I’ve reported on new CSP plants that are planned for construction in the desert, but the information below from the New York Times in a 2/1/2008, an article titled, "A Green Energy Industry Takes Root in California" was news to me. I suspect the future of electrical generation will include a very large dose of small to medium sized CSP plants built fairly close to the customer base so as to reduce distribution costs and losses of power.   This seems like an example.  "In 2007, 100 megawatts …

[Read more →]

Scientific American Magazine - January, 2008 A Solar Grand Plan By 2050 solar power could end U.S. dependence on foreign oil and slash greenhouse gas emissions By Ken Zweibel, James Mason and Vasilis Fthenakis Next Back Schott AG/Commercial Handout/EPA/Corbis A massive switch from coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power plants to solar power plants could supply …

[Read more →]

Transition to the Electric Economy

New year’s day is a good time for long term thinking and planning. Today I want to relate some fairly visible long term prospects for global energy changes to a few of their more obscure short term investment implications that are actionable.

The great game of the next era in human use of energy is going to be the transition from a petro/electric economy to a fully electric one, motivated by the end of affordable fossil fuels. Transportation is the name of this game because it uses …

[Read more →]

The following was written by Tom Konrad

#4 Composite Technology Corp. (CPTC.OB)

I first recommended CPTC last April in an article about how electricity transmission is essential for renewable energy on a large scale. At the time I focused on how transmission helps even out the variability of wind power, but transmission is going to be if anything more essential to the development of Concentrating Solar Power [CSP]. It is true that a 100×100 mile square of Southwest Desert theoretically receives enough sun to generate electricity …

[Read more →]