STUFF

Brace thyself. A lot of nuze.

Shipping rates are back to where they were in the pit of the financial crisis. Baltic Dry Index down 40% this year. Too many ships. Last year biggest year of new ship deliveries in history. This year expanding 15%. I wonder if they have more efficient engines. Now, owners can pay $25k/day to keep the ship running or scrap it for $10M. Scrapping at highest rate in 28 years. China makes up 1/3 of dry bulk trade - iron ore, coal, grain. So... looks like the fleet is getting regenerated and shipping is way down.

Spanish wind generated more power in '10 than German despite less installed capacity (>20GW v. GM's >27GW). SP had high winds, has more advanced turbines and better integration into grid. In March, wind covered 21% of SP's el demand (nuke 19%, hydro >17%). SP's wind cap grew 8% in '10, slowest since '03.

Las Vegas finished >$9M effort to install solar PV carports at 7 city facilities. Funded by fed grants, $3.2M rebate from NV Energy. 1.8MW.

Not many solar installs on coasts. Bird droppings.

Chevron subsid started up 1MW concentrating solar facility in NM.

Tampa El now paying rebates for rez/biz solar heating/PV installs. $2/W (up to $20k). They will also install a 10kw system/year at a school for 5 years.

San Diego G&E adding another 80MW solar to portfolio. 30MW with concentrated solar. Committed to 33% clean E, now at 29% of '15's forecast sales. Also entered into 20-yr PPA for up to 156MW from 1st phase of wind farm in Baja expected online in '13.

Primus Green E, US subsid of Israel Corp's IC Green E unit, can convert non-food ag and wood residues into fuels at competitive cost with oil. Can use existing infrastructure, no need for engine changes and 80% less pollution. Plans to produce avfuel.

Cape Wind cleared the last fed approval but lacks a buyer for half its proposed power. $2.6B/468MW project. Construction start in fall. MA now asking feds to halve possible offshore wind power leasing area for fishing industry.

Major home builders starting to sell tract homes with solar, near-zero utility bills.

El Paso city gov's E use has dropped 23% since '07. Retrofitting. Lighting, solar heat, LED trafiic lights. Johnson Controls loaned $15M for the changes. City paying back and extra left over. Now fed grants paying for more - mostly street light retrofits.

In PA, a NG well leaked chem-laced water into nearby creek.

France may ban shale exploration.

The economic "recession" cut GHG emissions 7.2%.

Power Tagging, a CO startup, has hardware/software to track E flow on the grid.  "Smart Grid 3.0". Grid aware, grid command/control, location specific, real time work, ap ecosystem. 2-way com using grid bandwidth. Can be used for demand redux, grid mapping, security, outage notification, etc., including transformer management (transformers reaching end of 40-yr life while EVs could overload). All digital, whereas analog signals get destroyed by the grid itself. 19 miles of grid with 4 utilities in demo phase. Dominion, Lockheed Martin investors.

Solazyme - fuel, food additives, chems from algae - filed prelim IPO papers. $37M revs in '10, $16.2M losses. Produced 455 met tons of oil in last 13 months. Can produce at $3.44/gal. $100M IPO.

Alstom Grid won contract for high volt DC (HVDC) converter for the Tres Amigas superstation that will connect the 3 major US grids at Clovis, NM to effectively give the US a national grid. Yes! $150M Euro contract for the 750MW/345kV converter in the $600M project. Construction begins next year, online in '14.

Weekly US oil supply dropped 2.3M bls v. predicted 1.7M increase. 4M bls short, folks. Gasoline stocks fell 1.58M bls to 208M, lowest since late '08. Gas demand holding at 9mb/d. China's Sinopec has halted exports of oil products with reports of fuel shortages. Small indy refiners, operating at a loss, have cut production. State-owned refiners attempting to compensate.

Market closed tomorrow. Happy fishing.