John Petersen

Now that the earnings season is almost over, a review of surprises in the storage sector seems appropriate. Before digging into performance surprises, however, I want to share a surprising excerpt from "Reinventing Capitalism: How to jumpstart what the marketplace can’t," an interview with Bill Gates that served as the closing presentation at this month's Techonomy 2010 Conference. While I commend the entire video for those who have 50 minutes to spare, I was particularly intrigued by Mr. Gates response to a question about whether we could reasonably hold out hope that Moore's Law class gains would occur in energy technology.

"Now and then yes, but we’ve all been spoiled and deeply confused by the IT model. You know chip scaling - exponential improvement - that is rare. Now we do see it; we see it in hard disk storage, fiber capacity, gene sequencing rates, biological databases, improvement in modeling software – there are some things where exponential improvement is there. If you believe Ray Kurzweil he takes it and says OK all of technology is subject to that and therefore, mankind in 2042 will be replaced by robots. That’s the, you know, positive view, which I think goes too far. ...

The more realistic view is what you’ll see in Vaclav Smil in terms of writing about energy. He has Thomas Edison reincarnated and he says OK what would Thomas Edison be surprised about and not surprised about? Light bulbs that screw in? He did that screw in thing. Lead-acid batteries? Very similar to what Edison did - no surprises. So you say “oh no, batteries have improved.” They haven’t improved hardly at all and there are deep physical limits. You know I’m funding five battery startups. There’s probably fifty out there. That is a very tough problem and intermittent energy sources force you into that problem. And it may not be solvable in any sort of economic way. There is no one that you look at and say has those pieces together.

So we’re fooled by this, you know. Supersonic transport, OK that was a nice thing in the past. There are things that don’t move forward and energy, nuclear energy, you know, stopped in the 1970s, by and large that got shut down. So this latest Smil book Energy Transitions really is eye opening when you see how long and hard it is for change to take place. So we have to have a blended model of the optimism that we get from our IT thing and the realism that the energy sector teaches us through its history."

In late-July I argued that the origins of specious battery cost forecasts were political and ideological rather than scientific, and drew vitriolic comment from scores of readers who've bought the mythology and think me out of touch with the way technology develops. It's more than a little gratifying to see a man with the technical stature of Bill Gates joining me in the Luddite camp and cautioning that while we can expect baby steps, the giant leaps for mankind will be few and far between.

In general the earnings season turned out pretty much the way I expected it would. The following table includes some key market metrics for the companies I follow that have recently reported earnings.



Ener1 (HEV) finished the quarter with $5.8 million in working capital, which pales in comparison to its losses over the last 12 months, the $100 million in additional company-funded capital spending that will be required under the terms of its ARRA battery manufacturing grant and an unknown amount of company-funded capital spending that will be required if its ATVM loan comes through. While Ener1 has been able to cover its funding requirements to date with a variety of stopgap financings, its balance sheet is a couple hundred million dollars light for its capital spending plans and I think that's a dangerous position when the capital markets are mushy.

A123 Systems (AONE) spent more money and generated less revenue than the analysts expected, and was punished for it. After adjusting A123's cost of goods sold for unabsorbed manufacturing costs, the hard cost of batteries sold to customers during the quarter was $970 per kWh – a far piece from the sub-$400 costs that will be required if it hopes to sell batteries for $500 per kWh by 2015.

Exide Technologies (XIDE) took a significant beat-down for reporting its best first quarter performance in five years. What observers have failed to note is that on a trailing twelve month basis Exide has reported net income of $33 million and the first two quarters of its fiscal year are historically weak due to the cyclical nature of its automotive battery business. Given the trajectory of its performance over the last year, I fully expect Exide to be solidly profitable by the time its next annual report comes around.

While it's not included in the summary table because its fiscal cycle is a month out of synch, C&D Technologies (CHP) has traded down to point where its $14.8 million market capitalization represents 20% of its working capital and 39% of its book value. C&D had a few ugly years while they were restructuring their business and building a new factory in China. Since the Chinese factory is now on line and capacity utilization is building rapidly, my sense is that the current selling pressure is likely coming from institutions that either can't or won't carry sub-$1 stocks on their books. With a market capitalization that's 4.3% of trailing twelve-month sales I tend to believe that C&D is an extraordinary speculation, particularly when you consider that Enersys (ENS) trades at 71% of sales and their business model is very similar.

The big question mark for the coming week is whether President Obama will be bearing gifts when he visits ZBB Energy (ZBB) on Monday. While ZBB was not included in my summary table because it uses a June 30 fiscal year and won't report till late-September, this is another company that trades at a surprisingly low market capitalization of $13.1 million. When I consider ZBB's current market capitalization in light of the numbers that frequently accompany a pre-election presidential visit, it could be fun to watch.

Disclosure: Author is a former director of Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and holds a substantial long position in its common stock.

Posted by John Petersen at 04:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

*with humble apologies to Charles Darwin
John Petersen

The Oxford Dictionary defines the adjective 'specious' as:

• Superficially plausible, but actually wrong;
• Misleading in appearance, especially misleadingly attractive.

The Wiktionary offers a broader definition as:

• Seemingly well-reasoned or factual, but actually fallacious or insincere; strongly held but false;
• Having an attractive appearance intended to generate a favorable response; deceptively attractive.
  

Over the last two years I've patiently analyzed the evolving price and performance forecasts of electric vehicle advocates and lithium-ion battery developers. In the process I've shown them to be possible, but unlikely, and interdependent to the point where a single flawed assumption can level the entire house of cards.

I've also puzzled over the broader question of why supposedly reasonable businessmen would encourage market expectations that are so aggressive that the probability of delays, cost overruns, performance shortfalls and other predictable failures approaches certainty. Everyone knows that the stock market reacts badly to disappointment, so I've never been able to figure out why companies would voluntarily set themselves up for that kind of pain.

I found my explanation last week. The lights went on when I downloaded a new DOE Report titled "Economic Impact of Recovery Act Advanced Vehicle Investments," which just happened to coincide with groundbreaking ceremonies for Compact Power's new plant in Holland, Michigan that will create one new job for every million dollars of capital investment. When I compared the conclusions of this seven-page DOE report with the exhaustive technical discussions in the 380-page Annual Progress Report on Energy Storage Research and Development the DOE released in January, the differences were breathtaking.

Who'd have dreamed an industry could make that much progress in only six months.

The answer fell into place when I noticed that (a) the DOE press release uses a hyperlink to the White House for people who want to read the full text of the Report, and (b) the Report is not even hosted on the DOE's server. Since I've never encountered a situation where the government agency that generated a report left it out of their official record, the clear inference is that the Report is political theatre wrapped in a DOE cover.

Once you understand that The Origin of Specious is political rather than technical, everything else makes sense. Armed with barrels of taxpayer money, the political class has sought out battery developers who will adopt the party line and add technical credence to questionable ideological goals. Faced with a Hobson's choice between needed funding and technical integrity, the developers make the rational business decision and take the money, confident that future apologies will be easier to spin than current failure. Sprinkle in a healthy dose of optimism from journalists who don't bother checking facts and you have the perfect political story for the next five years.

American presidents are supposed to inspire with challenges like putting a man on the moon or tearing down the Berlin Wall. The great ones sometimes succeed. For lesser men, the grand visions of their day target the highest fruit on the lemon tree and bring us wars on poverty, drugs, terror, foreign countries and CO2 that inevitably fall short of the mark while leaving us no wiser, but a little poorer and a little less free.

We all know how well pre-election promises work out. While it gives me no end of comfort to hear presidential assurances that battery prices, healthcare costs and budget deficits will collapse over the next five years, I'm not quite ready to pay a premium price to invest in those outcomes.

At the close of business on Thursday, the electric vehicle complex including Tesla Motors (TSLA), A123 Systems (AONE), Ener1 (HEV) and Valence Technology (VLNC) had combined 12-month revenues of $258 million and sported a combined market capitalization of $3.4 billion, including $900 million in stockholders' equity and $2.5 billion in blue sky premium.

In comparison, the lead-acid battery complex including Enersys (ENS), Exide Technologies (XIDE), C&D Technologies (CHP) and Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) had combined 12-month revenues of $4.6 billion and a combined market capitalization of $1.6 billion, including $1.2 billion in stockholders' equity and $460 million in blue sky premium.

Something is out of kilter when the electric vehicle complex has 6% of the sales and 77% of the stockholders equity of the lead-acid battery complex, but trades at twice the price.

Within a couple weeks, all of these companies will report second quarter results. The electric vehicle complex is likely to report bigger than expected losses - again, and at least for Ener1 and Valence, weak financial condition. In comparison the lead-acid complex is likely to once again report better than expected revenues, margins and financial condition. At some point the market will accept the cruel reality that political promises cannot repeal the laws of economic gravity, we can't waste scarce resources in an effort to conserve plentiful resources, and investments in vehicle electrification are bound to follow the tragic value trajectory blazed by fuel cells and corn ethanol, which have been favorites of the political class since I was a baby lawyer.

It's your money, but at least you understand The Origin of Specious.

Disclosure: Author is a former director of Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and holds a substantial long position in its common stock.

Posted by John Petersen at 01:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

John Petersen

On June 22nd Scientific American rolled-out a Web-only article titled "The Dirty Truth about Plug-in Hybrids, Made Interactive" that summarizes a January 2008 report from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and shows why plug-in vehicles in the U.S. will, on average, be just a little bit dirtier than gasoline HEVs.

You read that right – dirtier, not cleaner!

I first raised the issue in an August 2009 article titled PHEVs and EVs, Plugging Into a Lump of Coal, where I estimated that plug-in vehicles would be about 25% cleaner than HEVs, but the marginal cost of CO2 abatement with plug-in vehicles would be five times higher than the marginal abatement cost with HEVs. The Oak Ridge report went a couple of levels deeper than my simple calculations and evaluated:

• Baseload power requirements and generating facilities in 13 regions in the year 2020;
• The specific types of generating facilities that would be used to charge plug-in vehicles; and
• The regional CO2 increase or decrease from using those generating facilities to charge plug-ins.

The following graph highlights the comparative CO2 increase or decrease in the 13 regions identified in the Oak Ridge study and discussed in the Scientific American article.



After accounting for the projected number of vehicles in each region, the national average was a 0.37% increase in CO2 emissions. Given the modest CO2 reductions from plug-in vehicles in regions like the Pacific Northwest and the significant CO2 increases in the industrial heartland, it would be easier, cheaper and better policy to use domestic natural gas in HEVs and forget about plugs entirely. Where HEVs cut to the heart of the CO2 problem nationwide, plug-ins only nibble around the edges in a few select regions.

Last month the American Chemical Society published a similar white paper from Tsinghua University, Beijing, and the Argonne National Laboratory Center for Transportation Research titled "Environmental Implication of Electric Vehicles in China," which concluded that implementing electric vehicles in China would increase CO2, SO2 and NOX emissions. It also concluded that gasoline HEVs are more environmentally friendly, more commercially mature and less cost-intensive. The following graph comes from page 4 of the white paper.

While the CO2 emissions data from both China and the U.S. is damning, simple calculations prove that electric vehicles like the Leaf from Nissan (NSANY.PK) and the MiEV from Mitsubishi (MMTOF.PK) save an average of 10.4 gallons of gasoline per year for each kWh of incremental battery capacity while PHEVs like the Volt from General Motors save an average of 7.6 gallons of gasoline per year for each kWh of incremental battery capacity.

I'll encourage each of you to run your own discounted cash flow calculations on annual gasoline savings of 10.4 and 7.6 gallons per kWh and then compare your calculated value with current battery costs of ~$1,000 per kWh and projected future costs of ~$500 per kWh. I've run the numbers and am not impressed.

In addition to Tesla Motors, which is scheduled to go public next week at a price of $14 to $16 per share, there are six pure-play battery companies that focus on electrification solutions for transportation. A123 Systems (AONE), Ener1 (HEV) and Valence Technologies (VLNC) are all working on lithium-ion battery solutions for plug-in vehicles. Maxwell Technologies (MXWL) is working on supercapacitor solutions for city bus, stop-start vehicle and HEV applications. Exide Technologies (XIDE) and Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) are working on advanced lead-acid and lead-carbon battery solutions for stop-start vehicle and HEV applications.

The following table assumes the Tesla IPO will go off at $15, the mid-point of the price range, and includes summary balance sheet and market valuation metrics for all seven companies. For both working capital and stockholders equity, the table reflects the dollar amount and the percentage of market capitalization those values represent. The Blue Sky column highlights the spread between market capitalization and stockholders equity.


It doesn't take much training to see that valuation premiums are much higher for plug-in vehicle companies than for lead-acid companies. In March of this year I suggested that stop-start idle elimination and other vehicle efficiency technologies were the investment equivalent of birds in the hand while plug-in vehicles were a flock of wild geese on the wing. In April I reported that the EPA and NHTSA were forecasting a 42% market penetration for stop-start systems by 2016. Over the last month we've seen important articles in prestigious publications expose the zero-emission myth as urban legend. With Oak Ridge and Argonne Laboratories, the American Chemical Society and Scientific American targeting the wild geese with double-barreled shotguns, I'm more convinced than ever that the market will soon shift to a more rational focus on economic reality and business opportunity.

Disclosure: Author is a former director of Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and has a substantial long position in its stock.

Posted by John Petersen at 01:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

John Petersen

Since I discussed dilution risks in emerging energy storage companies last week, today I'm going to shift gears and offer an overview of the opportunities that have developed in larger pure-play energy storage companies since last September. The following graph tracks the 18-month composite performance of the five categories I defined in Battery Investing for Beginners, Part II and shows how they stacked up against the Dow Jones Average.



To understand what's happened in the storage sector over the last 18 months it's helpful to remember a few key dates. First, we had the November 2008 crash and the March 2009 retest of the lows. The market started to turn in the spring of 2009 and the storage sector fared better than most because Federal stimulus legislation included billions in direct and indirect subsidies that took final form in August when the President announced $1.25 billion in ARRA battery manufacturing grants. Those grants, in turn, laid the foundation for the successful A123 Systems IPO (AONE) that went off in September. Since September, the euphoria has faded as the market came to grips with the fact that building new factories takes time and changes in the cleantech revolution will be slower than they were in the IT revolution. The market is still adjusting to the reality that storage is governed by a different set of rules, but that adjustment period has created some interesting opportunities for investors who want to position their portfolios for a coming tidal wave of change.

In January of this year I introduced the concept of the Hype Cycle in an article on vehicle electrification and used a graph that TIAX LLC presented at the Plug-in 2008 Conference. I've recently found a generic Gartner Group version of the graph that describes the stages of the hype cycle in greater detail.



While opinions on where particular technologies fit on the hype cycle graph vary, I believe a macro-economic trend that's best described as a "storage supercycle" is just beginning. In IT terms, today is like the late-70s and headline grabbing energy storage applications like plug-in vehicles, frequency regulation and short-duration renewable power integration are analogs of the IBM 5110, the TRS 80 and the Apple II. In effect, the current headliners are little more than timid baby steps in an economic and technical supercycle that will take a couple decades to unfold before reaching its true peak of inflated expectations.

The thing that surprises me most about storage is our profound ignorance of technical, economic and resource limitations. We don't know whether plug-in vehicles will satisfy mainstream transportation needs because except for a couple of small-scale tests, nobody's built a fleet of plug-in vehicles, put them into the hands of ordinary people, and operated them long enough to find out. We don't know whether lithium-ion battery packs will perform as well in practice as they do in computer simulations and we can't know whether any of the promised economies of scale will actually materialize. For that matter, we're not entirely certain that global raw material supply chains will be up to the task. At the end of the day it's an R&D project that may work out well, but may also prove once again that batteries are not cost effective replacements for fuel tanks.

The same dynamic holds for ongoing efforts to use flywheels and a variety of other technologies to regulate the power grid and smooth the output of windmills. The first goal is to find out whether the various technologies are robust enough to do the required work for a reasonable service life. Once technical feasibility is established, the more difficult and demanding task will be identifying applications and installations where the benefits justify the costs. The process has started, but it will be years before the reports are written and wide-scale implementation decisions begin.

Over the next decade I expect all of today's leading technological contenders to be eclipsed by new developments. Some will be improvements on old-line chemistries, others will be improvements on advanced chemistries, and others still will take gee-whiz science out of research laboratories and move it into factories. The end result will be a crazy quilt where a wide variety of storage technologies will dominate billion dollar market segments, but no technology will dominate the industry. Tolkien is not writing this story and we're never going to see "one ring to rule them all."

Cheap Sustainable Companies

My cheap sustainable category, which includes Enersys (ENS), Exide Technologies (XIDE), C&D Technologies (CHP) and Active Power (ACPW), has been the hands down winner in terms of composite performance, but is off significantly from last fall's peak. When you consider the price trends for the individual companies, it becomes clear that Enersys was the star performer while the other three were relative laggards.



Some key valuation metrics as reported by Yahoo! Finance are in the following table.



Exide is emerging from a major restructuring that crushed earnings and drove its price down to roughly 25% of the pre-crash high of $18.80 per share. C&D has recently completed a big construction project in China that drove its stock price down to roughly 11% of the pre-crash high of $9.05 per share. Both are trading at prices that are very close to book value and represent obscenely low multiples of sales. They're also emerging from difficult times into a rapidly changing market that's demanding better performance and should favor their high-end product lines. In my view both Exide and C&D could easily double or triple over the next twelve months as the accomplishments of the last few years begin to show up in reported operating results.

Active Power is a textbook example of how a hot IPO can wallow for years if technological and business developments take longer and cost more than the market expects. After starting from an adjusted IPO price of over $70, it faded to an all time low of $0.26 in the winter of 2008. Since then, its flywheel-based power quality systems have gained traction in the data center market and just last week it announced an $8 million order, or roughly 25% of its 2009 sales. It seems that Active Power has finally found its footing after a lost decade of disappointment. If its business continues to follow the trajectory established over the last 18 months, it should be a solid performer in the coming year and could easily double or triple.

Chinese Companies

My Chinese category, which includes Advanced Battery Technology (ABAT), China BAK Battery (CBAK), China Ritar Power (CRTP) and Hong Kong Highpower (HPJ), has also been a solid performer that's trading way off its peak from last fall. When you consider the price trends for the individual companies, it becomes clear that CRTP and ABAT were the star performers, HPJ did well, and CBAK was the only true laggard.



Some key valuation metrics as reported by Yahoo! Finance are in the following table.



My two favorites in this category are ABAT, which is pursuing a vertical integration strategy in the booming electric two-wheeled vehicle market, and CRTP, which is a major manufacturer of cheap lead-acid batteries. While Hong Kong Highpower has been a solid performer and is down by 50% from its recent high, most of its sales come from NiMH batteries that require the rare earth metal Lanthanum. Given uncertainties over rare earth metal supplies, I worry that HPJ may face significant resource constraint issues over the next few years. While CBAK is one of the largest lithium-ion battery manufacturers on the planet and has a world class customer list, its financial results highlight a nagging concern that great customer lists aren't always good things if the customers are so tight fisted that you can't earn a decent gross profit.

Cool Sustainable Companies

My cool sustainable category includes A123 Systems, Maxwell Technologies (MXWL) and Ultralife (ULBI). While Maxwell has been a solid performer, Ultralife has trended downward since I started following it and A123 is currently trading for about 75% of its $13.50 IPO price after a run into the mid-$20s.



Some key valuation metrics as reported by Yahoo! Finance are in the following table.



Of the cool sustainable companies my favorite is Ultralife because it has a history of profitability, trades at 1x book value and 45% of sales, and has been beaten down by almost two-thirds from its peak in December 2008. I expect Maxwell to perform well over the next year, but think reasonable performance expectations are already priced into the stock. A123 worries me a bit because market expectations for plug-in vehicles are so high and it will be hard for any lithium-ion battery manufacturer to live up to those unreasonable expectations.

Conclusion

These are times of immense risk and once in a lifetime opportunity. Unless you're an expert, the only rational way to invest in the energy storage sector is with a diversified portfolio that focuses on a relatively short time horizon and leaves room to adapt to rapidly changing conditions. All other roads lead to the technology du jour minefields that have been snaring the unwary for as long as I've been practicing law:

25 years ago	Methanol
15 years ago	Electric Vehicles
10 years ago	HEVs and Electric Vehicles
5 years ago	Hydrogen Fuel Cells
3 years ago	Ethanol and Biofuels
Today	PHEVs and Electric Vehicles
2012	The next big thing?

Disclosure: No positions.

Posted by John Petersen at 05:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Petersen

The greatest truth in micro-cap corporate finance is that small companies have a lot in common with small children in third world countries – they rarely die of starvation but they frequently die of dysentery. In hard times, small companies that need additional capital can usually find the cash if their management has enough humility to accept the price the new financiers are willing to pay. The problems can quickly become life threatening, however, if management fails to adjust spending to accommodate business conditions or rejects available financing because the terms seem predatory. My advice to clients has always been "take the money when it's available, even if you don't like the terms, because shareholders adjust quickly to sensible decisions but they rarely forgive failure."

Last December a former client Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) found itself with a Hobson's choice because it needed substantial financing to pursue its development plans and the price the new financiers were willing to pay was painfully low. Management made the right decision and sold 45.8 million common shares at $0.57 per share, which was a big discount from the prevailing market price of $1.58 per share, but worked out to roughly 5.7x the company's adjusted pre-financing book value of $0.10 per share.

Earlier this week, ZBB Energy (ZBB) filed an SEC registration statement for an offering of up to $10 million in common stock. Concurrently, it added going concern language to the footnotes in its quarterly financial statements. The market's reaction was violent and shares that closed at $0.80 on March 31st closed at $0.28 yesterday, or 1.27x its book value of $0.22 per share. There's no way to predict what ZBB's offering price will be, or for that matter whether the offering will be successful in a tough market, but given the very small spread between the current price of ZBB's stock and its book value per share, I tend to think the market reaction was overblown and ZBB's shares are attractive at current prices in spite of the uncertainties. In any event I have to admire a management team that's willing to bite the bullet and take appropriate steps to insure their company's survival.

While Axion and ZBB each followed a rational path and got punished by the market for a good business decision, all the companies in my "cool emerging" category have comparable if not greater problems that seem to be complicated in some cases by an unwillingness to bite the bullet on financing terms or slash spending to accomodate current realities. The following table provides summary information on the six companies in my "cheap emerging" and "cool emerging" categories in ascending order of unsatisfied funding needs for the balance of 2010. Comments on each company follow the table.



Axion has enough cash and working capital to support up to three years of operations at historic levels. Now it's all up to the PbC battery. If ongoing testing by first-tier European and American automakers leads to significant purchase orders, Axion will be able to begin plant expansion with existing capital and, if necessary, go back to the market with a proven value proposition and a solid book of business. If it encounters delays or disappointments, there will be enough cash to weather the storm and solve the problems without going to the market in a position of weakness. Either way the stockholders win because there is no reasonable prospect of dilutive financing for the foreseeable future. Cash is a great thing and I'm delighted that management made the right decision even if the market reacted badly.

Altair Nanotechnologies (ALTI) has a reasonable market capitalization ratio of roughly 2x book value and modest capital spending plans for this year that will be contingent on increases in customer demand for its products. Altair believes its working capital together with revenue from product sales will be sufficient to support its operations for approximately six months.  Consequently, Altair will seek stockholder authorization for a reverse split at its annual meeting next week and plans to raise an undisclosed amount of new capital during 2010. There's no way to predict what the terms of a future Altair offering will be, or for that matter whether the offering will be successful in a tough market, but given the reasonable spread between the current price of Altair's stock and its book value per share, I tend to think Altair's shares are attractive at current prices in spite of the uncertainties. Altair's planned financing and reverse split may prove to be unpopular with some stockholders, but they seem likely to insure the company's survival and that's ultimately the only thing that matters.

Beacon Power (BCON) has a reasonable market capitalization ratio of roughly 1.8x tangible book value and more rigid capital spending plans that represent its share of PP&E spending that is not provided by DOE loan facilities.  Beacon believes it will need to raise $18 - $20 million in 2010 to continue the orderly implementation of its business plan and will seek stockholder authorization for a reverse split at its annual meeting in July. There's no way to predict what the terms of a future Beacon offering will be, or for that matter whether the offering will be successful in a tough market, but given the very small spread between the current price of Beacon's stock and its book value per share, I tend to think Beacon's shares are attractive at current prices in spite of the uncertainties. Beacon's planned financing and reverse split may prove to be unpopular with some stockholders, but they seem likely to insure the company's survival and that's ultimately the only thing that matters.

Valence Technology (VLNC) has always baffled me because I can't understand how a company that's under water to the tune of $75 million maintains a $120 million market capitalization. As near as I can tell Valence owes its survival to loans from a principal stockholder and occasional open market sales of its common stock. In a case like Valence, all I can do is paraphrase the late Billy Holliday, "papa may have, and mama may have, but god bless the company that got its own."

Ener1 (HEV) has consistently carried a market capitalization that's way out of line with its tangible book value. It also has a very high burn rate and aggressive capital spending plans that will require huge amounts of new financing in the immediate future. Ener1's most pressing problem is a $15 million note to Credit Suisse that matures in late June, but its capital spending plans are critical to an ARRA battery manufacturing grant the DOE awarded in August of last year. Ener1 plans to finance its operations and capital spending from open market stock sales and other sources. While Ener1 believes it has access to sufficient capital to continue its planned operations, I'm left with the nagging question "at what price?" In connection with its IPO, A123 Systems (AONE) sold stock for 5.75x its pre-offering tangible book value before. Unless Ener1 can convince investors that it's a better company than A123, I have a hard time imagining a substantial equity offering priced above $1.50 to $2.00 per share.

As a younger man I spent some time in the oil business and learned you don't start drilling a well without enough cash to reach your target depth, complete a successful well, build pipeline and storage facilities and provide for reasonably anticipated contingencies. That's a tall order in corporate finance where the cost of reaching the next milestone is always uncertain. A123 raised enough cash in its IPO to build a U.S. plant and begin production. As painful as its December financing was, Axion has at least a couple years of running room. All of the other emerging companies on my tracking lists will have to endure some pain over the next few months as they seek new capital in a tough market. Those that make solid decisions will emerge stronger for it. Those that don't will fail.

Disclosure: Author is a former director of Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and holds a substantial long position in its stock.

Posted by John Petersen at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

John Petersen

The first quarter was unkind to publicly traded companies in the energy storage sector, which saw their stock prices fall by an average of 16.22% over the last three months. While the shares of Enersys (ENS) and C&D Technologies (CHP) posted gains of 12.8% and 3.2% respectively, all of the others in my universe of 17 pure play energy storage companies traded down. The following table summarizes first quarter performance and provides some important valuation metrics.



The following table summarizes the portfolio performance a hypothetical investor would have realized over the last three months if he invested $1,000 in each company and the three broad market indexes on December 31, 2009.

Broad Market Indices	+4.89%
Cool Emerging Companies	-14.85%
Cool Sustainable Companies	-25.50%
Cheap Emerging Companies	-29.24%
Cheap Sustainable Companies	-6.65%
Chinese Battery Companies	-13.70%

After publishing performance updates for a year and a half, I've decided that quarterly snapshots don't provide enough information to show how my tracking categories and companies have performed over time. In an effort to make these summaries more useful to investors, I'm going to introduce a new format that breaks the data down into more digestible chunks. I hope it helps.

Cool Emerging Companies

My Cool Emerging Companies category includes four companies that are developing cool but objectively expensive energy storage technologies that are not fully commercialized. The companies in this category are Ener1 (HEV), Valence Technology (VLNC), Altair Nanotechnologies (ALTI) and Beacon Power (BCON). These four companies were down an average 14.85% in the first quarter and have fallen an average of 36.80% since November 14, 2008.

The following table provides quarterly price information for each company's stock and is accompanied by a graph that illustrates their relative price performance compared with their closest peers and the Dow.



Cool Sustainable Companies

My Cool Sustainable Companies category includes three companies that manufacture cool but objectively expensive energy storage devices and generate substantial recurring revenue from product sales. The companies in this category are A123 Systems (AONE), Maxwell Technologies (MXWL) and Ultralife (ULBI). These three companies were down an average 25.50% in the first quarter, but have gained an average of 12.19% since November 14, 2008.

The following table provides quarterly price information for each company's stock and is accompanied by a graph that illustrates their relative price performance compared with their closest peers and the Dow.



Cheap Emerging Companies

My Cheap Emerging Companies category includes two companies that are developing effective but objectively cheap energy storage technologies that are not fully commercialized. The companies in this category are Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and ZBB Energy (ZBB). These two companies were down an average 29.40% in the first quarter and have fallen an average of 12.76% since November 14, 2008.

The following table provides quarterly price information for each company's stock and is accompanied by a graph that illustrates their relative price performance compared with their closest peers and the Dow.



Cheap Sustainable Companies

My Cheap Sustainable Companies category includes four companies that manufacture effective but objectively cheap energy storage devices and generate substantial recurring revenue from product sales. The companies in this category are Enersys (ENS), Exide Technologies (XIDE) C&D Technologies (CHP) and Active Power (ACPW). These four companies were down an average 6.65% in the first quarter, but have gained an average of 103.72% since November 14, 2008.

The following table provides quarterly price information for each company's stock and is accompanied by a graph that illustrates their relative price performance compared with their closest peers and the Dow.



Chinese Companies

My Chinese Companies category includes four companies that manufacture a variety of energy storage devices including lead-acid, NiMH and lithium-ion batteries, and generate substantial recurring revenue from product sales. The companies in this category are Advanced Battery Technology (ABAT), China BAK Batteries (CBAK), China Ritar Power (CRTP) and Hong Kong Highpower (HPJ). These four companies were down an average 13.70% in the first quarter, but have gained an average of 80.28% since November 14, 2008.

The following table provides quarterly price information for each company's stock and is accompanied by a graph that illustrates their relative price performance compared with their closest peers and the Dow.



Murky Crystal Ball

Since July of 2008 I've consistently told readers that energy storage is an essential enabling technology for the cleantech revolution and has immense potential in transportation, wind and solar power and the smart grid. I've also consistently cautioned that the prevailing valuation metrics in the cool technology groups were far less attractive than the prevailing valuation metrics in the cheap technology groups. Since I believe Benjamin Graham was right when he said, "In the short run, the market acts like a voting machine, but in the long run it works like a weighing machine," I've consistently predicted that the cool technology groups were likely to stagnate or underperform on a go-forward basis while the cheap technology groups were likely to outperform. I think the comparative price performance charts say it all, particularly when you realize that China Ritar Power (CRTP) makes lead-acid batteries, instead of the lithium-ion and NiMH batteries made by the other Chinese companies.

The biggest challenge for energy storage investors is separating business reality from press release hype and establishing a realistic mental timeline for expected changes in the energy storage sector. Late last month, Lux Research published a new industry report titled "Emerging Technologies Power a $44 Billion Opportunity for Transportation and Grid." Some of the more intriguing conclusions I gleaned from my copy of the report are:

Heavy electric vehicles like hybrid buses, electric delivery vehicles, and hybrid trains will represent a $0.4 billion opportunity over the next five years for supercapacitors, and lithium-ion and molten salt batteries;

Annual revenue from battery sales for vehicle electrification will grow by about $6.8 billion over the next five years, including:

• $4.5 billion in battery sales for e-bikes and e-scooters (predominantly lead-acid);
• $1.2 billion in battery sales for plug in vehicles (predominantly lithium-ion)
  
• $0.9 billion in battery sales for stop-start micro hybrids (exclusively lead-acid);
  
• $0.5 billion in battery sales for HEVs (predominantly NiMH);

Annual revenue from grid-based storage will grow by about $1 billion per year, led by applications like wind and solar power integration ($810 million) and frequency regulation ($140 million); and

While lithium-ion battery sales will increase faster than lead-acid battery sales, lead-acid will remain the king of energy storage for the foreseeable future.

The futurist in me likes to look ten; twenty or even thirty years down the road and imagine what the world might be like. The realist in me knows long-term forecasts are always wrong because technological change is inherently unpredictable and the rate of change has been accelerating for decades. Therefore the investor in me tries very hard to concentrate on where the growth will occur over the next five years, and where market perceptions are out of synch with reality.

The combined market capitalization of the lithium-ion and NiMH battery companies I track is about $2.75 billion. In comparison, the combined market capitalization of the lead-acid battery companies I track is about $1.8 billion. When a highly regarded firm like Lux reports that over 75% of the expected revenue growth during the next five years will go to companies that make lead-acid batteries, I have to believe the market's weighing machine mechanisms will significantly increase the valuation of the cheap technology companies while the cool technology companies tread water or decline. So far the theory seems to be holding up pretty well.

The following table identifies six pure play energy storage companies that I'd classify as speculative. For each company I've taken the raw financial data from their December 31, 2009 SEC reports, eliminated derivative accounting impacts that make no sense in micro-cap companies and adjusted for stock conversion and financing transactions reported since year end.



If you focus on the intangible premium column, you’ll see a huge variation among the six companies. At the low end of the spectrum ZBB Energy’s (ZBB) market capitalization is only $6.8 million more than its tangible net worth. In my experience that’s a low premium for a speculative stock. At the other end of the scale, Valence Technologies (VLNC) and Ener1 (HEV) have intangible premiums of $185.7 million and $536.5 million, respectively. In my experience, both premiums are unsustainably high. The other three companies are clustered in the $40 to $70 million range, which is low compared to historical norms, but probably not unreasonable under current economic conditions.

Disclosure: Author is a former director of Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and holds a substantial long position in its stock.

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT:

Tom Konrad suggested that it might be worthwhile for me to prepare a composite graph that showed the average performance of my five tracking categories to either support or refute my cheap vs cool methodology. I ran the graph for him and decided to add it to this article.



Cheap may not always beat cool, but it's done a heck of a job over the last 18 months.

Posted by John Petersen at 12:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

John Petersen

Albert Einstein once said, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." So when the editor of Batteries International asked if I could present my analysis of plug-in vehicles in two pages and prove my numbers in a way that any open-minded adult could follow, understand and verify with an Internet search engine, I jumped at the challenge. The article was published yesterday in their Winter Edition. Since the numbers have profound implications for the energy storage sector and an expected flurry of ill-conceived electric vehicle projects like the planned Tesla Motors IPO, I've decided to reprint the article here and then offer some thoughts and observations on what the numbers mean for prudent investors.

The first great fraud of the new millennium
(Reprinted from Batteries International, Winter 2010)

PT Barnum would have been proud.

While hype-masters loudly proclaim that plug in cars will save the planet by slashing oil consumption and CO2 emissions, the numbers tell a different story; that plug-ins are all sizzle and no steak. The result is the industrial equivalent of a snipe hunt, a wild goose chase based on flawed assumptions.

Let me explain how I reached this conclusion. On December 31, 2009 Forbes published an opinion piece titled System Overload that questioned whether the battery industry was overbuilding global manufacturing capacity. The third paragraph noted:


While the article went on to question whether there would be buyers for all those batteries, the capacity estimate got me thinking: “In a world that wants to save fuel and reduce CO2 emissions, but can only make 36 million kWh of batteries per year, what is the highest and best use for the batteries?”

I hate unanswered questions. So I fired up my computer and went to work. Within a few minutes, I found myself wondering whether anybody in Brussels or Washington DC owns a calculator and understands grade school math.

The calculations were simple but the answers were amazing — at least to me. The sweet and simple summary is that the venerable Prius-class hybrid is five to six times more effective at reducing global gasoline consumption than its plug-in cousins and, in the US, it's seven to 10 times more effective at reducing CO2 emissions.

In other words, plug-in vehicles are not the effective albeit expensive saviours of the planet that have been sold to credulous reporters and intellectually lazy regulators. They're unconscionable waste masquerading as conservation.




I'm agnostic when it comes to the relationship between CO2 emissions and global warming. I simply don't know enough to have a firm conviction.

I'm not the least bit agnostic when it comes to the fact that six billion people on this planet want a small piece of the lifestyle that 500 million of us have and take for granted.

For all of recorded history, the poor toiled in ignorance and didn't know that there was more to life than subsistence.

Thanks to information and communications technology, the cat's out of the bag and fully half of the world's poor know that there is something better. The biggest challenge of this century will be making room at the table for six billion new consumers.

Accomplishing that without horrific environmental consequences and catastrophic conflict requires relevant scale solutions to persistent shortages of water, food, energy and every commodity known to man.

Using 100% of the forecast global battery production capacity to make plug-in vehicles will save less than five hours of oil production and CO2 emissions per year. I can’t see how any thinking man would consider that scale sufficiently relevant to justify the plunder of far scarcer mineral resources.

In my opinion, the plug-in vehicle industry is perpetrating the first great fraud of the new millennium by using one-on-one vehicle comparisons instead of fleet comparisons.

Yes, indeed PT Barnum would have been proud.



Implications for prudent investors

The most fascinating aspect of this analysis is that battery chemistries and costs are irrelevant. The numbers don't work any better if you use NiMH or even lead acid batteries instead of lithium-ion. They also don't work any better if you slash battery costs and make really cheap plug-in vehicles. Those factors might change the cost-benefit analysis for an individual driver or a particular vehicle, but they wouldn't change the cost-benefit analysis for the only planet we have. It is arrogant insanity to believe we can conserve a relatively plentiful natural resource like petroleum by plundering scarcer mineral resources like aluminum, copper, lead, rare earth metals and even lithium to make batteries for plug-ins.

The gaping flaw in the logic of EV evangelists is their insistence that all analysis stop at the fifth step; a point where plug-ins can look reasonable to a casual observer. In the real world, rational energy, economic, and industrial policies compel the sixth step comparison of fleet-wide performance, which is where the house of cards comes tumbling down. Over the next few years, global investments in advanced battery, plug-in vehicle and charging infrastructure schemes will be north of $20 billion. The best possible outcome will be a one or two percent reduction in global oil consumption by 2020.

That dog won't hunt. We can and must do better.

My core philosophy comes from Benjamin Graham, the patron saint of value investors, who observed, "In the short run, the market acts like a voting machine, but in the long run it acts like a weighing machine." While the numbers have convinced me that business models based on the plug-in dream are doomed because the concept is fundamentally flawed; I understand the hype cycle, recognize that markets can be irrational for extended periods of time and know that irrational markets can be alluring to opportunistic traders who are smart enough to enjoy popping corks and go home before the music stops.

For those who can't resist the hype and glitz, my favorite for "Best in Show" honors is France's SAFT Groupe (SGPEF.PK). While I don't write about SAFT regularly because it isn't registered with the SEC, it's a fine company that was the second largest beneficiary of the ARRA battery manufacturing grants President Obama announced last August. Unlike the other ARRA grant recipients, SAFT walked away with a double dip from a $299.2 million award to its U.S. joint venture with Johnson Controls (JCI) and a separate $95.5 million award to Saft America.

SAFT has a diversified revenue base from battery sales to military and industrial customers. As a result, SAFT earned €28.9 million on 2009 sales of €559.3 million and had €306.8 million in stockholders equity at year-end. Despite its solid track record, SAFT carries a relatively modest market capitalization of €730.5 million, which works out to 1.3 times trailing sales, 25.3 times trailing earnings and 1.3 times equity plus anticipated DOE grant funding.

For "Domestic Best in Breed," my favorite is A123 Systems (AONE), which edged out SAFT for the top spot on the ARRA battery grant list at $249.1 million. A123 also plans to borrow up to $233 million under the DOE's Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing (ATVM) loan program.

In the wake of a successful IPO last September, A123 finished 2009 with $528.2 million in stockholders equity and a clean balance sheet, but it lost $85.8 million on sales of $91 million. A123's market capitalization of $1.7 billion works out to 18.2 times trailing sales and 2.3 times equity plus anticipated DOE grant funding. While A123 doesn't offer SAFT class value, it stands head and shoulders above other domestic lithium-ion battery developers, particularly in light of its ongoing efforts to hedge its plug-in vehicle bets with forays into the utility and industrial markets.

Ener1 (HEV) has always struck me as a company that could go either way, but was likely to disappoint investors who bought at inflated prices. Ener1 took fifth place on the ARRA battery grant list with a $118.5 million award. It also applied for loans under the ATVM program, but hasn't completed due diligence. Since the ARRA battery grant requires matching funds equal to 100% of the grant amount and any ATVM loans will require matching funds equal to 25% of the loan amount, management recently cautioned that the company will need $150 million in additional equity before the dust settles.

Ener1 finished 2009 with a $3.7 million working capital deficit and $116.2 million in stockholders equity, but its balance sheet includes $13.2 million of intangible assets and a whopping $51 million of goodwill. Since both values strike me as incredibly speculative in the context of a company that lost $51 million on 2009 sales of $34.8 million, I believe potential investors will probably focus on Ener1's net tangible book value of $51.9 million for analytical purposes.  Based on 30 years of experience with investors who were willing to invest in my clients but wore brass knuckles to pricing negotiations, my big concern is that Ener1 will have a tough time justifying a huge multiple of net tangible book value to large investors who know that its grants and loans can't close without matching funds.

If it successfully completes it's planned IPO, I'd put Tesla Motors a couple tiers below A123 because there isn't a whole lot of  diversification potential for an electric vehicle manufacturer. There may be a couple years of splash and spectacle before the inevitable becomes obvious, but Tesla is not a stock that I'd buy and put in a drawer for my grandkids.

I believe plug in vehicles combine immense risk with insignificant reward, a potentially catastrophic dynamic. SAFT strikes me as a decent investment because its fundamentals are sound without considering any speculative upside from plug-in vehicles. If A123 can diversify into commercial and industrial markets, it may also be a long-term survivor. Until Ener1 solves it's chicken or egg dilemma of not having the cash it needs to absorb future losses and close on its ARRA grant and ATVM loan, I'd be extremely cautious.

Disclosure: I plan to sit this one out.

Posted by John Petersen at 12:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

John Petersen

The electric power system in the U.S. is dirty, antiquated, stupid, unstable, and a security nightmare. After years of discussion and debate, consensus now holds that the generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure will need hundreds of billions in new investment to reduce emissions, improve reliability, minimize waste and inefficiency, improve security, and facilitate the integration of wind, solar and other emerging alternative energy technologies. Commonly cited capital spending estimates range from $200 billion globally by 2015 to $2 trillion overall. In his November 2008 report, "The Sixth Industrial Revolution: The Coming of Cleantech," Merrill Lynch strategist Steven Millunovich observed that cleantech markets will dwarf IT to the tune of two orders of magnitude. While there's plenty of room to debate how the future will unfold, there's little question that we're watching the emergence of an investment mega-trend that will endure for decades.

The elephant in the living room is that while some smart grid spending will be recovered through increased efficiency, consumers will ultimately pay for any excess costs in the form of higher electric bills.

In the early release overview for its 2010 Annual Energy Outlook, the Energy Information Administration forecast that over the next 25 years, the constant dollar costs price per million BTUs of energy would change as follows:

	2009	2035	Price	Percent
	Price	Price	Change	Change
Crude Oil	$10.24	$23.04	$12.80	125.0%
Natural Gas	$3.24	$7.84	$4.60	142.0%
Coal	$1.56	$1.44	-$0.12	-7.7%
Electricity	$28.07	$29.87	$1.80	6.4%

To put these seemingly benign price forecasts into historical context, I prepared the following graph to show what happened to constant dollar energy costs over the last 17 years expressed as a percentage of their April 1993 values.



When I look at the historical trend-lines and factor in what I know about the energy industry and global economics, my sense is that:

• The estimate for crude oil prices is too low given likely economic development in Asia and elsewhere;
• The estimate for natural gas prices is too high given the recent emergence of shale gas as a resource; and
• The estimates for coal and electricity prices must assume continuation of the status quo into the indefinite future.

When I consider the costs of alternative energy from wind and solar, the storage required to make these inherently variable alternative resources stable, the carbon mitigation requirements that will almost certainly be imposed on the coal mining and electric power industries, initiatives to move transportation from fossil fuels to electricity, and the huge amounts of capital spending required for the transition to a smart grid, the only conclusion I can reach is that electricity prices will have to climb and the increase is likely to be dramatic, particularly in the early years of a smart-grid build out. I don't have the skills required to forecast the probable magnitude of the coming price escalations, but I don't believe for a second that a flat line on the price graph is either a possible long-term outcome or a rational expectation. In short, there is no free lunch.

Every industrial revolution in history has been driven by new technologies that proved their ability to do more beneficial work with fewer economic inputs. The fundamental dynamic will be no different in cleantech, however the need will be even more pressing as global demand for energy, along with water, food and every commodity you can imagine, continues to skyrocket. My friend and colleague Jack Lifton is fond of reminding readers that the "Green Road to a sustainable energy future begins in the black earth." We truly can't have a secure energy future without a security in raw materials supplies, which is why I'm an unrelenting critic of ideologically appealing but resource foolish notions like plug-in vehicles that promise to do less beneficial work while requiring far greater economic inputs. It's all about getting the energy we need at the lowest possible price. But discussing energy options without carefully considering the natural resource constraints for proposed solutions is a non-starter.

Many of the adjustments we'll be forced to make in coming decades will be quite painful, but the world has already moved on while we were paying attention to other things. I'm a firm believer that energy storage is a critical enabling technology for our energy future, but unless and until storage is cheaper than waste, the potential benefits of storage will remain unrealized. This truly is a sector where price is the only thing that matters and the technology that does the required work for the cheapest price will win the lion's share of the potential market.

Disclosure: No companies mentioned.

Posted by John Petersen at 02:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Petersen

Last week I introduced a new study titled "Energy Storage for the Electricity Grid: Benefits and Potential Market Assessment" that was commissioned by the DOE's Energy Storage Systems Program, identified seventeen discrete storage applications for the electricity grid, discussed the technical requirements of each application and summarized the potential economic benefits.

If the Yahoo! message boards are any indication, investors are already jumping to inaccurate and wildly optimistic conclusions because they don't understand that many storage applications are synergistic and every storage system purchaser will try to maximize the value of its investment by capturing as many value streams as possible. The process is called "aggregation" and while it will speed the implementation of storage on the smart-grid, it will ultimately destroy the high value niche markets for frequency regulation, short-duration wind integration, electric service reliability and similar ancillary services.

To truly understand the issues, investors need to stop looking at individual trees and focus instead on the forest.

One of the biggest challenges facing developers of grid-based energy storage systems is that electricity is cheap and abundant, and storage can be incredibly expensive. As a result, most of the grid-based applications identified in the new DOE study are not attractive as stand-alone value propositions. In the following table, the applications highlighted in blue make economic sense today as stand-alone value propositions. Conversely, the applications highlighted in yellow won't generally work unless a particular installation can capture and monetize several value streams. As utilities and other users begin installing significant storage capacity and aggregating value streams to maximize their returns, total system capacity will rapidly outrun demand for niche services, thereby eliminating the value premium. Over the long-term, the economics of grid-based storage will obey the laws of economic gravity. The only companies that will survive, much less thrive, are manufacturers of cheap, durable and dependable energy storage systems that can do the required work at the lowest cost.



A prime example of the prevailing "can't see the forest for the trees syndrome" is the wildly over-hyped idea that we can use plug-in vehicles to provide ancillary services while they're connected to a charging station. The silly values floating around for vehicle to grid, or V2G, services are all based on the theory that EV batteries can be used for frequency regulation and other high value ancillary services. While the theory sounds wonderful in the telling, the fundamental premise is fatally flawed and the promised benefits to plug-in vehicle owners will never be realized because they violate the law of supply and demand. The easiest way to demonstrate the point is with an example.

At last year's EESAT conference in Seattle, a representative of the PJM Interconnect estimated that total national demand for frequency regulation was on the order of 6,000 MW. Storage companies that are actively pursuing opportunities in frequency regulation include Beacon Power (BCON), Altair Nanotechnologies (ALTI) and A123 Systems (AONE). In general the battery companies that are working on fast response products claim their systems can provide two to four MW of frequency regulation service for each MWh of battery capacity. Beacon is claiming a 20-year life for its flywheel systems. Demonstration projects are currently under way to determine whether these performance claims will withstand the tests of time and intensive use. For purposes of this example I will assume that all systems perform up to expectations.

President Obama has established a policy goal of one million plug-in vehicles on the road by 2015. If that goal is reached and the average plug-in vehicle is equipped with 20 kWh of batteries, a figure that's mid-way between the GM Volt and the Nissan Leaf, then the total battery power available for V2G services will be roughly 20,000 MWh and the aggregate amount of frequency regulation those batteries could theoretically provide would be somewhere between 40,000 MW and 80,000 MW.

It doesn't take a PhD economist to know that if sellers try to force 40,000 to 80,000 MW of supply into a 6,000 MW national frequency regulation market, prices will collapse. Similar issues exist across the entire spectrum of grid storage applications.

In a 2007 "Guide to Estimating Benefits and Market Potential for Electricity Storage in New York" that was commissioned by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, Mr. Eyer and his colleagues identified and evaluated a number of potential synergies between different grid-based storage applications and concluded that users would need to carefully consider the potential value of the following complimentary uses when planning a new grid-based storage installation.

Electric energy time shift	Transmission and distribution (T&D) upgrade deferral; Transmission congestion relief; Electric service reliability; Electric service power quality; and Ancillary services.
Electric supply capacity	T&D upgrade deferral; Transmission support; Electric service reliability; Electric service power quality; and Electric supply reserve capacity.
Reduce transmission capacity requirements	Electric energy time shift; T&D upgrade deferral; Electric service reliability; Electric service power quality; Transmission support; and Ancillary services.
Transmission congestion relief	Electric energy time shift; T&D upgrade deferral; Electric service reliability; Electric service power quality; Transmission support; and Ancillary services.
T&D upgrade deferral	Electric energy time shift; Transmission congestion relief; Electric service reliability; Electric service power quality; and Ancillary services.
Operating reserves	Voltage support; Electric service reliability and Electric service power quality.
Regulation and frequency response	Limited.
Electric service reliability	Electric service power quality and Demand charge management.
Electric service power quality	Electric service reliability and Demand charge management.
Demand charge management	Electric service reliability and Electric service power quality.
Time-of-use energy cost management	Limited.
Renewables energy time shift	Generation capacity deferral; T&D upgrade deferral; Transmission congestion relief; Electric service reliability; Electric service power quality; and Ancillary services.
Renewables capacity firming	Electric service power quality; Electric energy time shift; T&D upgrade deferral; and Transmission congestion relief.

The point of the foregoing is not to pick winners and losers in the emerging market for grid-based storage solutions. Rather my goal is to highlight the immense differences between demonstration projects that establish whether a particular storage device can meet the technical requirements of a specific application and a detailed cost-benefit analysis that establishes whether a particular storage system will be cost effective for a particular user. As the market unfolds, I expect many demonstration projects to be impressive technical successes. Most of those technical successes, however, will be dismal economic failures because the cost of the storage system will be far too high for widespread implementation by potential users. The utilities all understand they can't buy a service for dime, sell it for a nickel and make it up on volume.

In a July 2008 report on its Solar Energy Grid Integration Systems–Energy Storage (SEGIS-ES) program, Sandia National Laboratories provided a summary table of current and projected capital costs for grid-quality manufactured energy storage systems. While commenters often criticize this table for conflicting with more the optimistic numbers that appear in corporate presentations and the mainstream media, I tend to believe Government studies are more reliable than public relations.



When I compare the capital cost figures in the SEGIS-ES table with the economic benefit per kWh values that I derived from the new DOE report on grid-based storage applications, the only companies I see that are within reasonable striking distance of a 10-year product life and a capital cost that compares favorably with the economic values are:

• Enersys (ENS), a leading manufacturer of lead-acid batteries for commercial and industrial applications;
• C&D Technologies (CHP), a leading manufacturer of lead-acid batteries for uninterruptible power systems;
  
• Active Power (ACPW), an established manufacturer of flywheel-based uninterruptible power systems;
• ZBB Energy (ZBB), which is scaling up manufacturing of a zinc-bromine flow battery system; and
• Axion Power International (AXPW.OB), which is preparing to begin commercial production of its PbC line of asymmetric lead-carbon supercapacitors in cooperation with Exide Technologies (XIDE).

All of the other systems that I'm aware of suffer from crushing raw materials or capital cost constraints. I understand that every storage system developer is actively pursuing research and development programs that may significantly reduce costs at some future date. Unfortunately, experience has taught me that it's unwise to count chickens before they hatch and hope is not an investment strategy.

The grid-based energy storage sector is in its infancy and there is no reasonable way for an average investor to learn enough to pick individual stocks with any level of confidence. While I'm a stock picker when it comes to my personal holdings, I believe that a balanced portfolio of established and emerging energy storage companies is the only rational way for non-professionals to invest in the sector. Disproportionate investments in individual companies should be avoided unless you're prepared to do a whole lot of investigation and analysis.

Disclosure: Author is a former director of Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and holds a substantial long position in its stock. He also has small long positions in Enersys (ENS), Exide Technologies (XIDE), C&D Technologies (CHP), ZBB Energy (ZBB) and Active Power (ACPW).

Posted by John Petersen at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

John Petersen

The California Energy Storage Alliance just issued a press release that describes new legislation to require utilities to incorporate energy storage in their distribution networks. The rules will mandate storage equal to 2.25% of daytime peak power by 2014 and 5% of daytime peak power by 2020. The press release is available here.

A quick check of the California ISO website forecasts a peak load of approximately 29,000 MW for tomorrow. If one assumes an average peak demand of 30,000 MW, a 2.25% storage penetration would require an annual storage build of 135 MW per year in each of the next five years.

Using the average values reported in the Energy Storage for the Electricity Grid: Benefits and Potential Market Assessment report that I introduced last week, the incremental revenue to storage manufacturers from the sale of grid-scale storage systems in California would be worth roughly $200 million per year.

If the legislation is passed by the legislature and signed into law, the new storage portfolio standards will be great kick-off for the storage sector.

Disclosure: No companies mentioned

Posted by John Petersen at 03:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

John Petersen

Yesterday a reader sent me a copy of an exhaustive new study titled "Energy Storage for the Electricity Grid: Benefits and Market Potential Assessment Guide" that was commissioned by the DOE's Energy Storage Systems Program and prepared by Jim Eyer and Garth Corey. I've been following the work in progress on this report since last summer and have eagerly awaited an opportunity to shift away from the overhyped electric vehicle market and focus instead on a far larger market where cost, performance and substantive business merit will be the only drivers. It looks like my time has finally come. For technology aficionados that want a detailed understanding of what the various grid-based storage applications are, the entire report (232 pages including appendices) is a must read. Over the next few weeks I'll try to extract some high-level technical and market data and translate that information into a form that will be useful to energy storage investors.

The Eyer-Corey Report identifies 17 discrete grid-based energy storage applications, discusses the performance requirements of each application and assesses the 10-year economic potential for each application. The Report also includes a great summary that condenses a couple hundred pages of detail into a single table.


From an investor's perspective, the problem with the summary table is that it focuses on the needs of utilities instead of economic opportunities for storage device manufacturers. As a result the summary table uses a range of discharge durations, a range of power capacities and a range of economic benefits per kW of nameplate power capacity. Since investors typically think in terms of megawatt-hours of potential demand and economic benefit per kilowatt hour of storage, we have to take the Eyer-Corey calculations a couple steps further to arrive at a simple translation that fits an investor's perspective.

In an effort to translate the summary table data into terms investors will understand, I've calculated an average discharge duration and an average economic benefit for each grid-scale application identified in the Report. I've then used those averages to calculate potential demand in MWH, economic benefit per kWh and revenue opportunity to manufacturers. I've also reordered the data based on declining economic benefit per kWh to highlight the inverse relationship between economic benefit per kWh and potential demand in MWH. If you're interested in more detail, I've posted a copy of my Excel spreadsheet here. I've discussed this methodology with Mr. Eyer and feel comfortable that my potential demand, economic benefit per kWh and revenue opportunity calculations are at least in the ballpark. Since we're dealing with averages of values that covered a wide range to start with, my numbers are best characterized as rough estimates, but they're certainly good enough for a first pass. The summary results of my calculations are set forth below.



The color coding in the table represents my attempt to segregate economic benefit per kWh into cool technologies like flywheels, supercapacitors and lithium ion batteries, which are highlighted in blue, and cheap technologies like flow batteries, lead-acid batteries, compressed air and pumped hydro, which are highlighted in yellow.

Last summer I wrote about energy storage on the smart grid and said that in terms of potential demand, the market would be 99.45% Cheap and 0.55% Cool. Depending on how you want to classify the voltage support line that I've highlighted in orange, my estimate was either spot-on accurate or off by a half-point. Now that I can refer to a reasonable third-party estimate of storage system values, it's clear that revenue opportunities in smart grid storage will be about 90% cheap, 8% cool and 2% in-between. Any way you cut it, the substantial bulk of the revenue opportunity for energy storage on the smart grid will flow to companies that manufacture objectively cheap storage solutions. There will be meaningful niche markets in the $1 billion to $6 billion range for cool technologies like flywheels, supercapacitors and lithium ion batteries, but those niche markets will pale in comparison to the immense opportunities for cheap energy storage technologies.

The following table provides summary information on the pure play energy storage companies I track that are actively working on storage applications for the smart grid. To keep things as simple as possible I've used the same color coding to segregate their planned product offerings into objectively cool technologies and objectively cheap technologies.



For several years the market has been enthralled with gee-whiz energy storage technologies and references to potential markets that represent billions of dollars in potential for highly specialized niche applications like frequency regulation. In the process, investors have lost perspective on the question of how the niche applications fit into the overall market. This dynamic has led to inflated expectations for companies that are developing cool emerging technologies and unrecognized value in companies that manufacture the cheap established technologies that will do the yeoman's share of the heavy lifting for the smart grid. Unless I'm way off the mark, that dynamic will shift very rapidly as outsized revenue gains begin accruing to manufacturers of cheap solutions.

When I started writing this blog I believed energy storage would become a major investment trend over the next few years because cost efficient storage systems can reduce waste while enhancing the reliability of most alternative energy technologies. Since then, the fundamental market drivers have developed faster than I imagined and what I initially described as a rising tide is rapidly becoming a full-blown investment tsunami. While rising tides lift all boats, the critical points for investors to remember are:

• Percentage gains in the stock market are largely dependent on entry price and it's easier to bag a double or triple in a cheap stock than it is to get the same result in an expensive stock;
• While it's all well and good to look a decade down the road and dream of a brighter future, America has pressing energy storage needs that require solutions today;
• In America we get up in the morning, we go to work and we solve our problems using the tools that we have in our toolbox, however we remain ready to embrace new tools as they are developed, perfected and proven; and
• Successful investing requires diligent monitoring to adjust portfolio positions to a rapidly changing market and technical landscape, and emerging technologies that are not ready for prime time, but will be someday.

Disclosure: Author is a former director of Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and has a large long position in its stock. He also has small long positions in Enersys (ENS), Exide (XIDE), C&D Technologies (CHP) and ZBB Energy (ZBB).

Posted by John Petersen at 05:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Petersen

Before moving to Switzerland in 1998 I lived and worked in Houston, Texas, a place that teaches you the importance of keeping an eye on long-term weather forecasts, particularly during hurricane season. Most of the time it turns out to be wasted effort because Mother Nature is fickle and highly unpredictable, but when it's important it's really important. The same logic holds for investments in energy storage and electric vehicle technologies. You have to keep a close eye on the industrial and regulatory climate and be ready to change your plans when conditions change.

For eighteen months I've cautioned that lithium-ion batteries are not suitable or cost-effective for use in cars with plugs, which are collectively classified as grid enabled vehicles, or GEVs, by the Electrification Coalition, a newly organized industrial lobby for the lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle industries. I raised the storm watch flag based on a DOE report that discusses the technical and economic challenges of using lithium-ion batteries in GEVs; a White House report that the GM Volt is not likely to be competitive; an unpublished DOE roadmap for lithium-ion battery development that highlights the need for several generations of improvement in battery chemistry and manufacturing technology; a National Research Council report that battery costs are likely to remain high for decades; and an Energy Information Administration forecast that GEVs won't account for more than 3% of the market before 2035. Politicians, reporters and eco-clerics are all enamored with GEVs, but they generally live in a "wouldn't if be great if ...?" world where economics, paychecks and monthly bills don't matter. In contrast, the people who bear the front line responsibility for implementing unsound policies see nothing but problems.

Now I think it's probably time to upgrade the storm watch to a storm warning.

Storm Warning I: Lithium-Ion Batteries

On December 7, 2009, the DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, which goes by the acronym ARPA-E, released a $100 million funding opportunity announcement for battery research and development projects that have a reasonable chance of achieving the long-term price and performance goals for electric vehicle batteries that lithium-ion technology can't even approach. While DOE funding opportunity announcements are a little arcane for most investors, I found the discussion in the Background section of the Program Overview revealing, which is why I'm upgrading my storm watch to a storm warning.

The background discussion starts out by repeating the widely publicized facts that the U.S. imports roughly 60% of its petroleum and uses almost 70% of available supplies for transportation. After describing the desirable economic and environmental impacts of shifting transportation to the electric grid, ARPA-E lays the blame for the anticipated shortcomings of GEVs squarely at the feet of the battery industry:

"However, the widespread deployment of electric vehicles has been prevented to date by their limited range and high upfront capital costs due to the limitations of currently available battery technologies. Currently available high performance Lithium-ion battery technologies are limited to system level energy densities of ~100-120 Wh/kg, costs of $800-$1200/kWh, and short cycle life, resulting in unacceptably short driving range for the vast majority of consumers and un-economically high lifetime costs for electric vehicles."

After praising recent strides that have been made toward developing high-power batteries for HEVs (without plugs), the tone becomes decidedly ominous on the topic of high-energy batteries for GEVs where oft-stated performance goals "are pushing up against the fundamental energy density limits of traditional Lithium-ion based batteries." After referencing "strong doubts in the battery community as to whether the energy density of Lithium-ion batteries will be able to be pushed to the 200+ Wh/kg system level energy densities required for widespread deployment of all-electric vehicles" and grave reservations "as to whether traditional Lithium-ion based battery production for electrified vehicles offers an opportunity for the U.S. to assert domestic technology and manufacturing leadership within the context of the existing Lithium-ion based battery technology platform," the funding opportunity announcement confirms ARPA-E's "strong interest in supporting the development of new high energy, low cost battery technology approaches beyond traditional Lithium-ion batteries" and offers up to $100 million in grants for battery researchers that are willing to rise to the challenge.

Overall the discussion struck me as a politically guarded admission of the inescapable reality that lithium-ion batteries are not good enough, durable enough or cheap enough for GEVs; and they're not expected to improve much in the foreseeable future. In other words, it's time to kick lithium-ion batteries to the sidelines, launch Plan B and develop new battery technologies that may actually be capable of doing the required work at an acceptable cost.

Storm Warning II: Raw Materials Constraints In Electric Drive Motors

A second storm warning that came to my attention this weekend is an issue that my friend Jack Lifton has been writing about for years -- Chinese domination of the global market for rare earth metals. On December 22, 2009 the DOE released a "Notice of Intent - FY2010 Vehicle Technologies Program Wide Broad Agency Announcement" that includes the following area of interest:

"Subtopic 3 (d)-Motors Using No Rare Earth Permanent Magnets for Advanced EDV Electric Traction Drives

This subtopic is for motor technologies that eliminate the use of rare earth permanent magnets. Analysis of recent price trends and resource availability indicate cost and availability concerns of these material types. Approaches may include the use of non-rare earth magnet materials or motor technologies that do not use permanent magnets to meet the desired size, weight, and cost targets."

I can't wait to see the formal funding opportunity announcement on this one. We may even see a carefully worded admission that the Chinese need their rare earth production to satisfy domestic demand and mining is so unpopular with the eco-clerics that it's easier to do without GEVs unless we can invent a whole new class electric drive motors that are not material constrained. I wonder how long the anti-mining attitudes will last when the general public comes to the realization that the generators in wind turbines are subject to the same raw material constraints.

The Perfect Storm

In combination I view these two DOE funding opportunities as a one-two punch for GEVs. The lithium-ion batteries that the investment world is valuing at nosebleed levels are not going to be up to the job and even if the batteries improve beyond the DOE's wildest expectations there won't be any permanent magnet motors to drive the wheels. From where I sit, it's beginning to look like another abortive government attempt to create a market for technologies that consumers don't want and global supply chains can't support. Other fine examples of the syndrome include:

Timeframe		Revolutionary Technology
25 years ago		Methanol
15 years ago		Electric vehicles
10 years ago		HEVs and Electric vehicles
6 years ago		Hydrogen Fuel Cells
3 years ago		Ethanol
Today		Grid Enabled Vehicles
2011		What’s next?

Every industrial revolution in history has been driven by innovation that gave people the ability to do more with less. While I believe the coming cleantech revolution will be driven in large part by constraint and increasing competition for water, food, energy and virtually every commodity you can imagine, efficiency is inherently cheaper than waste and the winning solutions will be technologies that allow us to do more with less. Technologies that require more and deliver less will, of necessity, end up on the dung heap of history.

Disclosure: Author is a former director Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and holds a large long position in its stock. He also holds small long positions in Exide Technologies (XIDE), C&D Technologies (CHP) Active Power (ACPW), ZBB Energy (ZBB) and Great Western Minerals Group (GWG.V).

Posted by John Petersen at 08:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

John Petersen

With only a couple trading days left in 2009, this is as good a time as any for a performance review. The predictions I made at this time last year were pretty solid with an 80% accuracy rate on price direction. For the year, a $1,000 investment in each of my green star companies would have yielded a portfolio appreciation of 67%, which handily beat the broader market indices. That being said, my star and caution ratings were a good deal less prescient because I seriously underestimated the potential of both Maxwell Technologies (MXWL) and Active Power (ACPW), which appreciated by over 200%.

The following table identifies my current universe of pure play energy storage companies, reiterates my outlook at the beginning of this year, summarizes their performance during 2009 and offers my assessment of likely price performance during 2010. In the table, a single star signifies a neutral position.



Valence Technologies (VLNC) scares the hell out of me. It had a working capital deficit of ($10.8) million at September 30, 2009 and its stockholders were under water to the tune of ($74.7) million. Valence is currently surviving on life support financing from the open market re-sale of 650,000 shares every two weeks. The financing is enough to keep the doors open, but leaves little or no room to build a business. My experience with companies in comparable financial straits has not been good.

Ener1 (HEV) is in a better position than Valence, but not much. It had $2.4 million in working capital at September 30, 2009 and then raised $20 million by selling stock to an equipment vendor, so short-term operating cash does not seem to be a problem. Nevertheless, Ener1's September 30th balance sheet includes a $13.6 million investment that allowed Th!nk Motors to emerge from the Norwegian equivalent of a bankruptcy reorganization; $13.7 million of intangible assets; and $50.4 million in goodwill. Even after the $20 million cash infusion, Ener1 had a net tangible book value of roughly $0.54 per share before fourth quarter losses. Since Ener1 needs to come up with $118.5 million in matching funds for an ARRA battery manufacturing grant that was awarded in August and it also needs an indeterminate amount of working capital, I can't help but believe that the company will face substantial financial challenges over the next few months. Management may be able to pull off a miracle, but given market conditions I would expect any major financing to go off at a big discount to the current price.

I remain quite bullish on established battery manufacturers with a global presence that trade for mere pennies on the dollar of annual sales including C&D Technologies (CHP) where the market cap equals 11% of sales, Exide Technologies (XIDE) where the market cap equals 21% of sales, Ultralife (ULBI) where the market cap equals 43% of sales and Enersys (ENS) where the market cap equals 67% of sales. All these companies have been actively restructuring operations to improve profitability and when the fruits of those efforts become more obvious, I expect significant upside potential across the board. Since I don't fully understand the business culture or the market, I'm a bit more cautious when it comes to the Chinese companies.

My two favorite speculations are ZBB Energy (ZBB), which has an ultra-low market capitalization for an exchange listed public company, and Axion Power International (AXPW.OB). I'm far from objective when it comes to Axion because I poured four years of my life and a large chunk of my personal fortune into the company. However, Axion's tangible accomplishments since I stepped out of an active role are truly impressive. Now that the pain of a recent down round financing is largely history and Axion's short- to medium-term financial future is secure, it's all up to the PbC battery.

It will be fascinating to see whether my predictions can be generally right for another year. I’ll revisit this list at least quarterly over the next year and either gloat or eat crow as appropriate. In the meantime I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year and a prosperous 2010. It should be a fascinating year for the energy storage sector.

Disclosure: Author is a former director of Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and holds a large long position in its stock. He also holds small long positions in Exide Technologies (XIDE), C&D Technologies (CHP), Active Power (ACPW) and ZBB Energy (ZBB).

Posted by John Petersen at 02:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Part 2 of 2

Bill Paul

Neither Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. Ltd., which trades OTC under the symbol DWOTF, nor Ener1 Inc., which trades on NASDAQ under the symbol HEV, is an obvious candidate for having hidden potential.

Heck, Daewoo isn’t even a green energy stock. Or is it?

Lost in the hubbub of Copenhagen and Congress, there’s been important news about both these companies that strongly suggests – at least to me – that each has plenty of undiscovered potential that will really start paying off over the next 18 to 24 months.

South Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding was just awarded a contract by German utility RWE AG’s (Symbol: RWEOY) renewable energy unit for up to three vessels specially designed to install offshore wind farms. The contract reportedly could be worth upwards of half a billion dollars, depending on whether RWE picks up the option on the second and third ships. The first ship is scheduled to be completed in 2011.

A couple things: at present, offshore wind power is going gangbusters thanks to healthy project returns that one European investment bank puts at around 15%. But installing the new large wind turbines under often harsh conditions requires a special kind of vessel. Daewoo’s reportedly will be the first – quite possibly the first of many. (Simultaneously, Daewoo just said it may build a wind power equipment plant in China.)

As for Ener1, seasoned green investors may think they know everything about this lithium-ion battery manufacturer. If Pike Research is correct, the future is bright for all li-ion battery manufacturers, Pike having just forecast that the global li-ion transportation battery market will total nearly $8 billion by 2015, compared with $878 million in 2010.

But the big li-ion winners should be those companies whose batteries also meet the critical need of providing energy storage for power grids. The really big winners should be those companies whose li-ion batteries also go into cars whose manufacturers can provide the rapid recharging infrastructure that consumers have indicated they want.

Tuck this away: Ener1 is the battery supplier in the world’s first project linking grid storage, electric vehicles, rapid recharging infrastructure and solar power. Other participants in the just-announced Japanese project include Mazda Motor Corp. (Symbol MZDAY) and Kyushu Electric Power, which trades in Tokyo under the symbol 9508.

Footnote: in Part 1 of this series, we explored the undiscovered potential of PFB Corp. (Symbol PFB), Vodafone Group (Symbol VOD), and Telefonica S.A. (Symbol TEF). For more please see: http://energytechstocks.com/wp/?p=2194.

Bill Paul is Managing Editor of EnergyTechStocks.com

DISCLOSURE: None

DISCLAIMER: This is a news article. Please read terms and policy.

Posted by Bill Paul at 05:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

David Gold

Grants for smart grid projects. Grants for battery manufacturing lines. Loan guarantees for renewable energy project development. Grants to private companies for energy efficiency projects. And with each it seems that the cleantech world cheers. Yet for all our desire to create sustainability in our consumption and use of energy, this model of getting us there is not only unsustainable but is of questionable value.

I want to emphasize that I am speaking about government grants to the private sector where the government is not the end customer and where the grants are for implementation of projects that businesses may (or may not) have done otherwise as opposed to grants to conduct basic R&D. Projects like smart grid implementations, battery manufacturing lines, biofuels plants or industrial energy efficiency implementations that have represented the bulk of cleantech grants to the private sector this year. Instead of focusing on cultivating businesses that can sustain themselves via customers, government handouts have focused company time and money on lobbyists and grant writers. And if you haven’t noticed, the handouts are huge, with many in the tens of millions and even hundreds of millions of dollars for a single award. Some award winners, like ECOtality, are honest enough to admit that their efforts to secure government funding directly attributed to a drop in their revenues. For every company that wins a cleantech grant, there are as many as 10 times the companies that applied and lost. All those losers spent significant time and money chasing those funds and, in the process, neglecting their real business and real customers. Lately the discussion in board rooms often has concentrated more on how to win the next government grant and which lobbyist to hire than on how to build a successful and sustainable business.

At the most basic level, the goal of current U.S. energy policy should be to speed our transition to sustainable domestic energy consumption – a transition that would occur naturally as carbon-based energy sources declined but likely too slowly to avoid the environmental, economic and national security implications. Presumably, the concept behind hundreds of billions of dollars in grants to the private sector is to enable and encourage acceleration of this change. As such, it also must presume that government employees can select winners better than the private sector, do so without political influence, and that the projects being funded are absolutely ones that would not have occurred without government funding. Finally, those same government employees; 1) must be able to select projects that will help accomplish our goal and; 2) must either be able to continue to fund those projects or have effectively analyzed that a one-time grant will be sufficient to incentivize the private sector to take over from there.

My Democratic friends may scream at me, but those are an awful lot of largely unrealistic presumptions that defy the history of government grant programs to the private sector. (Synfuels and the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Advanced Technology Program are just two examples.) And to add insult to injury, large amounts of the recent cleantech grant money handed will help the competitiveness of foreign corporations as it was awarded to U.S. subsidiaries or joint ventures of those companies (for example, hundreds of millions in battery grants involving LG Chem, Kokam, Itochu Corporation, BASF and Saft). While the government has long had a role in advancing basic R&D, the concept that the U.S. will jump-start, let alone build, a sustainable energy economy through government handouts for implementation of manufacturing plants, production facilities or enhanced utility grids is, quite simply, ludicrous.

Government grants to the private sector are great PR and make the cleantech public feel good. But they don’t provide quick economic stimulus to the economy (see Cleantech Stimulus Not Very Stimulating) and will not provide meaningful acceleration on the path to sustainable domestic energy consumption. In the end, the only way to have sustainable change is to have a change in the fundamental economics of energy – both in the cost of non-sustainable sources and in the regulatory infrastructure through which carbon based energy companies and utilities earn money. We all saw how quickly things began to change when oil hit $100 a barrel and how quickly they reverted when prices went back down. Reform the regulatory environment so that utilities can profit from conserving energy instead of from building power plants and watch how things change.

In my home state of Colorado, wind turbine manufacturer Vestas just announced it is furloughing all 500 workers at the plant it built not long ago. Why? Vestas notes the challenge of natural gas prices being so low that wind turbines can’t compete. I guess we need to borrow more money from the Chinese and other foreign governments to further increase our grants to the wind turbine market…or, we can focus on a sustainable solution.

Nothing can provoke an economic transformation more quickly than the free market appropriately motivated by profit. That, in fact, is largely how we got to where we are today with our reliance on carbon-based energy sources. And the most sweeping and powerful thing the government can do is to influence the profit motive for the private sector by changing energy economics. But that is a topic for another blog post. (And now my Republican friends can scream).

David Gold is an entrepreneur and engineer with national public policy experience who heads up cleantech investments for Access Venture Partners (www.accessvp.com). This article was first published on his blog, www.greengoldblog.com.

Posted by David Gold at 12:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

John Petersen

Mother always taught me that if you can't say something nice, it's usually better to say nothing. While regular readers might question my ability to follow Mom's advice, this is an article I had really hoped somebody else would write. The quick summary is that while the shares of A123 Systems (AONE) may be a reasonable investment at current prices, the shares of BYD Co. Ltd. (BYDDF.PK) are an irrational value proposition, the shares of Ener1 (HEV) are even worse, and the shares of Valence Technologies (VLNC) are beyond understanding. Since many readers find detailed tables more confusing than enlightening, I'll use words instead of numbers to explain my reasoning. I'll also assume that every company I mention has a great technology. Accordingly, this article will focus exclusively on the hard-core financial data and be far shorter than most.

To create a baseline for comparisons, I'll start with Exide Technologies (XIDE) and Enersys (ENS), the two largest pure-play battery manufacturers in the world. During the twelve calendar months ended June 30, 2009, Exide was restructuring its operations and lost $113.1 million on sales of $2.9 billion. During the same period Enersys earned $67.5 million on sales of $1.7 billion. Exide's current market capitalization of $552 million represents roughly 176% of book value and 19% of annual sales. Enersys' current market capitalization of $1.14 billion represents roughly 157% of book value and 66% of annual sales. For the sake of simplicity, I believe a baseline market price standard of 2x book value and 1x sales is probably reasonable for established manufacturers of traditional battery products.

Until recently, it was almost impossible to establish a baseline for emerging manufacturers of advanced battery products. That all changed when A123 Systems (AONE) completed its IPO last month. After adjusting A123's June 30, 2009 financial statements for roughly $400 million in IPO proceeds and $250 million in ARRA battery manufacturing grants, A123 had a pro forma stockholders equity of $823 million and potential annual revenue from existing facilities of roughly $233 million. Its actual revenue for the twelve months ended June 30, 2009 was roughly $72.1 million. Based on yesterday's closing price, A123's market capitalization of $2.35 billion represents roughly 3x book value, 10x potential sales and 33x trailing sales. As A123 uses its available resources to build new manufacturing capacity, its market capitalization to potential sales ratio should fall to roughly 2x potential sales. While I'm convinced that PHEVs and EVs are suboptimal uses for advanced batteries, I have no doubt that A123 will have more demand than it will be able to satisfy. Accordingly, I believe a baseline of 3x book value and 2x potential sales is probably reasonable for emerging manufacturers of advanced battery products.

BYD Co. Ltd. (BYDDF.PK) is a classic example of why it is never a good idea to make investment decisions based on simple questions like "What did Warren do?" Everybody knows that MidAmerican Energy, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A), agreed to buy a 10% stake in BYD for $230 million in September 2008. At the time, BYD was generating roughly $4 billion in annual sales that included $1.6 billion in cell phone components (43%), $1.3 billion in automobiles (31%) and $1.1 billion in batteries (26%). For the first six months of 2009, auto sales more than doubled to $1.3 billion (55%), cell phone components remained flat at $780 million (33%), and batteries fell by a third to $281 million (12%). While it started out as a battery manufacturer, BYD is currently an automaker first, a cell phone manufacturer second and a battery manufacturer by default because it needs the batteries for its core product lines. With first half sales of roughly $2.4 billion, it would be hard to classify BYD as anything other than an established manufacturer of traditional products. BYD's financial statements are available here. According to Yahoo! currency. the conversion factor between the U.S. Dollar and the Chinese Yuan is 6.8336.

So far, the one critical fact that seems to evade most commenters and investors is that MidAmerican's purchase price worked out to $1.02 per share, or 1.2x book value and 0.5x sales. Overall, the MidAmerican purchase is exactly what one would expect from Messrs. Buffett and Munger, a solid value with good growth potential. Since the Berkshire announcement (the purchase didn't actually close till July of this year), the share price of BYD has rocketed to $10.82 per share, which works out to 10x book value and 5x sales. At present, BYD has 2.275 billion outstanding shares and a market capitalization of $24.6 billion. These valuation metrics are out of line with the auto industry, out of line with the cell phone industry and out of line with the battery industry; proving once again that the value of an investment depends on your entry price. BYD was a great deal at $1.02, but it's terrible for investors at $10.82.

Following Ener1 (HEV) over the last year has been a lot like watching a slow-motion train-wreck. Its final private financing round brought in $42 million of offering proceeds in 2007 and $31 million of warrant exercise proceeds in 2008. In the second quarter of 2009, Ener1 entered into a $40 million open market sale agreement that generated $5.8 million in proceeds during the second quarter and has presumably generated another $33 million since the end of June. When these fundraising activities are offset against operating losses, Ener1 has been treading water for a long time.

At June 30, 2009, Ener1 had a $1 million working capital deficit and $26.3 million in long-term debt, including $9.7 million in related party debt. After giving effect to $33 million in new financing, an $18 million investment to rescue a potential customer from bankruptcy and estimated third quarter losses of roughly $10 million, I expect Ener1 to report approximately $129 million in stockholders equity and about $4 million of working capital at September 30, 2009. Its current market capitalization of $758 million is roughly 6x estimated book value and 34x trailing sales. If you adjust Ener1's book value to eliminate $14 million of intangible assets and another $48 million of goodwill, the ratio of market capitalization to estimated net tangible book value soars to 11x. On balance, I think Ener1's report for the quarter ended September 30th will paint a very bleak picture.

While Ener1 was awarded a $150 million ARRA battery manufacturing grant in August, that award is wholly contingent on its ability to provide a like amount of matching funds. With no meaningful working capital, a major investment in a fledgling EV manufacturer that's just emerging from bankruptcy and a large related party debt balance, I can't see where the matching funds will come from. It's certainly not a business picture I would encourage a client to take to market for a secondary offering.

Valence Technology (VLNC) carries a market valuation that never ceases to amaze me. For the last several years, Valence has relied on loans from its principal stockholder to support average losses of roughly $20 million per year. At June 30, 2009, Valence had $27 million in assets and $95 million in debt, resulting in a negative stockholders equity of $69 million. While Valence has recently inked a deal that will throw off up to $2 million per month in proceeds from dribble-out sales of its common stock, the expected proceeds will do little more than keep the company afloat until the next bi-weekly closing. Since Valence's market capitalization of $190 million represents 9.5x trailing sales and the common stockholders are under water to the tune of $0.55 per share, all I can do is scratch my head.

DISCLOSURE: Author has small long positions in Enersys (ENS) and Exide Technologies (XIDE).

Posted by John Petersen at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

John Lounsbury

With the furor over the potential for hybrid, plug-in hybrid and all-electric cars recently, one might think the hydrogen car was dead. Nothing could be further from the truth. Feasibility at an affordable price appears to be established and market availability of hydrogen powered cars may come sooner than you think.

Many issues remain to be addressed and this article will try to cover them. The problems to be overcome are not insurmountable, but are also not trivial. These problems include the economics of hydrogen production, transportation, distribution and storage systems, as well as safety issues for cars involved in collisions.

Alan Ohnsman, writing for Bloomberg, reports that GM (MTLQQ), Toyota (TM), Daimler AG (DAI) and other car makers want to start supplying car fueled by hydrogen as soon as six years from now. Quoting from the article:

"The advances that have been made by the automobile manufacturers are remarkable,” said Scott Samuelsen, director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center at the University of California, Irvine. “Infrastructure is the Achilles’ heel.”

The fuel cell center opened in 1998 and is funded mainly by the U.S. government and California Energy Commission. It has also received grants from Toyota and Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s hydrogen unit, said Kathy Haq, a spokeswoman for the center.”

Here is a picture of a Royal Dutch Shell (RDS-B) hydrogen fueling station in New York City, discussed in a Seeking Alpha Instablog in August



According to the Ohnsman article, the economic factors are starting to line up for hydrogen. He quotes a Toyota objective of a $3,600 price premium for a hydrogen fuel cell powered car. This compares to the current price premium for the Synergy Hybrid Drive system from Toyota, currently averaging around $4,000 for the Camry. This is quite a change from the $1,000,000 price tag estimated to build one of these vehicles just a few years ago.

Advantages of Hydrogen Fuel Cells over Batteries

To understand the significance of this topic, one must first recognize how the hydrogen fuel cell powers a vehicle. Hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles are electric vehicles. Hydrogen is not burned like a hydrocarbon fuel. Hydrocarbons are storage media for thermal energy which is released for power in an internal combustion engine. The hydrogen fuel cell is a storage medium for electrical energy, which is released when hydrogen and oxygen are combined electrochemically to release electricity. The hydrogen fuel cell is conceptually a battery, providing electricity to power an electric car. Unlike other battery powered cars, the fuel cell uses an onboard source of energy (hydrogen “fuel”) to generate electricity and does not have to stop to be recharged. The advantage of hydrogen powered cars is basically a long driving range, requiring only a fuel refill like internal combustion cars do today.

The hydrogen powered car has advantages for long trips. For daily commutes under 100 miles round trip, the operational convenience of battery and fuel cell energy storage is similar. In fact, it could be argued that the convenience of plugging in within your own garage to recharge batteries is more convenient than finding a refueling station every few hundred miles. The ultimate decision for most commuters will be which power source is cheaper.

Fuel Cost

The most convenient metric to compare fuel costs across the ICE (internal combustion engine) – electric drive interface is the fuel cost per mile. Miles per gallon (mpg) becomes an awkward measurement. Consumers will be required to start thinking in cost per mile terms, because that will become the comparative price on the new car sticker. According to http://www.costpermile.org/, the electricity “fuel” cost per mile (CPM) for electric cars will be between $0.01 and $0.05. Currently electric utility charges per kWh (kilowatt hour) run between $0.10 an $0.15 in most of the U.S., so most of this large range in costs must be associated with the difference in engineering technology and size of the vehicle.

Since I like a larger car, my example will compare to a mid-size Toyota Camry Hybrid. The assumed cpm for an equivalent electric car will be $0.05. (Disclosure: I own a Camry hybrid.) At $2.50 per gallon (near the national average price as this is written), the Camry has a cpm of $0.07 at $3.50 per gallon, the cpm is $0.10. I have used 35 mpg for the Camry hybrid. This is 3% higher than the sticker and 10% lower than my actual experience.

For the standard Camry the cpm would be $0.08 and $0.11 (highway and city, respectively) at $2.50 per gallon and $0.11 and $0.16 at $3.50 per gallon. The sticker mileage numbers have been used for the ICE Camry. These fuel costs are summarized in the following table.

Estimated Cost per Mile (CPM)
Car	Gas at $2.50 per gallon		Gas at $3.50 per gallon
Design	City	Highway	City	Highway
Camry ICE	$0.11	$0.08	$0.16	$0.11
Camry Hybrid	$0.07	$0.07	$0.10	$0.10
"Camry"* Electric	$0.05	$0.05	$0.05	$0.05
*An electric car equivalent to the Toyota Camry.
Electricity cost assumption for Camry equivalent is $0.05 cpm

If the range available with an all electric car is sufficient, then customer acceptance will require that purchase costs (and maintenance costs, which will be ignored here) to be such that the purchase price difference is more than recovered in, say, 100,000 miles. The cost savings for city driving at $2.50 per gallon for gasoline is $6,000 per 100,000 miles of driving, compared to an ICE car. At $3.50 per gallon the cost savings would be $11,000. If two cars are available for our commuter and the electric car purchase cost difference is less than $5,000 more, there will be a big market. If the purchase price is $12,000 more, the market will be limited until the cost of gasoline exceeds $3.50-$4.00 per gallon.

In an August 6 press release, Toyota reported the results of a one-time driving test comparing a Toyota Hybrid Highlander with a new 4^th generation fuel cell equipped Highlander Hybrid. In that test, the cpm for the production hybrid was more than double the cost for the fuel cell equipped model. I am taking this test result with a grain of salt because it was a one time test.

The remaining comparison to be made is hydrogen fuel cells to plug-in electric vehicles. Hydrogen requires power for production by electrolysis of water. If the same power is used that is available at the residential power plug, all the added costs of handling, storing, transporting and distributing hydrogen are added to the costs that one has at his own power plug. Hydrogen is very uncompetitive on a cost basis with other sources of power in this scenario. If the cost of gasoline goes much higher than the $3.50 we have in our examples, then hydrogen might compete there. But hydrogen can never compete with electricity for local driving (right now under 100 miles per day) if the same electricity source is used for both battery recharging and fuel cell operation.

Never forget that a hydrogen fuel cell is nothing more than another form of battery, wherein a chemical reaction produces electrical current. A hydrogen fuel cell car is an electric car.

Can Hydrogen be Produced with Cheap Power?

Do sources of electrical power exist that are cheaper than what we produce (or can produce in the future) for domestic consumption? The short answer is: Yes. (Well, maybe.)

One possible source of cheap electrical energy is from ocean currents that have a large temperature differential between the surface currents and those at depths of 1000 feet or so. This process is called OTEC, Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion.



The above graphic, from The World Energy Council 2007 Survey of World Energy Resources, shows that most of the areas with the largest thermal differentials occur in areas that are too far from populated shorelines to make feasible electricity generation for transmission into a power grid. Temperature differentials of 20^o C or more are necessary for efficient power generation.

The cost estimates for power from OTEC are somewhat problematic. The World Energy Council estimates that a single 10MW demonstration plant would produce electricity at a cost somewhere between $0.14 and $0.21 per kWh, depending on factors such as recovery of potable water and marketable chemicals such as ammonia and various salts. The existence of carbon tax credits could lower the costs further by as much as $0.03.

It is only with the building of multiple plants of the same design that costs may come down below $0.12, the reference cost for existing electricity generation. For example, eight 10 MW plants could produce electricity at a cost between $0.098 and $0.119.

There is potential here, but the costs have to come down more to bring electricity from OTEC to a price to make hydrogen production economically attractive. Remember, we need to transport this hydrogen from the point of generation by ocean going tanker and distribute it by truck or rail tanker (or pipeline) to retail points.

Another potential source of electricity for hydrogen production is wave and tidal motion. To supply electricity for a power grid, the waves and tides must be close to populated shore lines. Wave motion can be used anywhere for hydrogen production, not just where is occurs close to populated shore lines. The same is true for tidal action in remote regions of the planet. The picture below, from New Scientist, shows a SeaGen tidal electricity generator, made by Sea Generation Ltd, in the tidal currents at Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland. Sea Generation is a division of privately held Marine Current Turbine Ltd.



Generation costs for electricity from capital costs alone will be about $0.07 per kWh for a 25 year depreciation. There will be additional unspecified maintenance and operation costs.

Wave action can also be used to generate electricity. The picture below (from New Scientist) shows a wave operated electrical power generator in a generation farm off the north coast of Portugal.



These generators are made by privately held Pelamis Wave Power Ltd. Each generator is a 150-meter-long steel jointed structure, which flexes to drive hydraulic generators and produce 750 kilowatts of power. The company claims electricity generation a competitive costs, but provides no specifics.

The reasons I selected these examples as potential hydrogen generation power sources are:

1. Potential for a lower electricity price point;

2. Electricity generated with plentiful raw material (water) present to produce hydrogen; and

3. With OTEC, the potential for additional revenue from side products.

Battery Costs vs. Fuel Cell Costs

The implications from currently available information are that the costs and durability will be similar. The current objective for Toyota is to have a price premium for hybrids less than the current price premium for a hybrid. The latest generation fuel cell engine is about the same size as a typical 4-cylinder ICE engine and contains about 30 grams of platinum. This is down from the previous generation fuel cell stack which was more than twice the size and contained 80 grams of platinum. The costs just for the platinum alone have been reduced from more than $4,000 in the previous generation to less than $1,500 in the current one. The final fuel cell structure is expected to use only 10 grams of platinum, the same amount as a typical catalytic converter today.

The dramatic change from the previous generation hydrogen fuel cell stack power system to the current generation is seen in the following picture from AutoBlogGreen.com, showing the latest fuel cell drive system on the left next to the drive system used in the past few years in the Chevy Equinox test vehicles that have been driven by volunteers in California, Washington, DC and New York. The power, range and performance of the two systems are the same. The horsepower rating is the equivalent of a current four-cylinder ICE.



Transportation of Fuel and Wholesale Distribution

The technology for distribution by tanker truck and railway car exists today. You can not spend a few hours on any interstate highway near a population center without seeing several pressurized gas tank transports sharing the roadway with you. Pipeline distribution for pressurized hydrogen gas may require different features than currently use for natural gas, but there is no reason to believe that the engineering and construction would present any more challenges or costs. Currently, there is no data reflecting transportation and wholesale distribution impediments to scaling up the use of hydrogen to higher volumes.

Retail Distribution

The cost to build a new gasoline station has been estimated to be in the $250,000 to $450,000, with the largest variable being land cost, using estimates obtained from national average costs at RS Means Cost Works. Obviously, where land costs are extremely dear, near the center of major cities, for example, the cost to build a gasoline station could be much higher, up to $1,000,000 or more.

The cost of building the first 32 hydrogen refueling stations in Southern California has been quoted as $32 million. As high as this cost projection is, it is less than the current cost for a hydrogen refueling pump in Los Angeles, according to Phil Baxley, President of Shell Hydrogen, quoted in the Ohnsman article. He said currently the cost is from $1 million to $5 million per pump, depending on capacity. Even the lower quoted cost, averaging $1 million each for 32 stations, seems to be more costly than all but the most expensive gasoline stations. However, there are three factors related to hydrogen refueling stations that mean this apparent current cost difference may decrease or even be reversed. These are:

1. externality cost exposures for gas stations;

2. lower costs for hydrogen stations in the future through economies of scale; and

3. lower costs to add hydrogen to existing gas stations than to build new.

There are major externality exposures for petroleum based fueling stations. The biggest exposure pertains to future liabilities for soil and ground water contamination by petroleum products and fuel additives. When these externalities are realized, they can be more than the original construction cost (even adjusted for inflation) and occasionally are many millions of dollars. Hydrogen refueling stations do not have these environmental cost exposures.

When the initial costs and the externalities are considered, the refueling stations for hydrogen have an original construction cost of the same order as petroleum fuel stations. Hydrogen refueling stations may decrease in construction costs from the estimates for the first 32 stations in Southern California when many hundreds are constructed per year. If hydrogen were to become ubiquitous, there might be a few thousand new stations per year for a couple of years. A more likely progression would be the modification of existing gas stations to also offer hydrogen refueling facilities at a fraction of the cost of building new stations.

Other countries have more advanced plans for infrastructure development.Both Japan and Germany are working to build large scale distribution networks, with over 1,000 stations on line for each county in five years.

Safety

To start with, we must recognize that hydrogen would not be replacing something that did not have an extremely high fire and explosion hazard. We have managed to live with the risks of gasoline for more than a century, with the material being stored in thin walled tanks that can easily rupture.

Hydrogen, a pressurized gas, would be stored in thick walled, virtually indestructible tanks. Pressurized gases are handled in such containers in a variety of industrial environments today and have been for most of the past 100 years. There are few examples of these tanks being breached. The risks have been associated with the pressure reduction valves (regulating the controlled release of the gas) being broken by impact damage. The major risk associated with using hydrogen will be the exposure to the fuel lines being damaged and allowing the tanks to lose pressure rapidly, turning them into jet propelled missiles.

The pressurized gas tank as a missile is the major safety hazard. It is not insignificant, but should not be an insurmountable problem.

Conclusion

There are still a lot of questions to be answered. But one thing is clear: hydrogen powered cars are not dead. In congested metropolitan areas where electrical costs are high, hydrogen may become widely utilized. The further advantage of much longer travel ranges may also give hydrogen an additional edge over plug in alternatives.

It is too early to make investment decisions trying to select eventual winners. It is not wise to assume there will not be a viable hydrogen car and hydrogen distribution systems during the next decade.

John Lounsbury, CFP, PhD is a financial planner in Clayton, NC. He has extensive experience in computer technology research and development both as an engineer/scientist and in corporate management with academic degrees in physical science. He is a regular contributor to Real Money at TheStreet.com and to Seeking Alpha. Dr. Lounsbury also has his own professional blog, PiedmontHudson. His articles are widely circulated on the internet.

Posted by Guest Contributor at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

John Petersen

Last week I appeared as a luncheon speaker at EESAT 2009, a biennial international technical conference sponsored by the DOE, Sandia National Laboratories and the Electricity Storage Association that focuses on storage technologies for utility applications. The conference included dozens of high-level technical presentations from storage technology developers and was far and away the best-organized event I've ever attended. The only notable absence was a large contingent of buyers, which left some participants wondering whether they were preaching to the choir. Nevertheless, I was encouraged by rapid growth in the number and size of utility-scale demonstration projects and the growing body of proof that storage will be a critical enabling technology for the smart grid. I left Seattle more convinced than ever that the opportunities in grid-based energy storage are huge, but that successful investing will require study, patience, diligence and a firm grasp of economics.

The theme of my presentation was that some developers of energy storage devices are destined to follow in the footsteps of Arkwright, Fulton, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford, Moore, Gates, and Brin, and become the next generation of industrial legends for one simple reason: we're entering an era where 500 million people in North America and Western Europe can no longer lay claim to the lion's share of global resources because the other 6 billion inhabitants of our planet know for the first time that there's more to life than mere subsistence. While each of them may only want a small piece of the pie, the law of large numbers will give rise to explosive increases in global demand for everything and the only way to avoid armed conflict or catastrophic environmental damage is to minimize waste in all its forms, beginning with energy.

On the cautionary side I returned often to the unpleasant reality that most grid-connected storage applications won't pay under current economic conditions because the spread between the cost of storage and the value of storage remains narrow. That cost-benefit equation is changing rapidly as energy costs rise and renewables are added, but as long as waste is cheaper than storage, waste will prevail. The following graph comes from a November 2004 presentation by John Broyes of Sandia National Laboratories that provided an overview of the DOE's Energy Storage Systems Program. The chart focused on the California utility market and showed the clear inverse relationship between the installed cost of energy storage systems and total demand for those systems. It merits more than a passing glance from investors who want to know where the business is (see p. 11 of the presentation for an expanded version).



While the graph contains a wealth of information on the wide variety of potential uses for storage in the utility market, the most important lesson for energy storage investors is price sensitivity. When total installed costs for energy storage systems are $1,000 per kW or higher, demand for storage is almost insignificant. As installed costs fall into the $600 per kW range, the number of cost-effective utility applications soars. I've been told that an updated version of the graph is in the works and will be released shortly. You can bet that I'll be among the first to write about it.

There were several EESAT presentations that focused on important but expensive frequency regulation technologies that are priced beyond the high-range of the graph. Over the last year, demonstration systems from Beacon Power (BCON), Altair Nanotechnologies (ALTI) and A123 Systems (AONE) have shown a remarkable ability to respond to regulation signals in microseconds and provide up and down regulation at speeds that traditional systems can't even begin to match. Based on estimates from the PJM Interconnection, one of the independent system operators that manage the U.S. grid, national demand for frequency regulation installations is on the order of 6,000 MW and could be much higher if flywheel and battery systems prove capable of handling longer duration load ramping intervals. The ongoing tests are not conclusive because the new systems have not been in service long enough to establish their useful lives, but the preliminary results are promising.

There were also several EESAT presentations that dealt with more mundane energy storage applications that were priced in the mid-range of the graph. Those projects ranged from the use of flow batteries at cellular telephone installations in Africa to a recently completed 12-year demonstration where Exide Technologies (XIDE) used lead-acid batteries to effectively eliminate the need for diesel fueled backup power on a remote island where the primary power source was renewable. Yet another presentation showed how computer analysis of satellite maps was being used to identify new locations in Ireland for pumped hydro, a technology that generally falls in the low-range of the graph but is commonly believed to have limited potential because most of the desirable locations are already developed.

Overall, the most important takeaways from EESAT were that from a utility perspective:

• Storage is the economic equivalent of a dispatchable generating asset;
• Installed cost and reliability will be the primary drivers of decisions to implement storage solutions;
  
• Maintenance and cycle life will be secondary decision drivers;
• An optimal smart grid configuration will need storage equal to at least 5% of peak system load; and
• As renewables become prevalent, storage will become increasingly critical to grid stability.
  

In Energy Storage on the Smart Grid Will Be 99.45% Cheap and 0.55% Cool, I explained that the required annual storage build in the State of California was estimated at 500 MW per year for the next decade. Of this total, 50 MW would need to be fast storage in the form of flywheels and Li-ion batteries and the 450 MW balance would be 4 to 6 hour storage in the form of pumped hydro, compressed air, flow batteries and advanced lead acid batteries. When the California numbers are scaled up to a national level, they translate to billions in new annual demand for as far as the eye can see. When you add in billions in new demand for transportation, it's clear that the sector isn't even close to ready for the near-term demands. To compound the problem, essential raw material supply chains aren't ready either.

In preparation for my EESAT presentation, I spent a good deal of time analyzing how the energy storage industry of today is different from the industry that existed a few years ago. My most important conclusion was that energy storage devices are rapidly evolving from minor components in high-value durable goods to stand-alone end user products. As a result, the cost of energy storage is rocketing from less than 5% of product cost in the case of portable electronics to more than 50% of product cost in the case of an EV like the Tesla roadster. When you get into the utility arena, the storage devices are the products and represent 100% of the product costs. Since consumers generally have higher payback expectations and shorter investment horizons than utilities, I believe consumer price sensitivity will be very high notwithstanding the current flood of optimistic stories, speeches and reports from the mainstream media, politicians and environmental activists.

While some of the stock market valuations in the energy storage sector reflect the emerging reality that energy storage is and will remain a highly price sensitive product, others do not. As a result, we have a weird market dynamic where Enersys (ENS), the world's largest manufacturer, marketer and distributor of industrial batteries, trades at a 50% discount to a newcomer like A123 Systems (AONE); and Exide Technologies (XIDE), the world's second largest manufacturer of OEM automotive batteries, trades at a 28% discount to a newcomer like Ener1 (HEV). While the valuation disparities might be justified if either of the newcomers had a technology that would displace the established leaders or significantly erode their revenues or margins, that outcome can't be expected in the foreseeable future because the newcomers are focused on far more expensive products for markets that don't even exist yet.

Over the last fifteen months I've written 92 blog entries that focus exclusively on the energy storage sector; the established and emerging energy storage technologies; and the principal competitors in the industry. My recurring simple hypothesis has been that cheap energy storage will beat cool energy storage in the market and that companies that manufacture objectively cheap products will experience far more rapid and sustained stock price growth than companies that are developing objectively expensive products. Over that time, my personal trading account that includes Active Power (ACPW), Enersys (ENS), Exide Technologies (XIDE), ZBB Energy (ZBB) and Great Western Minerals Group (GWMGF.PK) has gained over 300%. Nevertheless, I think I've finally reached a point where I've said most things that can be said. Accordingly I plan to slack off a bit and write in response to current events instead of trying to maintain a regular schedule.

Over the next decade, I believe that every energy storage company that brings a product to market will have more business than it can handle. Nevertheless, I believe that companies that have attained lofty market valuations based on ambitious plans to develop exotic products are likely to trade flat or decline in price while the companies that have less ambitious goals and less expensive products have substantial upside potential.

My favorite short-term holding is ZBB Energy (ZBB) because its ZESS 50 and ZESS 500 flow battery systems are market ready and carry an attractive mid-range price while its market capitalization of $15.3 million is but a small fraction of the peer group average. My favorite mid- to long-term holding is Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) because its first generation PbC batteries are in production and have been delivered to select end users for testing, the PbC battery promises a cheap solution for a wide variety of mundane energy storage applications and Axion's market capitalization of roughly $80 million is well below the peer group average.

The only thing that will prove me right or wrong is time.

DISCLOSURE: Author is a former director of Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and has a substantial long position in its stock. He also has small long positions in Active Power (ACPW), Enersys (ENS), Exide Technologies (XIDE), ZBB Energy (ZBB) and Great Western Minerals Group (GWMGF.PK).

Posted by John Petersen at 08:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

John Petersen wrote a series of popular articles last week to introduce new investors to the battery sector, following the A123 IPO.  We've had a couple requests from readers who missed one part or another, so here is a quick index to the articles.

1. Part I - Battery industry overview.
2. Parrt II - Comparison of energy storage technologies and companies.
3. Part III - Benchmarking Performance of battery stocks
4. Part IV - Debunking misconceptions about electric vehicles and battery technology.

Posted by Tom Konrad at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Petersen

In "The Sixth Revolution: The Coming of Cleantech," Merill Lynch strategist Steven Milunovich heralded cleantech as a new investment theme and forecast a period of gut wrenching change followed by an age of plenty. A few days later venture capital icon Vinod Khosla warned his audience “500 million people on earth enjoy a lifestyle that 9 billion people will want in 2050.” The differences between these two informed viewpoints are more than a little stark, but they highlight a frightening truth about cleantech: for the first time in human history the fundamental drivers of a technological revolution are constraints rather than opportunities. In this final installment of my series on battery investing for beginners, I want to explain why cost considerations and the transitory nature of government policies should temper the optimism of energy storage investors.

Warren Buffett advocates investing in companies you understand, companies that that sell products and services you know, trust and use. Unfortunately, that advice is almost impossible to follow in cleantech because most of the players are new, few can point to a long and successful operating history and the principal disclosures investors rely on are forward-looking statements from people that are trying to build a company in an emerging industry; people who are by nature optimists. Any time you put an optimist's forward-looking perspective into the hands of an optimistic reader, the only possible outcome is optimism squared and that's a dangerous equation.

In 1999, Toyota (TM) introduced a radical concept called the Prius, a hybrid electric vehicle, or HEV, that used recuperative braking, stop-start idle elimination, electric only launch and electric boost to reduce energy waste and slash fuel consumption by roughly 40%. Over the last 10 years, the Prius has progressed from an eco-bling status symbol to a mass-market product. In the process it won the loyalty of consumers and forced other automakers to develop competitive vehicles. The following 10-year graph of domestic HEV sales comes from hybridcars.com and shows how unit sales and product offerings ramped up over time.

US hybrid market historical sales (1999 – 2009)

This chart shows a normal market for an innovative product that evolved organically in response to consumer demand. If not for the current recession, it's easy to see how HEV sales could easily have been in the 500,000 to 700,000 vehicles per year range by now. The HEV is a winning concept that can only get more popular as the base of satisfied customers broadens and gasoline prices rise.

The unspoken truth about PHEVs and EVs is that the fundamental driver for change is government compulsion, not customer demand. The automakers know that they can't possibly meet new U.S. CAFE standards and European CO2 emission standards without including a high percentage of HEVs or a more modest percentage of PHEVs and EVs in their sales forecasts. The government's theory seems to be "if you build it they will come." While there is a high degree of automaker skepticism over whether the average consumer can or will pay an 80% to 100% premium for a PHEV or EV, the automakers all know that if they spend the money to build and introduce PHEVs and EVs and consumers refuse to buy, they'll have the perfect cover when the regulators come calling. Greenwash is expensive, but it's not as costly as being excluded from major markets or finding another line of business.

The hard question I think investors need to ask themselves is, "do you plan to spend at least $40,000 to buy yourself a PHEV or EV?" Unless your answer is an enthusiastic yes, you need to question whether investing in a battery company that has tied its future to the success of PHEVs and EVs makes sense.

My favorite part of the blogging experience is the lengthy debates I get into with informed and opinionated readers. They add a depth and balance I could never achieve on my own. They also provide wonderful insights into what people believe the future holds. The following is a compendium of a few cherished mythologies and incontrovertible realities that I’ve seen time after time in reader comments.

Cherished Mythology lithium-ion batteries are expensive today but they'll get cheaper with economies of scale.

Incontrovertible Reality The lithium-ion battery industry already sells $7 billion of products annually and big companies like Sony, Sanyo, Panasonic, LG Chem, Toshiba and Johnson Controls have done a great job of optimizing their production economies. According to a presentation by RolandBerger Strategy Consultants at last month's Frankfurt Auto Show, between 65% and 75% of the manufacturing cost for lithium-ion batteries represents the purchase price of raw materials and another 20% to 30% represents the cost of increasingly sophisticated and expensive equipment and factories. The balance goes for energy, labor and overhead. The only factors that can reasonably be expected to significantly reduce costs are generational improvements in battery chemistry and manufacturing technology.

Cherished Mythology PHEVs and EVs have limited range for now, but they'll have more flexibility in the future.

Incontrovertible Reality A typical PHEV or EV will get about four miles of travel range for each kWh of useful battery capacity. A comparable car with an internal combusion engine would get at least 28 mpg. In a normal car the fuel tank is cheap and the fuel is expensive. In a PHEV or EV the dynamic is reversed and the battery pack is the functional equivalent of a fuel tank that costs $7,000 per gallon of capacity (28 mpg/4 miles per kWh @ $1,000 per kWh). Once you buy the tank, filling it is dirt-cheap. Under current economic conditions long-range PHEVs and EVs can never be cost effective and the only way to make the economics come close to working is to buy no more battery capacity than you plan to use every day.

Cherished Mythology PHEVs and EVs will help reduce America's dependence on imported oil.

Incontrovertible Reality A PHEV or EV will use 10 times the battery capacity of an HEV. If the batteries are used in one PHEV or EV, national gasoline consumption will fall by 400 gallons per year. If the batteries are used in 10 HEVs, national gasoline consumption will fall by 1,600 gallons per year. In truth, PHEVs and EVs will sabotage America's drive for energy independence instead of supporting it.

Cherished Mythology PHEVs and EVs will help reduce America's CO2 footprint.

Incontrovertible Reality A PHEV or EV will use 10 times the battery capacity of an HEV. If the batteries are used in one PHEV or EV, national CO2 emissions will decline by 190 grams per mile, or roughly 2.375 metric tons per year. If the batteries are used in 10 HEVs, national CO2 emissions will fall by 135 grams per mile, or roughly 16.875 metric tons per year. Until we stop generating electricity with coal, PHEVs and EVs will not significantly reduce CO2 emissions.

Cherished Mythology PHEVs and EVs will become a dominant automotive technology in the next decade.

Incontrovertible Reality In its 2009 Annual Energy Outlook, the DOE estimated that PHEVs and EVs would account for 1.26% of the new light duty vehicle sales in 2020 and grow to 2.28% by 2030. At the Frankfort Auto Show, Roland Berger Strategy Consultants forecast the following market penetration rates for the principal automotive powertrain technologies in 2020:

	USA	Europe	Japan	China
Internal combustion	23%	6%	17%	48%
Micro hybrid	51%	67%	60%	30%
Mild hybrid	5%	6%	9%	4%
Full hybrid	8%	1%	6%	2%
PHEV	9%	15%	4%	10%
EV	4%	5%	4%	6%

 
Cherished Mythology Lithium-ion batteries will be needed for mild, micro and full hybrids.

Incontrovertible Reality Advanced lead-carbon batteries and systems that combine lead-acid batteries with supercapacitors are up to 75% cheaper than lithium-ion batteries and offer acceptable performance in the micro and mild hybrid vehicles that Roland Berger says will account for 56% of U.S. auto sales, 69% of Japanese auto sales and 73% of European auto sales in 2020. While lithium-ion batteries will undoubtedly be used in some luxury hybrid vehicles, they're not expected to be a major factor in the mass markets for affordable light duty vehicles.

Cherished Mythology Revenues will ramp up rapidly for lithium-ion battery manufacturers over the next decade.

Incontrovertible Reality There is no substantial unused lithium-ion battery manufacturing capacity anywhere in the world and future revenue growth will be directly tied to the construction of new factories that typically take three years to plan and build. The only energy storage device manufacturers that already have excess manufacturing capacity are in the lead-acid group. As a rule of thumb, lithium-ion battery manufacturers plan on $1 in capital spending for every $1 of incremental sales revenue. In comparison, lead-acid battery manufacturers generally plan on $1 in capital spending for every $3 to $5 of incremental sales revenue.

Cherished Mythology New battery technologies will take revenue away from established manufacturers and hurt their bottom lines.

Incontrovertible Reality History teaches that increased energy efficiency leads to increased energy consumption and new technology inevitably increases aggregate demand by facilitating the development of new applications that were impossible using old technology. For the foreseeable future, demand for all classes of energy storage devices will increase at rapid rates and the only losers will be companies that can't bring a competitive product to market.

Lithium-ion batteries are a very valuable technology and their future importance to the cleantech revolution cannot be overstated. Nevertheless we've all seen the disastrous consequences investors suffered from ill advised governmental policies to encourage the use of ethanol, the wonder fuel of the new millennium. In a slideshow presentation at a recent clean air conference one auto industry executive described government's "technology du jour syndrome" and offered the following table to prove his point.

25 years ago	Methanol
15 years ago	Electric vehicles
10 years ago	HEVs and Electric vehicles
5 years ago	Hydrogen Fuel Cells
2 years ago	Ethanol
Today	PHEVs and Electric vehicles
2011	What’s next?

It's enough to make you go Hmmm.

As a young lawyer in Houston, my first mentor taught me that you can describe every oil and gas deal with a venn diagram that consists of three concentric circles. The outer circle represents the seller's expectations, the middle circle represents the buyer's expectations, and the innermost circle represents the actual outcome. In the market for energy storage stocks I worry that the venn diagram is distorted because investor optimism exceeds industry expectations by a wide margin. These are conditions that can give birth to bubbles.

My favorite story of unbridled optimism begins with a straight-laced father who thinks his son is overly optimistic and decides to teach the boy a lesson by telling him that a load of manure is his birthday gift. The manure is delivered and dumped in the driveway and the father puts a big red bow on top of the pile. When the son gets home from school, he promptly dives headfirst into the manure pile and starts digging. When the surprised father asks "What's going on?" the boy promptly replies, "There has to be a pony in here somewhere!"

The good news is there are several workhorses in the pile. The bad news is that none of them are the pretty ponies that the government, the mainstream media and the environmental activists are praising with quasi-religious fervor. Unless investors are willing to spend a huge amount of time studying deathless tomes on energy storage, the only rational way to invest in the sector is through a diversified portfolio of cheap and cool stocks.

This will be my last blog for a week or so because I'm scheduled to give a luncheon speech at Sandia National Laboratories’ EESAT 2009 Conference in Seattle on Tuesday. In connection with the speech I'll have an opportunity to attend three days of high-level presentations on electrical energy storage applications and technologies. Hopefully I'll return with some new insights that can help make readers better investors.

DISCLOSURE: None

Posted by John Petersen at 10:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

John Petersen

I've been blogging about pure-play energy storage device manufacturers since July 2008. By mid-November I'd assembled a short list of thirteen pure-play public companies that accounted for almost 25% of the $30 billion global battery market. Frankly I was shocked to learn that major battery manufacturers like Exide (XIDE) and Enersys (ENS) that report billions in annual sales carried tiny market capitalizations when compared with far riskier technology development companies like Ener1 (HEV) and Valence Technology (VLNC) that would be little more than rounding errors on the big boys' financial statements. As I focused on the obvious valuation disparities, it became clear that the market was paying huge premiums for companies that are developing cool energy storage devices and heavily discounting companies that manufacture objectively cheap energy storage devices. My belief at the time was that the cool companies were likely lose ground while the cheap companies were likely to gain ground. My original peer group comparison table follows (click on the image for a larger view).



While the last ten months have been anything but normal, I revisited my valuation analysis in May of this year and showed that from November 14, 2008 through April 30, 2009, the cheap group appreciated an average of 56.5% while the cool group appreciated an average of 6.7%. I revisited the analysis again in August of this year and showed that from November 14, 2008 through July 31, 2009, the cheap group appreciated an average of 59.2% while the cool group appreciated an average of 21.42%. We all know that past performance is never a guarantee of future performance, but the theory seems to be holding up pretty well.

With it's successful IPO last week, A123 Systems (AONE) dropped a $2.2 billion market capitalization rock into what was previously a $4.4 billion market capitalization pond. The ripple effect will be felt for months as analysts and investors perform detailed comparisons of the publicly traded energy storage companies in an effort to ferret out the bargains and identify the diamonds in the rough. Now that the initial volatility of A123's IPO has passed, the market seems to be returning to more normal conditions, and we've reached the end of a calendar quarter, this seems like a convenient time to do a final comparison of market performance since November 14, 2008. It also provides an opportunity to conform the cheap and cool classifications to the tables I used in Battery Investing For Beginners, Part II and reset the baseline for future comparisons using yesterday's closing prices.

The following table provides comparative price data for the pure play energy storage companies I track. It shows closing prices on November 14, 2008 and September 30, 2009; calculates the percentage of change since November 14, 2008; and shows current market capitalization of each company. It also provides comparable tracking data for the Dow, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Index. While I've included A123 in the cool sustainable group effective September 30th, I have not adjusted the historical performance of the group for the first week of trading in its stock (click on the image for a larger view).



The following table summarizes the portfolio appreciation that a hypothetical investor would have realized over the last ten months if he had invested $1,000 in each company on November 14, 2008. It also presents comparable data for the broad market indexes.

Tracking Category	Percentage Gain
Broad Market Indexes	25.09%
Cool Emerging Companies	4.30%
Cool Sustainable Companies	75.14%
Cheap Emerging Companies	54.73%
Cheap Sustainable Companies	121.02%
Chinese Battery Companies	126.24%

Equity markets are driven by a combination of greed and fear, emotional reactions that are frequently at odds with economic realities. Over the past few years, the cool companies have been driven by headlines that highlight opportunities while the cheap companies have been driven by headlines that highlight problems. Since headlines inevitably feed the greed and fear cycle, the cool companies were driven to objectively high valuation levels while the cheap companies were driven to objectively low valuation levels. If the last ten and a half months are any indication, the pendulum is moving back toward a more balanced position where the cheap group valuations will eventually reach a more reasonable parity with the cool group valuations. They still have a long way to go.

I have consistently argued that every energy storage decision in transportation, alternative power and the smart grid will boil down to a cost-benefit analysis. As long as the cost of storage exceeds the value of the stored electricity, waste will prevail. When the value of the stored electricity is higher than the costs of storage, the market will respond appropriately. While there is no doubt that the cool companies will have more business than they can handle, there is also no doubt that the bulk of the incremental sales revenue will flow to companies that serve the mundane needs of the average user, rather than the extreme needs of "power users." It's ultimately a choice between meat and potatoes or rainbow stew.

While I believe the cleantech revolution will result in rapid and sustained growth across the entire spectrum of energy storage companies, I remain convinced the best stock market performers will be manufacturers of objectively cheap energy storage products. Vinod Khosla is fond of reminding investors that "The most important thing to remember is economic gravity — the cheapest thing ends up winning." Mark Twain once quipped, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” Henry Ford didn’t make the best cars; he made the cheapest cars. Microsoft didn’t make the best operating system; it made the cheapest operating system. Xerox invented and then failed to commercialize more cool technologies than I can even begin to count. Examples of the fundamental economic reality that cost trumps coolness are too numerous to mention. When you cut through the energy storage hype and drill down to business fundamentals, I have to believe that investors who want market beating returns in the energy storage sector should be focusing on companies that make cheap products.

DISCLOSURE: Author is a former director Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and holds a large long position in its stock. He also holds small long positions in Exide (XIDE), Enersys (ENS) Active Power (ACPW) and ZBB Energy (ZBB).

Posted by John Petersen at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Petersen

Last Friday I published "Battery Investing for Beginners" as an introductory piece for investors who don't know much about the energy storage sector but are interested in learning more because of the hugely successful initial public offering by A123 Systems (AONE). Since the article was well received and there seems to be a good deal of reader interest, I've decided to continue the theme with a series of articles where I'll try to build a contextual framework for the industry and show where various types of energy storage devices and their manufacturers fit into that framework. Since I don't want to spend too much time replowing old ground, I'll rely on hyperlinks to my earlier blogs and third party source documents.

I'm a lawyer, not a journalist. My undergraduate degree was in accounting with a solid base of hard science. I've spent the last 30 years working in securities law where most of my work involved small natural resource or technology development companies. I'm not an engineer or scientist, but my chosen field of practice requires me to understand the science well enough to explain it. My foundation in the energy storage sector dates to 2003 when I took on a client named Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) that was organized to develop a novel energy storage device that's half lead-acid battery and half supercapacitor. I spent the next five years working as Axion's general counsel and served as a member of its board for four of those years. I stepped down from my position as Axion's board chairman in January 2007 and brought in successor legal counsel in early 2008. I still own a substantial long position in its stock. In short, I know the energy storage sector well and understand what the principal players are trying to accomplish, but I come from the lead-acid side of the business and because of my long history with high-tech innovation I'm not as excited by gee-whiz technology as many commenters. I like to think of myself as a cautious optimist who sees the opportunities but never overlooks the challenges.

Everybody understands the basic problem. We passed an inflection point for peak cheap oil in the late '90s and fuels that are expensive today can only become more costly in the future. We've also passed the inflection point for peak cheap electricity. When you factor in concerns over CO2 emissions as a possible cause of climate change, we have a real mess on our hands. The good news is that fundamental economics are finally kicking in and forcing us to attack the issue of energy waste while we search for new ways to generate electricity from non-traditional sources. Merrill Lynch strategist Steven Millunovich believes we are at the dawn a new industrial revolution, the age of cleantech. I believe he's right.

When I started writing this blog, I decided to limit its scope to "pure-play" energy storage device manufacturers that file regular reports with the SEC. The decision resulted in three noteworthy exclusions: Johnson Controls (JCI), which is the largest battery manufacturer in the world but only gets 15% of its revenue from battery sales; SAFT Groupe (SGPEF.PK), a profitable French battery manufacturer that does not file reports with the SEC; and BYD (BYDDY.PK), a Chinese manufacturer of cell phones and automobiles that gets 23% of its revenue from battery sales and does not file reports with the SEC. The decision also left me with a small but reasonably comparable short list of companies that only differ in the nature of their products and the development stage of their businesses. For investors who would rather track an index that includes JCI and BYD, I recommend the Energy Storage and Battery Technology Stocks Index (*BTTRY) published by Tickerspy.

There are two basic classes of energy storage devices: cool devices like lithium-ion batteries, supercapacitors and high-speed flywheels that promise extraordinary performance and are relatively expensive in terms of cost per unit of storage capacity; and cheap devices like lead-acid batteries, flow batteries and low-speed flywheels that offer lower levels of performance but are relatively inexpensive. My favorite source of cost data on energy storage technologies is a July 2008 Sandia National Laboratories report on its Solar Energy Grid Integration Systems – Energy Storage (SEGIS-ES) program. The following table separates the raw Sandia data into short duration power technologies, short duration energy technologies and long duration energy technologies; orders the technological contenders based on the average of current and 10-year projected cost data reported by Sandia; and identifies the American companies I follow that are focused on each storage technology.

	Current Cost	10-year Projected
Short Duration Power	($/kWh)	Cost ($/kWh)
High-speed Flywheels (composite)	$1,000	$800
Beacon Power (BCON)
Lithium-ion Batteries	$1,333	$780
Altair Nanotechnologies (ALTI)
A123 Systems (AONE)
Electrochemical Capacitors	$356/kW	$250/kW
Maxwell Technologies (MXWL)
	Current Cost	10-year Projected
Short Duration Energy	($/kWh)	Cost ($/kWh)
Flooded Lead-acid Batteries	$150	$150
Exide (XIDE)
Enersys (ENS)
C&D Technologies (CHP)
Valve Regulated Lead-acid Batteries	$200	$200
Exide (XIDE)
Enersys (ENS)
C&D Technologies (CHP)
Low-speed Flywheels (steel)	$380	$300
Active Power (ACPW)
Lead-carbon Asymmetric Capacitors	$500	<$250
Axion Power (AXPW.OB)
Lithium-ion Batteries	$1,333	$780
A123 Systems (AONE)
Ener1 (HEV)
Valence Technologies (VLNC)
Altair Nanotechnologies (ALTI)
	Current Cost	10-year Projected
Long Duration Energy	($/kWh)	Cost ($/kWh)
Zn/Br Batteries
ZBB Energy (ZBB)	$500	$250/kWh

There are also two basic classes of pure-play energy storage companies: emerging entrepreneurial companies that are developing new technologies; and established manufacturing companies that have solid customer bases and sustainable business models. A fifth and final class is a rapidly expanding group of Chinese battery manufacturers that have listed their shares in the U.S. but are not expected to be major players in the growth of America's domestic battery industry. To allow for fundamental differences among their technologies and business models, I've segregated my universe of pure play energy storage companies into five classes that I'll briefly describe below and summarize in a series of tables that identify the individual companies and provide summary data on their share prices, market capitalizations and key financial ratios.

Cool Emerging - My cool emerging class consists of thinly-capitalized developers of relatively expensive energy storage technologies. Their annual operating losses are typically large in relation to their total assets and they'll be dependent on additional financing for an indeterminate period of time. Cool emerging companies are typically valued on the basis of the perceived potential of their technology and their expected time to market.

Name	Symbol	Price	Mkt. Cap.	P/E	P/B	P/S
Ener1 Inc	HEV	$7.07	$826.0		9.8	37.5
Valence Technology	VLNC	$1.81	$229.7		N/A	11.6
Altair Nanotechnologies	ALTI	$1.17	$123.5		2.7	33.8
Beacon Power	BCON	$0.73	$88.1		4.2	213.7

Cool Sustainable - My cool sustainable class consists of well-capitalized developers of relatively expensive energy storage technologies that have a substantial customer base. Their annual operating losses are typically smaller in relation to their total assets and their need for additional financing is generally less pressing. Cool sustainable companies are typically valued on the basis of their earnings potential and business development plans.

Name	Symbol	Price	Mkt. Cap.	P/E	P/B	P/S
A123 Systems	AONE	$18.73	$1,838.9		3.6	20.5
Maxwell Technologies	MXWL	$19.27	$500.5		6.2	5.4
Ultralife Corporation	ULBI	$5.90	$99.8		1.3	0.5

Cheap Emerging - My cheap emerging class consists of thinly-capitalized developers of relatively cheap energy storage technologies. Their annual operating losses are typically large in relation to their total assets and they'll be dependent on additional financing for an indeterminate period of time. Like their cool counterparts, cheap emerging companies are typically valued on the basis of the perceived potential of their technology and their expected time to market.

Name	Symbol	Price	Mkt. Cap.	P/E	P/B	P/S
Axion Power	AXPW.OB	$2.12	$75.9		18.3	62.8
ZBB Energy	ZBB	$1.24	$15.4		1.9	8.7

Cheap Sustainable - My cheap sustainable class consists of well-capitalized manufacturers of relatively cheap energy storage technologies that have a substantial customer base. Like their cool counterparts, cheap sustainable companies are typically valued on the basis of their earnings potential and business development plans.

Name	Symbol	Price	Mkt. Cap.	P/E	P/B	P/S
Enersys	ENS	$21.71	$1,040.0	15.7	1.4	0.6
Exide Technologies	XIDE	$8.01	$604.9		2.0	0.2
C&D Technologies	CHP	$2.14	$56.3		1.3	0.2
Active Power	ACPW	$0.88	$58.2		3.1	1.3

Chinese Companies - My last class consists of Chinese companies that have listed their shares in the U.S., but operate solely in Asia. They're generally profitable and may export products to the U.S., but they're not expected to be key players in America's drive to develop a thriving domestic battery manufacturing industry.

Name	Symbol	Price	Mkt. Cap.	P/E	P/B	P/S
Advanced Battery Technologies	ABAT	$4.09	$253.1	11.8	2.1	5.3
China BAK Battery	CBAK	$4.19	$241.7		1.5	1.1
China Ritar Power	CRTP	$5.47	$105.3	20.0	2.8	1.0
Hong Kong Highpower	HPJ	$3.34	$45.3	23.2	2.5	0.7

My fundamental premise is that current conditions in the energy storage sector are a lot like they were in high-school.

There are four publicly held lithium-ion battery developers vying for supremacy in the high profile contest to become the technology superstar for PHEVs and EVs. They're competing against each other, a number of foreign companies and a host of privately held companies for a market that will be a long time coming. While they all trade at prices that would give value investors a nosebleed, the odds that a particular company will make it to the NFL draft are remote at best.

At the other end of the spectrum there are a small number of emerging and sustainable companies that are manufacturing and developing technologies for the more mundane energy storage needs of the average consumer who would be hard-pressed to buy a $22,000 Prius class hybrid, much less a $40,000 Volt class PHEV.

As the newly born excitement over the energy storage sector wanes and fundamental investment analysis gains supremacy, I expect the relative valuations of the cool technology companies to either remain flat or fall while the relative valuations of the cheap technology companies rise to more reasonable levels. On Thursday I'll put together an analysis of how that investment thesis has held up since last November and establish a new set of foundation metrics for future tracking comparisons. I continue to believe cheap will outperform cool for the foreseeable future. Only time will tell whether I'm right or wrong.

DISCLOSURE: Author has a large long position in Axion Power (AXPW.OB) and small long positions in Enersys (ENS), Exide (XIDE), ZBB Energy (ZBB) and Active Power (ACPW).

Posted by John Petersen at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

John Petersen

This morning A123 Systems filed another registration statement amendment for its planned IPO. The amendment specifies a preliminary price range of $8.00 to $9.50 and a preliminary offering size of 25 million shares (28.85 million shares with over-allotment option). Amendments like today's filing occur during the late stages of an IPO and it's not unusual to see the price range or offering size increase in later filings.

Both of the preliminary values are about half of what I expected. The price range surprises me because of its rough parity with the $9.20 per share price A123 received in its last private placement. The offering size surprises me because A123 needs to raise significant working capital; needs to raise $250 million in matching funds for the ARRA battery grants it was awarded last month; and needs to raise up to $60 million in matching funds for DOE guaranteed loans it expects to qualify for. If the A123 IPO goes off in the preliminary ranges, it will have an initial market capitalization of $800 to $950 million.

I have to assume that the initial share price and offering size estimates were fixed at conservative levels because of weak conditions in the IPO market over the last year and uncertain current conditions in the broader market. I sincerely hope that the road show surpasses everyone's expectations. I've been waiting for the A123 IPO since the summer of 2008 and believe that a successful offering will draw attention to the energy storage sector in a way that no other event can.

Storage sector investors who want to better understand the impact a significant IPO can have on a sector should read Zachary Scheidt's recent Seeking Alpha article, The Stage is Set for an IPO Rebound. Another worthwhile recent article from Forbes.com that discusses the potential impact of the A123 IPO on the energy storage sector is "Battery IPO Could Recharge New Issue Market."

DISCLOSURE: None

Posted by John Petersen at 09:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Petersen

On August 28th, the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Postal Service published the results of a feasibility study titled, "Electrification of Delivery Vehicles." While the feasibility study reaches a foregone conclusion and recommends the purchase of a 3,000 unit demonstration fleet, I was surprised by the high level of Federal subsidies the Inspector General thought necessary to bring EVs within Postal Service capital investment policies. I was even more surprised by the conclusion that the tipping point in the economic analysis was revenue from ancillary vehicle to grid, or V2G, services.

The Postal Service operates a fleet of 219,000 vehicles, including 146,000 delivery vehicles. The feasibility study focused on the long-life vehicles, or LLVs, that have been a part of the American landscape since the late 80's.



The current version of the LLV is built on a GM truck chassis, costs the Postal Service about $19,000 and gets about 10 miles per gallon; which isn't bad for the kind of low-speed stop-start driving on a typical mail route. The average LLV is driven about 18 miles a day and roughly 96% of the LLV fleet drives less than 40 miles a day. The vast majority of LLVs are parked at Postal Service facilities from 5 p.m. till 8 a.m.

The proposal evaluated in the Postal Service feasibility study would replace the internal combustion engine and drive train with an electric drive and 20 kWh of lithium-ion batteries of unspecified chemistry. The projected cost of a 3,000-unit fleet of electric LLVs, or E-LLVs, is $120 million, or $40,000 per unit. The projected cost of associated charging station infrastructure and training is $16.75 million.

The most striking aspect of the Inspector General's report is the fact that it was written from the perspective of an EV buyer, rather than an EV seller. After years of reading up-beat promotional materials that talk about ten-year battery lives and seven- to ten-year payback periods, it was refreshing to see a more skeptical buyer's analysis that:

• Assumed the battery pack would have to be replaced after five years;
• Assumed a fifty percent reduction in repair and maintenance costs;
• Assumed a stable correlation between gasoline and electricity prices;
  
• Required internal returns of thirty percent per year like you see in most businesses;
• Required payback periods of less than three years like you see in most businesses;
  
• Concluded that substantial Federal subsidies were essential; and
• Concluded that ancillary revenues from V2G services were essential.
  

The Inspector General's report was not overly kind to E-LLVs, but then I've never expected undue kindness from fleet buyers who are invariably constrained by capital spending policies that require a return on investment, as opposed to a return of investment. The good news for EV developers is that the Inspector General was able to put together a plan that worked for the Postal Service. The bad news is the plan will be difficult for other fleet users to duplicate because the feasibility study assumes that:

• The Postal Service will get grants for 74% of the cost difference between a standard LLV and an E-LLV;
• The Postal Service will save roughly $1,300 per vehicle year from reduced fueling costs;
• The Postal Service will save roughly $1,500 per vehicle year from reduced maintenance; and
• The Postal Service will earn roughly $2,300 per vehicle year from V2G services.

The Inspector General's report analyzed four possible scenarios. In the basic scenario of no grants and no V2G revenue, the E-LLVs were a poor investment that had a negative return over ten years. In two middle of the road scenarios that included (a) grants without V2G revenues and (b) V2G revenues without grants, the payback periods were in the five-year range and internal rates of return were 15% to 20%. In a best-case scenario that included both grants and V2G revenue, the payback period was under two years and the internal rate of return was over 60%. Since the Postal Services has influential friends in high places, I think it's a safe bet that they'll be able to negotiate the details of a best case project.

The only thing that concerns me about the strategy the Postal Service has adopted for its E-LLV demonstration fleet is the long-term stability of V2G revenue. The E-LLV fleet will be on the road every day from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., the precise period when demands on the power grid are greatest. So while the proposed fleet of 3,000 E-LLVs will have the theoretical ability to provide 45 MW of frequency regulation services, it will only be able to provide frequency regulation services when demand for those services is relatively low. While I've not been able to find any detailed estimates of the national demand for frequency regulation services during off-peak hours, I have to assume that the aggregate demand for frequency regulation is smaller than demand for other grid-based storage systems. I also have to assume that V2G services will compete directly with alternatives like the flywheel systems that Beacon Power (BCON) is developing which will be available 24/7.

Overall, I believe the Postal Service proposal to deploy a fleet of 3,000 E-LLVs presents an unparalleled opportunity to provide a reliable real-world testing laboratory for ideas that have not yet been reduced to practice. The Postal Service has long promised "neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, nor the winds of change, nor a nation challenged, will stay us from the swift completion of our appointed rounds." Since one of the biggest challenges facing America is the efficient use of energy and the prevention of waste, I can't imagine a better organization to lead the way.

In a perfect world, the Postal Service would break its planned E-LLV fleet into as many as a half-dozen subgroups that would each use a different battery chemistry from a different vendor. The willing industry participants I can identify off the top of my head include Altair Nanotechnologies (ALTI), Ener1 (HEV), Johnson Controls (JCI), Valence Technologies (VLNC), and A123 Systems (IPO pending). With proper monitoring, the amount and relative uniformity of the data generated in the first few years of testing for both EV and V2G applications could be priceless.

As a side note, I'm pleased to announce that I've accepted an invitation to appear as a luncheon speaker at the Electrical Energy Storage Applications and Technologies conference in Seattle on October 4th through 7th. While bloggers like me frequently get invited to speak at investment conferences, EESAT is in an entirely different animal. It's a biennial international technical conference co-sponsored by the DOE, Sandia National Laboratories and the Electricity Storage Association. The agenda currently includes technical presentations from the U.S. and eleven foreign countries. EESAT is not appropriate for investors, but it's a must for companies that are active in the energy storage sector and for institutional investors who need to better understand why storage is important and where the growth opportunities lie.

DISCLOSURE: None

John L. Petersen, Esq. is a U.S. lawyer based in Switzerland who works as a partner in the law firm of Fefer Petersen & Cie and represents North American, European and Asian clients, principally in the energy and alternative energy sectors. His international practice is limited to corporate securities and small company finance, where he focuses on guiding small growth-oriented companies through the corporate finance process, beginning with seed stage private placements, continuing through growth stage private financing and concluding with a reverse merger or public offering. Mr. Petersen is a 1979 graduate of the Notre Dame Law School and a 1976 graduate of Arizona State University. He was admitted to the Texas Bar Association in 1980 and licensed to practice as a CPA in 1981.

Posted by John Petersen at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (19)

John Petersen

Since I've stirred up a hornet's nest over the last two weeks first by debunking the mythology that PHEVs and EVs will save their owners money and then by showing how PHEVs and EVs will sabotage America's drive for energy independence, I figured I might as well go for the triple-crown of harsh realities by showing readers that in the U.S., where 70% of electricity comes from burning hydrocarbons, PHEVs and EVs won't make a dent in CO2 emissions. They'll just take distributed CO2 emissions off the roads and centralize them in coal and gas fired power plants.

I started to seriously question the policy arguments in favor of PHEVs and EVs when McKinsey Quarterly published an article titled "Profiting from the low-carbon economy" in early August. The article included a "Global carbon abatement cost curve" that shocked me because it showed that HEVs offered a substantial cash benefit from carbon abatement while PHEVs imposed a significant carbon abatement cost. A few days ago I got permission to reprint the original graph from a recent McKinsey & Company report titled "Pathways to a Low-Carbon Economy. Version 2 of the Global Greenhouse Gas Abatement Cost Curve," 2009."



While the graph is fairly complex because it shows both the benefits and costs of various carbon abatement options and the potential amount of CO2 that each option could eliminate, the key issue is the relative positions that HEVs and PHEVs occupy on the curve. HEVs are shown on the left hand side of the graph between residential insulation retrofit and electricity from landfill gas; which means that HEVs save €30 ($43) per metric ton of carbon abatement. PHEVs are shown on the right hand side of the graph between nuclear power plants and low penetration wind farms; which means that PHEVs cost €12 ($17) per metric ton of carbon abatement. Since the McKinsey graph analyzed abatement costs at a 'global' level, I felt compelled to dig a little deeper and analyse their impact in the U.S.

In its latest report on greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., the Energy Information Administration said that CO2 emissions from electricity generation were 2,433.4 million metric tons in 2007. In its 2007 annual summary of electric power in the U.S., the EIA reported that net generation of electric power during 2007 was 4,157 billion kilowatt-hours from the sources identified in the following graph.



When you divide the total CO2 emissions from electricity generation by the total amount of electricity generated, it works out to 585.4 grams of CO2 per kWh. While the figures vary among manufacturers, the average electric-only range of the PHEVs and EVs planned by General Motors, Nissan (NSANY), Mitsubishi (MMTOF.PK), BYD (BYDDF.PK), Tesla Motors, Fisker Automotive, Th!nk Global and a legion of others is roughly 4 miles per kWh of useful battery capacity. So in the U.S., a PHEV or EV will ultimately be responsible for about 146 grams of CO2 emissions per mile unless the owner has the foresight and dedication to buy solar panels or wind turbines to generate the electricity his PHEV or EV will use.

To review the math, a gallon of gasoline releases 20.35 pounds of CO2 (9,231 grams) when it is burned in an internal combustion engine. So a normal car that meets current CAFE standards of 27.5 mpg is responsible for roughly 336 grams of CO2 emissions per mile. In contrast, an HEV like the Prius, which slashes fuel consumption by roughly 40% through a combination of recuperative braking, idle elimination and electric launch will be responsible for roughly 201 grams of CO2 emissions per mile.

The following table compares typical vehicle costs (without tax subsidies) and CO2 emissions per mile for each class of vehicle. It then goes two steps further and (a) calculates an average carbon abatement cost for HEVs, PHEVs and EVs, and (b) calculates an incremental carbon abatement cost for PHEVs and EVs. Both carbon abatement costs are expressed in dollars of capital spending per gram/mile of CO2 emissions.

	Vehicle Cost	CO2 Emissions	Average Abatement Cost	Incremental Abatement Cost
Internal combustion	$20,000	336 g/m
Prius HEV	$26,500	201 g/m	$48.15 g/m
GM Volt class PHEV	$40,000	146 g/m	$105.26 g/m	$245.45 g/m
Nissan Leaf class EV	$40,000	146 g/m	$105.26 g/m	$245.45 g/m

Is it any wonder that Vinod Khosla keeps telling interviewers that in the U.S., China and India, PHEVs and EVs will be plugging into a lump of coal for years to come?

News stories, speeches and press releases can only maintain the electric drive illusion for so long. Sooner or later the public is going to realize that it's all hype, blue smoke and mirrors, and that PHEVs and EVs have little of substance to offer customers in the U.S. market. When the public comes to the realization that electric drive vehicles:

• Won't save their owners significant amounts of money;
• Won't be as fuel efficient as HEVs when battery capacity is factored into the equation;
• Won't be as CO2 efficient as HEVs when utility emissions are factored into the equation; and
• Are nothing more than feel-good, taxpayer subsidized eco-bling,

the backlash against lithium-ion battery developers like Ener1 (HEV) and Valence Technologies (VLNC) that have attained nosebleed level market capitalizations based on electric drive hype may be vicious. The big winners should be developers of cheap and efficient high-performance lead-carbon batteries like Exide Technologies (XIDE) in cooperation with Axion Power International (AXPW.OB); C&D Technologies (CHP) in cooperation with Firefly Energy; and East Penn Manufacturing in cooperation with Japan's Furukawa Battery Co. (FBB.DE).

It would be wrong for readers to assume that I dislike lithium-ion battery technology, because I believe it will be an increasingly important part of the coming cleantech revolution. I also believe that companies like Advanced Battery Technologies (ABAT), Altair Nanotechnologies (ALTI), Johnson Controls (JCI) and A123 Systems (IPO pending) that are taking a diversified approach by focusing on products for a wide variety of consumer, industrial, utility and military applications will grow and prosper. But the companies, reporters, financial analysts and politicians that have built a mountain of unreasonable expectations from an electric drive molehill may be in for a tough time.

DISCLOSURE: Author is a former director and executive officer of Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and holds a large long position in its stock. He also holds a small long position in Exide (XIDE).

John L. Petersen, Esq. is a U.S. lawyer based in Switzerland who works as a partner in the law firm of Fefer Petersen & Cie and represents North American, European and Asian clients, principally in the energy and alternative energy sectors. His international practice is limited to corporate securities and small company finance, where he focuses on guiding small growth-oriented companies through the corporate finance process, beginning with seed stage private placements, continuing through growth stage private financing and concluding with a reverse merger or public offering. Mr. Petersen is a 1979 graduate of the Notre Dame Law School and a 1976 graduate of Arizona State University. He was admitted to the Texas Bar Association in 1980 and licensed to practice as a CPA in 1981.

Posted by John Petersen at 02:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (22)

John Petersen

A123 Systems filed another amendment to the registration statement for its proposed IPO on August 19th. With this amendment, A123 is much clearer on its anticipated Federal funding than it was in earlier filings. In addition to discussing the recent DOE announcement that they'll receive $249.1 million in ARRA battery manufacturing grants, they've reduced their estimate of the ATVM guaranteed loans that they'll be eligible for from $1 billion in their July filing to $235 million in the current filing. This most recent number is specific enough to indicate that it reflects ongoing negotiations rather than hopes and aspirations. I hope they get it.

When A123 originally filed their registration statement last summer, the planned offering amount was $175 million. Under the ARRA battery grant program they'll need to come up with $250 million in matching funds. Similarly, under the ATVM loan program they'll need to come up with roughly $60 million in matching funds. If one assumes that all of the matching funds requirements will need to be satisfied by the IPO, they'll need to raise $500 to $700 million in the IPO to meet their cash requirements.

If the IPO goes off for $500 million or more, it will be a watershed event on Wall Street and likely result in a frenzy of activity for other stocks in the energy storage sector. I'm excited because there are still a number of storage sector stocks that trade at objectively low valuations.

In early August I wrote an article titled "Alternative Energy Storage: Cheap Continues to Outperform Cool" which suggested that the companies in the Cheap Emerging and Cheap Sustainable classes still had significant upside potential. I continue to believe that these companies will be solid performers after a major storage sector IPO. I'm less sanguine about the ability of Ener1 (HEV) and Valence (VLNC) to maintain their current market capitalizations in the wake of a major IPO for a company that makes a competitive product and has far stronger business fundamentals.

September should be a very interesting month.

DISCLOSURE: None

John L. Petersen, Esq. is a U.S. lawyer based in Switzerland who works as a partner in the law firm of Fefer Petersen & Cie and represents North American, European and Asian clients, principally in the energy and alternative energy sectors. His international practice is limited to corporate securities and small company finance, where he focuses on guiding small growth-oriented companies through the corporate finance process, beginning with seed stage private placements, continuing through growth stage private financing and concluding with a reverse merger or public offering. Mr. Petersen is a 1979 graduate of the Notre Dame Law School and a 1976 graduate of Arizona State University. He was admitted to the Texas Bar Association in 1980 and licensed to practice as a CPA in 1981.

Posted by John Petersen at 04:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jason Hamlin

The lithium market is buzzing as GM, Nissan and other car manufacturers get set to roll out a new series of electric cars that will greatly increase demand for the obscure silver-white alkai metal. GM has announced plans to construct a $43 million plant in Michigan to build lithium-ion batteries for its Chevrolet Volt electric-powered car, which captured headlines with its claim of 230 miles per gallon.

Adding to the lithium mania is Washington’s support in the form of $2 Billion in stimulus funding:

“New plug-in hybrids roll off our assembly lines, but they will run on batteries made in Korea. Well I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders –and I know you don’t either. It is time for America to lead again.”

- President Obama

For those with concerns that fuel efficiency alone is not enough to entice America’s automobile consumer, consider the company Tesla Motors. While their roadster is the first production automobile to use lithium-ion battery cells and travel more than 200 miles per charge, it is also capable of doing 0-60 in under 4 seconds. Not only will the Tesla Roadster leave most sports cars in its dust, the car recently set a distance record in April 2009 when it completed the 241-mile Rallye Monte Carlo d’Energies Alternatives with 36 miles left on the charge. While the Roadster’s price tag may be out of reach for the average consumer at just over $100,000, Tesla has taken more than 1,000 reservations for the car and expects to begin production of an all-electric and more affordable sedan starting in late 2011. While Tesla remains a private company whose stock you are unlikely to get your hands on, their success bodes well for the future of lithium battery-powered cars.

Lithium prices have nearly tripled over the past decade with 22% compound annual growth since 2000 for use in laptops, cell phones and other electronics. While this demand is expected to continue rising, the recent lithium mania has been ignited by the fact that electric cars require about 3,000 times the lithium needed for an average cell phone or 100 times the lithium used in a computer battery. This huge spike in demand should propel lithium prices much higher over the next few years. Investors are eager to get ahead of the curve and are scrambling to find the companies that stand to benefit most from this new demand.

While most investors turn to the world’s largest lithium producer, Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile (ADR) (NYSE:SQM), only a small percentage of their revenue is derived from lithium sales. SQM generates the bulk of their sales from iodine and specialty fertilizers for the agriculture sector.

My preferred way to profit from the coming lithium boom is through the company Western Lithium (CVE: WLC or PINK: WLCDF), which owns the largest known lithium deposit in North America. The near surface lithium clay deposit is located in Nevada, USA and was initially discovered by the US Geological Survey and Chevron USA in the 1970’s. Engineering work completed by Chevron, and later by the US Bureau of Mines in the 1980’s, is now being advanced by Western Lithium.

The company’s flagship Kings Valley property has a National Instrument 43-101 resource estimate for the initial stage of development and in total hosts a historically estimated 11 million tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE). The project has a well developed local infrastructure and Nevada has a long history in the metals and industrial mineral mining industry. The company plans a scoping study during Q3 of 2009, a pre-feasibility study with results from additional drilling during 2010 and projected production by 2013. A chart with the world’s largest lithium deposits is below (click on the chart for an enlarged image).

Western Lithium is well-funded and debt free with CDN$7.3 million (US$6.7 million)) cash on the books. They recently completed a CDN$5.5 million (US$5.0 million) private placement in May of this year and have a market cap of CDN$70 million (US$63.8 milllion). As you can see below, the stock has broken out recently on heavy volume. While some might view the stock as overbought, I believe lithium mania is only getting started and that Western Lithium will outperform its peers both in the short and long term. Despite the recent spike in price, shares are selling at a premium of just 20% to their highs which were put in well before the recent flurry of bullish news. The last time the stock made a move like the current one, it continued to produce a gain in excess of 800%!

We might not know for sure “Who Killed the Electric Car?,” but it appears to be making an impressive resurrection.

DISCLOSURE: The author is long Western Lithium

Jason Hamlin owns the Gold Stock Bull. The Gold Stock Bull Portfolio is up 115% year-to-date in 2009 with a record of 29 profitable trades and 14 losing trades. Click here for more information or click here to get started right away.

Want to write a guest article for AltEnergyStocks.com? Write us! We're always looking for a fresh perspective on investing, alternative energy or both.    

Posted by Guest Contributor at 01:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In August of last year I wrote an article titled "Grid-based Energy Storage: Birth of a Giant." Over the last 12 months I've written a series of follow-on articles that discuss the principal classes of manufactured energy storage devices and the companies that are making or planning to make products for smart grid energy storage applications. My entire archive of articles on the energy storage sector is available here.

One of the biggest problems I've encountered over the last year has been a dearth of reliable third party information that can help investors understand the breadth and depth of the business opportunity, and sift through the frequently contradictory claims of energy storage device manufacturers that plan to target the smart grid as a principal market. Since energy storage investors are generally well-informed and frequently opinionated, most of my articles have lengthy comment streams that round out my perspective and are usually more interesting than the articles themselves.

Two weeks ago I ran across a story on greentechgrid that said NanoMarkets LLC, a leading market research firm from Glenn Allen, Virginia, was predicting that the global market for storage batteries and ultracapacitors on the smart grid would grow from its current level of $326 million to $8.3 billion by 2016. Since the market size and growth rate estimates were very impressive and I track many of the companies identified in the greentechgrid story, I contacted NanoMarkets to see if they would send me a complimentary copy of their report.

A little over a week ago I received a copy of NanoMarkets 102 page report titled "Batteries and Ultra-Capacitors for the Smart Power Grid: Market Opportunities 2009-2016." I've been like a kid in a candy store ever since. While the $2,995 report is a little pricey for individual investors, it's a must read for institutions and other large investors that are analyzing opportunities in the energy storage sector. It's also a wonderful planning tool for companies that are developing go to market strategies for manufactured energy storage devices. Individuals who want to better understand how the smart-grid market is likely to develop and grow over the next several years can gain important insight from a free June 2009 NanoMarkets white paper titled "Plug In to Materials Trends for Smart Grid Applications." NanoMarkets has agreed to offer a $500 discount on the full report to my readers who contact Robert Nolan (rob@nanomarkets.net) and mention this article.

Unlike forecasts from storage device manufacturers and stock market analysts who tend to focus on how a particular product, technology or company might fit in an emerging market, NanoMarkets approached the issue of smart grid storage from the end-user's perspective; meaning that they identified the customer's needs first and then focused on the companies that had cost-effective solutions for those needs. The principal near-term applications identified by NanoMarkets are:

• Load leveling and power quality systems to protect commercial and industrial users from brief power interruptions that cost an estimated $75 to $200 billion per year in lost time, lost commerce and damage to equipment;
• Peak shaving systems to help commercial and industrial users manage their electricity costs under variable utility tariffs and help utilities manage generating assets to minimize waste;
• Transmission and distribution support systems to help utilities reduce grid congestion, defer upgrades and minimize waste; and
• Renewables integration systems to help power producers, utilities and end users cope with the inherent variability of wind and solar power and better match peak wind and solar output with peak demand.

In evaluating the likely development path for energy storage devices on the smart grid, NanoMarkets considered a variety of competing technologies including pumped hydro, compressed air, flywheels, chemical storage batteries, ultracapacitors and superconducting magnets. They ultimately concluded that:

• Pumped hydro and compressed air had limited growth potential because of geographical and geologic constraints;
• Flywheels and superconducting magnets were not likely to be widely used beyond niche applications because of their cost and complexity; and
• Absent a revolutionary breakthrough in cycle life and cost, lithium-ion batteries will have limited application in the smart grid.

From my perspective one of the most refreshing aspects of the NanoMarkets report was their belief that storage systems for the smart grid will be chosen based on fundamental cost-benefit analysis. Equally important was their conclusion that emerging technologies would increase the overall demand for storage and result in rapidly increasing revenue for all product classes. So instead of facing a situation where an emerging technology takes sales away from an established technology, each class of technology can expect rapid sustained growth over the entire forecast period. When the forecasts for individual product classes are stacked on top of each other, it's easy to see why I believe the smart grid storage market will reach explosive growth rates by 2016. The following graph provides a consolidated summary of NanoMarkets' forecast for each of the principal battery classes over the next eight years.



I can't begin to do the NanoMarkets report justice in the limited confines of a financial blog. They thoroughly discuss the economic drivers and development path for each of the principal smart grid markets; carefully review each of the energy storage technologies that have significant potential in the smart grid market; identify the leading developers of energy storage devices for the smart grid; and break their sales forecasts down by both specific applications and geography. If NanoMarkets' forecast is even close to being right, the next decade will be a period of explosive growth for:

• Sodium battery manufacturers like NGK Insulators (NGKIF.PK) and General Electric (GE) that can look for annual revenue in their sub-sector to grow by $1.3 billion over the next eight years;
• Supercapacitor manufacturers like Maxwell Technologies (MXWL) that can look for annual revenue in their sub-sector to grow by $1 billion over the next eight years;
• Lead-acid battery manufacturers like Enersys (ENS), Exide (XIDE) and C&D Technologies (CHP) that can look for annual revenue in their sub-sector to grow by $2.4 billion over the next eight years;
• Lead-carbon battery manufacturers like Furukawa Battery (FBB.F), Axion Power (AXPW.OB) and Firefly that can look for annual revenue in their sub-sector to grow by $2.75 billion over the next eight years; and
• Flow battery manufacturers like ZBB Energy (ZBB) that can look for annual revenue in their sub-sector to grow by $499 million over the next eight years;

For energy storage investors who truly want to understand where the smart grid energy storage device market is today and how it is likely to develop through 2016, the NanoMarkets report could well prove to be the soundest investment of all.

DISCLOSURE: Author is a former director Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and holds a large long position in its stock. He also holds a small long positions in Enersys (ENS), Exide (XIDE) and ZBB Energy (ZBB).

John L. Petersen, Esq. is a U.S. lawyer based in Switzerland who works as a partner in the law firm of Fefer Petersen & Cie and represents North American, European and Asian clients, principally in the energy and alternative energy sectors. His international practice is limited to corporate securities and small company finance, where he focuses on guiding small growth-oriented companies through the corporate finance process, beginning with seed stage private placements, continuing through growth stage private financing and concluding with a reverse merger or public offering. Mr. Petersen is a 1979 graduate of the Notre Dame Law School and a 1976 graduate of Arizona State University. He was admitted to the Texas Bar Association in 1980 and licensed to practice as a CPA in 1981.

Posted by John Petersen at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

John Petersen

On Monday of this week, the treehugger blog published a guest essay from Vinod Khosla that clarified his stance on the future of next generation lithium-ion batteries. The essay was prompted by "blog chatter" about an article in Earth2Tech where he was quoted as saying that lithium-ion batteries are overhyped. Since the Khosla essay included a link to my article "Why Lead-Carbon Batteries Will Deflate the Li-ion Bubble," I think it's important to tell readers that Mr. Khosla has written his own essay on the subject and encourage them to get the full story straight from the source.

The essay from Mr. Khosla is available here.

While we use different terms to frame the issues, it's pretty clear that Mr. Khosla's views of the lithium-ion battery sector are not all that different from mine. We both question the ability of leading lithium-ion battery developers to move down the cost curve and up the performance curve over the next five years. We both believe that without disruptive advances in cell design, battery chemistry and manufacturing technology, the market for PHEVs and EVs will be limited to a small fraction of the potential market. We both hope ongoing R&D will lead to the disruptive advances the industry needs. And we're both a little skeptical about EEstor.

After spending a good deal of time analyzing the Khosla essay, about the only place we disagree is his suggestion that "Even the old lead acid battery suppliers like Firefly and other lead acid battery makers are making a play to reach the electric car specifications."

I've always been very careful to respect the difference between cars that use electric drive to supplement internal combustion engines and cars that use internal combustion engines to supplement electric drive.

That difference is a plug.

I firmly believe advanced lead-acid and lead-carbon batteries will be a dominant technology for micro, mild and full HEVs. I do not expect them to be the first choice for PHEVs and EVs where battery size and weight are mission critical constraints. The only clear exception to my general view is gas guzzler to dual mode EV conversions.

Last November I wrote "Alternative Energy Storage is an Investment Tsunami," which began with a Khosla quote that “500 million people on earth enjoy a lifestyle that 9 billion people will want in 2050.” This quote had a profound impact on my thinking and has gradually morphed into a frequently repeated theme that 6 billion people already know about the lifestyle that 500 million of us enjoy and every single one of them wants to earn his piece of the dream. The trick will be finding a way to raise the standard of living in developing economies without crushing the standard of living in developed economies. For that to happen without catastrophic conflict and horrific environmental consequences, the world must find relevant scale solutions for persistent shortages of water, food, energy and virtually every commodity you can imagine.

Since I admire Mr. Khosla, I deeply regret any trouble I may have caused by not spending more time discussing his vision of the opportunities in next generation lithium-ion batteries. A favorite theme of mine comes from William Martin's novel The Lost Constitution, “In America we get up in the morning, we go to work and we solve our problems.” Solving our energy and carbon emission problems is a daunting task that will take decades and probably never be complete. In the meantime, we need to go to work with the tools we have and be ready to embrace new tools when they're developed. I don't view advanced lead-acid and lead-carbon batteries as the be all and end all of energy storage. They are, however, key bridging solutions that can help us get from where we are to where we need to be.

John L. Petersen, Esq. is a U.S. lawyer based in Switzerland who works as a partner in the law firm of Fefer Petersen & Cie and represents North American, European and Asian clients, principally in the energy and alternative energy sectors. His international practice is limited to corporate securities and small company finance, where he focuses on guiding small growth-oriented companies through the corporate finance process, beginning with seed stage private placements, continuing through growth stage private financing and concluding with a reverse merger or public offering. Mr. Petersen is a 1979 graduate of the Notre Dame Law School and a 1976 graduate of Arizona State University. He was admitted to the Texas Bar Association in 1980 and licensed to practice as a CPA in 1981.

Posted by John Petersen at 03:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

John Petersen

Posted by John Petersen at 05:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

John Petersen

During his address today at Navistar International's (NAV) facilities in Elkhart, Indiana, President Obama announced a total of $2 billion in ARRA battery manufacturing grants and another $400 million in Recovery Act awards for transportation electrification. The complete list of grant recipients, most of whom are private companies, is available here. The recipients of $1.25 billion in the primary class of grants for cell and battery manufacturing facilities are as follows:

Johnson Controls	JCI	$299.2	Production of nickel-cobalt-metal battery cells and packs, as well as production of battery separators (by partner Entek) for hybrid and electric vehicles.
A123 Systems	IPO pending	$249.1	Manufacturing of nano-iron phosphate cathode powder and electrode coatings; fabrication of battery cells and modules; and assembly of complete battery pack systems for hybrid and electric vehicles.
Dow Kokam	DOW	$161.0	Production of manganese oxide cathode / graphite lithium-ion batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles.
Compact Power	Private (Sub. of LG Chem)	$151.4	Production of lithium-ion polymer battery cells for the GM Volt using a manganese-based cathode material and a proprietary separator.
EnerDel	HEV	$118.5	Production of lithium-ion cells and packs for hybrid and electric vehicles. Primary lithium chemistries include: manganese spinel cathode and lithium titanate anode for high power applications, as well as manganese spinel cathode and amorphous carbon for high energy applications.
General Motors	???	$105.9	Production of high-volume battery packs for the GM Volt. Cells will be from LG Chem, Ltd. and other cell providers to be named.
Saft America	SGPEF.PK	$95.5	Production of lithium-ion cells, modules, and battery packs for industrial and agricultural vehicles and defense application markets. Primary lithium chemistries include nickel-cobalt-metal and iron phosphate.
Exide Technologies with Axion Power	XIDE AXPW.OB	$34.3	Production of advanced lead-acid batteries, using lead-carbon electrodes for micro and mild hybrid applications.
East Penn Manufacturing	Private	$32.5	Production of the UltraBattery (lead-acid battery with a carbon supercapacitor combination) for micro and mild hybrid applications.

Additional awards to other publicly traded companies include:

Celgard/Polypore	PPO	$49.20	Production of polymer separator material for lithium-ion batteries.
Honeywell	HON	$27.30	Production of electrolyte salt (lithium hexafluorophosphate (LiPF6)) for lithium-ion batteries.
BASF Catalysts	BASFY.PK	$24.60	Production of nickel-cobalt-metal cathode material for lithium-ion batteries.
FutureFuel	FTFL.OB	$12.60	Production of high-temperature graphitized precursor anode material for lithium-ion batteries.
General Motors	???	$105	Construction of U.S. manufacturing capabilities to produce the second-generation GM global rear-wheel electric drive system.
Delphi	???	$89.30	Expansion of manufacturing for existing electric drive power electronics components for both passenger and commercial vehicles.
Ford Motors	F	$62.70	Producing a Ford electric drive transaxle with integrated power electronics in an existing Ford transmission facility.
Magna E-Car Systems	MGA	$40	Increasing production capacity of advanced automotive electric drive system component manufacturing plants located in the U.S.
Kemet Corporation	KEM	$15.10	Production of DC bus capacitors including soft wound film and stacked film capacitors necessary for electric drive system power electronics.

On balance, I'd say my predictions from earlier today were not too far off the mark. I was particularly pleased (OK it was closer to "this is almost better than sex") to see that Exide Technologies (XIDE) will receive a $34.3 million grant with Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) for the production of advanced batteries using Axion's proprietary lead-carbon electrode technologies. While sharing of the grant funding will apparently have to be clarified during the contract negotiation phase, the boost to Axion's future revenue and technical credibility will be substantial. I was also happy to see that East Penn will receive an additional $32.5 million for the production of advanced lead-carbon batteries based on the Ultrabattery technology developed by Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

While these grants for advanced lead-carbon batteries pale in comparison to the huge amounts allocated to lithium-ion battery manufacturing, they show a clear recognition that the micro and mild hybrid markets will be very important over the next decade and go a long way toward confirming what I've been telling readers for months, that lead-carbon is a game changer for alternative energy storage.

I look forward to reading the press releases from the award recipients which will undoubtedly provide more detail.

ED NOTE: One more: UQM Technologies (UQM) gets $45M.

DISCLOSURE: Author is a former director Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and holds a large long position in its stock. He also holds a small long position in Exide (XIDE).

John L. Petersen, Esq. is a U.S. lawyer based in Switzerland who works as a partner in the law firm of Fefer Petersen & Cie and represents North American, European and Asian clients, principally in the energy and alternative energy sectors. His international practice is limited to corporate securities and small company finance, where he focuses on guiding small growth-oriented companies through the corporate finance process, beginning with seed stage private placements, continuing through growth stage private financing and concluding with a reverse merger or public offering. Mr. Petersen is a 1979 graduate of the Notre Dame Law School and a 1976 graduate of Arizona State University. He was admitted to the Texas Bar Association in 1980 and licensed to practice as a CPA in 1981.

Posted by John Petersen at 02:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Petersen

Industry subsector	Total Funding	Awards	Award Size
Cell and Battery Pack Manufacturing Facilities	$1,200 million	7 to 8	$100 to $150 million
Advanced Battery Supplier Manufacturing Facilities	$275 million	14	$20 million
Advanced Lithium ion Battery Recycling Facilities	$25 million	2	$12.5 million
Electric Drive Component Manufacturing Facilities	$350 million	3 to 5	$80 million
Electric Drive Subcomponent Manufacturing Facilities	$150 million	6 to 8	$20 million

Posted by John Petersen at 08:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Petersen

The next couple months are shaping up as a time of extraordinary change in the energy storage sector. Events that will drive the change include:

• Press reports indicate that the Department of Energy will be ready to announce it's preliminary decisions on the allocation of $2 billion in ARRA battery manufacturing grants sometime this week;
• We've seen numerous reports on automaker's plans to begin manufacturing PHEVs and EVs in limited volumes for testing and demonstration purposes;
• New tailpipe emission standards in Europe and accelerated CAFE standards in the U.S. will effectively compel the widespread adoption and rapid roll-out of stop-start and mild hybrid technologies by all major automakers;
  
• Advanced Battery (ABAT) acquired manufacturing facilities for electric two-wheeled (E2W) vehicles and is diversifying its operations with a sharper focus on the Chinese market;
• Beacon Power (BCON) received a conditional commitment for a $43 million DOE loan guarantee that will be used to complete a 20 MW flywheel energy storage project in New York; and
• A123 Systems filed another amendment to its SEC registration statement, which indicates that they're still on track for an IPO sometime in September.

So now seems like a good time to update the relative performance of the individual energy storage stocks I've been writing about for the last year.

The following table provides comparative price data for the short-list of pure play energy storage companies I track. It shows closing prices on November 14, 2008 and July 31, 2009, calculates the percentage of change over the last eight months, and calculates current market capitalizations based on recent SEC reports.

		14-Nov	31-Jul	Percent	Market
Cool Emerging	Symbol	Close	Close	Change	Cap
Ener1	HEV	$6.75	$6.38	-5.48%	$723.96
Valence Technology	VLNC	$1.88	$1.83	-2.66%	$228.58
Altair Nanotechnologies	ALTI	$0.87	$0.97	12.14%	$90.36
Beacon Power	BCON	$0.82	$0.76	-7.32%	$90.62
Cool Sustainable
Maxwell Technologies	MXWL	$6.50	$14.16	117.85%	$328.26
Advanced Battery	ABAT	$2.13	$4.28	100.94%	$247.47
Ultralife	ULBI	$9.08	$6.42	-29.30%	$108.88
China BAK	CBAK	$1.99	$3.31	66.33%	$190.95
Hong Kong Highpower	HPJ	$3.50	$1.41	-59.71%	$19.12
Cheap Emerging
Axion Power International	AXPW.OB	$1.30	$1.25	-3.85%	$44.53
ZBB Energy	ZBB	$0.93	$1.30	39.78%	$13.80
Cheap Sustainable
Enersys	ENS	$6.86	$19.79	188.48%	$951.70
Exide Technologies	XIDE	$3.38	$4.87	44.08%	$367.78
C&D Technologies	CHP	$1.94	$2.00	3.09%	$52.59
Active Power	ACPW	$0.40	$0.74	83.75%	$48.85

Between November 14, 2008 and July 31, 2009, a $1,000 index investment in the Dow Jones Average, the Nasdaq Index and the S&P 500 would have resulted in an average portfolio appreciation of 17.2%. The following table summarizes the portfolio gain or (loss) that would have resulted from an investment of $1,000 per company in each of my four groups.

Tracking	Percentage
Category	Gain (Loss)
Cool Emerging	(0.8%)
Cool Sustainable	39.2%
Cheap Emerging	18.0%
Cheap Sustainable	79.9%

Equity markets are driven by a combination of greed and fear, emotional reactions that are often at odds with fundamental economic realities. Over the past few years, both cool groups have been driven by headlines that highlight opportunities while both cheap groups have been driven by headlines that highlight problems. Since headlines invariably feed the greed and fear cycle, the cool groups were driven to relatively high valuation levels while the cheap groups were driven to relatively low valuation levels. If the last eight months are any indication, the pendulum is moving back toward a more balanced position where cheap group valuations will eventually catch up with cool group valuations. As the following summary valuation metrics show, they still have a long way to go.

		Shares	Price/	Price/	Price/	Book Value
Cool Emerging Group	Symbol	(000s)	Earnings	Book	Sales	Per Share
Ener1	HEV	113,474		8.63	48.38	$0.74
Valence Technology	VLNC	124,905			8.39	-$0.55
Altair Nanotechnologies	ALTI	93,153		2.48	16.39	$0.39
Beacon Power	BCON	119,239		3.67	519.28	$0.20
Group Average				4.93	148.11	$0.20
Cool Sustainable Group
Maxwell Technologies	MXWL	23,182		5.41	3.79	$2.65
Advanced Battery	ABAT	57,821	14.31	2.88	5.04	$1.47
Ultralife Batteries	ULBI	16,959	12.64	1.19	0.41	$4.92
China BAK	CBAK	57,688		1.19	0.82	$2.74
Hong Kong Highpower	HPJ	13,563	10.85	1.14	0.28	$1.23
Group Average			12.60	2.36	2.07	$2.60
Cheap Emerging Group
Axion Power International	AXPW.OB	35,625		7.25	42.09	$0.17
ZBB Energy	ZBB	10,618		1.74	15.24	$0.74
Group Average				4.50	28.67	$0.46
Cheap Sustainable Group
Enersys	ENS	48,090	11.56	1.49	0.49	$13.43
Exide Technologies	XIDE	75,519	7.49	1.09	0.11	$4.37
C&D Technologies	CHP	26,296		1.11	0.15	$1.81
Active Power	ACPW	66,458		2.24	0.91	$0.30
Group Average		54,091	9.53	1.48	0.42	$4.98

I have long argued that every energy storage decision boils down to a cost-benefit analysis and the bulk of the incremental sales revenue will flow to companies that serve the mundane needs of the average user, rather than the extreme needs of "power users." Based on his recent statement that lithium-ion batteries are overhyped, it appears that Vinod Khosla, one of Silicon Valley's most active cleantech investors, agrees with me. While I believe fundamental market drivers will result in rapid and sustained growth across the entire spectrum of energy storage companies, I’m convinced the superstars will be the manufacturers of objectively cheap products that can serve the needs of average users at a reasonable price. Until cheap group valuations approach parity with cool group valuations, I will continue to believe that investors who want to maximize portfolio performance in the energy storage sector should focus on the cheap groups instead of the cool groups.

DISCLOSURE: Author is a former director Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and holds a large long position in its stock. He also holds small long positions in Exide (XIDE), Enersys (ENS) Active Power (ACPW) and ZBB Energy (ZBB).

John L. Petersen, Esq. is a U.S. lawyer based in Switzerland who works as a partner in the law firm of Fefer Petersen & Cie and represents North American, European and Asian clients, principally in the energy and alternative energy sectors. His international practice is limited to corporate securities and small company finance, where he focuses on guiding small growth-oriented companies through the corporate finance process, beginning with seed stage private placements, continuing through growth stage private financing and concluding with a reverse merger or public offering. Mr. Petersen is a 1979 graduate of the Notre Dame Law School and a 1976 graduate of Arizona State University. He was admitted to the Texas Bar Association in 1980 and licensed to practice as a CPA in 1981.

Posted by John Petersen at 12:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Petersen

For over a year I've been cautioning readers that while lithium-ion batteries are glamorous, sleek, sexy and hot; they are about to face a formidable challenge from lead-carbon batteries that are a little bulkier and heavier, but offer competitive cycle-life and power for a tiny fraction of the cost. To placate lithium fundamentalists and EV evangelists, I want to clearly state up front that lead-carbon batteries will probably not be the first choice for plug-in vehicles. Nevertheless, it is crystal clear that lead-carbon batteries will be the only sensible choice for micro, mild and full hybrid electric vehicles (HEV's) and many grid connected energy storage applications. A July 30th article from Earth2Tech titled, “Vinod Khosla On Why Lithium-Ion Batteries Are Overhyped” says it all, "The most important thing to remember is economic gravity – the cheapest thing ends up winning." What do you know; somebody far smarter than me who believes cheap beats cool.

As regular readers know, I recently participated in Infocast's Storage Week 2009 and served on three discussion panels. The core data for this article came from a slide-show that Patrick T. Moseley PhD, the president of the Advanced Lead-Acid Battery Consortium (ALABC), presented at the conference. While I've known about the surprising gains that come from the integration of advanced carbon materials into conventional lead-acid batteries for several years, the Moseley presentation is one of the first public documents to explore the details. A copy of Dr. Moseley's Storage Week presentation is available here. A complete archive of my articles on the energy storage sector is available here.

The media began paying attention to lead-carbon batteries in January 2008 when Autobloggreen reported the results of a road test that used a split-electrode lead-carbon "Ultrabattery" developed by Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) to power a modified Honda Insight for 100,000 miles. The gist of the report was that in exchange for a weight penalty of 17 kg (37 pounds) and a fuel economy penalty of 2.8%, the Ultrabattery promised to shave up to $2,000 off the sticker price of a mild hybrid. Dr. Moseley's presentation took the Autobloggreen report a couple steps further and provided the following graph of ALABC-sponsored cycle life testing that compared the Ultrabattery to a standard NiMH battery through 180,000 cycles at discharge rates of up to 5C and recharge rates of up to 4.5C using the European Council for Automotive R&D (EUCAR) Power Assist Profile (click on the graph for a larger image).



Similar cycle-life improvement was clear in another graph from the Moseley presentation that compared the performance of conventional lead-acid batteries with lead-carbon batteries that incorporated 2% carbon black and 2% graphite by weight (roughly 10% carbon by volume) in the sponge lead paste for the negative electrodes (click on the graph for a larger image). This particular series of tests compared the two battery strings at discharge rates of up to 4C and recharge rates of up to 3C using a duty cycle developed by BAE Systems for its hybrid transit bus program. Once again, the cycle-life gains were remarkable.



The real meat and potatoes of the Moseley presentation, however, was a slide that compared the performance and price of the Ultrabattery against (click on the graph for a larger image):

• The Power Assist HEV Battery Goals established by the US Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC);
  
• An Advanced Automotive Battery Conference (AABC) performance report on NiMH batteries; and
• An AABC forecast on future generations of lithium-ion batteries.

While I hate belaboring the obvious, a simple battery technology that surpasses USABC goals by a comfortable margin while reducing the sticker price of a mild hybrid by up to 10% is important in hard times because the majority of American and European consumers are carefully weighing car buying decisions and demanding real value. More importantly, lead-carbon batteries can be manufactured in existing plants without building a new manufacturing, supply chain and distribution infrastructure from the ground up. As a matter of simple capital efficiency, lead-carbon battery manufacturing will be an order of magnitude cheaper. It can also ramp up to required volumes in years rather than decades.

In a January 2009 article titled "Lead-Carbon: A Game Changer for Alternative Energy Storage" I reprinted a graph that showed the results of a series of partial state of charge (PSOC) cycle-life tests that Sandia National Laboratories performed in 2008 on five different batteries including a valve regulated lead-acid (VRLA) battery, two VRLA batteries with carbon enhanced pastes, an Ultrabattery, and an advanced lithium-ion (Li-FePO4) battery. I also reprinted Sandia's summary slide which concluded, "The new carbon enhanced negative electrodes in VRLA batteries have dramatically improved utility PSOC cycle-life up to a factor of 10."

In a follow-up article titled "Lead Carbon Batteries: A Game Changer for Alternative Energy Storage - Part II" I compared the relative strengths and weaknesses of the principal lead-carbon battery developers, both public and private. The four public companies that are actively developing lead-carbon battery technology are:

• MeadWestvaco (MWV), a packaging material and container manufacturing company that is developing carbon additives for the sponge lead pastes used in conventional lead-acid batteries;
• Furukawa Battery Company (Frankfurt - FBB.F), which licensed the Ultrabattery from CSIRO and built the batteries used in the 100,000-mile road test;
• Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) a manufacturer of lead-acid batteries that has built a formidable patent portfolio in lead-carbon battery technology and was recently awarded $380,000 in ALABC grants for lead-carbon research and development; and
• Exide Technologies, Inc. (XIDE), a leading global manufacturer of lead-acid batteries that recently teamed up with Axion for the manufacturing and distribution of products based on Axion's proprietary lead-carbon technologies.
  

A 10-fold improvement in the performance of any technology is highly disruptive. The fact that lead-carbon batteries can do the work using cheap and plentiful raw materials from domestic sources and provide a product that is easily recycled in existing facilities is a game changer; particularly when both lithium-ion and NiMH batteries are based on imported raw materials that are likely to face substantial short-term supply constraints and will require the development of new recycling techniques and the establishment of a new recycling infrastructure.

In America we get up in the morning, we go to work and we solve our problems. NiMH and lithium-ion batteries cannot help the auto industry meet accelerated EU tailpipe CO2 emission standards and US CAFE standards because factories to make the batteries do not exist and even if they did the world's mines couldn't extract the needed raw materials fast enough to satisfy the demand. Over the next decade there's a fair chance that lithium-ion batteries will complete the development and testing path described in an unpublished "pre-decisional draft" of a DOE report titled, National Battery Collaborative (NBC) Roadmap, December 9, 2008, which discusses the merits, risks and expected costs of an aggressive eight-year initiative to foster the development and facilitate the commercialization of lithium-ion batteries. However those future advances will have no impact on our current problems.

It's time to quit talking about the distant future and focus on solving today's problems.

In closing I want to once again share an image from cartoonist Jan Darasz that was published in the Winter 2008 edition of Batteries International magazine with my article, America Must Rebuild Domestic Battery Manufacturing Infrastructure.



DISCLOSURE: Author is a former director of Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and holds a large long position in its stock. He also holds a small long position in Exide (XIDE).

John L. Petersen, Esq. is a U.S. lawyer based in Switzerland who works as a partner in the law firm of Fefer Petersen & Cie and represents North American, European and Asian clients, principally in the energy and alternative energy sectors. His international practice is limited to corporate securities and small company finance, where he focuses on guiding small growth-oriented companies through the corporate finance process, beginning with seed stage private placements, continuing through growth stage private financing and concluding with a reverse merger or public offering. Mr. Petersen is a 1979 graduate of the Notre Dame Law School and a 1976 graduate of Arizona State University. He was admitted to the Texas Bar Association in 1980 and licensed to practice as a CPA in 1981.

Posted by John Petersen at 01:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

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. Imre Gyuk, the DOE's Program Manager for Energy Storage Research, who explained that the unbuffered grid is vulnerable to collapse, noted that power outages cost American business an estimated $79 billion per year in lost productivity, and described grid-based energy storage as "a disruptive technology that will induce a paradigm shift in the utility industry." He further explained that storage has become a national priority as an integral subset of the smart grid program because of the multiple benefit streams it offers utilities in the form of frequency regulation, peak shaving, energy management, and transmission and distribution system upgrade deferral.

In his presentation, Dr. Gyuk specifically asked participants to support S. 1091, the Wyden Bill, which will provide a 20% investment tax credit for grid connected storage facilities that have at least 2 MW of capacity and can deliver 500 kWh for a period of 4 hours; makes utility-owned storage facilities eligible for clean renewable energy bonds; and provides a 30% investment tax credit for residential energy storage equipment. When the new subsidies are coupled with existing provisions that provide investment tax credits for storage system manufacturing facilities; ultra-rapid depreciation on eligible projects; and a short-term program that will offer cash subsidies to renewable energy storage projects in lieu of tax credits, the potential impact is massive.

In his discussion of the challenges associated with integrating intermittent renewables into the power grid, Dr. Gyuk explained that the peak-efficiency hours for both wind and solar do not mesh well with periods of peak demand for electric power. In the case of wind, the peak efficiency is usually at night when customer demand is lowest. In the case of solar, peak efficiency is usually around noon. Since peak demand typically occurs at about 4 P.M., Dr. Gyuk explained that short-term storage to shift power availability from off-peak to peak hours significantly increases both the usefulness of intermittent power sources to utilities and the economic returns to owners of those generating assets.

Community Energy Storage

Another important presentation came from Ali Nourai, AEP's manager of distributed energy resources who provided an overview of AEP's new Community Energy Storage (CES) program. In discussing the CES program, Dr. Nourai explained that the concept is "technology neutral" and emphasized that system reliability and "commodity priced batteries" would be critical drivers. He also noted that if PHEVs and EVs follow their expected development path, the batteries used in CES installations would likely be the same batteries used for automotive applications because widespread adoption in the auto industry would drive battery prices down to a level where they would likely be attractive to utilities. The key factors that Dr. Nourai stressed as critical for the CES program were:

• Improved safety and security;
• Increased customer reliability and value;
• Optimized realization of multiple value streams;
  
• Simplified integration of distributed power generation;
• Simplified budgeting for smaller neighborhood projects; and
• Simplified purchasing decisions by lower-level personnel.
  

Since the CES proposal contemplates installing batteries in a standard sized transformer box and assumes that Li-ion batteries will become a dominant technology for PHEVs and EVs, it clearly gives a short-term advantage to Li-ion battery developers who can make products that will fit in a limited volume. I remain skeptical about whether Li-ion battery technology will ever be robust enough or cheap enough for widespread adoption in the automotive industry and I wouldn't be surprised to see the volume constraints relaxed over time to facilitate the substitution of flow batteries and advanced lead-acid batteries. Seriously, does anyone really care whether the ugly green box hiding behind the shrubs is 3' by 3' instead of 4' by 4'? For the time being, the CES program favors Li-ion technology by imposing size constraints that have nothing to do with performance. It will be interesting to see how the program evolves as the cost and performance profiles for various battery technologies become clearer.

Energy Storage Heretic

On the third day I had an opportunity to play devil's advocate during a presentation by Mark Peters, the Deputy Associate Laboratory Director for the Li-ion battery development program at Argonne National Laboratories. During the question and answer session, I explained that for several months I've been suggesting that the inflection point for Li-ion batteries seems to be when you put a plug on a car because until you get to an all-electric drive train, the weight and volume differences don't justify the additional cost. Mr. Peter's response came as a pleasant surprise to me because he basically said "While there are members of my staff who would probably disagree with you, I tend to personally believe that your assessment is reasonable and the sweet spot for Li-ion batteries arrives when you add a plug."

By the afternoon of the fourth day, I had lapsed into full heretic mode for a panel discussion on the future of vehicle to grid technology. I think it came as a bit of a shock when I said "I don't believe V2G will happen because I don't believe PHEVs and EVs will happen in anything that even remotely resembles current plans." I then laid out the simple case against PHEVs and EVs as follows:

• The principal goal of the smart grid is the minimization of waste in the electric power industry;
• The most wasteful activity I personally engage in is using gasoline to power 4,000 pounds of car and 300 pounds of passengers at highway speed;
• The only activity I can imagine that would be more wasteful is using batteries to power 4,000 pounds of car and 300 pounds of passengers at highway speed;
• While most of the conference participants can afford the $40,000 cost of an eco-bling PHEV or EV, that option is not available to over 90% of the car buying public who need to worry about things like budgets and car payments;
  
• There are 6 billion people who live in crushing poverty and for the first time in history most of them understand that there is more to life than subsistence farming;
• As the 6 billion become consumers, our biggest challenges will be finding relevant scale solutions to shortages of water, food, energy and virtually every commodity you can imagine;
• Last year 23 million electric bikes and scooters were sold in China and those E2Ws used the same battery capacity that one million American style PHEVs would have required;
  
• From the perspective of a foreign government planner, providing mobility for a million wasteful Americans is not as important as providing mobility for 23 million locals who have more reasonable demands and aspirations; and
• From the perspective of raw economics, a purchaser who needs a small battery pack can afford to pay a higher price per watt-hour than a purchaser who needs a large battery pack, which will leave PHEVs, EVs and grid-connected applications at the bottom of the food chain rather than at the top.

I wonder if they'll invite me back as a panelist for next year's conference.

Posted by John Petersen at 03:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Petersen

Infocast’s Storage Week was all I had hoped it would be, and more. While I thoroughly enjoyed serving on three discussion panels and was warmly received by roughly 250 attendees, including executives of companies that I've occasionally criticized, the most important value for me came from the opportunity to hear four days of high-level presentations by industry executives, national thought leaders and policymakers who repeatedly stressed that:

• From a utility perspective grid-based energy storage is the functional equivalent of an instantly dispatchable generating asset;
• The combination of wind assets with cost effective load-shifting storage can improve internal rates of return by 50% or more;
• The combination of solar assets with cost effective load-shifting storage can improve internal rates of return by 50% or more;
• When it comes to grid-connected energy storage, cost, reliability, maintenance and cycle life will be the primary decision drivers.

Consensus was that an optimal smart grid configuration will need storage capacity equal to at least 5% of peak system load and areas that rely heavily on intermittent renewables like wind and solar will need a higher capacity to maximize the value of those assets.

In the example of California, the required annual storage build was estimated at 500 MW per year for the next 10 years. Of this total, 50 MW would need to be fast storage in the form of flywheels and Li-ion batteries and the 450 MW balance would be 4 to 6 hour storage in the form of pumped hydro, compressed air, flow batteries and advanced lead acid batteries.

The following table assumes that fast storage for frequency regulation will have an average discharge duration of 15 minutes and load shifting storage will have an average discharge duration of five hours. It shows how the aggregate annual storage build for both California and the U.S. as a whole will break down in terms of both MW of dispatchable power and MWh of stored energy.

State of California	MW	Percent	MWh	Percent
Annual Fast Storage Build	50	10.00%	12.5	0.55%
Annual Load Shifting Build	450	90.00%	2,250	99.45%
Nationwide (8x California)
Annual Fast Storage Build	400	10%	100	0.55%
Annual Load Shifting Build	3,600	90%	18,000	99.45%

Using a quick and dirty pricing metric of $1 million per MW for fast storage devices including flywheels and Li-ion batteries the annual revenue potential of $400 million is impressive. Using an equally quick and dirty pricing metric of $500,000 per MWh for load shifting storage, the annual revenue potential of $9 billion is mind-boggling.

In the fast storage space, the leading contenders are Maxwell Technologies (MXWL), a leading manufacturer of supercapacitors; Active Power (ACPW), which builds low-speed flywheel systems for industrial power conditioning and UPS applications; Beacon Power (BCON), which builds high-speed flywheel systems for utility frequency regulation and recently snagged a DOE loan commitment for a 20 MW fast storage demonstration project; Altair Nanotechnologies (ALTI), which has built and deployed 2 MW of fast storage that is currently being tested by a major utility; and A123 Systems, which has also built and deployed several MW of fast storage for utility customers in the U.S. and overseas.

In the load shifting space, the leading contenders are Dresser Rand (DRC) which builds above ground compressed air systems, ZBB Energy (ZBB), which builds zinc-bromine flow batteries; lead-acid battery manufacturers like Enersys (ENS), Exide (XIDE) and C&D Technologies (CHP); and innovators like Axion Power (AXPW.OB) which is in the early stages of demonstrating the capabilities of its lead-carbon storage technologies.

The broader market has not yet come to grips with the realities that:

• The combination of wind and storage yields better returns than wind as a stand-alone;
• The combination of solar and storage yields better returns than solar as a stand-alone; and
• While the fast storage developers have been grabbing all the headlines because of the push to develop PHEVs and EVs, the manufacturers of cost effective load shifting systems will lay claim to well over 90% of the anticipated revenue.

As investors in the $100+ billion wind and solar sectors come to understand the critical need for storage to maximize the economics of those intermittent renewables, interest in the $2 billion storage sector will surge. As storage sector investors come to understand the critical need for cost-effective load shifting storage, interest in established manufacturers of less glamorous technologies will also surge. It all goes back to my fundamental premise that for the next decade, cheap will beat cool.

I'm in transit from California to Europe and won't have access to electronic copies of the Storage Week presentation materials for a few days. So I apologize for the dearth of links to source materials. When those materials become available, I'll follow up with a more detailed series of articles that get into the grittier questions of which companies are best positioned to capitalize on explosive growth in both fast and load-shifting grid based energy storage.

For the first time in my career, I find myself on the leading edge of a trend that will be larger than most investors can begin to imagine. It's going to be a fun decade for investors who position their portfolios early because events like Storage Week and the anticipated IPO from A123 Systems are rapidly sending a clear signal to the broader market.

DISCLOSURE: Author is a former director and executive officer of Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and holds a large long position in its stock. He also holds a small long position in Exide (XIDE).

Posted by John Petersen at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Last week, an article in Green Car Congress summarized a market forecast that Dr. Menahem Anderman presented at this month's Advanced Automotive Battery Conference in Long Beach, California. In his presentation, Dr. Anderman evaluated the market for HEVs in 2011, projected a $1,230 million market for automotive NiMH batteries, and projected a $320 million market for automotive Li-ion batteries. The following graph comes from Green Car Congress, is based on data from Dr. Anderman's AABC presentation, and shows both unit sales and market value of the Li-ion batteries that will be used in HEVs by 2011 (click on the graph for a larger image).



It's sobering if not downright depressing when you get to the middle of the article and read about Dr. Anderman's analysis of the gasoline prices required for HEVs to make economic sense.

Based on a five-year net present value analysis, Dr. Anderman concluded that:

• Stop-start hybrids make economic sense in the $5 per gallon range;
• Mild and strong hybrids require a gasoline price of roughly $7 per gallon; and
  
• PHEVs and full EVs require a gasoline price of about $10 per gallon.

When he performed an eight-year present value analysis, Dr. Anderman concluded that:

• Stop-start hybrids make sense in the $3 per gallon range;
• Mild and strong hybrids make sense in the $5 per gallon range;
• PHEVs require a gasoline price of roughly $7 per gallon; and
  
• Full EVs still require a gasoline price of about $10 per gallon.

I know very few people that can perform a net present value analysis. I know even fewer who go looking for a new car with the idea that they're going to drive it for five to eight years. Given the dismal economics of mild and strong hybrids and the ghastly economics of cars with plugs, I believe the high-end market for the next several years will be limited to the image conscious affluent who are willing and able to pay big premiums to make a statement. While Dr. Anderman's forecast of 40,000 Li-ion powered HEVs in two years strikes me as a very ambitious target, I'm willing to set aside my reservations for purposes of this article and assume that manufacturers of automotive Li-ion batteries will be guaranteed revenues of $320 million in 2011.

While most would agree that $320 million of total revenue by 2011 sounds impressive, it loses a bit of luster when you consider that advanced lead-acid battery manufacturers can expect $900 million to $1.8 billion of incremental revenue by 2011 from the widespread implementation of stop-start technology as standard equipment.

I've used the following graph from an October 2008 Frost & Sullivan presentation in a couple of recent articles, but it bears repeating because the law of large numbers is the fundamental reason that short term revenue growth in the automotive battery market favors lead-acid by 6 to 1 over Li-ion. The long blue segments represent the stop-start market that will be dominated by advanced lead-acid batteries because they can do the required work, they cost 60% to 75% less than NiMH and Li-ion alternatives, and they are the only batteries that can be manufactured in sufficient numbers to serve the short-term needs of automakers. The red, green and violet segments represent the high priced "centerfold" alternatives favored by EV advocates, reporters, politicians and public relations managers who would rather sell a sweet dream than grapple with economic reality.



In How Short-Term Supply Constraints Will Impact Booming HEV Markets, I explained that Frost & Sullivan based their original forecast on European CO2 emission standards but did not account for President Obama's subsequent acceleration of domestic CAFE standards. That change alone will push growth that would normally have occurred between 2015 and 2020 into earlier years and could easily double the growth rates Frost & Sullivan expected last fall. So with that background in mind, let's run the numbers.

Currently automakers spend between $50 and $100 for the commodity lead-acid batteries they use for starting, lighting, ignition and accessories; call it an average of $60. Since stop-start hybrids put far more stress on the battery, the advanced lead-acid batteries needed for stop-start vehicles will probably cost the automakers $250 to $300 per vehicle; call it an average of $260. That means the battery cost increment for a stop-start vehicle will be in the $200 range.

A quick eyeball of the Frost & Sullivan graph shows forecasted sales of 4.5 million stop-start vehicles by 2011, which works out to about $900 million in incremental revenue for lead-acid battery manufacturers, or roughly three times Dr. Anderman's forecast for Li-ion. If accelerated CAFE standards double global demand for stop-start vehicles, the incremental revenue for lead-acid battery manufacturers will be closer to $1.8 billion, or roughly six times Dr. Anderman's forecast for Li-ion.

Li-ion battery developers Altair Nanotechnologies (ALTI), Ener1 (HEV) and Valence Technologies (VLNC) have a combined market capitalization of $935 million and will be vying with a host of established domestic, European and Asian competitors for a piece of $320 million in total revenue.

In comparison, lead-acid battery manufacturers Exide Technologies (XIDE), C&D Technologies (CHP) and Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) have a combined market capitalization of $340 million and will be vying with their traditional competitors for a share of $1.8 billion of incremental revenue.

Benjamin Graham said, "In the short term, the stock market behaves like a voting machine, but in the long term it acts like a weighing machine." The voting is based on hopes, dreams and expectations. The weighing is based on revenue growth, earnings and other business fundamentals. Any time I can identify one industry sub-sector that trades at one-third of the market value of its more glamorous cousin but is likely to enjoy three to six times the short-term revenue gains, I have to believe the undervalued sector will reward investors handsomely as the weighing machine returns to balance.

DISCLOSURE: Author is a former director and executive officer of Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and holds a large long position in its stock. He also holds a small long position in Exide (XIDE).

John L. Petersen, Esq. is a U.S. lawyer based in Switzerland who works as a partner in the law firm of Fefer Petersen & Cie and represents North American, European and Asian clients, principally in the energy and alternative energy sectors. His international practice is limited to corporate securities and small company finance, where he focuses on guiding small growth-oriented companies through the corporate finance process, beginning with seed stage private placements, continuing through growth stage private financing and concluding with a reverse merger or public offering. Mr. Petersen is a 1979 graduate of the Notre Dame Law School and a 1976 graduate of Arizona State University. He was admitted to the Texas Bar Association in 1980 and licensed to practice as a CPA in 1981. From January 2004 through January 2007 he was a director of Axion Power International, Inc. a public company involved in advanced lead-carbon battery research and development.

Posted by John Petersen at 02:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last Tuesday a reader who works as a consultant in the energy storage and hybrid electric vehicles industries and sent me an unpublished "pre-decisional draft" of a DOE report titled National Battery Collaborative (NBC) Roadmap, December 9, 2009, a high-level policy analysis that discusses the merits, risks and expected costs of an aggressive eight-year initiative to foster the development and facilitate the commercialization of Li-ion batteries. The draft roadmap was written during the last days of the Bush administration, has since been partially implemented in the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 and has never been officially released by the DOE. It does not necessarily reflect the policy goals of the Obama administration. While I don't generally feel comfortable writing about documents that have not been publicly released, I've discussed most of the basic issues and challenges in other articles and believe the conceptual framework, industry assessment, development goals and timelines discussed in the draft roadmap can help energy storage investors make better decisions. So I've decided to take a deep breath, begin with a couple of important quotes, summarize the broad investment themes that can be extracted from the draft roadmap and try to tie it all back to a likely future for the energy storage sector. This is complex stuff so I encourage readers to offer comments and ask questions.

The introductory paragraph of the draft roadmap says:


While the frank message of the introductory paragraph is stunning, the follow-up discussion of the principal barriers to the development and commercialization of Li-ion batteries is an even bigger eye opener.

• Cost – The current cost of Li-based batteries is approximately a factor of three to five times too high on a kWh basis. The main cost drivers are the high cost of raw materials and materials processing, the cost of cell and module packaging, and manufacturing costs.
• Performance – Much higher energy densities are needed (for the 40-mile or greater system) to both meet the volume and weight targets and to reduce the number of cells needed for an entire battery, thus reducing the system’s cost. In addition, durability and reliability of current batteries needs to be assessed and possibly improved for use in passenger vehicles.
• Abuse Tolerance – Many Li batteries are not intrinsically tolerant to abusive conditions such as short circuits (including internal short circuits), overcharge, over discharge, crush, or exposure to fire and other high-temperature environments. The use of Li chemistries in these larger (energy) batteries increases the urgency with which these issues must be addressed.
• Life – Hybrid systems with conventional engines have a life target of 10 to 15 years, and battery life goals have been set to meet these targets. The goals of 300,000 HEV cycles and 5,000 deep discharge cycles are either unproven or are anticipated to be difficult. Specifically, the impact of combined EV/HEV cycling on battery life is unknown, and extended time at high state of charge (SOC) is predicted to limit battery life.

I've read the draft roadmap several times and think the DOE's development plan for Li-ion batteries has a reasonable chance of success from a governmental policy perspective. Nevertheless, I believe the plan will expose energy storage investors to a high level of business, competitive and technical risk that will take the better part of a decade to resolve. The simple summary for those who do not have the time to study the draft roadmap in detail is:

• Battery manufacturing is a national security issue and America cannot rely on imports for this fundamental need;
• Catching up with Asia is not enough and America must become the global leader in energy storage technology;
• The best available Li-ion battery chemistries are not robust or stable enough to power America's energy future;
• The best available battery manufacturing technologies are too expensive for a mass-market product;
• Current material supply chains are not reliable enough to protect America's national security interests;
  
• Li-ion batteries cannot become commercially viable without a massive government funded effort to advance the state of the art in battery manufacturing and Li-ion chemistry through two generations over the next decade;
• The activity we've seen over the last few years is a good start, but only a start on the work that must be done;
• The major expected reductions in Li-ion battery costs will arise from generational improvements in manufacturing processes and battery chemistry, rather than simple economies of scale associated with scaling-up current technology;
• Substantially all of the recently announced plans to build limited numbers of PHEVs and EVs for sale into "entry markets" like specialty vehicles, state fleets, city busses, utility fleets, USPS vehicles, private delivery fleets and the military are essential steps in the R&D process that allow manufacturers to validate the technical potential of their products prior to full scale commercial roll-out; and
• Commercialization of Li-ion batteries for the mass markets cannot occur unless and until all essential R&D work is successfully completed.

While I'm reluctant to compare the development plan for Li-ion batteries with the Manhattan Project, which cost $24 billion (in CPI adjusted dollars) and employed 130,000 scientists, engineers and technicians, the combined governmental and private sector investments could easily be in the same price range by the time the dust settles.

We are entering the age of cleantech, the sixth industrial revolution. We are also witnessing the birth of massive new consumer markets in South America, India and Asia that will put unimaginable strain on global supplies of water, food, energy and every commodity you can name. In combination, these mega-trends guarantee 10 to 20 years of gut wrenching change and economic dislocation. I have enough oil and gas experience to know that the oil industry will not be able to increase production to levels that satisfy the future demand projected by McKinsey and other macro-economic analysts. I have enough experience in energy storage to believe that by 2020 Li-ion battery manufacturing technology and chemistry will probably advance to a point where PHEVs and EVs are cost effective. But given my age, experience and financial responsibilities, I'm unwilling to put my portfolio at risk by trying to pick the winners of a business marathon that will take a decade or more to run and be subject to the unpredictable and highly variable winds of political and economic change.

I recently reviewed a slideshow presentation from a September 2008 clean air conference that described the auto industry as a serial victim of  technology du jour syndrome and offered the following table to prove the point.

25 years ago	Methanol
15 years ago	Electric vehicles
10 years ago	HEVs and Electric vehicles
5 years ago	Hydrogen Fuel Cells
2 years ago	Ethanol
Today	PHEVs and Electric vehicles
2011	What’s next?

It's enough to make you go Hmmm.

Every analytical report I've seen concludes that global demand for energy storage devices will grow at extraordinary rates for several decades. Over the next few years, the substantial bulk of the revenue growth will go to existing producers of lead-acid batteries that can deliver proven products from existing factories. As cost-effective Li-ion battery manufacturing technologies and chemistries are developed, tested, validated and commercialized, they will rapidly become the preferred choice for extreme performance applications like PHEVs and EVs. As these technologies mature, Li-ion batteries may even make inroads into less demanding applications that have traditionally been the province of lead-acid batteries. Over the longer term a new equilibrium will develop where lead-acid batteries are used for certain applications and Li-ion batteries are used for others. Unless the market forecasts I've seen are seriously misguided, manufacturers of all classes of energy storage devices will have a hard time keeping up with expected demand.

We don't live in a black or white world and it is patently absurd to think that the future of energy storage will be black or white. The reality is far more likely to be a richly mottled canvas dominated by various shades of green. The simple fact is that we need every energy storage technology that's ever been invented, and more. I believe Li-ion batteries, lead-acid batteries, lead-carbon batteries, flow batteries, pumped hydro, compressed air, thermal solar and flywheels will all make important contributions to the energy storage solution. So I believe a balanced portfolio of energy storage stocks is the only sensible approach for investors who don’t have the time, inclination or ability to do their own detailed research. Articles like this one can provide food for thought, but they should not be relied on as investment advice because every author (including me) has his own agenda, preferences, predilections and prejudices.

As an investor, my goal is to buy low and sell high. Based on five years of work in the energy storage sector, I’m convinced that near-term revenue growth in the Li-ion group will be slower than most people expect while near-term revenue growth in the lead-acid group will be faster than most people expect. If my basic thesis about future rates of technological development and revenue growth is correct, the companies in the lead-acid group are likely to perform far better over the next few years than the companies in the Li-ion group.

Readers that want to develop a deeper understanding of the issues and opportunities in the energy storage sector may want to join me in San Diego for Infocast's Storage Week on the 13th through 16th of July. The speaker's list includes more than 80 thought leaders from the battery industry, the government, the utility and automotive industries and the research and development sector. I'll be participating in three panel discussions and hope to return home with new investable insights that I can share with readers in future articles.

DISCLOSURE: Author is a former director and executive officer of Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and holds a large long position in its stock. He also holds small long positions in Active Power (ACPW), Exide (XIDE), Enersys (ENS) and ZBB Energy (ZBB).

John L. Petersen, Esq. is a U.S. lawyer based in Switzerland who works as a partner in the law firm of Fefer Petersen & Cie and represents North American, European and Asian clients, principally in the energy and alternative energy sectors. His international practice is limited to corporate securities and small company finance, where he focuses on guiding small growth-oriented companies through the corporate finance process, beginning with seed stage private placements, continuing through growth stage private financing and concluding with a reverse merger or public offering. Mr. Petersen is a 1979 graduate of the Notre Dame Law School and a 1976 graduate of Arizona State University. He was admitted to the Texas Bar Association in 1980 and licensed to practice as a CPA in 1981. From January 2004 through January 2008, he was securities counsel for and a director of Axion Power International, Inc. a small public company involved in advanced lead-carbon battery research and development.

Posted by John Petersen at 07:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Comparison of Energy Storage Technologies from Solar 2009

Tom Konrad, Ph.D.

A reader and  CEO of a fuel cell startup sent me an email asking for a copy of my presentation comparing energy storage technologies which I referred to in last months article on Renewable Energy integration.  Since other readers may be interested as well, here it is:

Economic Comparison of Electricity Storage Technologies (Power Point Show, 721 kb)

Here is also the spreadsheet where I gathered most of the data for the graphs. (Excel spreadsheet 74 kb)

Visual Comparisons

These following graphs can also be found in the spreadsheet and presentation.  They all use the same data as the one in the renewable energy integration article, but display it on different axes.  Larger bubbles to the top and right are more economic technologies.

 

 

I'm still looking for better data on the economic costs for HVAC based thermal storage, such as that sold by Ice Energy, and would appreciate any information from readers on this.

Tom Konrad, Ph.D.

In order to electrify transportation, well need batteries, with ultracapacitors and compressed air playing supporting roles.  Based on cost, John has been making the case that the batteries for economical cars are more likely to be advanced lead-acid (PbA) than the media darling, Lithium-ion (Li-ion.)  I generally agree, especially since recycling Li-ion batteries is an expensive and difficult process, although I see a future where both cars and oil are simply more expensive, and we have far fewer of them.

But transportation is only one application for energy storage technologies.  Another is matching the electricity output of variable power sources such as wind and solar with demand, as well as providing standby power to accommodate sudden ramp-ups and ramp downs.

Storage for Grid-Tied Applications

Below is a chart I put together comparing the cost per kW (Power), cost per kWh (Energy) and Round-trip efficiency of a large range of technologies.  Both axes are log scale.   This slide will be part of a presentation I'll be giving at Solar 2009 on May 15th.  (I'll also be on this panel on the 13th.)  Technologies to the right can store energy cheaply, and are the best for matching variable energy output with demand.  Technologies near the top deliver high power at low cost, and so are best for accommodating sudden changes in supply or demand on the grid.  Larger bubbles represent higher round-trip efficiency, meaning that more of the stored power can be sent back to the grid.

There are many other important characteristics of storage technologies, such as cycle life, O&M costs, memory effects, response time, and size/weight, so the technologies which look best on this graph will not be the best for all applications.

Batteries: Mostly for Cars

It's easy to note that lead-acid batteries dominate Lithium-ion batteries for grid tied applications: In a grid-tied application, the light weight of Li-ion batteries no longer makes any difference, and cost is much more important.  More important, however, it's also easy to note that neither the battery nor flow battery technologies are truly dominant in this context (note that I've lumped hydrogen electrolysis/fuel cell combinations (H2) with flow batteries in this context.  The bubble hidden behind NaS is ZnBr, a Zinc-Bromide flow battery, being commercialized by ZBB Energy (ZBB).)  

If I'd done this research a few years ago, I never would have recommended Vanadium Redox flow batteries (VRB) or Sodium Sulfur (NaS) in 2007, although a quick look at the chart makes clear why NGK Insulators (NGKIF.pk) is still selling NaS batteries while VRB Power declared bankruptcy not long after I sold it: NaS batteries produce much more power at the same cost.  They also have the advantage (not shown here) that they are small enough to be moved, and so can be used to defer transmission and distribution upgrades in multiple locations over the life of the battery.

Lead Costs More than Salt, Water, or Air

When it comes to dealing with the large scale power for grid tied applications, the best technologies are the ones with the cheapest storage media.  Thermal storage molten salt, while pumped hydro (PHES) uses water, and Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) uses air.  Demand Response and Transmission do even better by shifting power use in time or space, and dispensing with a storage medium altogether.  

The primacy of Demand Response and Transmission should not come as any surprise to regular readers, who will recall that Demand Response was the hero of the Texas Wind incident, while Transmission compares favorably to most storage technologies because it diversifies away many of the ups and downs of variable electricity supply and demand.

Pumped Hydro vs. Thermal Storage vs. CAES

Transmission is unfortunately difficult to permit and build, and demand response can only be used a few hours a year (at least until we get more responsive demand through smart grid investment.) This means that there will continue to be a large need for the three other forms of large scale, cheap energy storage.  Unfortunately, all three can only be used effectively in special situations.  Pumped hydro requires two adjacent reservoirs with a vertical drop between them, Thermal Storage works best with Concentrating Solar Power plants, especially in the tower configuration, and CAES requires an underground, air-tight cavern.  

While reservoirs and caverns can be built, doing so erodes the economics of the technologies.   It's worth noting that the economics of pumped hydro vary widely depending on the location, and so the apparent advantage of CAES only holds in some cases; the locations of the bubbles are based on averages of the highest and lowest costs in the literature.

Investments

For investors who see opportunity in integrating renewable electricity into the grid, the media fascination with battery technology is an opportunity.  They should focus on Demand Response and smart grid stocks such as EnerNOC (ENOC), Comverge (COMV), Itron (ITRI), Echelon (ELON), Telvent (TLVT), and RuggedCom (RUGGF.PK), Transmission stocks such as ABB Group (ABB), Quanta Services (PWR), General Cable (BGC), Pike Electric Corp (PIKE), ITC Holdings Corp (ITC), and Siemens (SI), before investing in traditional storage plays.

In many ways, this is fortunate, since Pumped Hydro, Thermal Storage, and CAES are all difficult for a stock market investor to get exposure to.

UPDATE: The full presentation comparing large scale energy storage technologies can be found here.

UPDATE 12/29/09- I came across better numbers for the cost of transmission, and updated the graphs here.

Posted by Tom Konrad at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)