Wind

Spanish Energy producer ENDESA (ELE) will have 75.9 MW of additional wind power in Galicia, now that its subsidiary, ECYR, (ENDESA Cogeneracion y Renovables) has completed construction of the Fonsagrada-Punago wind power complex in the Province of Lugo. ENDESA currently has operative installed wind energy capacity totalling 999 MW, with an additional 163 MW under construction, giving it a national market share of 16.6 %. Year to date, the Company has brought 4 wind parks into operation, representing 77 MW, while it has commenced construction on 7 new farms, which will add 163 MW to current installed capacity....

Worldchanging.com has an article about former soviet weapons designers working with Lawrence Berkely National Latoratory to design a new vertical axis wind turbine. Lawrence Berkeley helped form a new company, known as Wind Sail, to commercialize the new turbine for this Russian group.

Scottish Power plc (SPI) was granted final planning approval to construct Europe's largest on-shore windfarm, the 322MW Whitelee project south of Glasgow. The 140 turbine project would provide enough green energy to power 200,000 homes. Scottish Power is currently the largest provider of wind generated electricity in the United Kingdom.

Renewable Energy World Editors Offshore Wind Farm photo via Bigstock. On January 1, 2013, Congress passed legislation that included the long-sought extension of wind energy tax credits in a bill to avert the "fiscal cliff" that now moves to President Obama for his expected signature. The extension of the production tax credit (PTC) and Investment Tax Credit (ITC) is expected to save up to 37,000 jobs and create far more over time, and to revive business at nearly 500 manufacturing facilities across the country....

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...

John Petersen In 2009, the world produced some 13.2 billion metric tons of hydrocarbons, or about 4,200 pounds for every man, woman and child on the planet. Burning those hydrocarbons poured roughly 31.3 billion metric tons of CO2 into our atmosphere. The basic premise of alternative energy is that widespread deployments of wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles will slash hydrocarbon consumption, reduce CO2 emissions and give us a cleaner, greener and healthier planet. That premise, however, is fatally flawed because our planet cannot produce enough non-ferrous industrial metals to make a meaningful difference and the prices...

ENDESA (ELE) will have another 78.4 MW of new wind power capacity in Andalusia once subsidiary Endesa Cogeneracion y Renovables (ECYR) completes its new wind complex in Tarifa, Cadiz province, comprising the five wind farms of La Manga, Rio Almodovar, El Ruedo, El Gallego and Cortijo de Iruelas. The complex is wholly contained in the town of Tarifa, and has 98 wind turbines: 42 Made AE-56 and the other 56 Made AE-59, both designs being 60 metres tall with unit generating capacity of 800 kV. The complex required an investment of Euro 75 million.

ENDESA (ELE) will have 21.5 MW of new wind capacity in the region of Castilla y Leon once its cogeneration and renewable energy subsidiary (ENDESA Cogeneracion y Renovables: ECYR) completes the construction of the Valpardo wind farm in the town of Navalperal de Pinares (Avila), located in the central part of the Malagon mountain range. The farm is scheduled to start up at the end of this year.

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"...

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...

Tom Konrad CFA On March 7th, Maxwell Technologies (NASD:MXWL) announced problems with revenue timing.  Unlike Lime Energy (NASD:LIME), which I discussed in the previous part of this series, there was no hint of any fictitious revenue.  The disclosure was very specific that “The errors relate to the timing of recognition of revenue from sales to certain distributors.”  The announcement went on to discuss “arrangements … regarding the payment terms for sales” at these distributors.  As a result of the discovery, “certain employees were terminated and our Sr. Vice President of Sales and Marketing resigned.”  Maxwell is reviewing deficiencies in...

Colorado House Speaker Lola Spradley, R-Beulah. and U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, D-Eldorado Springs, co-chairs of Amendment 37—the Renewable Energy Initiative—kicked-off their statewide campaign Thursday with stops throughout Colorado. Amendment 37 would require 10 percent of Colorado's electricity be generated from renewable energy by 2015. The program is scaled beginning with a 3 percent requirement by 2007, 6 percent by 2011, and 10 percent by 2015.

"America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world" Thanks to Mr. Bush's state of the union address last night, we should see some nice gains across the board in the Alternative Energy sector. Some of the big winners may be the Ethanol companies like Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Pacific Ethanol, Inc. (PEIX). The EnergyStockBlog.com has a nice write up on the potential for ADM. GreenCarCongress.com has a nice summary of the important parts of the speech. In his State of the Union 2006 address, President...

The Spanish government will increase the country’s wind-power target for 2010 to 20,000 megawatts, up 54 percent from the existing target of 13,000 MW, a government source said on Tuesday. Spain ranks third in the world behind Germany and the United States with an installed wind power capacity of 6,200 MW, and the new goal aims to reduce Spain’s dependency on imported fuel.

John Petersen Earlier this month I wrote a pair of articles (here and here) that questioned the reasonableness of the near universal assumption that the wind is always blowing somewhere and wind power infrastructure with a wide enough geographic dispersion would offer a relatively stable power output. I presented graphs from the Bonneville Power Administration and a study by the John Muir Trust that raised substantial doubt in my mind. The articles drew a well-reasoned response from my colleague Tom Konrad (here). While many commenters understood the point I was trying to make, many others argued that...