John Mauldin, an economist and investment advisor who often offers both unusual and insightful views recently wrote that new applications for solar power plants are booming.  He said: “The July 21 Fortune has a great article on the rush to build solar power plants in the deserts of California, Arizona, and Nevada. Applications have been filed to build plants that would generate a theoretical 60 gigawatts of electricity. To put that into perspective, California only uses 33 gigawatts. And the biggest and richest firms are lining up to get land …

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“We’re going to beat coal.”  That quote from an Ausra representative encapsulates this story.  Ausra projects their concentrating solar system will generate electricity at a 10 cent/kw cost in 2010 and 8 cents when cost reductions now on the drawing board are implemented.  Ausra is just one of many concentrating solar efforts backed by sophisticated blue ribbon investors and utilities that are in the process of being being implemented, as the Bloomberg report posted below describes in detail.  Concentrating solar, my friends, will be the Big Bertha of oil substitution …

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The following report posted on The Energy Blog was interesting to me first because it explains in simple terms (the ones I need) how a Stirling system works to convert sunlight to electrical power and secondly because it indicates one potentially viable direction that concentrating solar may take.   I firmly believe that in the end we will come to depend on electrical power for virtually every need and it will be generated to a very great degree from sunlight.

Here is is the report:
February 15, 2008
Sandia, Stirling Energy Systems Set New …

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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 …

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There was a debate regarding the best way to have clean aut0motive transport.  Is it better to substitute biofuels for petroleum or to build plug in hybrids.  Actually, I am not sure the two are mutually exclusive.  Anyway,  Tom Konrad, an astute analyst whose web site, Alt Energy Stocks,  is now listed among “Jim’s Recommended Sites”,  has weighed in with an alternative position.   You can read it here.

It is an interesting discussion for those who come at the subject from a global warming perspective. I’m sure some farmers …

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Here is a link to the NYT coverage of the revolutionary Israeli plan to transform their automotive fleet to electric vehicle over a decade.  We know this is the ultimate future for all vehicles because electricity will be the ultimate energy source as petroleum and then natural gas become scarce.  

It makes perfect sense for Israel to lead the way because

1. the country is physically small enough to use electric cars for most purposes despite the limitations of current battery technology.

2. with high intensity sunlight, Israel is well positioned to …

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I recently noted the growing U.S. presence of Ausra, a CSP company with new expansion plans, large ambitions and excellent financial partners.   There are two other CSP players active in Colorado: 

      - Abengoa Solar is a Spanish company that focuses sunlight on a single point and  uses molten salt to store the energy.   It has created a subsidiary, Solucar Power, Inc., to try to interest U.S. utilities in constructing new capacity using a “trough” system that they acquired from a Colorado company.   This system may lack the cost …

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Jerome Ball believes that PV cell production may exceed demand by the end of 2008 and that longer term the subsidies of many governments may not continue, leading to reduced growth in demand.   Of course, the second point is exactly what I discussed in Newsletter # 10.  Ball provides an excellent statistical summary of projected PV cell production. read full post

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January 02, 2008   A new company has entered the thermal solar field.  Per their press release: Hamilton Sundstrand, a subsidiary of United Technologies Corp. [NYSE: UTX], and US Renewables Group have formed a new entity, SolarReserve, to commercialize the concentrated solar power tower technology and corresponding molten salt storage system developed by Rocketdyne. This renewable technology will enable utility-scale solar power generation. It is designed to meet a utility’s needs with a single installation capable of producing up to …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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The potentially game-changing combination of concentrating solar power with thermal storage is described on the Ausra web site.  CSP is an old and proven technology, although Ausra is now using new ways to make it far less capital intensive.  But  the addition of thermal storage, which is far more efficient than storing electricity, is the key to the revolutionary nature of this development.  Ausra’s thermal storage technique will be tested soon.  It is not yet proven.

read full post

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by Charles Morand Regular readers know I’m a big fan of wind power, especially in North America. I like the fact that the technology and business model are well understood, that most wind projects have good forward revenue visibility, and that wind is close to being competitive with conventional power generation without subsidies. Wind combines the best of both worlds: stable cash-flows and rapid growth. Over the past few months, concentrating solar power [CSP], a form of energy that is about as ancient as …

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LONG BEACH, California (Reuters) - Two of the nation’s biggest power companies are teaming up with a solar start-up to create one of the world’s largest solar power projects, which they say could make electricity at a competitive price. PG&E Corp, FPL Corp and solar thermal power generator Ausra Inc unveiled plans on Thursday for utility-scale solar plants which they claim will produce electricity at a price comparable with conventional fossil-fuel power plants. The announcement represents the commitment among the three companies to build 2,000 megawatts of solar …

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