Wind

Vestas' (VWDRY.PK) Board of Directors intend to grant management share options at a strike price one-third BELOW book value. The Board of Directors is rewarding management for its mismanagement and past profit warnings. This will not help restore investor confidence. Given Vestas' valuation, it is time for shareholders to stand up for their interests: Investors should vote against all nominees for Vestas Board of Directors at the AGM on March 29th. The strike price of Vestas' share option scheme is only the latest in a series of decisions disregarding shareholder interests. Vestas needs to change! Vestas needs a...

U.S. power companies such as FPL Group Inc (FPL) that develop windmill farms will probably install a record number of turbines next year after Congress renewed the tax credit needed to make the plants cost effective. Over a thousand new windmills, typically twenty stories high with three 40-foot blades, will crop up in fields in Oklahoma, ranches in Colorado and off the coast of Massachusetts. U.S. wind power will increase by more than the 1,687 megawatts built in 2003, said Christine Real de Azua, a spokeswoman for the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group in Washington....

Debra Fiakas Angela Merkel’s coalition government may not have looked at the nuclear power question for anything more than a “cover your behind” solution.  Nonetheless, the wind industry sees last month’s decision to phase out Germany’s nuclear power generation industry by 2022 as  -  no pun intended  -  a windfall.  Policy makers say as much as half of the deficit left by the shutdown of nuclear power plants will need to be made up from other power sources, principally wind power. This is no small undertaking.  A total of 21,607 wind turbines with an overall...

The Casualty Last Monday, I discussed how I had recently reviewed Railpower Tech with a view to potentially adding to my position on grounds that: (a) the company had a fair amount of cash in the bank, which reduced the need to go to capital markets for financing for a while; and (b) that it was getting badly battered by general market conditions, potentially offering an attractive entry point. Although my portfolio has taken a beating in recent weeks, I remain ready to take small positions in stocks if I feel they are being unfairly bashed, including in...

By Jeff Siegel Something doesn't add up here... A recent Energy Department report has suggested that wind power will be cheaper than natural gas-generated power within 10 years. And that's without a federal tax incentive. Sounds good. Certainly I love hearing about renewable energy competing with fossil fuels in the absence of subsidies. Yet here's the weird thing... While the DOE report states that wind can be the cheapest, cleanest power option in all 50 states by 2050, the Obama administration is pushing to not just renew the wind energy production tax credit but actually make it permanent. That's...

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article on the upcoming Clean Power Call in the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC). In a nutshell, the Clean Power Call consists of an auction conducted by the government-owned integrated power company to award long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) to private wind developers. This is the model that has dominated in Canadian wind power so far. The notable thing about this model is that the PPA facilitates access to financing significantly for successful bidders, since the counterparty is a proxy of a credit-worthy government. EarthFirst Canada (EF) (ERFTF.PK or EF.TO)...

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...

By Tim Conneally The pool of public solar yieldcos keeps growing. Just before the Christmas holiday, Sol-Wind Renewable Power LP filed for a $100 million initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This will be the eighth Yieldco to debut since 2013, and the stock will trade on the NYSE under the symbol SLWD. But there's something different about this one. Sol-Wind is a yieldco that utilizes a Master Limited Partnership (MLP) structure, so it will be taxed differently from the other Yieldcos. Generally speaking, a Yieldco is similar to MLPs by nature, but the taxation...

This article has been cross-posted on The Oil Drum. Last month, I brought you some nice maps showing when and where good wind resources are found in the US.  Now I've found something better: a visual comparison of electrical load with wind farm production, published by the Western Area Power Administration in 2006.  The study compared electricity production from five wind farms in Northern Colorado, Southwestern Nebraska, and Central Wyoming in 2004, 2005, and the start of 2006, compared with electricity consumption in the same area over the same time period. Comparison of Wind Production to...

Doug Young In a quirk of timing, 2 completely unrelated rulings are boosting the outlook for Chinese new energy firms from the wind and solar sectors in their complex relationship with the US. The 2 cases are quite different, but each reflects the wariness Washington feels towards these Chinese firms due to their government ties. In the bigger of the 2 cases, a World Trade Organization panel has ruled that US anti-dumping tariffs against Chinese solar panel makers violate WTO rules. In the second case, a US judge’s ruling has given a boost to a...

California's push to add more renewable electricity to the state's power grid is pressuring wind power developers to reduce the number of birds killed each year at one of the biggest wind farms in the United States. Wind companies like FPL Group Inc (FPL) , wildlife groups and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are trying to agree on ways to lower the risk for birds flying into big spinning turbine blades at the 584-megawatt Altamont Pass wind center in rolling hills about 50 miles east of San Francisco.

By Jeff Siegel When it comes to understanding the EU, I'm not the brightest star in the sky. And to be honest, after stumbling down a rabbit hole of proposals, directorates, and laws on the European Commission's website, I was even worse shape than before I started. The European Commission is the EU's executive body that represents the interests of the EU as a whole. And just yesterday it made a decision that will result in a huge boost for wind energy in Germany. Germany's 7 Gigawatts are Coming So as many in the renewable energy game know, following...

Renewable energy is still very much in its infancy, which means that companies in the space are either profitless or high-multiple startups, or divisions of much larger companies (GE Wind (NYSE:GE), or utilities such as FPL Group (NYSE:FPL) and Xcel (NYSE:XEL) which get much of their power from conventional generation.) This presents a dilemma for investors who understand the compelling drivers for the sector, but whose risk tolerance or financial needs indicate an income-based investing strategy. Canadian Income Trusts in Renewable Energy A few Canadian Income Trusts have historically gone some way towards filling this niche....

Tom Konrad CFA Offshore Wind Farm photo via Bigstock Wind tower stocks having opposite day, or rather opposite week. When US-based wind power companies won a preliminary injunction to impose countervailing duties  in a trade dispute against China, their stocks fell.  They have continued to fall for the four trading days since the announcement.   In fact, as the chart and table below show, wind tower stocks Trinity Industries (NYSE:TRN) and Broadwind (NASD:BWEN, red) have fallen more than the wind industry stocks as a whole (NYSE:FAN, green) and Siemens AG (NYSE:SI), the German energy...

Distributed Energy Systems Corp (DESC) has been awarded a contract to install and commission three additional NorthWind 100® wind turbines for Anchorage-based Alaska Village Electric Cooperative (AVEC). The contract brings the total number of turbines AVEC has purchased from Northern Power to 10, representing what is believed to be the largest investment in wind turbines made in Alaska in a single year. The Northern Power Products division will also supply and install wind turbine Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems for the villages of Toksook Bay and Kasigluk. These systems will leverage Northern Power's SmartView® software, which...

Tom Konrad CFA The Growth of Offshore Wind Offshore wind has finally gotten a toe hold in the United States.   The United States' first offshore wind farm, the 30 megawatt (MW) Block Island Wind Farm, is under construction.  A new project, the South Fork Wind Farm will be  three times the size of Block Island (90 MW), is set to be approved by the Long Island Power Authority.  This project will be located 30 miles East of Montauk, NY and Southeast of Block Island in a wind energy area designated by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy...