ELBC 2010 – Automakers Discuss Their Battery Requirements For Stop-Start Systems
John Petersen Last week I spent three days at the 11th European Lead Battery Conference in Istanbul where I learned that I've been far too conservative in earlier articles that discuss the likely impact of stop-start idle elimination systems on the battery sector. To put things in perspective, the 10th ELBC in 2008 had 500 participants and two papers on stop-start systems. The 11th ELBC in Istanbul had 700 participants and 15 papers on stop-start, including three from major automakers. The stop-start papers took a full day of the 2-1/2 day conference program. The high-level overview...
How Growing HEV Markets Will Impact Battery Manufacturing Revenues
John Petersen For the last three weeks I've been writing about why rising oil prices, tightened CO2 emission standards in Europe and accelerated CAFE standards in the U.S. will combine to foster rapid implementation of hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) technology in the automotive industry and result in huge revenue increases for all automotive battery manufacturers. These articles have generated record numbers of comments and questions from readers that want a clearer understanding of what the rapidly changing demand picture means for battery investors. While I generally try to avoid revenue forecasts because they require pricing assumptions...
ePower’s Series Hybrid Electric Drive – Unmatched Fuel Economy for Heavy Trucks
John Petersen Over the last couple weeks there’s been a lot of message board chatter about ePower Engine Systems, a transportation technology company that has selected the PbC® battery from Axion Power International (AXPW) for its series hybrid electric drivetrain for over-the-road freight haulers who drive heavy Class 8 tractors. Since I introduced ePower to Axion and have tracked their progress for a couple years, I called ePower’s CEO Andy Claypole to ask his permission to share what I’ve learned about ePower’s hybrid electric drivetrain. After a series of phone calls and e-mails, Andy graciously...
Interview: Ted Hollinger of Hydrogen Engine Center
The following is an interview with Ted Hollinger, President of Hydrogen Engine Center. In a nutshell, what is Hydrogen Engine Center’s (HEC) main technology and what are its principal applications? Development of proprietary electronic controls and other technologies to allow for the use of hydrogen and other gaseous fuels for the generation of power. These technologies have applications in many areas, including but not limited to the distributed power industry, airport ground support, co-generation with certain manufacturing processes, buses, marine engines and agricultural irrigation pump systems. One of the main drivers you identify as necessary...
NY Working Hard to Catch Up with CA’s Energy Storage Requirements
Bill Radvak Battery storage is gaining more and more traction in the distributed energy resources community. Last fall, California passed the first statewide energy storage directive in the United States. Issued by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the mandate requires all investor-owned utilities in the state including Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric, to jointly purchase “1325 megawatts of energy storage” by 2020. “The proposed targets increase between 30% and 55% every two years, creating economic incentives for multiple players with various technologies to enter the market reports Energy...
Metal-Air Battery Stocks
by Debra Fiakas CFA A small Israeli battery developer, Phinergy, is getting attention in the press for a road test of a Citreon C1 car outfitted with Phinergy’s metal-air batteries. Confined mostly to military applications, metal-air batteries have not gained as much attention as lithium-ion applications. Indeed, the Citreon is principally powered by a lithium-ion power package that has been installed in the trunk. Phinergy’s metal-air batteries are to be used as a range extender. Long-use is really the metal-air battery’s main attraction. Like regular batteries Phinergy’s metal-air battery has an anode. It is made from...
Hidden Gems? Why Green Investors Should Look at Daewoo Shipbuilding and Ener1
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...
Lux Research Dissects Lithium-ion Battery Mythology
John Petersen We all know that you can't have a cost-effective electric car without a cost-effective battery. We also know that a small but vocal hodgepodge of ideologues, activists, politicians and dreamers wants everyone to believe that rapid and stunning advances in lithium-ion batteries will finally make the dream a reality after a century of one abject failure after another. I frequently caution readers that it won't be anywhere near as easy as the proponents claim. In a new report titled "Searching for Innovations to Cut Li-ion Battery Costs" Lux Research did a yeoman's...
Vanadium Flow Battery Companies
The recent post “Lithium Technology Dominates Large Energy Storage Projects” featured companies offering utility-scale lithium battery systems. Industry research firm Navigant estimates that lithium-ion technology accounts for almost 30% of non-pumped storage capacity developed since 2011. This might be due in part to the dramatic decreases in cost for lithium ion batteries. A study completed by Bloomberg New Energy Finance found that the ‘levelized’ cost of energy for lithium ion batteries has fallen by 76% to $187 per megawatt hour in the first quarter 2019 from $800/MWh in 2012.
Is the story over for utility-scale storage? Should investors look for lithium ion battery manufacturers and forget...
Equitex Completes Acquisition of Hydrogen Power, Inc.
Equitex, Inc. (EQTX) announced today that it has completed the acquisition of Hydrogen Power, Inc. ("HPI") through a newly formed Equitex subsidiary which will be the surviving entity and renamed Hydrogen Power, Inc. HPI is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Equitex which controls all of HPI's licensed intellectual property rights to patented hydrogen generation technology in the United States, South America, Mexico and Canada.
Storm Warnings For Lithium-ion Batteries and Electric Vehicles
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...
Magnetek to Purchase Eighty, 5kW VRB Energy Storage Systems for Telecoms Market Applications
VRB Power Systems (VRB.V) announced that Magnetek's Telecom Power Systems Group (TPS) has entered into a Letter of Intent to purchase eighty 5kW VRB Energy Storage Systems to be sold to telecom market operators in the U.S. VRB Power will supply the core-technology for the VRB-ESS units, which will generally include the overall design, cell stacks, electrolyte, tanks and the balance of the battery system, whereas TPS will be responsible for supplying the electronics, including the rectifier and controller, and assembling and integrating the components into finished VRB-ESS units. TPS will market and sell these VRB-ESS units to...
An Elephant Hunter Explains Inflection Point Investing
John Petersen In "An Elephant Hunter Explains Market Dynamics" I discussed the two basic types of public companies; earnings-driven companies that are “bought” in top-tier weighing machine markets and event-driven companies that are “sold” in lower-tier voting machine markets. Today I'll get a bit more granular and show how "sold" companies usually fall into one of two discrete sub-classes that have a major impact on their stock market valuations. As a starting point, I'll ignore the China-based companies that are listed in the US because their quirky metrics would only confuse the analysis. Then I'll break...
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...
Johnson Controls Forecasts Enormous Stop-Start Growth
John Petersen On June 27th Johnson Controls (JCI) hosted their 2011 Power Solutions Analyst Day and unveiled their expectations for the future of stop-start idle elimination systems. After noting that all automakers are developing a range of powertrains, JCI used this graph to emphasize their view that the overwhelming bulk of alternative powertrain vehicles over the next five years will have simple, cost effective and fuel efficient stop-start systems. You don't see much about stop-start systems in the mainstream media because politicians and reporters are too enchanted with plug-in vehicles and other exotica...
Dilution for Dummies – Why A123 Systems is Undervalued
John Petersen Bartenders are smarter than most investors because they know what dilution is and they never get it wrong. Unfortunately, the markets have made such a bogeyman out of the word 'dilution' that public companies often suffer extreme backlash from financing transactions that should have existing stockholders on their feet and dancing in the aisles. Today I'll try to clear up some of the profound confusion that runs rampant in the minds of retail investors. Every bartender knows you can't dilute a beer by adding a shot of whiskey. The boilermaker is always stronger....
