STUFF

More on Solyndra bankruptcy. Chinese solar panels are 10-20% less expensive than US-made. But, some estimates that Solyndra panels were 100% more expensive. One bad bet was that silicon would stay expensive. It didn't. And won't be expensive. Solyndra didn't use the most expensive silicon. Then WEST beat them on their presumed flat-rooftop price advantage. The DOE loan agreement was initiated during Bush admin. So talk radio nazis can only get so far on that. China has been providing tens of billions in loans and subsidies to clean E/solar too. So. Solyndra made too many bad assumptions, it looks. But then, they sure dragged financiers into it bigtime. All that glitter may not be gold I guess.

Vycon Energy working on flywheel/regen braking tech to capture kinetic E from subways/light rail. NYC subway train requires ~3-4MW for 30 seconds to get back up to speed. Vycon says they could recover up to 90% of that in braking energy converted to a station flywheel thru 3rd rail and back to a departing train. They already sell flywheels for seaport cranes, using gravity. Running price ~$1/W for equipment. Obviously competitive with coal/NG/wind elgen. And the train commutes are at peak power demand.

Australia's grid-connected market grew from 73MW to 379 in '10. Driven by Solar Homes/Communities program, solar credits, feed-in tariffs, PV price drops and favorable currency exchange rates.  1st utility-scale PV project underway to offset energy need at seawater desalinization plant. 10MW. Using FSLR product. Online mid-'12. GE unit will own half. A 150MW PV plant also to be built. BP Solar in on that. And a 250MW solar-thermal/NG plant to be built by Areva.

UK announced $7.5B of smart grid contracts. Smart meters mandated to be in by '20 (~47M devices). UK govt has established a central data/com corp to oversee the security instead of leaving it to utilities.

EU close to boycotting Syria's 130kb/d oil exports (~1/3 of their income).

World's motor vehicle count now over 1B.

Brazil lowered their ethanol blend to 20% from 25%. But it won't lower pump prices, they say. Eth prices up 27% since June. (On harvest estimates?)

No US troop deaths In Iraq in Aug. A 1st since it began. Shh.

Aug US auto sales better than expected.

New Orleans area expected to be inundated with heavy rain for the next 5 days.

And that's the trails, pards. Vaya con dios.