Maxwell Stakes its Claim in a $2.7 Billion Niche Market
John Petersen Last Wednesday Maxwell Technologies (MXWL) announced the launch of a new ultracapacitor product that insures reliable engine starting for commercial trucks and other heavy vehicles. According to the Energy Information Administration, the existing US fleet includes 4.2 million heavy-duty diesel trucks. All of these vehicles are subject to strict anti-idling laws and regulations that strain their battery systems and increase the risk that the engine won't be able to start when it needs to. While a dead battery is a pain for the average consumer, it can cause a world of problems for a commercial truck...
In Search Of Solid State Battery Stocks
by Debra Fiakas, CFA
Greater energy density or the amount of energy stored is the mission of every battery developer. The higher the energy density, the longer a battery can serve its owner. Scientists have been adjusting circulating chemistry, cloaking electrodes in exotic metals, and otherwise tinkering with conventional battery designs. Debate even spills over into the raw material supply chain as it has recently over the use of expensive and sometimes difficult to source cobalt as an additive to lithium ion battery designs. Others are trying to tame silicon for use in battery anodes.
Perhaps the most daring developers have abandoned conventional battery design...
Hydrogenics Awarded Contract by Gas Natural to Deliver Hydrogen Station to Spanish Wind Farm
Hydrogenics Corp (HYGS) announced that they have been awarded a contract for over EUR 500,000 to deliver a hydrogen station to Gas Natural SDG, a Spanish-based energy services multinational with approximately ten million customers in Spain, Latin America, Italy and France (www.gasnatural.com). Gas Natural will use a Hydrogenics' HySTAT(TM)-A Hydrogen Station at the Sotavento Galicia wind farm to produce up to 60 Nm3/hr of hydrogen. The hydrogen will be used to fuel an internal combustion engine generator, which in turn will supply electricity to the electric grid.
Hypersolar: Hydrogen In A Baggie
by Debra Fiakas CFA The last post “Man Makes Mother Nature Look Like a Lazy Maid” featured the work of Harvard scientists who have developed a breakthrough ‘bionic leaf’ system that uses sunlight to split water into hydrogen and then combine it with carbon to make isopropanol, an alcohol that can be used as fuel. It is very much like reverse combustion. Kudos to Harvard! However, the good folks at Harvard are not alone in their quest to outsmart Mother Nature. In the late 1990s, the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado had reported progress...
PHEVs and EVs; Plugging Into a Lump of Coal
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...
A123 Systems Files Price Range Amendment
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...
EPA and NHTSA Predict 42% Market Penetration for Start-Stop Systems by 2016
John Petersen On April 1st the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency announced a joint final rule establishing fuel economy standards for all light duty vehicles sold in the United States. In my last article, I focused on the overall fuel efficiency improvements the new CAFE regulations will require. After spending a couple days reading and digesting the Final Rule Release, which runs to 1,469 pages, I've concluded that my initial optimism over the future of start-stop technology was understated. The Final Rule Release begins with several hundred pages of introductory...
Beacon Power Announces Award of Phase II SBIR Contract for Advanced Flywheel Energy Storage...
Beacon Power Corp (BCON) announced that it has been awarded a contract through the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), and co-funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense. The contract, valued at $750,000, is for the preliminary design of a space-based flywheel energy storage system for satellite applications, and is a Phase II award under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program of the U.S. Small Business Administration's Office of Technology. Beacon announced completion of an associated Phase I project earlier this year. This was welcome news for this company...
Don’t Bet Against SolarCity
By Jeff Siegel DISCLOSURE: Long SCTY. It wasn't an April Fool's Day gag when I said it was time to buy SolarCity Corp. (NASDAQ: SCTY) at the beginning of the month. After a brief standstill, the company's battery-backed solar projects have begun to move forward again. The State of California Public Utilities Commission has added an important item to its May 15 agenda that will make a huge difference for SolarCity. Utility companies may finally be blocked from imposing big fees on battery-backed solar systems. For more than a year, California's largest utilities companies demanded...
Electric Vehicles Will Increase China’s Air Pollution
John Petersen Last week the American Chemical Society published a white paper in Environmental Science & Technology from a team of researchers at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and the Argonne National Laboratory Center for Transportation Research titled "Environmental Implication of Electric Vehicles in China." This white paper concludes that: Implementing electric vehicles in China will increase national CO2, SO2 and NOX emissions; and Gasoline HEVs are more environmentally friendly, more commercially mature, and less cost-intensive. The following graph comes from page 4 of the white paper and compares the relative fleet wide CO2 emissions for gasoline ICEs,...
Axion Power – A Battery Manufacturer Charging Forward
John Petersen Last week Debra Fiakas of Crystal Equity Research published an article titled "No Battery Producer Left Behind" that was based on old information about the relationship between Exide Technologies (XIDE) and Axion Power International (AXPW) and reached several erroneous conclusions. Since I'm a former Axion director, the stock is my biggest holding and I follow the company like a hawk, Tom Konrad asked me to clarify the record and present a high level overview of Axion's business history, stock market dynamics and technical accomplishments over the last four years. Since Tom's request is a...
Arotech Receives Additional Research Funding of $650,000 from U.S. Army
Arotech Corporation (ARTX) announced that its Battery and Power Systems division has received additional funding from the U.S. Army's Communications and Electronics Command, CECOM, for further development of its 4th generation (Gen4) zinc-air cells. The funding covers Phase II of a three-phased research and development program for Gen4 Zinc-Air Cells aimed at the Future Force Warrior project - the U.S. Army's flagship Science and Technology initiative to develop and demonstrate revolutionary capabilities for Future Force soldier systems. Arotech's Gen4 portable battery pack is 12 or 24 Volts and has a total capacity exceeding 400Wh with Battery Energy Density above...
Investment Ideas From the One-House Grid
In June, I wrote how intermittent power sources such as photovoltaics and wind would have to compete with baseload technologies such as IGCC "Clean Coal" and nuclear for capacity on the grid. The key problem is that neither baseload technologies nor intermittent technologies are able to match themselves to the fluctuations of demand. This creates a need for technologies which can fill the varying gaps between supply from these sources, and normal energy use. From the comments, it seems like I was not completely clear how intermittent and baseload power cause problems for each other, so I will start...
Are Energy Storage Investors Chasing Their Tails?
John Petersen I didn't learn about normal bell shaped curves in kindergarten but I developed a pretty solid understanding of the concept by the second or third grade because at report-card time A's were worth a quarter, B's were worth a dime and C's had no value at all. By the time I reached college I was chasing the right hand tail of the bell curve on my own initiative. Law school and the competitive nature of my profession merely pushed my drive for the right hand tail up a notch. Old habits die hard, so I...
Axion Power is Poised to Dominate Energy Storage for Stop-start Idle Elimination
John Petersen After eight years of rarely speaking above a whisper, Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) has found its voice, taken the scientific wraps off its PbC® battery technology and shown potential customers, competitors and investors that it's carrying a big stick and is poised to dominate energy storage for stop-start idle elimination – a cheap and sensible fuel efficiency and emissions reduction technology that's expected to grow at spectacular rates for the rest of the decade as shown in the following forecast of battery demand in vehicles equipped with stop-start systems. In a new white...
Distributed Energy Systems profile on Forbes.com
Distributed Energy Systems Corp (DESC) has been profiled on Forbes.com. Kenneth Reid, editor of Spear's Security Industry Analyst, recommends buying shares of Distributed Energy Systems. The Wallingford, Conn.-based company creates and delivers a variety of products for the alternative and decentralized energy markets.. . .The story of Distributed Energy and other alternative-energy players is a long-term one, say bulls like Reid. With the surge in oil prices this year, the story is resonating with investors. Distributed Energy shares are up 333% in the past year, trading around $8 after hitting a 52-week (intraday) high of $8.09 on Sept....
