FPL Energy’s Wind Farms Continue to Have Positive Environmental and Economic Impact
FPL Group Inc (FPL) wind farms continue to help meet the growing need for pollution-free electricity while providing new economic opportunities for local communities and states across the United States. In 2004, FPL Energy's 43 wind farms produced more than 6.6 million megawatt hours of electricity for local utilities, municipalities, power marketers and rural electric cooperatives across the country, or enough power to serve more than 500,000 average homes. FPL Energy estimates that it would have taken the equivalent of 3.8 million tons of coal, or 32,579 train cars of coal, 10.5 million barrels of oil or more than...
Western Wind Energy Receives $78.3M Cash Grant: Good News, Bad News
Tom Konrad CFA The Windstar Wind Farm. Photo credit: Western Wind Energy Western Wind Energy (TSX-V:WND, OTC:WNDEF)recently announced that it had received the much delayed 1603 cash grant for its 120 MW Windstar wind farm, which was completed last year. Good News, Bad News The good news is that the grant was finally issued after over a month and a half after the Treasury’s normal 60-day cycle of considering the grants. This will come as a relief to investors who may have been wondering if the grant might be denied, although I concluded...
How Weather Risk Transfer Can Help Wind & Solar Development
by Daryl Roberts
The Need To Accelerate Renewables Adoption
Renewables are growing rapidly as a percentage of new electric generation, but are still being assimilated too slowly and still constitute too small of a fraction of total generation, to be able to transition quickly enough to scale into a low carbon economy in time to mitigate climate change.
The issue of providing public support, with subsidies and other reallocation methods, is a politically charged subject. High carbon advocates, for example American Petroleum Institute, argues that support for renewables distorts the market. On the other hand, it has been argued, for example by...
Eneti and Brookfield Renewable Earnings
By Tom Konrad, Ph.D. CFA
Here are a couple earnings notes I shared last week with my Patreon followers.
Eneti, Inc. (NETI) - formerly Scorpio Bulkers (SALT)
Eneti completed its name and ticker change on February 8th. New ticker is NETI (formerly Scorpio Bulkers (SALT), which I recently wrote about here.
Highlights from February 2nd earnings report:
37 of the 47 vessels owned at the 3rd quarter have been sold or have completed sale agreements.
Net asset value is $23.94/share. Since most assets are cash or vessels held for sale, this number is basically accurate.
The stock is still a good buy...
Hydrogenics and PEI Energy Corporation Partner to Develop Prince Edward Island Wind-Hydrogen Village Project
Hydrogenics Corp (HYGS) announced that Hydrogenics and Prince Edward Island Energy Corporation will lead a consortium of industry and government partners to develop Canada's first wind-hydrogen village demonstration - the Prince Edward Island (PEI) Wind-Hydrogen Village Project. This multi-faceted initiative will demonstrate, in real-life and in real-time, how wind energy and hydrogen technologies can work together to offer clean and sustainable energy solutions across a wide range of applications.
Wind Turbine Art
My sister, who is a linocut artist, just finished some wind turbine prints for me. One is below, you can check out the others at facebook.com/SarahKonradArt
Rarer Rare Earths Are Not Going To Sink The Wind Power Sector
Charles Morand Once the electric and plug-in hybrid vehicle frenzy fizzles out, as cleantech frenzies typically do when reality comes knocking (i.e. corn ethanol and solar PV), the next hot thing to hit the world of alternative energy investing could very well be rare earths, or the lack thereof. Rare earth metals are used in a number of technologies, most importantly for alt energy investors in NiMH HEV batteries and in permanent magnets for wind turbine generators and electric motors (made with the element neodymium). This article, as its name indicates, will focus on the wind sector. ...
New Wind ETF FAN Cools Off Sunburned Portfolios
Update:You can find a comparison of FAN with PWND. a more recent wind ETF here. Since I last covered clean energy mutual funds and ETFs, the sector has seen the launch of two solar ETFs (KWT the Market Vectors Solar Energy ETF from VanEck, and TAN, the Claymore/MAC Global Solar Energy ETF.) Continuing in the tradition of cute ticker symbols, First Trust's new global wind energy ETF is FAN. I recommend that investors stay away from the (very expensive) green energy mutual funds, and invest either in one of the ETFs, or if they have...
Xantrex announces US $12 million wind converter order from Clipper Windpower for 2006
Xantrex Technology Inc. (XTX.TO) received an order for wind converters valued at $12M from Clipper Windpower Technology Inc. of Carpinteria, CA for delivery in 2006. This order exceeds the framework agreement announced on September 15, 2005 for approximately $10 million over two years. These Xantrex converters will be used in Clipper's new 2.5 megawatt Liberty wind turbine. I spent sometime talking with the people at the Xantrex booth at the recent solar conference and they have a firm commitment to the Alternative energy marketplace. They have also started a concentrated effort to release new products into the...
Our Undiversified Wind Portfolio
Wind advocates like to say "The wind's always blowing somewhere" to counter concerns about the variability of wind power. This is true, and it means that wind can always be relied on to produce some power, but that does not mean that wind can always meet demand. In the United States' Great Plains wind belt, wind is typically anticorrelated with demand, meaning that, unless we can shift demand to times when the wind is strong, either through time of use rates or demand planning, overall energy production from wind will not be able to exceed 25-35% of overall demand...
Saviors and Saboteurs in Alternative Energy
John Petersen Last week Societe Generale published a thematic research report titled "A new world order, when demand overtakes supply" which examines the macro-economic and demographic trends that will transform the global economy over the next 20 years. It mirrored the theme of Jeremy Grantham's April 2011 quarterly letter titled "Time to Wake Up: Days of Abundant Resources and Falling Prices Are Over Forever" and did a great job of summarizing an issue I touched on in "How PHEVs and EVs Will Sabotage America's Drive For Energy Independence." In the words of Societe Generale: "So, while...
Offshore Wind Power: Penny Foolish, Dollar Wise
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...
American Superconductor Receives Order for PowerModule(TM) Systems for 150 Wind Turbines
American Superconductor Corp. (AMSC) announced it has received a follow-on order for its proprietary PowerModule(TM)-based wind turbine generator control systems for 150 wind turbines from Windtec Systemtechnik GmbH (Windtec), a supplier of large wind turbine components and system technology, based in Klagenfurt, Austria. The PowerModule-based control systems will be utilized in the electrical equipment of wind turbine generators each rated at 1.5 megawatts which Windtec plans to ship to China in calendar 2006. AMSC expects to ship the PowerModule PM1000 power converters, which manage and stabilize electricity produced by wind turbine generators, to Windtec by the end...
Western Wind Energy Corp. Signs Turbine Supply Agreement with Mitsubishi Power Systems
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...
Is Composite Technology Corporation Still a Buy?
by Tom Konrad When I asked, Alternative Energy Stocks readers overwhelmingly wanted me to take another look at Composite Technology Corp. (OTC BB:CPTC.OB) I've discussed CPTC several times over the last year, and consider it my most speculative pick in electricity transmission and distribution. True to the nature of a speculative stock with no current earnings which is still trying to establish markets for its products, the stock price has been all over the map. The reader interest is doubtless due to the recent sharp decline since mid January. I personally sold a portion of...
Sell Wind ETFs if Support is Violated
Steve Sollheiser Both Wind ETFs are showing interesting chart patterns. In the PowerShares Global Wind Energy Portfolio (PWND) chart we can see a Falling Wedge patern, that consists of two non-parallel trend lines that engulf price. The upwards trend line has been tested for 5 times, which is an indication of its strength. The support trend line was tested four times, which confirms its validity and the accuracy of the pattern. The Falling Wedge, contrary to intuition, is a Bullish pattern which predicts a breakout upwards and an uptrend in 68%...
