A123 Systems files for bankruptcy

[chemisttree]

After receving $249.1 million grant from the US Department of Energy and $125 million in tax credits and incentives from the Michigan Economic Development Corp., A123 Systems is filing for Chapter 11. What remains to be seen is how the debtors will run the company and if the jobs promised here in the US http://nlpc.org/stories/2012/10/15/government-love-failing-a123-systems-was-unconditional

 

[SunnyBoyNY]

My previous boss was a high-ranking official at A123. From what I heard, the place was a mess. Good mangers and engineers have been leaving the company for better opportunities in droves.

On the other hand, you cannot really expect each government-sponsored company to thrive and become a multi-billion dollar business. Also, didn't China severely limit the export of rare-earth minerals essential for Lithium battery production?

 

[russ_watters]

On the other hand, you cannot really expect each government-sponsored company to thrive and become a multi-billion dollar business.

Why do you say that?

 

[OmCheeto]

Argh.

I once said; "I've never lost money in the market."

That is no longer true.

I just lost a poop-load on A123.

I've also told people, way long ago, that if A123 goes down, it means Americans don't understand squat about science, sociology, nor economics.

-----------------------------------------
But now, I understand why Cantor has been shorting the American dollar.

good night, and god bless PF

 

[SunnyBoyNY]

Why do you say that?

I have been dealing with NYSERDA for quite some time, which is the Research and Development Authority of NYS. They have funded hundreds, if not thousands, proposals that could lead to a groundbreaking invention. Or they could not. Needless to say that most of the money is spent without ever attaining the original goal! The point is that until you do the research, you never know. The world out there is hardly deterministic.

This example could be extended to the Federal Government. How can you possibly make sure that every single company you put money in will become successful and profitable? That's not possible. The government cannot choose winners and losers. What it can do, however, is to sponsor a company with the best proposal and the best chances of surviving its nascent age. And I believe this part is done quite well.

 

[edward]

Not all companies that make batteries and received government money have gone bankrupt.

According to google it does appear that they all have Chinese subsidiaries.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/09/more-on-cars-and-wto-cases/63218/

 

[russ_watters]

I have been dealing with NYSERDA for quite some time, which is the Research and Development Authority of NYS. They have funded hundreds, if not thousands, proposals that could lead to a groundbreaking invention. Or they could not. Needless to say that most of the money is spent without ever attaining the original goal! The point is that until you do the research, you never know. The world out there is hardly deterministic.

I don't see how that's relevant here: we're not talking about pure R&D efforts, we're talking about companies who manufacture actual products. I'm OK with the government spreading R&D money broadly/thinly.

This example could be extended to the Federal Government. How can you possibly make sure that every single company you put money in will become successful and profitable? That's not possible. The government cannot choose winners and losers. What it can do, however, is to sponsor a company with the best proposal and the best chances of surviving its nascent age. And I believe this part is done quite well.

I believe this thread is an example of the government not doing it well. And I believe that the Obama administration has made poor business decisions based on political goals, in a two-step process:

1. Deciding what industry to support and what not to support.
2. With a lot of money to spend in small industries, throwing money at companies without properly vetting their viability.

Furthermore, if we're going to have a government who is going to support business with direct corporate stimulus, who better to do it than someone who made a good fraction of his living doing exactly that with private funding? Or, perhaps Romney would decide that that is better left to venture capital firms and get the government out of that business. From the article in the OP:

“AOne sold the majority of its products at a gross loss, meaning it cost AOne more to make the product than it could sell it for,” said Andrea James, a senior research analyst who followed the A123 for Dougherty & Co. LLC in Minneapolis.. “It does no good to be an industry leader in a money losing business.

Would you invest in such a company?!

 

[OmCheeto]

Would you invest in such a company?!

At least I didn't lose as much as http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2012/10/16/geloss/.
And A123 had an IPO market cap of $2,000,000,000.
So it looks as though quite a bit morehttp://investors.morningstar.com/ownership/shareholders-major.html?t=AONE than public money was lost.

That reminds me, with such a significant capital gains loss, can I write the whole thing off on my taxes next year and have all of you foot the bill for my losses? Seems like the wall street thing to do.

---------------------------
ps. I've decided that playing the market is like fishing. You throw your line in, spent inordinate effort reeling in what appears to be a potentially good catch, only to find you've reeled in an old spare tire. Oh well, time to re-cast.

 

[SunnyBoyNY]

Russ,

Why for Christ sake would you invest money in R&D and not subsequent manufacturing? If I extend your logic, that's pretty much equal to "we invented a car that runs on water but let's just stick to the prototype". And how about NASA and other science agencies? Army labs? That's hardly broad/thin spending.

The other argument of yours is funny: the government can choose which industry to support and which not. The decision to support a company has to be aligned with the program of the elected President and his Government. Clearly, renewable energy-focused government will support solar and wind as opposed to coal. I do not see anything wrong with that.

And how can you vet a viability of a startup company that has no other assets than the idea and a few excited folks?

Actually I am quite curious how you would assess such a company.

 

[russ_watters]

Sorry, had to rub that in a little.

That reminds me, with such a significant capital gains loss, can I write the whole thing off on my taxes next year and have all of you foot the bill for my losses? Seems like the wall street thing to do.

Probably, yeah.

 

[russ_watters]

Russ,

Why for Christ sake would you invest money in R&D and not subsequent manufacturing?

*I* would, but the government doesn't actually invest, it just hands out money in grants and loans/loan guarantees. So where *I* would invest with the hope of turning a profit, the government doesn't hope to -- it actually plans not to. They assume all the risk without the chance of a benefit. I guess the fact that they aren't hoping to profit makes the poor decisions hurt less, but it also eliminates most of the incentive to make good ones.

The other argument of yours is funny: the government can choose which industry to support and which not. The decision to support a company has to be aligned with the program of the elected President and his Government. Clearly, renewable energy-focused government will support solar and wind as opposed to coal. I do not see anything wrong with that.

What is wrong with it is that the best political decisions don't always make for the best business or environmental decisions. For example, funding that is sent toward solar instead of nuclear unintentionally buoys coal because solar is expensive and can't produce much energy. But it sounds good in a speech.

And how can you vet a viability of a startup company that has no other assets than the idea and a few excited folks?

Actually I am quite curious how you would assess such a company.

That's the entire point of venture capitalism!? People meet with venture capitalists and present an idea that they can sell and a business plan to sell it. Venture capitalists then decide if the idea looks marketable and the plan looks viable. For example, the business plan would say how much you can sell your batteries for and how much it costs to manufacture them. With A123, the quote I posted above says that the plan was decidedly unprofitable: the cost to manufacture was higher than the selling price.

 

[Oltz]

Another solar company drops

http://blog.heritage.org/2012/10/18/another-doe-backed-solar-company-goes-bankrupt/

At least this one was "small" and it was for R&D which is much better then the others I have seen.

 

[OmCheeto]

Probably, yeah.

yeah? I would say; "Yippy Kay Yay, PmF!"

Anyways, I'm clueless as to why the stock is still trading, and made a 135% gain in the last 3 days.

108,000,000 of 170,000,000 shares traded today.

Wall Street is funny, in my book.

 

[AlephZero]

At least I didn't lose as much as http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2012/10/16/geloss/.

To quote from your link

The loss isn’t meaningful for GE, which reported $147 billion in revenue last year,

In fact, it's the same order of magnitude cost as accidentally wrecking one prototype of a jet engine. Which isn't something that jet engine manufacturers enjoy doing, but that doesn't stop it happening occasionally. (And for GE, they can easily get their money back by raising the price of light bulbs $0.01).

 

[edward]

yeah? I would say; "Yippy Kay Yay, PmF!"

Anyways, I'm clueless as to why the stock is still trading, and made a 135% gain in the last 3 days.

108,000,000 of 170,000,000 shares traded today.

Wall Street is funny, in my book.

I am sure that you realize that someone on Wall Street bet that you would lose money. And most likely that bet was made with borrowed money. It is the new and improved Casino Capitalism game.

 

[rootX]

I heard it had quite a few patents so it wasn't a complete failure.

 

[OmCheeto]

I am sure that you realize that someone on Wall Street bet that you would lose money. And most likely that bet was made with borrowed money. It is the new and improved Casino Capitalism game.

Don't even get me started on conspiracy stuff. So many companies/countries are after their intellectual property at the moment, it makes my head spin.

Wang Chung, or whatever that Chinese companies name is(Wanxiang. I was close), is probably really pissed at the bankruptcy court's decision to let Johnson Controls get ahold of the company for a fifth of what they were offering.

Interesting times. IMHO, this is why east coast Casino Capitalists spend millions trying to oust west cost congressmen, because said congressmen want to re-instate the wall street gambling tax.

Oh! It's capital gains. We're investors. The world wouldn't work without us. Don't tax us more because we didn't really own any stock in the company, and had no interest in the company actually succeeding. We only wanted it to fail, and get rich. That's the American way. And it makes the market; "More Efficient".

As usual, [Nixonian Expletives Deleted]

ps. Solyndra has just recently filed a $1.5 billion dollar lawsuit.
hmmm...
I guess in the end, Shakespeare was right.

 

[edward]

Don't even get me started on conspiracy stuff. So many companies/countries are after their intellectual property at the moment, it makes my head spin.

Wang Chung, or whatever that Chinese companies name is(Wanxiang. I was close), is probably really pissed at the bankruptcy court's decision to let Johnson Controls get ahold of the company for a fifth of what they were offering.

Interesting times. IMHO, this is why east coast Casino Capitalists spend millions trying to oust west cost congressmen, because said congressmen want to re-instate the wall street gambling tax.



As usual, [Nixonian Expletives Deleted]

ps. Solyndra has just recently filed a $1.5 billion dollar lawsuit.
hmmm...
I guess in the end, Shakespeare was right.

It seems Bill Moyer's 2010 Essay on Plutocracy was right on the money. no pun intended

http://vimeo.com/32805018

 

[OmCheeto]

It seems Bill Moyer's 2010 Essay on Plutocracy was right on the money. no pun intended

http://vimeo.com/32805018

Edward! You're going to get us both in trouble.

This thread is about bashing the government for trying to fix the country, not about bashing plutocrats for sucking the life/wealth out of it. God knows the Caymans can use a few more trillion in their banks.

I think Aleph was right, people appear to have no comprehension of orders of magnitude, nor, what is at stake.

 

[aquitaine]

Argh.

I once said; "I've never lost money in the market."

That is no longer true.

I just lost a poop-load on A123.

I've also told people, way long ago, that if A123 goes down, it means Americans don't understand squat about science, sociology, nor economics.

Actually it shows you don't understand squat about economics. If a company can't sustain itself in the market without massive government assistance then what it's doing is not economical. This has quite a bit in common with other parts of the malthusian energy plans: Politically contrived, hugely subsidized, and turned into political issues because they can't compete on their technological and economic merits.

 

[OmCheeto]

Actually it shows you don't understand squat about economics. If a company can't sustain itself in the market without massive government assistance then what it's doing is not economical. This has quite a bit in common with other parts of the malthusian energy plans: Politically contrived, hugely subsidized, and turned into political issues because they can't compete on their technological and economic merits.

Moi?

massive? on what scale?
not economical? in who's opinion?
Though I do agree with Russ's assessment that perhaps a proper business model was not in place.

There are people who have wanted their product, and due to A123's dismal business plan, they had no access to the product.

And now, it's all up for bid...

 

[OmCheeto]

...malthusian energy plans...

?

google google google

ah ha!

Desertec
An American organization supporting the perennial fringe presidential candidate, Lyndon LaRouche, for example, called Desertec - rather inexplicably - a "genocidal, Malthusian, energy plan.

Lyndon LaRouche
Known for:
Perennial presidential candidate,
economic forecaster,
conspiracy theorist

Malthusian
adj
(Economics) of or relating to the theory of the English economist Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) stating that increases in population tend to exceed increases in the means of subsistence and that therefore sexual restraint should be exercised

Desertec
Goal: To provide climate protection, energy security and development by generating sustainable power from the sites where renewable sources of energy are at their most abundant.
...
Consortium
[eleven entities I've never heard of, and]
Deutsche Bank
Siemens

Desertec sounds like a good idea to me, in theory.

Thomas Robert Malthus
Born 1766
England
Died 1834
England

I suppose Malthus's ideas were dead on accurate 200 years ago, especially in England. But I believe the world has changed a bit since then. And we have a slew of other threads regarding overpopulation, so I'd rather not debate that here.

 

[aquitaine]

Moi?

massive? on what scale?
not economical? in who's opinion?
Though I do agree with Russ's assessment that perhaps a proper business model was not in place.

There are people who have wanted their product, and due to A123's dismal business plan, they had no access to the product.

And now, it's all up for bid...

Massive as in billions of dollars in government support for production and truly collosal subsidies. I consider billions of dollars a year for an industry with such paltry efficiency and outrageous prices to be massive.

Now, specifically about A123. Yes, their business plan was flawed. Looking at their wiki page it's not hard to see why this was doomed to fail. Their main market appears to have been electric cars, which is at best a small niche that is being inflated by tax dollars. Realistically I figure we're at least one, maybe two decades away from a battery that is competetive with a traditional gas combustion engine. There's far better energy storage methods in methanol or maybe ethanol produced from methanol compared with what even our best batteries can offer right now.

Their secondary market was energy storage for wind. Again, a small market. What makes this one a little bit different from the electric car market is that it's entire existence is politically engineered. Without government central planning that forces utilities to build these things to meet "green quotas" and large quantities of tax money in the form of credits wind farms wouldn't exist at all. We stopped using wind to power our ships (except for recreation) 100 years ago precisely because of its fundamental inefficiencies. This fact hasn't changed.

All that being said, I understand why they did it. They and their investors fell for the sustainability hype and the only way they could get the government support they did was to toe the line.

?

google google google

ah ha!

Nice red herring/ad hom. No, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. 9/11 was not an inside job, there is no illuminati and there is no NWO. Pointing out the ideology supporting the blatantly obvious political agenda behind these energy plans does not make me a conspiracy theorist.

Actually I've talked to a number of wind and solar power supporters in real life. Each and everyone of them believes it will provide us with cheap and abundant power but the only reason it hasn't taken off is because of some vast conspiracy by the oil companies to suppress it, even though neither of them really competes with petroleum.

Desertec sounds like a good idea to me, in theory.

Of course. Until we look at the http://depletedcranium.com/the-realities-of-sahara-solar-power/ . Add to that the problem of costs (you realize this is hugely expensive and will only happen with massive amounts of tax dollars, right?) Add to that the inherent geo-political problem of making your electricity supply entirely dependent on a highly unstable region that's crawling with jihadis and you have a recipe for disaster. Suddenly this isn't looking so good, but such fanciful notions shows the dangers of governments picking and choose technological and scientific winners and losers. They do so for political reasons, not because of evidence or merit.

I suppose Malthus's ideas were dead on accurate 200 years ago, especially in England. But I believe the world has changed a bit since then. And we have a slew of other threads regarding overpopulation, so I'd rather not debate that here.

Actually the Malthusian theory is alive and well. In reality it is the guiding ideology behind the contemporary environmentalist movement and its associated "sustainability" push. The world may have changed, but the Malthusian view of scarcity and limits has not changed. As an example:

Analyzing the present world crisis, from observations on a recent tour around the world, Dr. Osborn said the situation resolved itself into six "overs" - overdestruction of natural resources; overmechanization of industry; overconstruction of means of transport; overproduction of food and other commoditiesl overconfidence in future demand and supply; and overpopulation , with consequent permanent unemployment for the least fitted.

http://www.dnalc.org/view/11723--Birth-Control-Peril-to-Race-Says-Osborn-New-York-Times-8-23-1932-review-of-H-F-Osborn-s-paper-at-Third-International-Eugenics-Congress.html

The image is hard to see but they provide a transcript at the bottom. That was written 80 years ago at a eugenics conference and yet current literature from the environmental organizations says virtually the same thing about resource use, industry, etc. The Malthusians want people to cut back resource usage and the only effective way to do that is to raise prices, hence their support for expensive and inefficient sources of energy. This isn't any more of a conspiracy theory than the effort by people with certain religious affiliations to get creationism in school biology classes. It's a political agenda that has some very grievous consequences if it is allowed to continue.

 

[mheslep]

I agree that there are dangerous consequences to the Malthusian philosophy, and hope to see them highlighted more ofter. A good case is made that Malthus helped cause a fraction million or so deaths from the Irish potato famine circa 1850, when there was ample other food.

 

[OmCheeto]

Massive as in billions of dollars in government support for production and truly collosal subsidies. I consider billions of dollars a year for an industry with such paltry efficiency and outrageous prices to be massive.

"Paltry efficiency" and "outrageous prices" probably mean different things to you and I.

My definitions:

efficiency:

Chevy Volt: 94 mpg
Scion iQ: 37 mpg​

outrageous prices:

price of imported petroleum products: $322 billion (annually)
price of A123: $129 million (once)​

Again, I parrot Aleph's "orders of magnitude" comment.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that if everyone were to be driving hybrids, we'd be bleeding to death much less quickly.

Now, specifically about A123. Yes, their business plan was flawed. Looking at their wiki page it's not hard to see why this was doomed to fail. Their main market appears to have been electric cars, which is at best a small niche that is being inflated by tax dollars. Realistically I figure we're at least one, maybe two decades away from a battery that is competetive with a traditional gas combustion engine. There's far better energy storage methods in methanol or maybe ethanol produced from methanol compared with what even our best batteries can offer right now.

Their secondary market was energy storage for wind. Again, a small market. What makes this one a little bit different from the electric car market is that it's entire existence is politically engineered. Without government central planning that forces utilities to build these things to meet "green quotas" and large quantities of tax money in the form of credits wind farms wouldn't exist at all. We stopped using wind to power our ships (except for recreation) 100 years ago precisely because of its fundamental inefficiencies. This fact hasn't changed.

All that being said, I understand why they did it. They and their investors fell for the sustainability hype and the only way they could get the government support they did was to toe the line.

It goes without saying that there was something wrong with the business plan after a company goes bankrupt. And I plan on not falling into that trap once I get my business going. I, live and learn.

Nice red herring/ad hom. No, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. 9/11 was not an inside job, there is no illuminati and there is no NWO. Pointing out the ideology supporting the blatantly obvious political agenda behind these energy plans does not make me a conspiracy theorist.

Actually I've talked to a number of wind and solar power supporters in real life. Each and everyone of them believes it will provide us with cheap and abundant power but the only reason it hasn't taken off is because of some vast conspiracy by the oil companies to suppress it, even though neither of them really competes with petroleum.

I googled: "Malthusian energy plan"
Only the LaRouche troupe and parrots use the phrase.
The phrase, for me anyways, makes no sense.

Of course. Until we look at the http://depletedcranium.com/the-realities-of-sahara-solar-power/ . Add to that the problem of costs (you realize this is hugely expensive and will only happen with massive amounts of tax dollars, right?) Add to that the inherent geo-political problem of making your electricity supply entirely dependent on a highly unstable region that's crawling with jihadis and you have a recipe for disaster. Suddenly this isn't looking so good, but such fanciful notions shows the dangers of governments picking and choose technological and scientific winners and losers. They do so for political reasons, not because of evidence or merit.

There's that "massive" again...
See my above response to "outrageous".
I consider money leaving the country to be a much greater tax, than money staying put and recirculating here. Perhaps like some, you only see the word "tax" as something solely related to some form called a 1040. I like to think of it more broadly, as in "taxing". Kind of like; "You are taxing my patience".

And as far as how many energy production/storage/efficiency options there are is a very good question.
We have solar thermal, solar PV, wind, hydraulic, pneumatic, chemical, kinetic, thermodynamic, biological, etc. etc.
I would like to government invest in them all, just like I did.
Did you know that if everyone of my financial standing had invested as much as I did in A123, they'd have a market cap of 240 billion dollars right now. And I've only invested $100 per month!

Wow. That would give them the 5th largest http://ycharts.com/rankings/market_cap in the world.

Actually the Malthusian theory is alive and well. In reality it is the guiding ideology behind the contemporary environmentalist movement and its associated "sustainability" push. The world may have changed, but the Malthusian view of scarcity and limits has not changed. As an example:



http://www.dnalc.org/view/11723--Birth-Control-Peril-to-Race-Says-Osborn-New-York-Times-8-23-1932-review-of-H-F-Osborn-s-paper-at-Third-International-Eugenics-Congress.html

The image is hard to see but they provide a transcript at the bottom. That was written 80 years ago at a eugenics conference and yet current literature from the environmental organizations says virtually the same thing about resource use, industry, etc. The Malthusians want people to cut back resource usage and the only effective way to do that is to raise prices, hence their support for expensive and inefficient sources of energy. This isn't any more of a conspiracy theory than the effort by people with certain religious affiliations to get creationism in school biology classes. It's a political agenda that has some very grievous consequences if it is allowed to continue.

This makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. Would you please provide a reference to a modern day Malthusian. Please be specific, as in, a single person.

I can't seem to find one.
-----------------------------------
ps. Your rhetoric makes me laugh

"Massive ... government support ... truly collosal subsidies. ... paltry efficiency ... outrageous prices ... massive. ... flawed. ... not hard to see ... doomed to fail. ... at best a small niche ... inflated by tax dollars. ...Again, a small market. ... it's entire existence is politically engineered. ... government central planning ... large quantities of tax money ... fundamental inefficiencies. ... fact ...sustainability hype ... government support ... toe the line. ... ideology supporting the blatantly obvious political agenda ... hugely expensive ... massive amounts of tax dollars... a recipe for disaster. ... fanciful notions ... dangers of governments ... winners and losers. ... political reasons... the Malthusian theory is alive and well...eugenics conference ...The Malthusians ...expensive and inefficient ... a political agenda..."

Those dreaded Malthusians... Weren't they responsible for the deaths of all Trekkian red shirts?

 

[mheslep]

...This makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. Would you please provide a reference to a modern day Malthusian. Please be specific, as in, a single person.

I can't seem to find one.

Paul Erlich, John Holdren, Lovelock, James Kunstler, the Earth First environment group, Mathew Simmons, Colin J. Campbell, Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Jean H. Laherrère, Albert Bartlett, ... and your prior posts are closely aligned.

 

[OmCheeto]

Paul Erlich, John Holdren, Lovelock, James Kunstler, the Earth First environment group, Mathew Simmons, Colin J. Campbell, Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Jean H. Laherrère, Albert Bartlett, ... and your prior posts are closely aligned.

Gads! How could I not know I was a Malthusian myself. Silly me.

Perhaps I should rephrase my question. What on Earth does the somewhat logical idea of putting a limit on the planets population have to do with the somewhat logical idea of an energy plan that looks beyond extracted hydrocarbons?

ps. and I'm not the first person to propose such an energy plan.

...
-Fund alternate energy research heavily.
...
-Subsidize personal alternate energy, ie solar panels on houses/businesses.
...
-Reward conservation, ie. give tax incentives for conservation: buying compact fluorescent lights, heat recovery, energy efficient heat/ac, etc.
...
-Upgrade electric grid to handle upcoming new load and distribution. This would cost tens of billions of dollars a year.
...
-Begin phase-out of gas powered cars.
...
Of course, much of this money is recirculated, so its not as simple (or bad) as just sucking it out of the economy.
...
The benefit after 30 years, would be vastly reduced pollution, vastly increased capacity, assured long term availability/renewability, and lower energy costs going forward.

bolding mine

And it's not just A123 I've invested in. I'm not sure how many years or decades ago I was given the choice of how my energy was supplied, but I chose wind.

Wind power surpasses hydro for the first time ever in Northwest region

BPA now has about 4,700 megawatts of wind capacity connected to its transmission system. If all the turbines are spinning full speed -- this typically wouldn't happen -- that's the equivalent of four or five good-size nuclear reactors. Theoretically, that's enough energy to serve about 3.6 million homes, though wind turbines in the region typically produce, on average, about a third of their nameplate capacity.

And where is the infrastructure?

Rolling Blackout

The emergency authority allowed Davis to order the California Energy Commission to streamline the application process for new power plants. During that time, California issued licenses to 38 new power plants, amounting to the addition of 14,365 megawatts of electricity production when completed.

Bonneville Power calls for first wind shutdown of the season

Bonneville Power Administration ordered the temporary shutdown of wind farms in its system for a few hours early Sunday morning and again early Monday morning, marking the first time this year that the controversial practice has been tapped.

Bonneville calls for wind "curtailment" when periods of low electricity demand coincides with periods of strong wind and high water, which put more power on the grid than the system needs.

In all 10,100 megawatt hours of wind energy was curtailed over the two-day

As I said before, this is just stupid. Not sure if anyone can do the math in their heads, but I believe 10.1 gigawatt hours would be valued in the range of a hundred million dollars. In just two days! And where have I heard that "in the range of a hundred million dollars" before? Oh that's right, the money we invested in A123. What a coincidence. Are threads started about the wind farms being shut down? Maybe I should have started one. Then I could have talked about the Antediluvian non-energy plans of my opponents.

pps. I also own stock in solar and super-capacitor companies. Let's hope I don't get sucked into threads about those two.

ppps. Ooops. I guess they were talking about the upgrade just two days ago.

Pacific DC Intertie Upgrade
Customer Forum 36
October 25, 2012

About time. I do not want to hear about us dumping hundreds of millions of dollars worth of energy while the lights are going out somewhere else, ever again.

 

[russ_watters]

As I said before, this is just stupid.

I'm not sure you read it correctly. It appears to me to be saying that if the demand of the grid is too low and all of your power is coming from wind or hydro, you have to turn off either the wind power or the hydro power. Since both of these are fuel free, it doesn't matter which you turn off, but with hydro you have the added complexity of trying to avoid collapsing your dam.

That said, I suppose it also means our grid isn't integrated enough to allow the power to be shared with people further away. Or perhaps it is just an economic thing: there are times when an overabundance of power will cause the price to go negative, leading to the odd problem of having to pay people to take your electricity.

One thing that can combat this problem is changing energy usage patterns to flatten the load profile. Now that the price of electricity changes throughout the day, such technologies as ice and cold water storage are becoming more viable.

 

[OmCheeto]

I'm not sure you read it correctly. It appears to me to be saying that if the demand of the grid is too low and all of your power is coming from wind or hydro, you have to turn off either the wind power or the hydro power. Since both of these are fuel free, it doesn't matter which you turn off, but with hydro you have the added complexity of trying to avoid collapsing your dam.

Dams. There are 31 on the rivers, with a capacity of 22 gigawatts.(ref) And I doubt there is little chance of them collapsing.(knocks on skull) The flood of '96 was quite impressive.

That said, I suppose it also means our grid isn't integrated enough to allow the power to be shared with people further away.

I agree.

Or perhaps it is just an economic thing: there are times when an overabundance of power will cause the price to go negative, leading to the odd problem of having to pay people to take your electricity.

I like that idea. I'll turn on all my baseboard heaters!

One thing that can combat this problem is changing energy usage patterns to flatten the load profile. Now that the price of electricity changes throughout the day, such technologies as ice and cold water storage are becoming more viable.

And if everyone were to have plugin hybrids, powered by A123 batteries , a national grid of 2 terawatt hours of energy storage/generating capacity would in my opinion lessen this problem. This is 1/6th of our daily consumption of 12 terawatt hours per day.(ref)

(Om goes to town on spreadsheet)

Uh oh. 2 terawatt hours of lioh batteries has a current cost of a Trillion dollars.

hmmm... It takes us ~3 years to ship that amount of money overseas for our petro products. hmmm...

Wait! What the hell is this guy doing in the picture?

President Bush and Dave Vieau,
CEO of A123 Systems, with a
Hymotion-converted Prius,
Friday, Feb. 23, 2007,
on the South Lawn of the White House. (ref)

My brain just froze.
Bye.

 

[aquitaine]

"Paltry efficiency" and "outrageous prices" probably mean different things to you and I.

My definitions:

efficiency:

Chevy Volt: 94 mpg
Scion iQ: 37 mpg

Not as much as you might think.

outrageous prices:

price of imported petroleum products: $322 billion (annually)
price of A123: $129 million (once)

You do realize there is a substantial difference between private and public capital, right?

It goes without saying that there was something wrong with the business plan after a company goes bankrupt. And I plan on not falling into that trap once I get my business going. I, live and learn.

Your arguements on this thread indicate otherwise. Just out of curiousity, exactly what is your business going to do?

I googled: "Malthusian energy plan"
Only the LaRouche troupe and parrots use the phrase.
The phrase, for me anyways, makes no sense.

So not once did it ever occur to you that I came up with that phrase on my own? I've never even heard of this LaRouche guy or his "troupe" until you brought it up as a red herring. The phrase makes no sense to you because you refuse to understand what Malthusian principles stand for.

There's that "massive" again...
See my above response to "outrageous".
I consider money leaving the country to be a much greater tax, than money staying put and recirculating here. Perhaps like some, you only see the word "tax" as something solely related to some form called a 1040. I like to think of it more broadly, as in "taxing". Kind of like; "You are taxing my patience".

And as far as how many energy production/storage/efficiency options there are is a very good question.
We have solar thermal, solar PV, wind, hydraulic, pneumatic, chemical, kinetic, thermodynamic, biological, etc. etc.
I would like to government invest in them all, just like I did.
Did you know that if everyone of my financial standing had invested as much as I did in A123, they'd have a market cap of 240 billion dollars right now. And I've only invested $100 per month!

Wow. That would give them the 5th largest market cap in the world.

Most of those in that list are on government life support. I'll take solar PV. If you put solar PV on your home, you'll get a 30% federal tax credit plus another tax credit provided by the state government. Using California as an example, that would be another 30%. So basically more than half the cost is paid for by tax dollars. Here's a good idea of what solar PV REALLY costs without all that tax money. It will take a hundred years before that project even breaks even.

Looking more at the Volt and other electric vehicles, it turns out there is a $7,500 tax credit for that too. I've see nthe MSRP range from $32,000 to $38,000, so I'll pick a nice middle number, say $35,000. So basically we're looking at a 20% subsidy for that as well. I haven't looked too carefully into wind, but I'm betting I'll find similar percentages there too.

ps. Your rhetoric makes me laugh

"Massive ... government support ... truly collosal subsidies. ... paltry efficiency ... outrageous prices ... massive. ... flawed. ... not hard to see ... doomed to fail. ... at best a small niche ... inflated by tax dollars. ...Again, a small market. ... it's entire existence is politically engineered. ... government central planning ... large quantities of tax money ... fundamental inefficiencies. ... fact ...sustainability hype ... government support ... toe the line. ... ideology supporting the blatantly obvious political agenda ... hugely expensive ... massive amounts of tax dollars... a recipe for disaster. ... fanciful notions ... dangers of governments ... winners and losers. ... political reasons... the Malthusian theory is alive and well...eugenics conference ...The Malthusians ...expensive and inefficient ... a political agenda..."

Those dreaded Malthusians... Weren't they responsible for the deaths of all Trekkian red shirts?

If you actually bothered to learn the backgrounds of what you preach instead of being obnoxious you wouldn't lose nearly as much investment money.

Gads! How could I not know I was a Malthusian myself. Silly me.

Perhaps I should rephrase my question. What on Earth does the somewhat logical idea of putting a limit on the planets population have to do with the somewhat logical idea of an energy plan that looks beyond extracted hydrocarbons?

ps. and I'm not the first person to propose such an energy plan.

When it comes to generating electricity we've had the technology for more than 50 years to generate abundant amounts of it in a reliable fashion. But no, the Malthusians decided it was evil, it was the devil, and so it had to be shunned. We also have a real alternative to oil in our vehicles in the form of methanol or even ethanol created from methanol. If every car was flex fuel as the Open Standards Fuel Act would mandate, it would give tens of millions of cars the opportunity to run M85, E85, or even gasoline. We would be off of foreign oil in less than ten years. But no, the Malthusians have their Annointed Saviors here too in the form of low performance and very expensive hybrids and EV's. As you can see, alternatives to oil for cars, and coal & natural gas for power plants do exist, but they are unwelcome because they don't fit the agenda of artificially inflating the costs of energy. This has nothing to do with protecting the environment or even getting off of hydrocarbons, but it has everything to do with constricting growth and crushing ambition.

As further evidence I submit some quotes from an article the LA Times ran in 1989, not long after the Ponns & Fleischmann "breakthrough", regarding the possibility of cheap and abundant carbon free energy. Disclaimer for people who might not read carefully: The article was run before it was determined to be hoax, so this should be considered a thought experiment.

And even if it were, given society's dismal record in managing technology, the prospect of cheap, inexhaustible power from fusion is "like giving a machine gun to an idiot child," Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich says.

Laments Washington-based author-activist Jeremy Rifkin, "It's the worst thing that could happen to our planet."

Inexhaustible power, he argues, only gives man an infinite ability to exhaust the planet's resources, to destroy its fragile balance and create unimaginable human and industrial waste.

The Power to Pollute

That fusion itself may be a clean energy source, especially in comparison with fossil fuels, is beside the point.

Not all pollution is caused by burning fuel; there are many other pollutants that fast-growing industrial societies throw into the atmosphere--compounds from rubber tires, fumes from drying paint, and hundreds of other byproducts of industrial processes. And clean-burning, non-polluting, hydrogen-using bulldozers still could knock down trees or build housing developments on farmland.

A mere technological change in fuel sources also does nothing to change man's attitude toward nature--what UC Berkeley physicist John Holdren calls the "pave the planet and paint it green" mentality.

In addition, Holdren says, despite the claims made, there is no guarantee that fusion will necessarily be a clean process; in some circumstances it can produce deadly neutron radiation and poisonous tritium. Worst of all to some observers, its cheap inexhaustible energy would let the planet support many more people than its current population of 5.2 billion. And this, they say, would be a crowded Earth, without forests, wilderness, open space or the chance for solitude. What would the planet be like without "psychological space?" asks Richard Charter, a coastal lobbyist and environmentalist who notes that many of the aberrations and turmoil of inner cities can be blamed on "just plain crowding without hope."

Source

It's the worst thing that could happen to our planet? Does this sound like the words of someone who is really interested in getting off of hydrocarbons and onto something more abundant?

John Holdren, by the way, is Obama's science czar.

As I said before, this is just stupid. Not sure if anyone can do the math in their heads, but I believe 10.1 gigawatt hours would be valued in the range of a hundred million dollars. In just two days! And where have I heard that "in the range of a hundred million dollars" before? Oh that's right, the money we invested in A123. What a coincidence. Are threads started about the wind farms being shut down? Maybe I should have started one. Then I could have talked about the Antediluvian non-energy plans of my opponents.

These things are a total waste. Most of the time when they produce power it's when demand is low and hydro capacity is high. The only reason they appeared to produce more than the dam was because we had a big storm blow in, making is far more windy than it normally is. Typically they produce very little power and when they produce enough to be useful it's when there is no need for them. The only reason Bonneville uses it during those times is because they are required to by federal laws forcing utilities to use wind.

The environmentalists by the way have been trying to get rid of the dams on the Columbia for decades. They provide abundant, reliable, and cheap energy. Can't have that now can we?

pps. I also own stock in solar and super-capacitor companies. Let's hope I don't get sucked into threads about those two.

Unlike wind, these are not totally useless. They actually do have some niche uses and as the technology advances those niches will get bigger but those markets are being hugely inflated by tax dollars and central planning, not just here but all over the world. It's only a matter of time before those subsidies disappear as governments try to rebalance their budgets. When that happens those industries will implode, leaving investors like yourself holding the bag. Bottom line is, if you're smart you'll pull out before the bubble bursts and come back when the dust settles.

Dams. There are 31 on the rivers, with a capacity of 22 gigawatts.(ref) And I doubt there is little chance of them collapsing.(knocks on skull) The flood of '96 was quite impressive.

As I said, the environmentalists have been trying to get rid of them for quite a while.

 

[mheslep]

President Bush and Dave Vieau,
CEO of A123 Systems, with a
Hymotion-converted Prius,
Friday, Feb. 23, 2007,
on the South Lawn of the White House. (ref)

My brain just froze.
Bye.

It is one thing for politicians to take glad handing pictures with business people and another to write them checks with taxpayer money. Obama/Pelosi gave A123 a $249 million grant via DoE, and had a tentative loan about to start for over a billion. Gov. Granholm in Michigan gave another $125 million in tax credits. How much did Bush give to A123?

 

[SunnyBoyNY]

It is one thing for politicians to take glad handing pictures with business people and another to write them checks with taxpayer money. Obama/Pelosi gave A123 a $249 million grant via DoE, and had a tentative loan about to start for over a billion. Gov. Granholm in Michigan gave another $125 million in tax credits. How much did Bush give to A123?

Didn't Bush also spend around two trillion dollars on an absolutely useless war in Iraq? We are talking peanuts here, bickering over a few hundred million dollars that were mostly spent here in the US and fueled our economy.

Tax credits are a boost for a start-up company (I work for one) but are generally not refundable. Thus, the local taxpayer does not feel the difference.

 

[OmCheeto]

Not as much as you might think.

a blog? really?

and the rest? tldr

unsubscribe

 

[rootX]

I'm not sure you read it correctly. It appears to me to be saying that if the demand of the grid is too low and all of your power is coming from wind or hydro, you have to turn off either the wind power or the hydro power. Since both of these are fuel free, it doesn't matter which you turn off, but with hydro you have the added complexity of trying to avoid collapsing your dam.

That said, I suppose it also means our grid isn't integrated enough to allow the power to be shared with people further away. Or perhaps it is just an economic thing: there are times when an overabundance of power will cause the price to go negative, leading to the odd problem of having to pay people to take your electricity.

One thing that can combat this problem is changing energy usage patterns to flatten the load profile. Now that the price of electricity changes throughout the day, such technologies as ice and cold water storage are becoming more viable.

More integrated grid means building more transmission lines which is next to impossible. It's expensive (http://www.powermag.com/POWERnews/4854.html) and politically challenging (http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericagies/2011/07/25/new-transmission-lines-coming-to-an-area-near-you/).

However, the US seems to be going on right track:

An old saw would have it that new transmission cannot be built in the United States. That preconception is outdated. Last October, the Obama administration announced it was expediting and accelerating the permitting and construction of seven new major tranmission lines criss-crossing twelve states, as Energy Central's TransmissionHub reported on Dec. 20, 2011.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise...icity-pricing-complicates-smart-gird-buildout

 

[aquitaine]

a blog? really?

and the rest? tldr

unsubscribe

Is this the best reply you have to all of that?


Believe it or not, I get it. I used to buy into all this nonsense too. Until I started to look into the fundamentals on my own. Then I realized how damaging and ultimately unhelpful these prescriptions really are, not just to the environment but to our civilization. This kind of intellectual bankruptcy doesn't do anyone any good, especially the tax payer.