STUFF AFTER HOURS

Greece debt 143% of GDP. Forecast of 158% by yr end, 166% in '12. Deficit 10.5% of GDP in '10. EU has "strict" limit of 3%. Portugal debt to reach 101% of GDP this yr. The Irish north of 112%. Greek bonds paying over 17%. Any takers?

Japan, S. Korea 53% of current LNG to NG cap. Gorgon project in Australia - Exxon/Chevron/Shell - $50B to develop. India, China already paying $60B. '14 start. Up against Qatar. GTLS a consideration. LNG equipment.

Every 50 cent jump in gas prices takes $70B/y out of US economy. ~.5% GDP.

DaSTUFF

Swiss Federal Labs got new record 18.7% efficiency with flexible CIGS solar cells (copper, indium, gallium, deselenide). Beat their 17.6% last year.

NY to sue US for failing to study fracking impacts.

GM canceled plans for plug-in Caddy. Yes, the rich are too rich to help us off oil or clean the air.

3 Gorges Dam could be to blame for Chinese drought. Drought in Yangtze basin worst in 50 yrs. The river sustains 2/3 of China's rice fields. Rainfall 40-60% blw avg. 85% of China elgen from thermal. Coal prod up 11% 1st 4 months this year. But talk of 40GW power shortage this summer. Industrial output slowing from the shortage.

Cairn Energy to spend $600M to drill 4 wells offshore W. Greenland. Up to 3.2B bls in reservoirs.

57% of US Americans say they won't buy an EV no matter the price of gas: USA Today poll. What the hell is up with that?! Yea, most of us are too stupid to get off oil or clean the air?!

GE global research director: solar may be cheaper than fossil, nuke in 3-5 yrs.

MIT working on semi-solid lithium flow cells for E densities an order of magnitude greater than aqueous flow batts.

Pemex discovered 400-600BCF of new NG offshore in Gulf.

Brazil Libra field reserves est. reduced to 5B bls from 15B. And Petrobras must triple the number of ships and deepwater drilling rigs by '20 to double oil/gas prod. 1st grid-connected solar project in Brazil switched on this week.

Drought in Germany expected to hit rapeseed harvest hard, reducing biodiesel production significantly. 4 weeks in on the dry wx.

Australia to plant 30k kulpa plants in Queensland this yr for biodiesel from the seed oil, el from the waste.

Global C output has spiked to a record high. And Canada admitted to leaving oil sands emissions out of UN report.

E85 sales in Iowa - in Iowa - up 27% in 1Q11 over 4Q10, 64% over 1Q10. Cheaper than gas there, but when you figure in mileage ...

Russia restricting oil exploration to protect seriously endangered grey whales. Da.

IEA: intermittent wind, solar not a problem. It can be managed.

Last summer was Japan's hottest ever.

Libya's rebs have used up their stock of crude. The small refinery at Tobruk, near Egypt border, shut down last week. What do we do now.

Canadian utility Fortis buying Central VT Pub Svc for ~$470M.

US has 3 GW of geothermal plants in prod. 38-40GW known reserves. "100MW of geo power is like 300MW of solar." But capital costs of $3.5-6/W before incentives. And if your drill is off by 200', the hot water can be missed. 1 in 10 make it. 300 degrees in west US v. 600 in Iceland. Some wells only 15 yrs of production, tho water injection proving out. Single well can cost $5-8M to drill. And utilites pay them ~1/3 less than solar per kwh. MIT: enhanced geo tech, deep drilling could garner 100GW @ 4 cents/kwh.

And that was May, pards. May June get us to an even better place.

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Market up 128/38/14. Volume a little heavy, picked up much in afternoon. Oil steadied around $102.

FCEL up 30. Huge volume. Catch them on the comeback, tho they may go up another 10 here. Right at their 50-day lines on a 3-yr chart. PSUD up 29 on no volume. Yep, one of the playas. PVRE up 27, same story. CBWP up 25. Yup. MDTL up 25 too. WTWO up 43. No news. Double in 4 days. HEV up 15. A jump off the bottom on volume. HSOL up 13. Biggest solar gainer. Back to 50-day lines. CCGI up 13 on no volume. ENSL up 12. Doubled in May. I don't get it. CSUN up 11. LTBR up 11, maybe on the Germany nuke news. (Thorium reactor tech). SOLR up 10, heading back to their highs. NTCXF up 10. SZYM up another 8 (IPO Friday).

NACF down 27. BHWX down 24. CSOL down 23. UTOG down 13 after news. Still a triple this year. VNDB down 12. LEOM down 10. ESLR down 4, new low. UBRG, EFOI down 2.

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Market up 61/13/6. Volume a little light, but summer and 1st day back from holiday. Oil up $2 to $102. Help for Greece supposedly why market flew up at the open.

CBWP up 50. FCEL up 23 on contract news. A jump to their 200-day lines. CCGI up 18 on news. WWPW up 14. ECOS up 13. EFOI rebound off bottom, up 9. Solars up on Germany's news of retiring nukes. HSOL, CSUN, JASO up 6. CSIQ up 3 with news.

LEOM down 30. CLNO down 12. ECTY down 10.

STUFF II

Germany to retire their nuke fleet by '22. 20% of elgen now. Saying wind, solar, etc. will replace it. In '08, coal was 45%  elgen. I just don't see the logic. They don't get earthquakes or tsunamis. I think it's a blatant overreaction to Fuku. Nuclear power is clean. No GHG's. Now, in the mix is the age of the plants (how long do we keep our cars running, for gosh sakes?) and the expense of maintaining the nuke plants and building new ones. Maybe wind and solar does beat that. Great. Super duper. But how about those coal plants?

Renewable Energy Corp to scale back PV production 500 workers worth. Weak market demand. To halt production at solar cell plant in Norway. Happened before in 2Q09. ASP's for wafers, modules down 4% 1Q11 from 4Q10. Solar glut coming...

Solazyme IPO Friday. SZYM. Raised >$200M. Gen-mod algae that feeds on sugar. Chevron, Dow, USAF, Unilever among partners/customers. $38M revs in '10, lost $13.7M. Can produce fuel for $3.50/gal. Well, with usual markup, that's $7/gal.

In WI, the Olsens (not sure if the twins or not - a lot of Olsens in WI) have racked up debt of $104M from the family ethanol biz, including bankruptcy at 110M gal eth plant in Jan '09.

Adding NUCL, SZYM to watch list.

UPS began using biodiesel blends at major KY hub. B5 working up to B20. Sunoco launched B2 biodiesel in NJ. Sounds like bingo to me. Biodiesel New Zealand expanding distribution of B20, B100. Malaysia set to launch B5 mandate in June.

Renewable Fuels Assoc: US will save $440M this Memorial Day weekend due to ethanol. At what cost? That's me question. Aw, maybe they have a point. Um. No. No food for fuel. And here we go with soybeans for biodiesel. But we need alternate fuel to oil. I think we need a moonshot program on that.

In France, Thermya announced construction of 3 industrial biocoal production units using their biomass torrefactor process. 1st unit to open this summer in Basque country to produce 20k tons biocoal/y.

Seaweed to eth in India: 5 sqkm farm. Brazil's sugarcane harvest off to a slow start. And Defense Dept to increase biofuels contracts to 15 yrs from 5.

Well, I think we've herd enough taps played for a very long long time. Or ever more. Good ruck with that huh. Happy memorial trails pards.

STUFF

Canada Q1 GDP up 3.9%.

Russia lifting grain export ban as drought, floods ruin Europe, US crops.

Belarus devalued its ruble 36% overnight last week.

Dominion Virginia began ops at new 580MW combined-cycle NG plant. $619M. 24 permanent jobs. Combined-cycle uses exhaust from combustion turbines to generate steam to drive another turbine. VA 2nd only to CA in amount of imported el from other states.

Gamesa to launch 4.5MW wind turbine in China around turn of year. 4 mnfctrg plants now in China, 3 more planned.

GE/Cisco partnered up to provide windfarm-wide wireless connectivity for phase 1 - 30 GE turbines - of First Wind's UT farm.

Duke Power buying 20MW WI windfarm. Gives them >1GW of gen cap at 10 US windfarms. They've invested $1.5B in wind, solar power. Also plan to build a 168MW windfarm in KS, start in fall.

CA E Commission approved $16M for cleaner trans projects, leveraging another $9.6M in private match funds. Projects include hybrid trucks and buses, lith-ion batt module production line, algae-to-oil pilot plant and reducing buyer costs of new alt-fuel vehicles.

KY Utilities wants $1.1B rate increase to pay for upgrades to 2 coal plants to control particulates, mercury. Louisville G&E asking for $1.4B. Both owned by PPL Corp.

1st 4 months '11, US consumer price index up 9.7% annualized. PPI up 12.8%. Import prices up 26.7%. Last 4 yrs, inflation has wiped out all growth of weekly earnings. Or, to put it the other way, weekly earnings have kept up with inflation. No rises for social security last 2 yrs tho, which is legally obligated to keep up.

KPMG report says India's solar power gen will reach 68GW - or 7% of total gen then - by '22, triple the govt target. Also says solar cost will be on par with conventional thermal by '20, partly because they project coal, NG prices to rise 4-5%/y. India's solar currently 40MW. Total elgen cap ~179GW.

Thailand going with 3 800-MW NG-fired power plants, putting off plans for 9 coal-fired plants and 5 nukes. But they say new coal tech as clean as NG!

GE unveiled latest wind turbine - the 1.6-100. 630MW ordered already. Their most efficient turbine to date. Blades over 100 meters. 47% increase in swept area, 19% incr in annual el prod w/ 7.5 meters/second wind (<2mph by my crude math).

Well, let's end war on Earth for good, huh? That's the first step. Step 2 is terrorists. But the two pretty much comingle, don't they? Onward and upward pards.

SATURDAY

Memorial Day weekend. Car races. Baseball. Parades. "Taste of Cincinnati". How we celebrate war after war after war and our warriors. Oy. What's in it for our warriors? Free beers for life?

Heck, I'm just going to write some more energy news. Maybe tomorrow. Crap on TV. Of course, it's free. But such beautiful weather it's a sin to watch TV anyway. But no money to go flying with or even go see the pards at the bar. It's the end of the month. When you get paid at the top of the month, it's rough at the bottom. O, sure, I made 20 something percent on UBRG Friday, but that's not spendin' money.

But, more to our shared concern, how much longer can we afford our "Pax USA"? We police the world. And Bin Laden and comp made that bill what?, more than we could chew? We should examine the whole picture. Even think of ending this empire thing. What if we just started taking care of ourselves like the rest of the world? Well, I don't know. Maybe that's not us. We do like to give. But within reason might apply.

Getting Bin Laden and the rest of the hating arses was something we had to do. And we'll have to continue to do it. Because they ruin life. But it doesn't have to cost what we are spending. And, again, let's consider Ike's last werdz as President: "beware the military-industrial complex". But, for God's sake, let's honor our fellow warriors. How about, first, with great jobs when they come out of service. Too many stories of homelessness and neglect and suicide and police standoffs. Let's take good care of our warriors, yea? And remember and honor all whom ever served in war for what we have today.

Happy Memorial Weekend pards.

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Market up 38/13/5. Volume extremely light, but Memorial Day Friday. Oil steady. Admin now says China not a currency manipulator. G, wonder what changed their tune.

Sold UBRG, up 22, at .072. Bought EFOI, down 9, at 50 cents. May have jumped too soon on that.

CBWP down 33. AEGY down 19. BFRE down 17. HYPF down 14. LMCO down 10.

CCTC up 30. Heavy volume. No news. Still no revenue, either. BCON up 28 also on heavy volume, another 4 after hours. Still no news. WWPW up 27. BHWX up 26. CSOL up 23. WTWO up 22. ICPR up 12. VVIT up 11. EVCA up 10. APWR up 7. May be start of climb. CREE up 4, looking like starting a climb. CSIQ up another 3. CSUN up 3. JASO up 3.

And I'm up at 5 on Saturday morning editing this report. Go figure. Happy memorials, pards.

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Market up 35/11/4. Volume summer, holiday, Friday normal. Oil steady $100. Fitch cut outlook on JP debt to negative. G8 found $40B for Arab Spring from dev banks, aid.

BCON rocketing up out of long slide, up 34. No news. CSOL up 23. ENSL up 18. FDEI up 16. ECOS up another 8. ECTY up another 7. URRE up another 6. XDSL up 7. UBRG up another 3. APWR up 3. JASO up 2.

AEGY down 27. MGLT, QTMM down 10. ITRI down 6, new low. PSPW down 4.

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Market up 8/21/5. Volume summer light. Oil $100. 4-day weekend.

SNRY up 33. RNNM up 25. BLQN up 23. ECOS up 21. Volume over 50-day lines. URRE up 15. Stopped the slide. Back up near the lines. ECTY up 10. Above all their lines. AONE up 6. CSIQ up 3. UBRG up 1 more.

WNEA down 27. IFXY down 12. CCTC down 11. AFPW down 10. APWR down another 6. I really think they're going to explode up. PLUGD down 4 more. The reverse split effect just about done. NPWZ down 3. They hit 6 cents around mid May and I totally missed it. And now back. BYDDF down another 3, another new low. They will hit bottom. Somewhere sometime. Watch the volume. CSUN down another 2. Ditto. Watch the volume. FSLR down another 2. Jawboned down lately by the "master" shorter.

Happy EV motoring, pards.

STUFF

Asia-Pacific region accounted for 47% of global wind capacity additions in '10. >16.5GW.

CA, OR, MA, NY, CO topping US clean E installs in 2nd yearly assessment.

Last year China imported coal for first time. 86M tons. They burned ~1/2 world total, ~2.8B tons. Next 5 yrs, they may need another 1B tons/y. Their coal powergen almost tripled in the last decade. IEA est: China and India will account for 80% of increase in coal demand next 2 decades.

Mongolia has 10% of world coal reserves. Indonesia now largest coal exporter. Mongolia has 2X as much reserves. ~125B tons. But producing ~10M tons/y. 64% of exported coal going to China. South Gobi E trades in Toronto (SGQ). Plans to up production from 4M tons/y now to 14 by '13. Ivanhoe Mines owns 57%, China Investment Corp 14%.

Vanadium the next super mineral for batteries. Lifespan over 35 yrs v. lithium's 3-5 yrs. 20% more output. Safer. Potentially lower cost. BYDDF one comp developing. Already used in solar installs for storage. Ferrovanadium 90% of market but only vandium pentoxide good for batts. ENZR one comp mining (Madagascar).

Rut ro. PA solar developers built so much in recent yrs because of fed/state incentives that there's oversupply. Price of solar E credits down as much as 75% in the past yr. Legislation on way to mandate amount utilities must buy and cut off out-of-state sources. PA RPS requires utilities to have 18% clean E by '20, but only .5% solar. Most other states didn't allow out-of-state sources. PA has 71MW of solar installed, 100MW more approved. 24MW out-of-state certified.

Not sure when, but measure to open up VA waters to offshore drilling was voted down in the Senate. I guess it's too close to home, huh?

NJ to pull out of regional GHG initiative. 10 states. Wow, there's leadership, huh?

Interior designers hoarding incandescent light bulbs.

Senator Lamar Alexander sees his EV bill as "a climate step". Intro'd with Merkley. (Um, by the way, we need to extend the debt limit. Have you seen anything on that? I haven't.)  Alexander sees climate change as man-made and govt responsibility to correct it. Thank God for reasoning Republicans. S. 948 provides $2B in grants over 5 yrs for "EV deployment communities". Each would receive $250M w/ 20% match. Also, $300M in grants, loan guarantees to help comps transform large fleets, max $20M each w/ 80% share. Another $375M for batt research, deploy program @ DOE and help fed agencies' EV buys. Paid w/ redux to other programs including tax credits for clean E like wind power which, he says, "provides puny amount of unreliable E". Huh. Also suggested tax deductions for oil comps could be considered. Well, we get what we can get. No moon shot, that's for sure.

Hundreds of possible fed regulation changes could save billions of $/y: WH.

MI set new water/chem disclosure rules for drillers. TX senate passed fracking fluid disclosure law. Chevron, Exxon shareholding activists lost fracking proposals at annual meetings. Brit Columbia lawmakers called for fracking investigation.

EU urged global nuke safety checks after latest Fuku disclosure.

Largest-ever dead zone in Gulf of Mex "disaster in making" for LA fishers. And the Corps closed the Morganza spillway.

UN: metals, including rare earths, rarely recycled.

Fast-warming water threatens rare fauna around S. GA island.

Distributed geothermal could supply 7% of CA el.

'05-'09 the US published 233k scientific papers on clean E/alt fuels - 25% of world total. China close behind. And then everybody else way below. US papers far more likely to be referenced by other researchers.

Google announced $55M buy for piece of 102MW Alta IV windfarm in Tehachapi.

This week US distillate inventory went down to 141M bls, lowest in 2 yrs. And Brent was up $5 to $115.

OPEC meets June 8. G8 now.

Beijing ordered 5B meters of water released from 3 Gorges by June 10 to relieve drought. Will cut into elgen. Since '07, they allowed el price rise of 15% while coal rose 75%.

Brazil no longer needs imported gasoline.

In case we missed this: Obama ordered 100% alt fuels in govt fleets by '15. That's a little moony. A little.

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Market mixed, Dow down 54. Below 50-day lines. Volume dead. Oil back to $100. Corp profits fell .9% Q1, 1st drop in over 2 yrs. GDP Q1 unrevised @ 1.8%. Unemploy aps up.

BLQN, ECOS up 17. ECOS passing through 50-day lines with strong volume. AWNE up 13. PSPW, XDSL up 5.

WNEA down 27. NACF down 25. AFPW down 11. APWR down 6 more. They will have a reflux rebound sooner or later. CSUN down 1 more.

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Market up 38/15/4. 50-day lines holding up. Volume almost normal. Oil up over $101.

NACF up 64. No revs, 1 employee. Froth. AEGY up 37 on 1k shs. Froth. QTWW up 34. Biz. AEBF up 22. Whatever. LEOM up 20. BFRE up 16. MDTL up 14. LMCO up 13 on news that they are the thing. BIOF up 11. Watch the biofuels. TSLA up 8 on new issue. Go figure. PEIX up 5. Watch the ethanols. HSOL up another 4. Why this Chinese solar? CSIQ up 3. I would buy it here. LEXG up 2. UBRG up 1.

GWSC down 30. PSUD down 22. PBOF down 19. Probably a buy. FEWP down 16. BHWX down 11. CSKH, AFPW down 10. Ones to watch. APWR down another 5. I would buy it. SOLR down 3 kicking up dust. BWEN down 2, also dustin up the place. CSUN down 2 more. I would buy it. And FSLR down to $120 on some guy dissin 'm.

Trails. Hard, lonely. But trails.

STUFF

US debt in '80 was $.9T. Makes me very very sad. We could have stopped it. We could have stopped it again in '01. But now we have what we have. And have to live with it and change it.

RMT (Madison, WI) to build 10 windfarms, total ~1.1GW, and 8 solar PV projects for 55MW this year.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed suit against 2 traders in Australia and CA and 3 US and intl comps. In '08 they tried to hoard 2/3 available supply of American crude oil market, and then abruptly dumped and pocketed $50M. See?

Pools that hold spent nuke fuel in US plants typically contain far more radioactive material than found at Fukushima. (TEPCO now says maybe 3 reactors melted down.) Expert says fuel should be moved to dry steel containers.

Brazilian forest advocate and wife slain. Battled illegal loggers.

Switzerland decided on nuclear phase-out.

China's state-owned utilities reducing elgen because of coal price increases and govt-limited prices to customers. 436 coal plants. Also curtailing planned expansion/construction of new plants and scheduling abnormal plant closings for "maintenance" this summer. State Grid, China's main el distributor comp, says blackouts could be worst ever. China passed US last year as world's largest el user.

US imposed sanctions on Venezuela's national oil comp for 2 deliveries of fuel to Iran valued at $50M. Sanctions will prevent competition for US govt contracts, export licenses or Export-Import Bank financing. State Dept also sanctioned 6 oil and shipping comps in UAE, Singapore, Israel (!), Britain and Monaco for dealings with Iran.

In rare speech to both houses of Brit Parliament, Obama said, "...we must dismantle terrorist networks, stop the spread of nuclear weapons, confront climate change and combat famine and disease." Confront climate change. #3. B4 famine and disease. I would put famine before. Disease will always be with us. Famine is right now for our fellow human beings. Let's end famine on Earth for good, A?

DOE loan guarantees being rushed to comps with White House ties. He is a politician who likes to win. Hay, we all would do it.

Ahmadinejad is not going to attend the next OPEC meeting the latest werd.

Google, Citigroup investing in Mojave wind farm. Wind farm in Mojave?! Um. Isn't that solar country? Tho it could be great wind too and have a midwest tornado deflection component. Gotta consider everything.

IRS across the street here flying POW-MIA flag today under the US flag, of course. I guess thru Memorial Day weekend.

Island nations may keep some sovereignty - fishing, mineral rights, etc - if rising seas make them uninhabitable. Obviously, world already planning for global warming effects.

Smart grid deploy could cost $338-476B (figures pulled out of somebody's arse to be sure) next 20 yrs, but would deliver $1.3-2T (ditto) in benefits over the same period. Greater grid reliability, integration of rooftop solar, plug-in vehicles, redux in el demand and stronger cyber security: EPRI.

Developers want US to push E diversity rather than lowest cost power.

Joplin determined an F5. Over 200 mph winds. Man o man. Double vortex. I flew over 200 mph a few times. I was anchored out in a sailboat through 65 mph winds for 3 days. I've seen a tornado start to come out of the clouds while tilling a section in Colorado east of Denver and told it to go back up and it did. But I never felt 200 mph winds upon me. Man. God help those people of Joplin.

W. TX drought continues.

DOI considering ways to make system of oil/NG royalties more efficient. Dealing with regs from the '80's. >$9B collected in FY '10.

US at risk of losing ground in clean E "race" if it can't find ways to produce more rare earth minerals: Congress. USGS: US now 100% dependent on foreign sources. Besides the, um, national defense issue.

GSA launched pilot program to increase EV's in govt fleet. Buying >100 vehicles. Wo! Step back! 100 vehicles for 50k vehicle fleet ... um, that's ... a pilot program. POTUS requesting 1M advanced vehicles on road and govt 100% alternate fuel purchases by '15. 8M gallons gas saved in '10. Something. It takes everything.

GE announced new NG peak power plant tech of 61% efficiency (Siemens, I think I reported recently, has higher efficiency). Efficiency in old plants as low as 28%. Best now online ~46%.

New window labels with more EV/emissions/economy info for new vehicles starting with '12 models.

Warmer ocean feeding tornados. US April new record 875 tornados (tornadoes?). Previous April record 267 ('74 - remember Watergate?). April avg last decade 161. Previous record for any month May '03 with 542. Temp in Laredo reached 111F day prior to peak April outbreak, hottest on record. Rainfall was also extreme while large amount of TX in extreme or exceptional drought. >100 tornados in May so far. May avg 298. Gulf of Mex surface waters ~ 2 degrees C warmer than normal may be factor. And probably why the call on a hard hurricane season. And an uncommonly southward jet stream track.

3rd largest saltwater lake on Earth - Iran's largest - Oroumieh Lake - could disappear within a few yrs. From decade-long drought, misguided irrigation, development and damming rivers that feed the lake. Now only 2 meters deep - a 6-foot man - at its deepest. Storms sometimes carry the salt into nearby ag fields. 35 dams on feed rivers. 10 more planned. Like Aral Sea, Dead Sea, CA's Salton Sea. One idea to pump water from Caspian. Really.

As much as 20% of cost of avg residential solar in CA spent just to find customers.

Suntech Power (STP) reported Q1 well, but forecast down. Chinese solar.

Solar E Industries Assoc: "solar is fastest growing industry in US". Employs 100k, 50k created in last 2 yrs. Could double in 2 yrs. In a few yrs, US will be world's largest solar market. China might have werd on that.

'12 Obama budget extends "1603" Treasury grant program 1 yr. But SEIA wants extension to '16. What the heck, we couldn't end big oil subsidies.

Pawlenty tells Iowa voters ethanol subsidies must go. Yay. Verily.

The end.

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Market up 9/7/1. Volume light. Oil steady under $100. Durable goods April down 3.8% to $190B, citing JP slowdown.

NACF up 33. QTWW up 30. Contract from Dow Chem for 100+ hybrid EV pickup trucks using Dow batt tech. Leap off 50-day lines. WPNV up 20. SNRY up 10. UBRG up 5 more. LEXG up 4 on update. FSYS up 4 on upgrade. Bounce off 12-month bottom.

CSKH down 10. AFPW down 5. XDSL down 4. APWR down 3 more. PSPW down 2.

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Market down 25/12/1. Volume summer normal. Oil steady under $100.

PVRE down 44. WBRE down 25. NACF down 24. BHWX down 20. CPWY down 17. CCTC, ASOE down 16. MMMW down 14. ASPW down 13. PSPW, BFRE down 11. BLQN down 10. FCEL down 9. IFXY down 8. CSUN down 5 more. CSIQ down 4 more. Where the heck do we buy these guys? ENOC down 2 more. APWR down 1 more. And AFPW ended up flat.

VVIT up 83. PBOF up 66. MGLT up 50. GWSC up 49. VNDB up 35. CBWP up 33. CLNO up 28, new high. RNNM up 22. ECTH up 18. CABN, CSKH up 16. ADES, LEXG up 15. HSOL up 13. Conflicting Q reports. That's what I saw. Reuters and PR Newswire. EVOMY up 11. DYMTF up 10. ECOS up 8. UBRG up 5.

The come and the go, pards.

STUFF

Mortenson Renewable Energy Groups (privately owned) building 11 new wind projects in US, total of 1.36GW to go online by year end. 2 more in Canada for 308MW.

BWEN got $1.37M DOE contract to design/construct 5.8MW wind turbine gearbox for National Wind Tech Center at NREL. Spiked yesterday. Near 200-day lines.

Bureau of Ocean E Mgmt will now draw on NOAA's expertise in drilling permit decisions.

DOI to review proposal to tap Gulfstream current for baseload elgen 17 miles offshore FL coast. Goes to NC. As good as tidal.

Siemens exec said bipartisan clean E push could start with efficiency bill. What's this? An adult conversation in Washington?! Bipartisan!? What's that?

A panel tomorrow at Polytech/NYU to examine the value of a negawatt and what the word means to stakeholders (ENOC, COMV, etc.).

UK panel approved shale gas drilling, calling protests "hot air". Yea, until you get cancer or what from the drinking water. Let's be careful. Let's be right. And let's be truthful.

Australia Climate Commission finds climate change evidence "beyond doubt". Well, that's Australians for ya.

National green development bank to open next year in UK. Cheerio. Better late than never.

Pakistan preparing a 1st version of national climate policy in response to their floods. Will the US be the last for any policy? O, that's right, we've been the major carbon exhausters for how many decades? Oops. Does anyone wonder anymore why a lot of the world hates the USA? Besides creating 1 world depression and 1 world financial fraud in less than 100 years? O. Half empty to half full. The USA does a lot of good too. And we sure mean well. And we do get the bad boys when we have to. World War 2 certainly has long standing. Well, waxing pedantic here. Moving on. As the US continues to walk backwards with eyes closed into climate and clean energy policy. Maybe I'm a little off. OK, definitely moving on now.

Sierra Leone to start offshore drilling.

Greenpeacers scaled 450-ft smokestack of 100-yr-old Chicago coal plant. OK, they got our attention. What's the story on that plant?

Mickey Mouse wants to put up a 2.5MW GE wind turbine in Tomorrowland but Goofy is leading a protest that it would spoil his view of the Matterhorn. Well, they're both right. You want highest consistent wind but you don't want to ruin any vistas. The industry learned that at Altamont in the '80's. Anyway, 19 working offshore wind farms in Europe and 1 in China. US doesn't even have 1 ready to build. And you ask why. Me too, pards.

LED lights - especially headlights - will extend EV range, even improve gas mileage. Nissan Leaf LED hedlights use 21w v. halogen's 55w. Gives 9km more per charge or 9 gal of gas per year more. It takes everything.

FMC-Tech, an Irish comp that provides real-time monitoring of power lines, was 1 of 12 GE Ecomagination winners in '10. GE to buy them.

DOE SunShot awarded $25M each to SVTC Tech (spinoff from Cypress Semi, as was SPWRA) and Bay Area PV Consortium (Stanford and UC Berkeley). 16 comps have committed $1M/y toward meeting DOE's cost-share requirement. Shopping list of techs: 1) low cost III-V materials, chalcogenides, and organic solar cells (OSCs); 2) photon mgmt for each type of solarcell; 3) anti-reflective coatings; 4) substrate improvements; 5) transparent conductive electrodes (replacing indium); and 6) solar cell reliability and encapsulation in sun and moisture. Shooting for 50 cents/watt including install for 6 cents/kwh.

Innovalight - silicon ink - also got SunShot $3.4M to accel dev and prod.

And I am out of juice, pards. Prayers for Joplin, A? Man o man. At least we have a week before hurricane season. Life's a trip. Have a good one.

OPEN

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Market flat and mixed. On the 50-day lines. Volume very light. Oil back up to just under $100. Goldman and Morgan Stanley increased oil price forecasts by >20%. $130 Brent 12-month target. Thanks, big guys.

PVRE down 53. NACF down 24. AFPW opened up 30, now down 17. CPWY down 17. PSPW down 14. UBRG down 3 more. Very buyable price.

VVIT up 100. FRBE up 86. VNDB up 35. AWNE up 30. AEGY up 21. ECTH up 18. CABN up 13 on yesterday's news of breakthrough. WNEA, RNNM, MMMW, LMCO up 11. SOLR up another 7, another new high. HSOL up 6 after reporting. They didn't do any better than CSUN or CSIQ and those went down after reporting and are still down. The market makes no sense.

STUFF

Fed Chicago index came in minus .45 in April v. positive .32 in March. Lower auto production after quakenami cited.

Billy Ford, Ford chair, says by '20 25% of Ford products will be EVs. EV infra/svs market $997M this yr to be $4.4B by '16.

Word: it's been the large pension funds moving their money into the commodity index funds that have artificially drivved up price of oil. OK, how about moving your big pension funds into clean E, alt fuels investments.

Dodd-Frank Bill requires regulations be in place by July to govern how commodity price hedging swaps will be traded. They haven't even defined "swap". But almost all NG and el will have to be traded through clearinghouses which will cost cash flow 9% or thereabouts (hundreds of millions). So the utilities will either absorb that cost or pass on volatility to ratepayers. Um. Which do you think?

Well, somebody hast to be last. WV ranked worst in clean E development. Aw. The first shall be last. Or something.

Gamesa launched $50M fund for tech development. 1st move was 28% buy of SkyBuilt Power, integrator for rapid deploy of clean E.

Actis acquired majority stake in Guatemala's largest el/NG network. 1.4M customers. $345M plus assumed debt.

First Wind issued $200M in notes due in '18.

Symbion Power (Washington DC) signed agreement to buy 120MW power plant in Tanzania sitting idle almost 3 yrs while the country has faced and still faces shortage of elgen.

TVA added a 200kw solar project in Memphis and 1.6MW landfill gas project in Miss to their portfolio. Go TVA, A? Don't go too fast to fast now.

Japan studying spinning off power distribution from elgen to put end to power comps' regional monopolies. Hm.

Siemens claimed new world record in power plant efficiency w/ their new gas turbine. 60.75% net efficiency @ 518MW. Designed for 400MW in simple cycle, 600MW in combined cycle. Helps manage variable power from wind, solar. 500MW online in 30 minutes. 35MW/minute peak gain. Consumes 1/3 less NG/kwh generated than avg combined cycle plant installed worldwide. 500M Euro invested.

ABB won $22M order from Kuwait. El equipment, power systems for power plant upgrades.

LDK, YGE also missed Q targets. O those Chinese solars.

NRC found design flaws in Westinghouse AP 1000 reactors, 2 being installed right, um, now in China. NRC asking what the hell is up with that.

Half of plastic produced is used once and discarded. Most ends up in landfills, but way too much in oceans.

Chevron allegations about Ecuador's judicial system getting "SI's" from local folks. $18B on line for Chevron. That's what 9/11 cost insurance companies.

After December record freeze, UK bracing for hot dry spring. Remember the late summer and fall drought here in US last year? Tornados in US this year twice the normal amount, twice the usual deaths.

"Climate bonds" coming on to market to help launch low-carb projects. Yea. keep an eye on that.

Wildfires racing now across Siberia. 5k acres so far. Last year 2M hectares of Russia burned up.

Bahrain halted plan to import Iran NG because of "blatent" interference in domestic affairs. 1BCF/d at stake. Sunni minority ruling Shi'ite majority. Why can't people just get along. Oy.

And that is the stuff, pards.

CLOSE

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Market down 130/44/15. Volume still light. Oil still under $98.

O, here was fun. PLKT up 192. NACF up 98. And it got lower from there. FDEI only up 33. AFPW up 25. I told ya. Froth and stealth. CCGI up 20. ENSL up 19. SOPW up 15. BFRE up 13. WWPW up 12. BHWX up 11. QTWW up 9. SOLR up 6, new high. And JASO ended up.

VVIT down 50. GWSC down 33. VNDB down 26. TSPG down 24. WPNV down 23. It even rimes. FRBE down 21. ESLR and LEOM down 16. IAUS down 14. BLQN down 13. CSUN, EVCA down 12. UBRG, LEXG down 11.  EVOMY, FEWP, IFXY and RNNM down 10. XDSL down 7. PEIX down 5. HSOL, COMV, APWR down 4. PSPW came back, down 3. CSIQ, ENOC down 2.

And that was the come and the go. Bone jore.

OPEN

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Market down 150/48/16. Under 50-day lines. Volume light. Oil down under $98. Europe the culprit. Fitch further downgraded Greece debt. Possible 2nd EU bailout. And S&P lowered the outlook on Italy debt, but private debt levels are low and banking stable. Moody's confirmed a stable outlook.

VNDB down 26. ESLR down another 16. LEXG down another 13, EVCA down 13. PSPW down another 12. Back on their 50-day lines. LMCO down 10. BCON, UBRG down 9. CSUN down 8 more after reporting.

AFPW up 50 more on news. Double since Friday's low. RNNM, WWPW up 15. NGBF up 11.

STUFF

CSUN Q1 came in weak. They and other Chinese solars - CSIQ, JASO - still in long downtrend. But. China recently doubled their planned solar installs. Europe, though, continuing to cut back growth. And US uncertain with recovery funds drying up, other incentives due for expiration at end of year.

Enel Green Power started on a 200MW wind farm in Kansas. PPA from TVA. Using Vestas 1.8MW turbines. $350M.

In '10, Europe installed 12.5GW of solar PV. 1st time solar installs beat wind. May be closer to 14GW solar, tho, when Italy's #'s are fully processed.

Monetary history: every 50-70 years, there's a major shift in the reserve currency of the world. '15 will be 70 years for US/Bretton Woods.

Canada National Energy Board released report on Horn River Basin (BC) shale gas. ~78TCF reservoir, >2X previous estimates.

Kenya gearing up their oil industry. 36 oil blocks leased, 32 exporatory wells drilled, 900km pipeline, but just 1 refinery built in '63 (year of independence), to be updated by '13. They can't keep up with internal demand growing 10%/y. E. Africa has been searched before. Always the last place comps go, 1st abandoned when prices fall. But has 10% of world oil reserves, uses 3%. All of Africa has as much oil as Russia (~120B bls). Plus shale oil. Expected to produce 12-15mb/d by '15.

Treasury's "1603" cash grant program for clean E projects from Recovery Act will probably not be extended at the end of this year. But cash incentives are 2X as effective as tax credits and cost ratepayers significantly less.

Global installed offshore wind projected to increase from 4.1GW this year to 70 GW by '17.

Ontario's coal power plants will be decommissioned in next 3 yrs. 2.1GW of contracts signed for new wind projects, aps for 6.7GW more. 1.6GW already installed. Also new hydro and solar projects.

60% of Greeks pay no income tax. Personal income tax ~14.4% of total tax receipts (43% in US). They ran deficit last year equal to >14% of GDP (US very close to that).

Philly Fed's latest manufacturing report showed a plummet from 18.5 to 3.9. May make QE 3 more likely when QE 2 phases out this summer.

Gamesa signed agreement to deliver 2GW of wind turbines over next 5 yrs to India.

Maine gov proposing eliminating requirement of 1%/y growth thru '17 of clean E elgen. Requirement enacted in '07. They say it will save consumers $42M by '17. Maine rates 12th highest in US.

DOE: >1,800 EV chargers installed under Recovery Act.

Thin-film epitaxial silicon solar cells a potentially cheaper substrate than bulk silicon cells.

Billions (?) more in damage from weekend tornados. 75% of Joplin destroyed. Jeeze leweeze.

CLOSE

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Market down 93/19/10. Volume Friday normal. Oil up just under $100. Greece the problem. Yea, it's all because of Greece. Fitch downgrade.

NACF down 45. Doesn't even show up on a 1 year chart. Under a cent, but at least with volume. As advertised. The froth. The stealth. FRBE down 36. AWNE down 30. ENSL down 24. And a lot of times there is nothing to these companies. Not calling out ENSL. Just saying in general. GCHT, PSPW down 18. O, definitely, PSPW is the one you want to follow. SOPW, EVOMY (Y meaning foreign comp), AEBF down 14. CCGI down 13. ESLR, NGBF down 10. PPRW down 9. AMSC down 3, another new low. UBRG down 1, every day lately you can buy it in the low 5 cents. Nice dam spread I must say.

MMMW up 74. Yup.. AFPW came back, up 46. VNDB up 36. RNNM up 24. BLQN up 15. MDTL up 13. LMCO up 12. QTMM up 9. QTWW, XDSL up 7.

Happy trails or what?

STUFF

Head of TEPCO stepped down. At least he didn't go with hari kari.

Ahmadinejad to lead next OPEC meeting. That should be entertaining.

ESLR must repay incentives: Massachusetts. ESLR down another 10% today.

US thunderstorms in last 3 yrs cost $13B/yr in damage. ~$10B insured. 9/11 damage was $18B (to insurance comps).

FERC approved 12.6% return on equity for $6B Atlantic Wind Connection "backbone". One hurdle lept.

Deforestation rising sharply in Brazil's Amazon. Indonesia, though, approved forest clearing moratorium.

GM to boost Volt production.

Shell to build world's largest floating LNG platform to produce LNG from offshore Australia gas fields. Korean shipyard to build. With the hold filled, will weigh 6X largest aircraft carrier. 4 football fields long. Gas will be cooled with ocean water (from 150 meters deep). Gas shrinks 600X. Platform designed to withstand worst cyclone.

Solar 3D working on solar "microcell" at nano scale, using optics. Theoretically 25% efficiency. Sounds like CPV numbers already being built.

Humanity already has scientific, tech, industrial know how to solve carbon/climate problem over next 50 yrs. But we need carbon (CO2) priced at $50-100/ton.

Solar Reserve got $737M DOE loan quarantee for 110MW solar thermal plant in NV. Mirrors focus sun on tank of molten sodium, potassium salts heated to >1k F. Gets closer to 24-hr power. NV Energy to buy the power. Solar Reserve also hoping to build 150MW plant in CA. The 2-decades-old solar thermal plants in CA's Mojave haven't missed one hour of peak output in their lifetimes. Solar Reserve tech from UT's Pratt&Whitney RocketDyne. Developed, tested at Solar Two in CA desert in '90's. But it comes in @ $8.40/W. That's nuts. PV with batt storage would give 2X the size at 20% less. Why, DOE? Why? Campaign contributions, perhaps? Why in the hell can't we just do this smart?

And may I say have a swell weekend and great judgement day, pards.

OPEN

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Market down 89/16/9. Volume a little light. Oil down under $97.

AWNE down 30 on no volume. PSPW down 16. QTMM down 13. SOPW down 12. NGBF down 10. LEXG down 7 more. CSUN down 1 more. Remember, they report next week.

MMMW rebounded, up 59. VNDB up 10.

MORE STUFF

5 yrs ago an American engineer told regulators (I presume in JP) that the Fukushima emergency vents plan was flawed. O well. Now the world has more nuke crap to breathe or eat.

VA Supreme Court to rule on insurance coverage of warming claims. Heavy rains, flooding may be "new norm". Insurance industry already factoring it into premiums.Econ losses from natural disasters (US?) gone from $25B/yr in '80's to $130B/y in last decade. Even with inflation ...

House GOP bill would spur approval of oil sands pipeline. Senate Judiciary approved bill increasing Clean Water Act penalties. NRC commissioners forced release of Yucca safety reports. IEA: w/out more crude, econ recovery in danger. Well, let's get cruder. Or do they mean crude and substitutes? NOAA chief warns of rapid onset of "unprecedented" changes in oceans.

Bank of America vowing to reduce their GHG's 15% by '15 from '10 baseline. Reduced them 18% from '04-'09. LEED buildings, supply chain efficiencies, employee engagement. Since '07, BOA undertook 10-yr $20B initiative to address climate change by targeted investment, loans, philanthropy.

Robert Kennedy Jr: "show me a polluter, I'll show you a subsidy." He wants gov to restore free-market capitalism for environment.

Demand response - ENOC, COMV - just beginning to move overseas. ENOC's UK deal. Technically, China doesn't even have it yet.

POTUS' opportunity to give us a decade challenge - a la "we choose to go to the moon" - is running out of time. What's the vision? Everything? World peace through justice? Clean energy? Budget/trade surpluses from here to kingdom come? Do we want a goal? Remember what the moon program gave us. Rocks? Computers.

India could replace gasoline imports with ethanol by '20.

DOE Section 1705 (loan guarantees) running into sunset. Put on hold. But. There's 1703 (Star Trek's "Enterprise" #?). $170M there, scored on 10:1 basis ($1.7B). Projects approved over the $1.7B will have to fund an additional 10%. Eg: $2.1B Blythe solar project to require another $210M in equity funding. USDA still has loan guarantees for biofuel projects. A group including Citibank interested in running the program for the gov. But. Renewable fuel standards a more elegant, powerful system for advancing biofuels.

LinkedIn the big nuze today. LNKD. Double+ in 1 day on IPO. Professional networking website. Now valued at 25X revs of $94M in Q1, a double yoy. Net $2M. Facebook would be $100/sh at that val. Helping VC industry, which lost money last 10 yrs from dearth of IPO's. Biz model similar to Salesforce.com. Looks like EBay still has record 163% gain on IPO day. '98. Hoffman, tho, the new name on the block.

CLOSE

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Market up 45/8/2. Volume very light. Oil $98 and a half.

MMMW down 36. Under $1M val, hardly any stock and hardly any biz. But a wind power comp. AFPW down 31. Back to whence they started the latest surge. MDTL down 31. They tell us nothing. RNNM down 26. I can barely tell you anything. WNDT down 15. GWSC, BFRE down 13. CSKH down 12. HEV down 11. Year-long plummet. Oversold territory. IFXY, QTWW down 10. QTWW back under 50-day lines. UBRG down 8. LEXG down 7. APWR down 3. CSUN down 2. ENOC flat at 50-day lines.

CBWP up 125. PBOF up 30. PSPW, BHWX up 26. LEOM up 20. Leo Motors. Love the name. AEGY up 18. 1k shs. AWNE, AEBF up 16. GCHT up 13. NACF, TRKP up 10. TSLA up 6 on news. VLNC also up 6. Maybe new run up.

11:10A

UBRG down 21. At .051 cents. Oop. Now .054.

STUFF

Jan '00, Case-Shiller index was set at 100. It peaked @ 206 in July '06. Now 139 - spring '03 levels.

Vestas won 80MW Brazil order. CSIQ got 81MW Germany deal.

Senate didn't end tax breaks for big oil. Something about campaign contributions. What's $2B/y anyway between friends.

Once-rare Mississippi flooding now more frequent, more severe.

MD gov to sign waste-to-energy bill.

El rationed in China as coal prices surge.

EIA won't release '07 data on bldg E efficiency because of shoddy contractor methodology instead of previous, albeit expensive, "boots on the ground" method last used in '03.

Britain planning 50% cut in GHGs (from '90 levels) by '25.

Wind v. water power conflict in NW. Bonneville. Salmon.

Denmark prepares to challenge Russia's claim to North Pole. Oil?

BP/Conoco shelved Alaskan pipeline project because of shale boom.

VT created a "climate cabinet".

Persistent drought in China drying up lakes, straining E system (hydropower).

Report that atmos above Japan heated rapidly before the quake.

Osram Sylvania announced 100W equiv LED bulb that uses 14W. Some 60W-equiv bulbs will sell ~$20 by end of year, save over $10/y in power.

Hara - software to monitor E use - raised another $25M. Crowded field, but they were early leaders.

Transphorm announced new transistor yesterday that eliminates 95% of switching loss. 9% gain over previous transistor.

CREE touting their silicon carbide solution for more efficient tronics.

San Diego G&E added 2 more 25-yr PPA's  for 125MW of CPV (concentrated PV solar). Modules to be made in new Soltec factory to be built in San Diego area. 30MW also signed in April and another 150MW CPV project recently signed up.

The US hit Syria with sanctions for abuse of citizens. And what the heck is NATO doing in Libya? Meanwhile, a former Enron official moved from prison to halfway house.

~ 1,830 oil and gas rigs now operating in US. 2 yrs ago we had 876. Oil rigs have overtaken NG rigs for 1st time in 16 yrs.

Solo Power to build $340M thin-film solar panel plant near Portland, OR. State giving them $20M in tax credits and $20M E loan. They also may get $197M DOE loan guarantee.

And so we go onward, hopefully upward.

OPEN

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Market up 19/1/0. Volume very light. Oil just under $100. Japan Q1 GDP down 3.7%, included 20 days post-quakenami.

CBWP up 100. PSPW up 44 more. Earlier had doubled from yesterday afternoon. VNDB up 32. AWNE up 16.

MDTL down 37. BFRE down 31. RNNM down 27. AFPW down 15. LEXG down 7. UBRG down 6. CSUN down 2.

CLOSE

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Market up 80/31/11. Why not go up? Volume was light, tho. So I'm expecting a sell off. Consolidation at 50-day lines kind of thingy. Who knows? But the lines were going pretty much straight up all day. Oil just under $100. Tho I herd on radio that it closed over $100.

AFPW ended up 35. Pretty good volume, yea? HYEG up 27. GCHT up 26. LEOM up 25. AEBF up 20. SATC, ENSL up 19. CLNO up 18. BFRE up 15. IFXY, NGLPF up 12. XSNX up 9. CSUN up 1.

SPOW down 44. PSPW down 22. Hit 66 cents. I was going to tell ya. PLUG, SNRY down 10. UBRG down 7.

2:36P

UBRG under attack. You can pick it up for under 6 cents again.

OPEN

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Market up 17/13/5. Volume extremely light in Fed wait mode. Oil up $2 to over $99.

PSPW down another 17. 5th day of wild ride. COMV down 6, new low. CSUN down another 1.

AFPW up 57. VNDB up 23 on 500 shs. SATC up 20, flying off the bottom. NGBF up 17. WTWO up 14. NGLPF up 13. May be starting back up. LEXG up another 8. SOLR up 7 on a $228M order. New high. CREE bounce back, up 6.

CLOSE

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Market mixed, believe it or not. Dow down 68, Naz and S&P flat. Volume picked up to finish a little heavy. Oil just over $97. Indeces hit the 50-day lines and apparently are going back up. Today.

New lows galore. BIOF for one. PEIX close. Biodiesel and ethanol. We do not like using food for fuel. And, thankfully, don't reward the stocks. That we know of. And wish it would end.

APWR another new low. AMSC also.

ASTI, AONE bounced back up a little. AWNE down 26. BCON bounce. BHWX down 16. BWEN up 9. CLNO up 71. Okeydokey. Jumping over their 50-day lines. CREE back to their bottom. CSUN under $3.

ENOC back 5 more. ENSL up 26. EVCA up 19. HEV up 10. HSOL another Chinese solar new low. JASO down 4. LEXG up 16. NENE's down to $1.66, tempting if they're getting close to marketing the solar windows. NEWN was up 12.

PSPW down 37. Find the ride.. QTMM up 15. QTWW down 13. RNNM up 46. Yea, we all saw that coming.

SATC down 8 more. Bottom. UBRG up 3. VNDB down 19. WTWO down 12. I don't think they go lower. But I've been wrong before.

And that's the look see, pards. Happy motoring.

STUFF

Talk about energy efficiency. Our building switched over to air conditioning during an 80-degree heat wave last week. No switch back to central heat, tho, in this week's cold spell in the 40's and 50's. So we are heating our apartments with our electric stoves. Can't make this stuff up. May have a talk with management.

Raymond James research says global demand for uranium to outstrip supply by next year. Seems to be a recurring story for energy sources.

Ecuador approved feed-in-tariffs for clean E.

2/3rds of Americans support 60mpg standard. Well, I guess. Are we willing to buy the vehicles?

Alberta wildfires have halted oil sands production.

Iran moving ahead with nuke reactor plans despite earthquake risks. And Ahmadinejad took over the oil ministry.

Vote in Congress on oil subsidies today. Um, the debt limit. Who elects these people to run our country?!

NG lines from Egypt repaired. Again.

Solazyme to IPO 10M shs @ $15-17. Will give them ~ $1B valuation. '10 revs $37M ($16M net loss) from producing 455 met tons of oil from algae in a year. $3.44/gal production costs at commercial scale, which the IPO will help finance.

Suntech (Chinese comp - STP) adding 3rd shift at AZ factory. 30 jobs. World's largest producer of solar panels. 150 new jobs by end of year in AZ.

Advanced Solar Photonics in FL expanding production cap to 100MW, adding >50 jobs this year.

Intel, Ford to test DC microgrids for E savings.

OPEN

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Market down 52/7/1. Nearing 50-day lines. Volume a little light to summer normal. Oil under $97.

GCHT down 42 after reporting Q1. PSPW down 36 more. BHWX down 21. NGBF down 15. UTOG down 14. CSUN down 3 more. UBRG down 4.

ENSL up 26 on news of team up with EFOI. LEXG up another 21. Crazy. $1.20 to over $3 in a couple days.

STUFF

GA doubled its solar tax credit to $5M/y for '12, '13, '14. Businesses can get up to $500K credit taken over 4 yrs for installing solar PV system. Homeowners $10.5K.

French researchers creating artificial photosynthesis solar cells growing atom-thick layers of zinc oxide and titanium dioxide on semicon surfaces.

Power plant union - IBEW - asking Congress to delay new EPA rules. "Jobs will be lost if utilities don't get more time." Um, lives are lost and shortened from pollution. And our climate is changing that is also affecting lives. But maybe a little more time would be prudent here.

UN preparing 10-yr program to tackle climate change/GHGs.

Spain suspending some solar subsidies.

Warmer, drier climate beginning to change W. Australia.

Germany planning an EV push.

Fukushima reactor did have core meltdown and has a water leak. Work started on cover for the reactor bldg.

Shell got the 2nd deepwater drilling OK since the moratorium.

Energy analysts predict world coal production peak as early as next year. Then permanent decline to half of present prod by '50. Will force major restructuring of power gen, steel making and shrinking of global econ will follow. World Coal Institute, tho, says coal use will rise 60% over next 20 yrs and coal will last at least another 120 yrs, but not giving any production figs. EIA projects coal use for power will grow >50% by '35 unless slowed by emissions control policies.

CLOSE

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Market down 47/46/8. Rather rough on the Naz. Volume light. Oil down under $97. Debt limit reached. Investments into 2 pension funds stopped, pushes it out to Aug 2. Anyway to run a railroad? EU signed off on $110B Portugal bailout. No Prez Trump. Aw shucks.

CLNO down 32. RNNM down 28. SNRY, EVCA down 22. ASTI, AFPW down 15. ASTI new 12-month low. BFRE down 13. QTWW down 12 (almost tripled last week). WEST, CSOL down 11. WEST a new low. SATC down 10. Back near their lows. SOPW down 10 after reporting flat sales around $5M while holding to guidance of $70M for the year. XDSL down 10. PSPW ended up down 8 after morning jump up. 6 cents to $2.50 for Godsakes. All in this year. I was talking about them here around that bottom, if you recall. Owned them at 20 cents, sold before they went to 6. But got distracted. And, honestly, they didn't look all that impressive. Shows to go ya. Finally, CSUN down 6 for another new low. They report next week. I'd keep an eye on them. Their last Q had a huge gain in sales over previous Q and their first profit.

HYEG up 41. 3-day triple, then pulled back. LEXG up 36. This one moves, buddies. BHWX up 27. Another lithium player. SPOW up 26. Definitely jumping around. CREG up 22. ENOC ended up 19. Hit over $22, back to over $20. A launch off the bottom and 50-day lines. FDEI up 14. They've been awful quiet. KNDI up 11. Fighting back after the diss, I guess. MDTL up 10. UBRG ended up 9. SOLR up 3, hit a new high after reporting $84M deal.

And them's the trails, pards.

MORNING

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Dow and S&P up, Naz down. Volume extremely light. Probably starting to slip into lighter summer volume levels. Oil down around $99. And an odd quiet about the debt limit being reached and what our "leaders" are going to do.

Valuations flying all over the place.

MDTL down 37. BFRE down 28. VNDB down 20. XDSL down 19. AFPW down 15. SNRY down 14. PSPW flew up to $2.50, now down 13. QTWW down 12. CRGE, WEST down 10. BCON down 5, new 12-month low. CSUN down 1, also a new low. UBRG down another 7. I'm continually surprised.

LEXG up another 35. 2-day double. HYEG up 35. SPOW up 26. ENOC up 25 on news. (COMV up 8). NACF up 20. CCGI, BHWX up 13. CCTC up 9.

STUFF

SPWRA missed Q1 estimates. Guided lower. Blamed Europe going to rooftop solar. Still, 30% rev growth, 200% EPS growth. And that's what the market thinks of that. Nada.

Recent NRC inspections of US nuke plants found emergency equipment installed after 9/11 unusable in an accident at ~1/3 of plants. Current regs/plans don't consider problems enough after Fukushima. Pumps don't start or pump enough water if they do start, emergency equip being used in other parts of plants, emergency flood equip stored in floodable areas, insufficient diesel on hand to run backup systems.

Panel on US nuke waste disposal to propose above ground storage.

The top 5 oil comps get half of that $4B/y tax subsidy.

8 Arctic nations pledged intl protocols to prevent/clean up offshore oil spills.

1/3 of world's food supply - 1.3B tons/y - wasted. Retailers, consumers throw "perfectly edible food into the trash" in developed nations. UN FAO report. In 3rd world, poor infrastructure, low farming tech. Waste not want not, folks.

Carmakers urge admin to move slowly on fuel economy standards. Um, hasn't that been the problem?

JP quakenami aftereffects may delay new Prius deliveries a yr. $124B est. rebuild for JP. Not that bad monetarily, A?

US asked to restrict Navy sonar for whales sakes.

Trails.

FRIDAY CLOSE

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Market down 100/34/10. Normal Friday volume. Oil under $100. Kadaffy reportedly fled Tripoli.

PBOF down 37. ESLR down 26. WTWO down 24. LEOM, NACF down 16. UBRG down 15. Possibly was your last chance to buy in at this level. WPNV down 14. AEBF, HEV down 11. NENE down 10.

AFPW up 50. RNRG up 42. TSPG up 41. HYEG, RNNM up 40. ENSL up 25. CLNO up 19. XDSL up 18 (maybe the only one I saw coming). LEXG up 16. Wild ride. HYPF, MMMW up 15. BLQN up 14. PSPW up 13 more. GSPI, VVIT up 12. SOPW up 11. CRGE up 10.

Out. Up. Over. Onward. Happy trails, A? Tally ho.

THURSDAY STUFF

I'll put up Wednesday's stuff if Goog can't put it back up. Was that part of Facebook attack?

320MW hydro plant inaugurated in Turkey. Alstom (FR), Sanko (TK) teamup.

CSIQ results slightly topped estimates. CSIQ is trading down, primarily because of their Euro exposure.

FLEX, MEMC expanding their partnership on making solar panels for Sun Ed.

GM to build .5MW solar PV system at Detroit plant for Volt. DTE E investing $3M in it. Other efficiency projects will save the plant almost $3M/y.

IEA cut crude demand forecast for '12 citing pump prices, weakening growth for industrialized countries. '11 est. trimmed to 89.2mb/d. Down 190k. Still 1.5% higher than '10. Also cited: JP's quakenami effects, mideast unrest. surge in commodity prices, risks from current account balances and possible asset bubbles in large emerging economies (China real estate?). Also a 4% decrease in March demand for heating oil in Europe. And Russia, Brazil, China facing difficulties passing on recent pump price increases to consumers. Finally, it looks like OPEC picked up net of 100kb/d of lost Libyan crude production.

Kroger phasing out BPA in receipts (?!) and cans.

USDA found gene maps to fight pathogens in wheat, barley.

CA Sierra Club asking the Gov to dump cap and trade. China: poor countries will suffer if airlines are included in EU cap and trade.

Plans to build WY water reservoirs for wind power storage.

Solid H ice may explain interstellar glow. Awesome, no?

Hormel Foods reduced water use by 30M gal.

Electron Vault - with former TSLA science director - has tech to quickly, cheaply, comprehensively wire batts together. EV's, grid. Laser welding too expensive. Vault uses parallel rather than series wiring. Plan to license. Discussions with Chinese EV makers, S. African grid operators. He says "think botany ... broadly."

ABB took controlling interest in Validus (CT). DC systems for data centers. $24B market for telecom/data centers. Validus worked w/ IBM, Oracle-Sun, HP. DC center 20% more efficient than standard (not state of art) AC.

Jeff Sachs. Director of Earth Institute at Columbia U. "We're now in a state of (manmade)-induced global crisis." Ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, almost annual 100-yr weather events, rising food prices, continued reliance on fossil fuels, failed institutions, politicians bought and paid for. "It will take policy, science and ethics working together..."

Half the world's adult population unemployed/underemployed. Half. Another 25% in non-essential service work.

Biggest solar roof in world: 5.38MW at Toys R Us distribution center in Flanders NJ. Used ENER solar. Will gen 72% of center's el use.

And the Miss Issippi's flood will probably shut down some if not all of the 11 oil refineries along its banks.

Exxon CEO in Congress: "oil should be $60-70."

Happy motoring, pards.

FRIDAY 1PM

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Market down 111/32/11. Volume Friday normal. Oil under $99.

BFRE down 26. GCHT, ESLR down 24. ESLR headed for bankruptcy. Risky buy for big gain if they don't go under. Maybe. NACF, LEOM down 16. HEV down another 12, another new low. May have a bounce today or Monday. Or Tuesday. Or. AEBF down 11 (PEIX down 6). HYPF down 10. QTWW topping out, down 7. NGLPF down another 4. I still don't know what happened here. EFOI down another 3. Another new low. How low do they go? UBRG was down to .065 again and sprung back again.

TSPG up 41 on 5k shs. LEXG up 27. Hit $1.20, now over $2. Man O man. You never know. But with that volume you kinda knew there was going to be a spring back. I sorta did but had no playing money. XDSL up 23. Back over 200-day-lines, going up for a month. PSPW up another 12. Looks like peaking. GSPI up 12. AFPW up 10. JUHL up 6 after reporting triple revs and trip profits.

It's now 2PM.

THURSDAY CLOSE

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Google blogger was shut down yesterday and just came back up Friday afternoon. And Wednesday and Thursday reports were deleted. Anyway, just want to apprise you of PSPW, up 102 Thursday. A merger takes effect Monday. LEXG was down 36 more. Now (Friday) it hit $1.20 this morning and zoomed back up to $2. Just like that. QTWW was up another 17 Thursday. PEIX up 22 more. UBRG up 8. XDSL up 10, up more again Friday.

And the Dow finished up 65 on normal volume. Oil over $99. Germany Q1 GDP up 1.5%, France up 1%.

OPEN

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Market down 60/10/6. Volume a little light. Oil down below $98. US wholesale prices up .8% in April, higher than forecast, led by food and fuel. We didn't know.

LEXG down 20 more. RVBF down 15. No volume. BHWX down 11. EVCA down 10.

FRBE up 61. 200 shs. PEIX, AEBF up 17. AEBF reopened a CA plant. Unfortunately, corn fuel is here to stay until these guys convert to cellulosic. AWNE up 16. PSPW up 15. 6 cents to a buck. Unbelievable. QTWW up another 13. Over double, 50-day lines in 5 days. That hybrid pickup? UBRG up 5.

CLOSE

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Market down 130/26/15. Volume finally back to normal. Oil just over $99. Wo. Dollar rally. Wo. Oil record premium to gas. Driest French spell in 50 years. So is West Texas. Bank of America may pay $3.7B to end mortgage probe. What the hell is that?! And the Taliban attacks. Finally, the flood moves down the mighty Miss Issip.

NGLPF down 50. I would buy that. Nevada Geothermal. You would think. I did not see any nuze. Mucho volumes. SPOW down 42. Reporting. Low volume. Used to be Superlattice Power. Now Sky Power Solutions. Really. Tweet me if you get the real truth here or what. Actually, I don't have a tweeter. So. Whatever.

AFPW down 35. Another ouch. Volume. HEV down 26. Big volume. HYPF down 25. Wasn't good for the H today. CCGI down 17. MGLT, BLQN down 12. No volumes. VLNC, AEBF down 10. VLNC had volume. And that's the dubble digit downs but I must say UBRG ended up down 6. As is CSIQ after hours reporting slightly better numbers. And LEXG, who came back from $2.20 to $2.76.

TSPG up 54. QTWW up 31. RNNM up 17. ULBI, of all companies, up 13. CSKH, PEIX up 12. PEIX. Check it out. CREE was up 2. Too much cheaper competition.

And that is all the thought I usually get in a day.

Happy trails, pards.

STUFF

NCEN/CBWP to co-develop 200MW wind farm in ND. Using GE 1.5MW turbines.

First Wind's 102MW wind farm in UT now online. GE 1.5's. PPA with So Cal Pub Pwr Auth.

Shear Wind (TSX:SWY) - 62% owned by a Spanish comp - opened 62MW wind farm in Nova Scotia. Phases 2 and 3 could realize another 170MW. Other Can properties for dev.

GE expects to exceed 12.8% for CdTe solar efficiency record when its 1st commercial-scale factory opens in '13. 14-15% "in the cards". FSLR to be left behind? FSLR partnered up with China Power Intl.

Alaska oil pipeline facing shutdown with low oil supplies. Running ~ 7kb/p, 1/3 of peak. If that don't wake peeps up...

Cogentrix - sub of Goldman - got conditional commit from DOE for $90.6M loan guarantee for 30MW high-concentration PV (CPV) project in CO. Target mid-'12 completion. Plans to use Amonix panels. Pub Svc Co - sub of Xcel E - to buy the power. 1st guarantee for a CPV project. Soitec awaits decision on 150MW project near San Diego.

Est. 20-40% of potential crop harvests in developing nations lost from pests, pathogens. Low hanging fruit with 2B more peeps to feed in '50. We're going to pass through 7B sometime late this year. 7 billion people. I remember when we reached 6 back in the 90's somewhere. Maybe just after the Cold War ended. I know, who remembers the Cold War?

Solar farms' "sweet spot" in 10-50MW range. Lower for East Coast, higher for West Coast.

Germany could close the last of their 17 nuke plants in a decade. A gov commission said replacement wind and NG plants could be built by then.

GE, Toshiba, Honeywell and ABB going after Landis & Gyr, Swiss leading maker of smart meters.

Here we go. Here's something. You remember the subprime mortgage securitization thingy, right? Um, what we're still trying to dig out of? Right. You know. Well, now, there's a report the same thing is being started with life insurance policies. Bets on peoples' early demise. Largely unregulated. Aimed at peeps who can't or are tired of paying premiums and cash out for 20 cents on the dollar to the securitization industry. The insurance comps don't like it because the premiums get paid and they will have to pay out eventually. Well, interesting world, A?

OPEN

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Market down 81/8/7. Volume light. "Inflation concerns". Couldn't be we're 5 days from reaching debt limit, could it? Oil down under $102.

AFPW down 22. LEXG down 18 more. HEV down 17, new 12-month low. CCGI down 11. BCON down 8. UBRG down 4, hit .063 and bounced back. I think it's buy time.

AXTG up 650. I know. Just reporting. BHWX up 28. QTWW, NGBF up 11. QTWW 4th gain in a row, back to 50-day lines. ZAAP up 10. Close to all their lines.

STUFF

So Cal Public Pwr Authority - public authority with 10 muni utilities and an irrigation district - purchased an option on 2 solar updraft towers in dev by EVOMY in AZ. 200MW each. Option gives SCPPA right to buy 1 tower at "fair market" at either 10th or 30th yr of op and option to buy power from other tower. EVOMY has PPA signed for 1 tower. Check this tech out.

A study says it would cost at least $600/ton to capture CO2 from air vs. est. $80/ton to capture from coal plant. Well, there we go.

Methane found in water near fracking sites in PA, NY. Big oops. Members of Sarkozy's conservative party have come out against fracking. Um, instead of trying to solve the problem.

JP scrapping plans to build new nukes. 14 more were planned by '30 to bring nuke fleet to 50% el supply. 54 reactors now for 30% (bfr the quake). Plans to add 2 new "pillars" - clean E and conservation.

GAO: admin's shut down of Yucca Mt. "strictly political". Well, yes, the people who live there were against it. No citing of tech or safety issues. Could set back repository 20 yrs. Um, is all the waste in one place a good idea? Or are fast breeder or thorium reactors a better idea?

Chile okaying 5 dams on wild Patagonia rivers. Well, there goes the kayaking/canoeing.

IL gov released plan to boost clean E, efficiency (conservation).

Brit gov advisors: ramp up nuke, delay offshore wind.

China planning big investment in EV's.

OPEC pumped 344kb/d less in April than March. Iraq not included. Libya fell from 460k in Mar to 200k in Apr. OPEC, tho, pumped 1.39m more in Apr than target of 24.85mb/d.

AEIS selected to supply inverters for 150MW project in AZ. Probably phase I of Sempra's Mesquite solar project (700MW total). Near Phoenix. Suntech the panel supplier. AEIS also has achieved world record 98% efficiency for inverters of the size (500kw) to be used.

Switch - formerly "Superbulbs" - to begin to sell LEDs in Q4. "Switch 75" - 15.5 watt emits equiv 75w incandescent (1,100 lumens). Likely to sell at $20-25 (existing bulbs at $60+). 1-yr payback. Saves $150-200 over life. Bulb dome filled w/ nontox liquid that draws heat away fm LEDs inside. Clear bulbs will let consumers see the physics (like lava lamps I suppose). They use much less LEDs, which account for 65-80% of costs.

Google is developing LED bulbs controllable from Android with LSCG. 60w incandescent equiv.

ENER. Flexible amorphous silicon PV and BIPV (building inegrated PV). Not doing too well. 3Q fiscal rev decrease 70% yoy, 69% fm previous Q. "Euro markets." Laying off 300 peeps (20%). CEO resigned, replaced.

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Market up 75/28/10. Volume very light. Oil up over $103.

AFPW up 70. Like a periscope over the 50-day-lines. Looks like it's rounding out the bottom. Aluminum fuel cells. Not selling, tho, as far as we're told. PVRE up 61. No volume for their price. FEWP up 58. So they were. Been going down last 12 months at least. MGLT up 22. LSCG up 21. No news except a story about coupling up with Google (coming up in "stuff"). Broke through 50-day-lines. QTWW up 18. 3-day rise now. CPWY, FDEI up 11. ASYS up 10 on report. 200-days held. ECTY up 9. Clearing the 200-days. CSIQ reporting at 7PM Eastern (sold off some to get UBRG).

TSPG down 27. Not enough volume at the price. Let alone story. ASOE down 25. 500 shares, but >$100M valuation. Very odd. Chinese telluride producer. NSPH down 24. Their name is "Nanosphere". Go figure. Another go down last 12 months. UBRG down 24. But, of course, bottomed under 6.5 cents, as reported. PANL down 18. Punched under their 50's on the bad news. LEXG down 17. They do have volume. ADES down 16. A drop below the 200's. Hell of a chart lately. RNNM down 15. NACF, ENER down 14 (ENER story in "stuff"). MDTL, CCGI, BHWX down 12. EVCA, ECOS down 9.

1:28P

Would have said something about 5 minutes earlier but I was busy setting up and thinking out the buyback of UBRG at 6.5 cents. May just play a day play. But keep an eye on it. May have been the bottom but it goes fast.

OPEN

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Market up 57/14/7. Volume extremely light. Oil steady, just over $102.

FEWP up 72. SSHO up 33. VSPC, MGLT up 22. VVIT up 11. JASO up 5 on Q1 report. CSIQ up 2 more.

VNDB down 26. UBRG down 21. Possibly a point to buy back in, but maybe another day or two of "correction". LEXG down 20. PSUD, AFPW down 18. PANL down 16 on Q1 report. MDTL down 12. ENER down 10, new 12-month low.

STUFF

Egypt transition govt pushing ahead with plans to build new wind farms in Gulf of Suez.

Malaysia adopted feed-in-tariffs for clean E.

China added 18.9GW wind cap in '10, 73% more than '09. Total cap 44.7GW. Ist place in world. 30GW connected to grid. On track to install >90GW by '15, 150GW by '20. They also expect to increase exports of their wind equipment.

Vestas won order for 102MW wind farm in CA. 3MW turbines. Online late this year. Vestas' 1Q rev up 25% to $1.6B, but losses grew to $123M from $56M yr ago.

Germany president joined Russia's call for global nuke plant safety standards.

FL legislators killed a solar E bill. Our "Sunshine State".

World Bank prez pledged support to Morocco solar plans.

Iranian warships thwarted an attempted oil tanker hijacking by Somali pirates. 7th Iranian thwart since March.

Russia on May 1 curbed oil/gas exports because of domestic fuel shortages.

JP govt "asked" a nuke plant (not TEPCO) to shut down while the quakenami defense is strengthened. Located on major quake fault plane. Why do they do that? Really. Why. Called "most dangerous" plant in country. Would affect el for Toyota plant, HQ.

Global solar PV market in '10 installed 17.5GW v. '09's 7.2GW.

Oil hit $94 on Friday (Brent $109), US gasoline futures $3.12. US demand dropped 1.2mb/d in April. But the bounce today.

China on track to grow 9.5% in '11. El consumption growing 13% while el production growing 9%. Oops.

Sauds buying up African land to produce their wheat since their aquifers are drying up at home. Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Jordan also facing water shortages.

EIA budget cut 14%.

Jordan's citizens being asked to cut el use (most el from Eqypt's NG - cut off again).

Petrobras to double spending on Santos Basin thru '15 to accel crude production.

Venezuela in talks with Korea National Oil, Korea Gas on potential joint projects.

Shell to seek permission for 10 exploratory wells in N. Alaska waters by '13.

G20 should negotiate a "fair" cost of oil w/ OPEC and limit prices w/in a "band": UN.

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Market up 45/15/6. Volume really really low. Freaky. Oil up $5 to $103. New Greece downgrade. And such.

AXTG down 91. I guess they're out of biz. SNRY down 36. FEWP down 20. LEXG down 19. Found flyer in me mailbox all about them. CLNO down 17. CCGI, GCHT, RVBF, WTWO down 13. VSPC down 12. IFXY, WWPW down 11. NGBF down 10. UBRG hit .077 and ended up down 8 at 10 cents. XDSL down 8 also. EFOI down 2 more, hit new low.

ARTX up 57 on $63-94M Army deal. I follow these guys because they're selling zinc/air fuel cells. WBRE up 45, ICPR up 42, both on no shares. PSUD up 22. TSPG up 18. WPNV up 16. HYPF up 15. EVCA up 14. PSPW up 13. QTWW, VVIT up 12. BHWX, TMEN up 11. MGLT up 10. AMLM up 9. CSIQ up 1.

OPEN

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Market down 13/2/1. Volume freaky light. Oil back to over $99.

CCGI down 18 on 400 shs. MDTL down 16. UBRG down 7. EFOI down 5 more.

WBRE up 45. ICPR up 42. VVIT up 25. PSUD up 22. PSPW up 16. AMLM up 14. BHWX up 11. BWEN up 9 after reporting. Revs beat, earnings missed. RNNM up 9.

SATURDAY

The Derby. Pants on fire. Mucho macho man. Is it Church Hill or Church Ill? Reds on earlier. Drew Stubbs drove in go ahead run then couldn't catch the ball that eventually lost the game. Besides "The Closer" Cordero. Not to point to the goats.

But. On we go.

ADM, Cargill spearheading a push to invest  $560M in new soybean-diesel refineries in Brazil. Betting Brazil will double biodiesel blend to 10% next 3 yrs. Brazil already has 2x needed cap for present demand. Overcap also in Europe, plants op'n @ ~40%. 25% in US. New Brazil biodiesel units cost ~25 cents/liter to build. BR imported 9B liters diesel in '10.

IEA has concluded world oil reserves are being depleted by 6%/y.

Greece, Turkey, Norway, Hong Kong, other countries paying $9/gal for gas.

DOE spending $122M next 5 yrs researching artificial photosynthesis to produce fuels. Led by CIT, Lawrence Berkeley labs.

Shenyang Power Group, 20% owned by APWR, signed LOI to develop 615 MW wind farm in TX.

REpower Systems (GM) signed contracts for 2 Canadian wind farms, total 110MW. WWPW under contract for 30MW.

Vogt Power (Louisville), sub of Babcock, to supply heat recovery steam generators for Caracas power plant.

GE to provide >$500M of gas turbines for 4 Saud power plant expansions. To add 1.68GW to grid. Brings GE's Saud orders to >$2B in last 2 yrs. Sauds plan to add 3GW/y. El demand growing 6%/y. GE also got order from Indonesia for 114MW of gas turbine gen tech. Demand there also growing 6-7%/y.

French cities getting ....

FLASH FLASH FLASH...Animal Kingdom wins the Derby, #16 .. a horse into the ambulance... Velasquez ... Irwin ... mucho macho 3rd ... Arch arch arch in the ambulance ... thin legs with 3/4 ton on 'm ... animal kingdom paying $43 ... jeeze leweeze ... Velasquez' 1st win ...

French cities getting up to 45% E savings from ELON street lighting systems. 40% of city E budgets for street lights.

Hydro Green E developing 1GW hydropower projects @ existing non-powered dams in 15 US states. DOI, DOE, Army Engineers Corps announced MOU to dev hydropower @ existing dams/waterworks. Also, CO Gov's office partnered up with FERC to streamline permitting of small hydro projects in existing conduits. '06 Idaho National Lab found 5400 sites worthy of small hydro dev to increase US hydro 50% (18GW).

Should we raise capital gains tax rate, lower corp tax rate in some way to spur jobs? Just wanderin.

DOI report projects 8-20% decrease in annual flows of Colorado, Rio Grande and San Joquin river basins. Affects hydropower. Climate change expected to reduce snow in mountains tho this year we had plenty.

MIT solar thermoel project produces power w/ efficiency 8x higher than ever reported. Generates/harnesses 200C temp difference. If they can reverse the process, we have more efficient refrig/AC. DOE has program to dev el-therm systems mostly using vehicle engine waste.

China el demand 1Q11 up 12.7% over '10. Power shortages already, summer on the way. Coal for China hit $124/ton.

JUHL bought 12-yr-old 110MW wind farm for $400k! $1m/y revs. Hellro! Love you long time PPA from XCel E.

US wind biz installed 1.1GW in 1Q11 in 12 states. MN, WA. IL led. 5.6GW in dev (twice '09 and '10 at year point). Total US fleet now 41.4GW = 10M homes.

EIA: Jan hydro gen up 16% fm '10, most in WA, CA, OR. Jan windgen up 27% - most in WA, WY, CO. Solar up 343%, led by NV, CA, FL.

BP Wind started 225MW farm NW of Ft. Worth. Clipper Windpower 2.5 turbines. Online 1Q12. 2nd TX farm announced in past month. 4th TX farm. 4-mile grid connect. El to be sold in wholesale market. BP now 13 farms, >1.3GW (360MW in TX).

NC has best offshore wind resource of east coast. DOE goal 54GW by '30. 1st project gittin goin.

3.2GW wind permitted in IL awaiting dev. 2GW already online. NREL: IL's wind could meet 5x state's el demand. But current RPS law makes financing difficult. Legislation coming. Can windpowergen lessen tornadic power? Any research?

Alaska looking to renewables - wind, geo, hydro - as NG dwindles. Importing LNG.

DeWind, sub of Daewoo now, bought 20MW more of TX windfarms near Dumas. Turbines assembled by TECO-Westinghouse in Round Rock. 2MW turbine can be connected directly to grid w/out power conversion equipment. Torque converters.

Climate models of wind patterns suggest US wind E prod next 30-50 yrs will be largely unaffected by global warming. If there is such a thing possible as global warming, that is.

Germany's 1st commercial offshore windfarm now operational in Baltic. >48MW. 21 Siemens 2.3MW turbs. 93-meter rotor diameter. 50k homes equiv. 7 sq. km. 16 km offshore. GM expecting 20-25GW offshore by '30. Siemens soon to intro 6MW gearless turb. Their next offshore project to have 80 3.6MW turbs (120-meter blade) online in '13. 340k homes. Orders for 5 offshore windfarms in GM waters. 3.6GW more additional offshore orders.

Vestas, Abound Solar, oil/gas comps expanding in Weld County, CO. I helped grow hard red winter wheat in Weld County in the late 80's. And aerial sprayed to kill the Russian wheat aphids then threatening the crops. Moved after to my first sailboat at Cocoa FL. Anyway, Weld led state employ growth (1.8%) w/ 7.3k new jobs early this yr. Cap investment >$2.3M since '06, outpacing most. "You guys started clean tech for CO..." Over .1% state job growth in '10 "unherd of in world". "Most congressional policies not doing us any good." "NASA has 14k inventions sitting on shelves in DC, space coast." Aerospace/clean E park planned for Weld. Meanwhile, est. 2.5T bls oil reserves in world, 2T in western US. Huh? CO, UT, WY 1.5T of 'm. Maybe. Maybe not. I do miss CO.

Windfarms could threaten prairie chickens in OK. Tallgrass Prairie Reserve. Osage Nation. 2 farms proposed nearby. Mineral rights underneath too. And bison roundup in falls. But prarie chick not spotted owl (protected). And not to confuse with lesser prairie chick up in western high plains. Hunting seasons stretch into KS, Dakotas. Canary in coal mine possibly. And this is where the wind is. "Dirty green". Diff of 1/100th of meter/sec windspeed is 6 figures over project life. Prairie grouse already gone w/out windpower. Prairie chick population crashed in '90's, No one knows why. End of cold war? Severe wx? "We know they avoid tall vertical strucures." Maybe hunted out? Hawks, owls pech on towers for the chickens. "Now no hawks or owls on the towers." And "you can't reason with a chicken." And I can't make this stuff up.

Have a great Mothers Day, A?

FRIDAY CLOSE

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Market up 54/12/5. Volume very heavy. Oil down 2 more, just above $97. Wow.

SPOW up 81. PSPW up 47. SNRY up 42. VVIT up 33. MDTL up 32. RNNM up 28. CCGI up 22. No volume, though. UBRG up another 21, 2-week triple. GCHT up 19. TMEN up 17. ELON, SOPW up 15. IAUS, WNDEF up 14. PPRW, WNEA up 12. QTWW, VSPC up 11. QTWW previewed new hybrid pickup, but down 5 after close. HEV, HYPF up 10. PWER up 9. Q1 earnings pop, over 50-day lines.

BHWX down 28. PSUD down 18. XDSL down 16. Hit .006, bounced back to near .008. WTWO down 13. AFPW down 12.

STUFF

I know. Friday afternoon . Who cares.

Goldman reversed last month's call on oil. Now saying oil could surpass recent highs by '12. Supply y demand. Brent fallen from $125 to $106, as Goldman predicted. So. Maybe they control the oil prices? For their own benefit? Could that possibly be? They do do the work of the Lord, they said in what, '08?

Vatican said climate change is melting world's glaciers. That can't be. Climate change is heresy. Um, only to US Republicans now. Will they leave the church over it? Oy.

Tidal gate across SF Bay proposed to manage sea rise. Those dang liberals again.

Tendril, leader in home automation/networking, to begin large-scale projects 2H11. Potential 25% cut in home E use. $300-400 installs. Utilities have to educate us to understand the benefits. 25% less bill. Um, educate us. GE an investor.

Kaiima (Israel comp) multiplies chromesomes for biofuel/ag crops. Not GMO - no material from other species. Polyploidy tech. Durum wheat has 4 sets of chromes. Wheat 6. I've seen 6-row barley personally. Grew it, harvested it, drank it. Yee-hoo. The large strawberries in stores today are polyploids. There's a word for the kids. Doesn't work well in humans or animals, tho. Down syndrome, (mad cow?). Polyploidy occurs in 1st stage of mitosis (cell splits in 2). Colchinine, harsh solvent, used. Kaiina uses gentler (kinder) process. Gives rise to stabler crops that don't revert to single chrome sets. Derived from cancer research. Kaiima "sustainability" in Hebrew.

Over long distance, high-volt direct current (HVDC) lines lose less power, cost less to build and more efficient than AC. Thank God we have some answers.

JP's quakenami cut into manufacturing of oxides for lith-ion batts. Also destroyed factories making mini DV tapes.

USDA, DOE gave out another $48M in biofuel grants. O, the spendthrifts. To optimize sorghum, turn paper waste into oil or sugar and develop farm biochem/biofuel production.

And Intel's new 3-D chips. 3 active sides. Trigate transistors.

Oops, Iraq to reset crude production goals for '17. Reducing to 6mb/d from 12. O well. We only lost how many American warrior lives and how much money? But reality is reality.

AMRS announced 25% rev gains, 28% gain in losses. G, that works.

Joule buying NM land for diesel/eth from sunlight and waste CO2 project. Can produce @ $20/bl (was $30). "Solar converter like no other." Water to organism captures CO2 and photons, manages therms ...

And so we go, migos. Stuff us with candy and beat us with a stick.

OPEN

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Market up 147/28/15. Volume normal. Oil just over $100. Well, stuff me with candy and beat me with a stick, the market's all the way back from yesterday's loss on 244k jobs added in April, more than forecast. Though more people looking raised unemploy rate. O, by the way, al Qaida issued a revenge threat to us. Duck and cover.

And China doubled their solar targets for '15 and '20. Buy Chinese solars - CSIQ, JASO, CSUN, HSOL, or the NYSE-listed. China's new surge will help the entire world solar industry, but which comps will China favor? Exactly.

SPOW up 109. Not a clue. PSPW up 59 on merger news. SNRY up 40. UBRG up 27 more on yesterday news of new contract. Sold a little off to buy some CSIQ. TMEN up 17. ELON up 17, back up to 12-month highs. WNEA up 12. HYPF up 10.

BHWX down 30. BFRE down 21. XDSL down 15. ZOLT down 13 after reporting last night. Sales up but still losing money. EFOI down another 5.

STUFF

Bezos' VC fund put $19M into General Fusion, a Canadian comp, to harness nuke fusion. Magnetized Target Fusion. El current generated in conductive cavity containing lithium and a plasma. Current produces mag field, cavity collapses for massive temp spike. Lithium breaks down into helium and tritium. Tritium fused with deuterium to make helium, releasing E. The plasma only has to stay at thermonuke temps (150M C) for a microsecond. But it was supposed to have been proven feasible already. So, betting money is not in our lifetimes. But good luck Jeff.

Bill Gates also investing in a modualr nuke venture. And there's thorium ventures.

Reuters reported Saud crude production up 300kb/d in April to 8.5M. Saud banker said production expected to avg 9M/d this year. Looks like they have to step on it.

E. China has been having power outages from coal shortages.

Gasoline prices hit >$9/gal in Germany after Russia stopped exports because of their domestic shortages.

Seems Pakistan will soon have few, if any, goods to export and will be living on subsidies from foreign govs. Remember, these guys have nukes.

Nepal just about completely out of motor fuels from inability to pay the bills.

And Hertz charging >$9/gal to customers who don't bring back a full tank.

Happy trails, pards.

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Market down 139/13/12. The Dow hit proportionately more. Volume got very bizzy. Yea. Very heavy. Oil. You're not going to believe this, pards. Unless you already herd it. Under $100. The dollar supposedly rising. POTUS to ground zero day. Emotional day. The market was due for a kickback and sell in May and go away was as good excuse as any and it looks a lot better to the Muslim world that we are not celebrating wildly. But, longer run, dollar rising is good for the US market. Though this has to be a short-term rebound thingy. We are over $14T in debt. It seems like we'll come back to around 12,400 Dow in next week or so and then head the herd back out again. Just my guess. Who knows. It looked like a real collapse was coming after 3PM. But that didn't happen.

Anyway, check this. Ive owned UBRG since 4 cents. Didn't execute on mid 6 cents yesterday after noon because of lack of funds. And today didn't execute on XDSL at .0075 after noon. Same reason. So I've had a pretty hot hand lately despite "sell in May and go away". I will try to give you guys more heads up on minute by minute when it counts when I can (the ISP or the puter interface is sometimes a real rock in the road). Though most of these bottoms last hardly a minute.

Anyway, here's the come and the go. As I can see. Sorry it gives so many to check. But you know as I do there's a lot that don't count.

SNRY down 30. FEWP down 27. MGLT down 25. TMEN down 23. GCHT, TSPG down 20. CCGI down 19. EVCA down 17. Volume there. WTWO, PPRW (200 shs) down 11. XDSL, FRBE, QTMM down 10. AMLM down 9. ABAT, ZAAP down 7. EMKR down 4 after reporting after close lousy numbers. PEIX down 3 more. Do they ever move on from corn? CSIQ, HSOL, EFOI down 2. AMRS down 1 after reporting bad losses after close. ELON flat after reporting after close sales increase, loss increase.

SPOW (used to be SLPO) up 243. I know. On all of 8k shs. UBRG, BDCO up 22. NG. CLNO up 15. CSKH up 12 after a morning comeback to flat. AMSC up 7. May be a push back up. PWER up 7 after reporting good #'s. RBCN up 6 after "strong" #'s reported. POWR flat after reporting kinda flat.

Man. Some day.

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Market down 58/0/5. Volume normal. Oil down $4, over $105.

SNRY down 40. EVCA down 12 on news. AMLM down 11. XDSL down 7. EFOI down 5 more.

CSKH up 12 on patent news. LEXG up 8. UBRG up 6.

STUFF

Mother's Day, boys and girls. Do it up.

Mexico to do 3% biofuel blend in '12.

NAS says US' ability to monitor Earth from space "at great risk" from budget cuts. Aged satellites, replacements delayed or shelved. But this is a world expense. UN? Why should we incur all the costs?

NYC selects 25mpg Nissans for "green" taxi fleet. Thought we could have gone with EVs.

Sauds will likely harvest their last wheat crop in '12. In the 70's they tapped an aquifer for irrigation. It's tapped out. I think they don't get much rain there in their desert. 30M population. Like Canada's.

Gasoline/fuel shortages showing up in Yemen, Kenya, Vietnam.

Pipeline build started for Russian NG to Germany.

BP Alaska to pay $25M penalty and promise to bolster pipeline network for their recent spill up there.

NC greenlighted mega offshore wind farm. 300MW. "Desert Wind". $600M. Scheduled online next year. Progress-Duke PPA probably coming.

Sun Run gets $200M from US Bank to finance solar arrays.

MGLT demo'd ultra-high transmittance thru nanostructured-coated glass. Importance of quantum well, quantum dot tech. New class of materials of porous silicon dioxide nanorods. Patent pending.

So far in '11, just 2% of green VC money going to smart grid. $3B invested so far. Record pace. Biggest deals in solar, auto, fuel cells. Gridpoint 1 exception. 7 smartgrid deals just $53M.

Smart Grid 2.0 about "distribution automation".

SD G&E has installed ~95% of its 1.4M smart meters.

AMAT buying VSEA for $4.9B @ 55% premium. Ion implantation equipment.

MIT working on exploiting heat that builds up under solar panels.

Do we love this country or what, pards?

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Market down 83/13/9. Volume picked up to heavy. Oil dropped under $110. And no OBL pics. Yes. Why stir the hornets.

XDSL up 57. 3-day double, over 200-day lines. No news I saw. Extreme volume, but exteme shares. SNRY up 42. Now there's a chart. Turning around? What's their story? AMLM up 23. Lithium. Between 50 and 200 days. Volume just woke up in last few days. The little ones: PSUD up 19, ASOE up 16. Tho ASOE has some valuation.

ENOC reported in and doing nothing after hours. UBRG ended up flat, but went 80's to 60's and back to 70's. I've always felt like that. LEXG ended up 3. New issue looking for the path. Up and down big today again. Mucho volume.

KNDI down 23. Bad news report. Lying about sales. Another China comp discredited. Hay China. Hay China comps. AEBF down 20. Who knows. AFPW down 14. Aluminum air fuel cells. Aluminum ain't cheap. How about zinc-air fuel cells or boron-sodium? What happened to that? PSPW down 10. Fallen below all their lines except one. AMEL (another recent lithium player) and ECOS down 8. EFOI down 6. JASO down 3. COMV down 2, new low. CSIQ, HSOL down 1.

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Market down 114/20/12. Volume normal. Oil down under $110. 179k jobs added in April.

KNDI down 21. New 12-month low. NACF down 15. FSLR down 7 after reporting. Chinese solars keep heading down - CSIQ, HSOL, CSUN, JASO.

NGBF, PSUD up 19. HYPF up 16. LEXG up another 13. AMLM, CCTC also up 13. UBRG up another 4.

A THOUGHT

Maybe it's good it was time for our markets to go down to consolidate gains while the Muslim world would have been incensed if we had celebrated OBL's demise with triple digit gains for days. Or weeks. I mean, 9/11 did make everyone go crazy. And now we're all remembering it all over again. That was one dam son of a bitch. Maybe as good as Hitler. Nah. Hitler killed 50-60 million. At least we got to kill OBL before he killed himself or died a dam martyr. What a world.

AGAIN, STUFF. OY

VC funding for greentech Q1 $2.6B, leaning tord late-stage deals. April $330M for 26 deals, slowing down. Suniva the biggest @ $115M after fracking off DOE loan. Go wonder. I do.

Brent hitting around $125, up >7% in April. What were the gaspump prices when oil hit $150 in '08? I don't remember either.

14% budget redux for EIA. Yea, cut the info. We don't need more info.

Treasury projects to borrow $142B this Q, $156B less than forecast. But. Don't get happy. $405B projected for Q3. Q1 was $265B v. est. $237B. And the secretary told us today we may make it to Aug 2 on the debt limit. Well, you don't want Congress to know they have more time to make us even more nuts. But, oops, they do now.

Factory order growth up 3% in March. I think I already reported that. But it is a good number.

PG&E reported 1,600 smart meters malfunc'd ... MD to sue over fracking spill in Susquehanna tributary ... severe wx knocked out power at TVA nuke ... conservatives won big in Can election - forget new climate policy ... climate cycle shift may accel west coast sea level rise ... warmer Antarctic keeping whales, krill around longer ...

New NG found in Egypt. Dama Gas says yield of 14mcf/d in test. Prelim est. 60bcf reserves. Eqypt's NG reserves doubled to 70tcf in last 5 yrs.

Friday oil pipe spill in Alberta under control. Carries 200kb/d. Several hundred bls spilled bfr leak stopped.

Half billion Euros lost every yr around the world by wind farm operations inundated w/ unassimilated data. They don't reach achievable levels of availability or operating efficiency. Software coming for it.

Solid state transformers the next new buzz. Grid efficiency could increase 8-10% w/ line conversion/transmission efficiencies. Conference in SF today and morrow.

EPA kicked off battle of the buildings. 245 teams competing who can save the most energy in buiuldings. '77 in Cincinnati ...

50% of fish in world - $400B market - is farmed since '09. NOAA: ~84% of seafood consumed in US imported. (My current diet is no meat, no chicken, no fish, no dairy - having some trouble with that - and no processed foods). China to become net importer of fish next year. 75% of fisheries over-exploited. Need for a US aquiculture policy. Aquaman we need you.

And may our trails be happy. HI-O silver. Kimosabi and Tonto, man. The days of yesteryears. And our days to come to kingdom come. Don't mind me. I'm having a ting.

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Market mixed to crazy. Heavy volume. Oil down $2 to $111.

WBRE down 26. I told you it was crazy. XDSL down 16. ZNNMF down 15. HYPF, WPNV down 14. SOPW, VNDB  down 12. EVCA, RNNM down 11. CPWY, SSHO, AMLM down 10. NEWN down 9. FSLR falling as I report, down 6 after reporting. ECOS, CSKH, HSOL down 5. CSIQ down 4. COMV, CSUN down 3. ENER down 2. Another new low? APWR down 1. How long does the travesty goeth on?

FDEI up 23. Yep, and what happened to their business? Who knows? CLNO up 20. TSPG up 18. SNRY up 16. UBRG, LEXG up 15. Great volume, both. VUOC up 13. WNEA, IAUS up 12. IFXY, BHWX up 11.

Give it time. It's May. We got Bin Laden. The US is running out of money. Enjoy your family. Plant seeds in the garden. Take a break. You deserve one. And that's the come and the go as I see.