Wind

Bribing and Pressuring Fissile Regimes On July 25th, France offered to build a nuclear reactor for Libya to power a water desalinization plant.  Russia is delaying the delivery of  nuclear fuel for Iran's nearly completed Bushehr to help pressure them to comply with UN Security council demands for less secrecy.  South Korea, Japan, China, Russia, and the United States promised to provide 950 thousand tons of oil or equivalent aid to North Korea in return for permanently disabling all its nuclear facilities. I'm not going to argue about whether using energy aid is the best way to influence this...

Right on the heels of Colorado passing Amendment 37, Pennsylvania is waiting for State House approval on the passage of their own legislation mandating clean energy production. This new bill states that by 2020, utilities would be required to provide 18 percent of the electricity used in Pennsylvania from alternative sources, like wind, solar and waste coal. Wind should be the big winner for this region.

Tom Konrad CFA On July 23rd, Finavera Wind Energy (TSXV:FVR, OTC:FNVRF) announced a deal to sell its 77 megawatt Wildmare Wind Energy Project to Innergex Renewable Energy (TSX:INE, OTC:INGXF.)  The sale will come as a great releif to Finavera’s long-suffering shareholders, who have seen the stock halve in value since the start of the year. I included Finavera in my annual list of clean energy stocks this January because, even at the time, Finavera was trading at a fraction of the value of its wind projects, despite a weak balance sheet.  Since then,...

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...

Net metering describes the requirement that an electric utility buy electricity from any of its customers that generate their own electricity (usually with some sort of renewable energy, such as solar or wind) at the same price that they sell it to the customer.  That seems fair, doesn't it? The Utility Perspective It doesn't seem fair to the utility.  Utilities do more than just generate and sell electricity to customers.  They also are responsible for transmission (delivering the electricity) and reliability (making sure that the lights work when you flip the switch.) Taking just the reliability requirement, suppose that...

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 Debra Fiakas CFA In the second week of November 2015, GAMESA Corporation (GTQ1: Berlin, GAM: Madrid, or GCTAF: OTC), Spain’s wind turbine manufacturer, reported double the net profit in the nine months ending September 2015, on revenue that was 30% higher than the same period last year.  During the period GAMESA has received orders from customers in twenty-five different countries for wind turbines with generating capacity of 2,841 megawatts.   Backlog at the end of September 2015 was 3,034 megawatts, representing a 43% increases over backlog a year ago.  At a time when some companies are struggling amidst...

Tom Konrad On March fifth, St. Louis, MO based carbon fiber manufacturer Zolek’s (NASD:ZOLT) shares jumped 14% to $10.52, having traded as high as $11.70 intraday when Quinpario Partners LLC  and allied investors disclosed a 10.13% stake in the company. Jeffry Quinn wants to help Zoltek penetrate new markets and increase its global presence. Quinpario is an investment firm  focused on the specialty chemicals and performance materials sectors, and also based in St. Louis.  The firm was founded in 2012 by Jeffry N. Quinn and several senior executives from Solutia Inc,...

by Debra Fiakas CFA   The Stohr DSR has an all carbon fiber body (Photo credit: Rhots/Wikimedia Commons)   Zoltek Companies (ZOLT:  Nasdaq) is in the business of fibers, mostly carbon fibers.  Plain, simple fibers may not seem very impressive.  However, Zoltek’s carbon fibers are in wide demand for renewable energy applications such as wind turbines blades and deep sea oil and gas wells.  After two years swimming in red ink, Zoltek has managed to bring sales back up to 2008 levels.  The company earned $22.9 million in...

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...

by Kidela Capital Group In spite of the recent global economic slowdown, the growth of new wind energy developments has so far continued unabated. Wind turbine technology has evolved considerably in the last decade, and new wind farms are steadily popping up across the globe. To meet rising demand for renewable, clean sources of energy, the push for more efficient wind energy technologies has moved from a proverbial light breeze just a few years ago, to a steady gale today. The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) recently predicted that the world’s wind power capacity will increase by...

Hydrogenics Corp (HYGS) announced that the company was awarded a contract by Basin Electric Power Cooperative, to supply an electrolyzer-based hydrogen refuelling station for installation in Minot, N.D. In addition to the core electrolyzer module, Hydrogenics is supplying compression, storage and dispenser equipment as part of the contract. The station is one of the first United States-based hydrogen fueling stations to use electricity from a wind power resource to produce hydrogen from water, in this case using electricity generated by wind resources either owned or contracted by Basin Electric. The hydrogen produced will be used to refuel hydrogen-powered...

Investing in Renewable Energy Stocks seldom fails to be exciting, although it can lead to crushing losses as well as mouthwatering gains (Think Ethanol stocks and Thin Film Solar in 2007.)  With this in mind, I usually emphasize that the majority of most investors portfolios should be targeted towards larger, profitable companies, especially those focused on Energy Efficiency rather than the more sexy Renewable Energy technologies.  This is the philosophy behind Alternative Energy Stocks' Blue Chip Portfolio: companies which aren't sexy, but which still are well positioned to take advantage of rising oil prices and increasing efforts to reduce...

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...