STUFF

Gamesa looks to invest 50M Euro into offshore wind tech in Scotland and 150ME by '14 into offshore in UK. And won contract for 10MW in AZ. April install in Kingman. Also have 2 manufacturing plants in PA, cap over 1GW/y. 800 jobs that could have been in Spain. Alrighty then.

Europe installed 308 offshore turbines in '10. 51% increase yr on yr. 883MW. 2.6B Euros. 9 farms in 5 countries. 2.9GW now installed.

USAF - #1 gov buyer of clean E - to quadruple solar PV use in 4 yrs. DOD spent over $24B on fuel, power in '10. Order out for 25% clean by '25.

Southern Co. (biggest US utility by market value) to invest $17B next 3 yrs to build 2 nuke reactors, a somewhat clean coal plant, NG plants and O, some clean E too. Hooweeyoowee. Expected EPA rules could cost them $700M to $3B through '13. '10 earnings $2B on $17B revs. 42GW gen cap.

CREE intro'd their 60W-equiv household LED bulb. 800 lumen. Uses 10W. A decade of use predicted. Announced same day 131 years ago Edison got his patent for the lightbulb. No price or marketing plan announced yet. Expecting $30-20. LSCG sells 40w-equiv now for $20 and has 60W @ 850 lumes. Plenty of bigboy competition.

Envia Systems has cathode tech (they say) that can more than double capac of li-ion batts. Raised $17M, $7M from GM. China even more receptive to newtech. They're into Innovalight, that can increase solar panel efficiency. And Tigo Energy for solar panel DC optimizers. Other startups also taking a component approach. Polyplus has solid electrolyte, other tech to possibly mass manufacture lith-air batts to hold 10x power of today's batts and have lith-Sulfur tech to license. Porous Power Tech has a way to coat electrodes in batts with a spray-on separator for li-ion batts. Can increase capac, cut manufacture costs, increase reliability. And Zeptor. Former Intel engineers experimenting with cathodes made of C nanotubes. Finally, Atiero - software to monitor/control batt cells.

USDA: >500 biorefineries need to be built by '22 in US to meet added requirements for advanced biofuels. Cost ~$8/gal capacity. Total about $150B. Dudes. That's only 10% of this year's budget deficit! Globally double it. Um, when did we start on 11-year goals? $10T replaces oil. There's a go.

Duke E, Sun Ed announced final phase of 17MW solar farm in NC.

TVA signed 1st Renewable Standard Offer Contract with Waste Management Renewable Energy. 20-yr contract for 4.8MW landfill gas facility.

Exxon, Russia's Rosneft to explore Black Sea. Oil India's giving up 2 blocks in Libya. Exxon says NG to supply >1/4 world E needs by '30. And their wells came up dry near Brazil.

Happy trails to us one and all.