August 2010

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Meters, Pricing and Politics

In carrying out our research for our soon-to-be published report on Smart Grid market opportunities in Europe we came across one Smart Grid project in which the home energy monitoring software is sophisticated enough to identify which members of a family are the “energy hogs.”

How Regulators Increase the Business Risk in Smart Grids

The escalating costs of the Boulder SmartGridCity – the project will now cost at least $44.8 million and not the original $15.3 million – is being presented as incompetence on the part of Xcel Energy and possibly of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission as well. (http://www.dailycamera.com/boulder-county-news/ci_15594606?source=rss)  It is certainly arguable that both sides could have done a better job of handling their role in the project.  But we think that, in the end, the kind of oversight that the PUCs are supposed to have for such projects may do more harm than good. 

India, China and Reasons to Believe in the Smart Grid in a Post-Climate Change World

Let’s face it this has not been a good year for “warmists” as the believers in human-induced climate change are sometimes derogatorily called.  Revelations of what, at best, can be called shoddy workmanship by researchers, but what may actually may be closer to fraud, have tainted beyond repair the credibility of the “global warming” alarmists.  The poke in the eye for climate scientists has been even more telling because the publications that have been actively reporting their sins have often been impeccably left-leaning; for example witness the reports by the British Guardian newspaper on the climate scandals at the University of East Anglia.  No great right-wing conspiracy this.  We might also note that back in the U.S.A, one of the warmists’ fondest dreams took a nosedive last week when Senator Reid announced that the so-called "cap-and-trade' energy proposal that passed the U.S. House of Representatives last year would not be taken up by the Senate.

July 2010

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How Will the California House Storage Mandate Impact the Energy Storage Market?

The California House recently passed bill 2514 which would require that California utilities develop energy storage capacity equal to 2.5 percent of their peak capacity by 2014 and 5 percent of their peak capacity by 2020.  

March 2010

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The Return of the Indium Scare?

In our coverage of Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) and thin-film PV including CIGS, we repeatedly see concerns about the cost and supply of indium. Now, these concerns mainly involve grumbling about indium's or ITO's price rather than its availability, especially since the economy collapsed in 2008, and even the cost has been less pressing of an issue since indium fell to the "bargain" price of $300 at that time. But indium prices are now pressing toward $600 a kilogram, and economic growth will certainly push the price up higher.