Wind

ENDESA (ELE) has started up the Estoncala, Jupiter and Saturno wind farms, located in the north of the province of Soria, in the Sierras of Alba and Montes Claros, near the villages of Santa Cruz de Yanguas, Villar del Rio, Vizmanos, Las Aldehuelas and Arevalo de la Sierra. The three wind farms have a combined installed capacity of 47.2 MW and are equipped with 59 GAMESA AE-56 wind turbines, made in Spain and with a unit capacity of 800 kW each.

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...

Without a doubt, ethanol and solar are the 2 alt energy categories that have attracted the most investor attention in North America in the past few years, and that is because they are the 2 categories that feature the most US-listed stocks. However, despite its comparatively lower profile as an asset class, investors should not forget about wind power! On January 18th, Emerging Energy Research published a short study on the growth of wind power in China. For 2006, China installed 1,040 MW of new wind capacity, making it the 5th country in the world in terms...

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.

Charles Morand Tom and I recently received complimentary copies of a new book called "Investment Opportunities for a Low Carbon World", edited FTSE Group's Director of Responsible Investment Will Oulton*.  The book is a compendium of articles by 31 different authors broken down into three main categories: (1) environmental and low-carbon technologies; (2) investment approaches, products and markets; and (3) regulation, incentives, investor and company case studies. While Tom will provide a comprehensive review of the book once he's finished reading it in its entirety, I will instead review a few selected chapters over...

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...

Who's the Energy Alpha Dog? GE or Siemens? By Jeff Siegel General Electric (NYSE:GE) wants to acquire one of the largest companies in France, and it could get what it wants if Germany doesn't get in the way. Alstom SA (AOMFF), the target of GE's desires, is a French energy and transportation company with a market value of approximately $11.5 billion. It deals in hydroelectric and nuclear power, environmental control systems, wind turbines and battery storage, as well as trains and rail infrastructure. It's a huge company, and GE could spend as much as $13 billion to...

by Tom Konrad David Kline, and his team at the National Renewable Energy Lab, wants to help China exceed its target of 30 GW of installed capacity by 2020 by miles.   How is he helping?  By developing a methodology to help the central planners find the "Geospatial Supply Curves" for wind within China's regions.  By a geospatial supply curve, he means the available sites for wind farms at each levelized cost of energy (LCOE,) associated with the geographical data as to where that capacity would be installed. The team's technique combines geographical wind speed data with turbine...

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....

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"...

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...

Renewable energy like wind and solar power and hydrogen fuel cells could blossom into a $100 billion a year global market in less than a decade as technology costs fall, according to a study. The combined market for "green" sources of energy has already grown 68 percent since 2002 to more than $16 billion last year, according to Clean Edge, a research and publishing firm based in California. You can view and download the complete Clean-Energy Trends report at the following link.

The Wind Power industry is gaining momentum in the U.S., with more wind power produced here than in any other country last year.   My own Colorado is quickly becoming a wind manufacturing and R&D hub, with three Vestas (VWSYF.PK) plants, a wind tower manufacturing plant in Lamar, not to mention the National Wind Technology Center. When Vestas first announced the move to Colorado in January 2007, I assumed it was because of the central location in the wind belt and the great rail infrastructure, as well as the strong political support for wind.  At the New Energy Economy Conference...

John Petersen Last week I had the pleasure of participating as a panelist in Infocast’s Storage Week and attending four days of presentations by industry executives, national thought leaders and policymakers. While most of the presentations were too detailed and specific for a blog about energy storage stocks, there were a few high-level discussions that may be interesting to readers and while I'll never qualify as a journalist I can at least share some of the thoughts I jotted down. Storage for Integration of Renewables Two of the most important presentations came from Dr....

by Debra Fiakas CFA The November 8th post “Trident Winds Floats a Plan for Morro Bay” described plans for one of the first wind energy projects off the western shores of the U.S.   Trident has perfected new technologies for a floating platform that makes possible the location of wind turbines in areas where ocean depths prohibit conventional wind turbines towers anchored to the sea floor.  Investors interested in wind energy technology do not have to wait for Trident to prove out to get a stake in ‘floating offshore’ wind energy.  Based in Europe, SBM Offshore (SBMO: ...