Wind

Steve Leone   Wind Tower photo: Samdogs via PhotoRee The United States Department of Commerce has once again ruled in favor of American companies who say Chinese manufacturers are receiving unfair government subsidies. American wind tower manufacturers filed a trade complaint in December against Chinese companies, and on Wednesday the DOC made its preliminary determination on countervailing duties. According to Wiley Rein, the lead counsel for the group that filed the petition, commerce found that mandatory respondents, Titan Wind Energy and CS Wind China, received countervailing subsidies...

Western Wind Energy (WNDEF.OB) announce that it has executed a formal turbine supply agreement with Mitsubishi Power Systems. Mitsubishi Power Systems will supply Western Wind Energy with an initial 15 one-megawatt MHIA 1000A wind turbine generators, for Western Wind Energy's 15-megawatt steel park wind project in Arizona for delivery of October of this year. The turbine supply agreement further calls for the supply of up to an additional 900 megawatts of wind turbine generators for future projects. A delegation from Western Wind Energy will be traveling to Japan next month to inspect the new 2.4-megawatt Mitsubishi wind turbine...

Tom Konrad CFA A month ago, I was convinced that Finavera Wind Energy’s (TSX-V:FVR, OTC:FNVRF) stock was only temporarily trading at depressed levels in the low 20 cent range because investors were disappointed at the deal with Pattern Energy.  Many shareholders had been hoping for an outright sale, and were selling into the thinly traded holiday markets.  I predicted that Finavera stock would “quickly rebound to at least the C$0.30 range over the next few days or weeks, as liquidity returns to the market, and investors revalue the stock based on the agreement with Pattern.”...

Tom Konrad CFA Disclosure: Long FNVRF, short PEGI $30 and $35 calls, $20 and $25 puts. The Good News Finavera Wind Energy (TSXV:FVR, OTC:FNVRF) shareholders have had a long and trying wait for the sale of its wind projects to Pattern Energy Group (NASD:PEGI) since the deal was announced in December 2012.  The timeline has slipped repeatedly, two of the projects proved impossible to permit, and there have been questions about just how large the remaining ones would be.  The long silence since the company’s interim financial update last November has probably led many investors to give the company...

Tom Konrad CFA Image via Wikipedia Sticker Shock As I discussed in my article on investing in offshore wind power, Nstar (NYSE:NST) recently agreed to buy 27.5% of Cape Wind's 420MW planned output. Since National Grid (NYSE:NGG) has had a power purchase agreement (PPA) to buy 50% of the farm's output since 2010, Cape Wind now has enough capacity contracted to raise money for construction. The Nstar PPA has yet to be negotiated, but prices the PPA...

Tom Konrad CFA Sinovel's recent refusal to accept shipments from American Superconductor (AMSC) may be due to more than just a slowdown in the Chinese wind market. Many of my best ideas come from readers.  When American Superconductor (AMSC) announced that their largest customer, the Chinese Wind Power company (and the world's second largest wind turbine manufacturer) Sinovel (601558.SS) had refused shipments, and not yet paid for some previous deliveries, my first thought was that Sinovel's reasons would likely remain an enigma for several months.  I did not write anything, knowing that anything I said would...

Even though solar - and especially solar PV - has managed to capture the lion's share of public equity investors' attention over the past three years, wind remains far more competitive with with fossil-fired power generation on a cost basis than solar, and thus presents a fundamentally stronger investment case for the time being (and I emphasize for the time being). What's more, wind as an industry is more mature than solar; for solar, the lack of earnings for many companies and the wildly inflated PEs for others make the sector potentially volatile and risky for investors. While...

In the most recent two installments of Energy Tech Stocks' interview with me cover my views on transmission stocks, and biofuel stocks.  Readers of AltEnergyStocks know that I am a big fan of electricity transmission, a theme I keep coming back to.  You also know that I have a very ambivalent relationship with both ethanol and biodiesel.  So I liked Bill's transmission article, but I just wasn't able to convey to him the subtleties of how I feel about biofuels.  But he got one thing right: the owners of biofuel feedstock are likely going to be the biggest winners....

Tom Konrad CFA The Windstar Wind Farm. Photo credit: Western Wind Energy Yesterday, I wrote about Western Wind Energy’s (TSXV:WND, OTC:WNDEF) plans to increase the 1603 cash grant for their Windstar wind farm.  But that was not the only thing discussed in Monday’s conference call. Investor Frustration During the Q&A, many investors were concerned about Western Wind’s recent deal to acquire a 4 GW wind development pipeline from Champlin/GEI Wind Holdings.   The concern was that the company would be issuing 8 million shares for the assets, but the company...

Distributed Energy Systems Corp (DESC) has been awarded a contract for $1.14 million to install, commission and service three additional NorthWind 100 wind turbines for the Alaska Village Electric Cooperative (AVEC) in the rural village of Chevak, Alaska. The contract continues AVEC's commitment to the development of its rural wind program in Alaska, bringing the total number of turbines AVEC has purchased from Northern Power to 13. The three new turbines, combined with an additional NorthWind 100 purchased by AVEC in October 2005, are expected to be installed in Chevak by the autumn of 2006. Together, the four...

Who's the Energy Alpha Dog? GE or Siemens? By Jeff Siegel General Electric (NYSE:GE) wants to acquire one of the largest companies in France, and it could get what it wants if Germany doesn't get in the way. Alstom SA (AOMFF), the target of GE's desires, is a French energy and transportation company with a market value of approximately $11.5 billion. It deals in hydroelectric and nuclear power, environmental control systems, wind turbines and battery storage, as well as trains and rail infrastructure. It's a huge company, and GE could spend as much as $13 billion to...

Tom Konrad CFA Yesterday, I tendered my shares of Western Wind Energy (TSX-V:WND, OTC:WNDEF) to Brookfield Renewable Energy Partners' (TSX:BEP.UN, OTC: BRPFF) extended offer for Western Wind at C$2.60 a share.  This is despite the fact that I think (and was even quoted in a Western Wind press release) saying Western Wind is worth more than C$2.60. Two things have changed.  After conversations with other investors, Western Wind CEO Jeff Ciachurski, and a representative of Brookfield, as well as reading some evidence of extremely bad governance in Western Wind's Q3 2012 filing, I no...

Charles Morand The relationship - or lack thereof - between oil prices and the performance of alt energy stocks has been a long-time interest of mine. I discussed it last in late March when I looked at correlations between the daily returns of alt energy and fossil energy ETFs. At the time, I found that only a weak relationship existed between the two and that if someone wanted to make a thematic investment play on Peak Oil, alt energy ETFs were not an ideal way to do so.  Seeing as the popular press and countless "experts"...

Maxwell Technologies (MXWL) announced that Enercon GmbH has placed a 1.5 million-unit purchase order for ultracapacitors for wind turbine blade pitch systems. Enercon currently uses BOOSTCAP® ultracapacitors for backup energy storage and power delivery in wind turbines models ranging in output from 300 kW to 6 MW. Ulrich Neundlinger, Enercon's managing director of switching units, said that the company is expanding its use of ultracapacitors for blade pitch system backup power after initial deployments confirmed their significant advantages over traditional battery solutions.

A Bet on Wind Industry Growth Tom Konrad, CFA Wind Works Power Corporation (WWPW.OB) presents investors in publicly traded wind power stocks a new type of opportunity with the potential for high reward, and a complementary risk profile to existing plays.   In the past, I've lamented the dearth of choice in publicly traded wind power stocks on North American markets, but both the number and types of opportunities are growing, allowing investors to diversify risk or to make more narrowly focused bets on how they expect the sector to evolve. I classify wind stocks into three types: Wind...

John Petersen Last Wednesday I stirred up a hornets nest with an article titled "A Reality Check for Wind Power Investors" that included two graphs from the Bonneville Power Administration, or BPA, which manages a four state, 300,000 square mile service region that's home to over 40% of the installed hydro capacity and roughly 12% of the installed wind capacity in the US. The first graph tracks the BPA's regional load and power production from hydro, thermal and wind facilities over the last seven days and shows why the region is one of the largest power exporters...