUNE). This is an aggressive operation, run by incredibly smart people. The company is well-capitalized, fairly liquid, and well-diversified in the energy space, boasting both a top-notch, vertically-integrated solar operation, and a basket of healthy wind assets, too. The company is also now advancing on energy storage – the final obstacle to the creative destruction necessary to alleviate the world's reliance on fossil fuels. In a press release this morning, SunEdison made the following...
Shares in Active Power Purchased
I currently don't have time to do a complete writeup on this stock, but wanted to let everyone know that I purchased shares in Active Power Inc (ACPW) this afternoon for both my personal portfolio and the mutual fund. The average price was at $3.77. I will updated this post later this afternoon with more details. Updated at 10:00 PM As I mentioned above I purchased shares in Active Power Inc (ACPW) this afternoon for both the mutual fund and my personal portfolio. Active Power designs and sells battery-free uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems....
Li-ion Motors and Frito Lay Ink Deal
Li-ion Motors. (HYBT) has inked a deal with Frito Lay to provide Hybrid Technologies' Lithium vehicles as part of their fleet sales program. Frito Lay has agreed to purchase and take delivery of the Lithium Mini Cooper model as well as the Daimler Chrysler Smart Car Lithium version. The first deliveries are scheduled for the first quarter of 2006. These vehicles will be part of Frito Lay's Hybrid fleet and the corporation's commitment to "green philosophy" as well as its well known philosophy of working with the latest in American technology. You would have thought that...
DOE Reports That Lithium-ion Batteries Are Still Not Ready For Prime Time
John Petersen Last month the DOE released the 2009 Annual Progress Report for its Energy Storage Research and Development Vehicle Technologies Program. Like the 2008 Annual Progress Report I discussed in a February 2009 article titled DOE Reports That Lithium-ion Batteries Are Not Ready For Prime Time, this new report is a relatively upbeat assessment of lithium-ion battery research and development that once again provides a stark reality check for investors in energy storage stocks. In Section III of the Report, which focuses primarily on meat and potatoes issues like R&D objectives, technical barriers, technical targets and recent...
ChangeWave Research Fuel Cells, Hydrogen, and Battery Technology Trends
The ChangeWave Alliance has produced a detailed look at the key trends for fuel cells and future battery technology. I have been given permission to post the abstract of this 13 page report. Overview: This report focuses on key trends in fuel cells and hydrogen, along with battery technologies. The findings are from the Alliance's most recent alternative energy survey, completed February 10, 2006. A total of 121 members working in the alternative energy industry participated, including 25 working in companies involved with Fuel Cells. Bottom Line: Respondents working in alternative energy believe that over the next...
Why Energy Storage Investors Must Understand Economies of Scale
John Petersen One of the most seductive and dangerous stock market myths is the immensely popular but demonstrably false notion that the rapid cost reductions and performance gains we enjoyed during the information and communications technology revolution will be repeated in the age of cleantech. The persistence of the mythology is astonishing when you consider that the entire history of alternative energy proves that cost reductions and performance gains are extraordinary events, rather than common occurrences. Investors who buy into economies of scale mythology without carefully considering the fundamental differences are in for a world of disillusionment and...
How The Micro-hybrid Revolution Will Radically Change The Battery Market
John Petersen In late October I gave a keynote presentation at Batteries 2012, one of the largest lithium-ion battery conferences in the world. During the conference, I was buttonholed for a couple hours by the chairman's global strategy team for one of the top three lithium-ion battery manufacturers in the world. They started by explaining that their Global 100 company is abandoning the plug-in vehicle market to focus on sensible applications where it can earn a reasonable margin. Then they started drilling down with a series of detailed and probing questions about whether any of the principal lead-acid...
What I Sold: Electro Energy, Inc. (NASD:EEEI)
Of all the stocks I've sold in response to the market turmoil, Electro Energy was the most painful to sell, both emotionally and financially. The sale was painful emotionally because I've been recommending this company for a year (albeit with the caveat that it was a speculative bet.) In each article I wrote I said something along the lines of "If EEEI can obtain financing..." Now even investment grade companies have serious trouble obtaining financing. If an outside company is interested in EEEI's manufacturing assets or technology, there is little reason for them to buy EEEI stock. Any outside...
