Most Popular
1. Banking Crisis is Stocks Bull Market Buying Opportunity - Nadeem_Walayat
2.The Crypto Signal for the Precious Metals Market - P_Radomski_CFA
3. One Possible Outcome to a New World Order - Raymond_Matison
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
5. Apple AAPL Stock Trend and Earnings Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
6.AI, Stocks, and Gold Stocks – Connected After All - P_Radomski_CFA
7.Stock Market CHEAT SHEET - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.US Debt Ceiling Crisis Smoke and Mirrors Circus - Nadeem_Walayat
9.Silver Price May Explode - Avi_Gilburt
10.More US Banks Could Collapse -- A Lot More- EWI
Last 7 days
Stock Market Volatility (VIX) - 25th Mar 24
Stock Market Investor Sentiment - 25th Mar 24
The Federal Reserve Didn't Do Anything But It Had Plenty to Say - 25th Mar 24
Stock Market Breadth - 24th Mar 24
Stock Market Margin Debt Indicator - 24th Mar 24
It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - 24th Mar 24
Stocks: What to Make of All This Insider Selling- 24th Mar 24
Money Supply Continues To Fall, Economy Worsens – Investors Don’t Care - 24th Mar 24
Get an Edge in the Crypto Market with Order Flow - 24th Mar 24
US Presidential Election Cycle and Recessions - 18th Mar 24
US Recession Already Happened in 2022! - 18th Mar 24
AI can now remember everything you say - 18th Mar 24
Bitcoin Crypto Mania 2024 - MicroStrategy MSTR Blow off Top! - 14th Mar 24
Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - 11th Mar 24
Gold and the Long-Term Inflation Cycle - 11th Mar 24
Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - 11th Mar 24
Two Reasons The Fed Manipulates Interest Rates - 11th Mar 24
US Dollar Trend 2024 - 9th Mar 2024
The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - 9th Mar 2024
Investors Don’t Believe the Gold Rally, Still Prefer General Stocks - 9th Mar 2024
Paper Gold Vs. Real Gold: It's Important to Know the Difference - 9th Mar 2024
Stocks: What This "Record Extreme" Indicator May Be Signaling - 9th Mar 2024
My 3 Favorite Trade Setups - Elliott Wave Course - 9th Mar 2024
Bitcoin Crypto Bubble Mania! - 4th Mar 2024
US Interest Rates - When WIll the Fed Pivot - 1st Mar 2024
S&P Stock Market Real Earnings Yield - 29th Feb 2024
US Unemployment is a Fake Statistic - 29th Feb 2024
U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - 29th Feb 2024
What a Breakdown in Silver Mining Stocks! What an Opportunity! - 29th Feb 2024
Why AI will Soon become SA - Synthetic Intelligence - The Machine Learning Megatrend - 29th Feb 2024
Keep Calm and Carry on Buying Quantum AI Tech Stocks - 19th Feb 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

Hydrokinetic Power is the Next Wave in Cheap Energy

Commodities / Renewable Energy Feb 29, 2012 - 08:14 AM GMT

By: Money_Morning

Commodities

Best Financial Markets Analysis ArticleKeith Fitz-Gerald writes: In an era of cheap capital, emerging technology companies could provide investors the biggest bang for the buck we've seen in years.

The key is finding a market that already has billions of dollars in pent up demand - like cheap energy.


Of all the cheap alternatives available to us today, I'm most excited by hydrokinetic power systems for the simple reason that the oceans contain enough energy to potentially support more than 50% of US demand alone, according to the US Department of Energy.

In case you are not familiar with the term, hydrokinetic systems produce power from the water's kinetic energy. It's quite literally power from the motion in the ocean.

Critics charge there are limits involved because the technology we need to make, transmit and store wave-based energy is primitive and prohibitively expensive.

And they're right... it is, or at least has been to date.

That's why despite years of effort and billions of dollars in government-sponsored financing, there are a mere 5 megawatts of wave-generated energy being created worldwide.

According to Forbes Magazine, that's only enough to light 4,000 U.S. homes.

Yet studies estimate that two-thirds of the world's economically feasible hydropower has yet to be exploited. Perhaps not surprisingly, much of this untapped energy is concentrated in South America, Asia and Africa.

That's my kind of opportunity - but it will require a sea change in our thinking (pun absolutely intended).

The Rising Tide in Hydrokinetic Power
That's because traditional "alternative" power choices tend to evolve in terms of how applications like solar, hydro, thermal and gas production ties into the grid. As such, they're dependent on environmental variables that come and go.

On the other hand, hydrokinetic systems really are the grid. By placing turbines, bobbers and impellers into large bodies of water, they become part of the very system they're tapping into.

And it's a whopper of a system.

The Electric Power Research Institute estimates that the total energy potential for hydrokinetic power may be 100 Gigawatts by 2050 or enough to power 67 million homes while reducing carbon dioxide emissions by more than 80 million metric tons. That's, incidentally, the amount of power produced by 20-30 coal fired power plants. So we're not talking chump change here.

There are many benefits, not the least of which is continuity.

For example, despite the fact that Katrina wiped out an area the size of Great Britain and devastated many of the power plants in the area, the area's rivers kept flowing and the ocean kept producing waves.

In Japan, the situation is much the same. As recently as December 2011 only six of the nation's 54 reactors remained in operation, according to Marketwatch.

This is making fuel costs skyrocket and negatively impacting Japanese profit margins despite all the cash and effort being poured into that nation's recovery.

As an island nation that's heavily dependent on nuclear power with now extremely apparent risks, the potential for harvesting water is significant, considering that the entire nation is a series of islands quite literally surrounded by boundless energy.

Closer to home, we've got the Hudson, the Missouri and the Colorado Rivers to contend with in addition to strong tidal currents and waves along both coasts - all of which could be exploited for power production.

Environmentalists charge that the systems will disrupt natural habitats effectively creating gigantic blenders or cuisinarts that aren't fish friendly, create underwater acoustic pollution or otherwise disrupt maritime habitats.

Not to dismiss any of these concerns, but I think the demands outweigh the bureaucratic red tape in an age where energy demand is rising and rapidly becoming an issue of national security rather than luxury.

Two Hydrokinetic Power Companies to Keep an Eye On
Here are two companies worth watching. One is public and "investable" today. The other is still private but getting ready to commercialize a full-scale version of its core product.

Ocean Power Technologies (Nasdaq: OPTT) - Based in New Jersey, the company is tiny with a market cap of a mere $36.39 million and change. It's running at a loss and according to Yahoofinance.com sports negative earnings of $1.71 per share. That is entirely understandable when you recognize $120 million they've spent developing their proprietary PowerBuoy wave generators.

PowerBuoys look like gigantic thumbtacks comprised of a movable float, a base plate and a long spar that holds everything together. Each one is capable of producing 150 kilowatts using nothing more than the piston like action of waves.

Defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE: LMT) recently partnered with the company to help with development and logistics. Presumably Lockheed Martin will help with costs as well.

Earnings are scheduled for March 9 and I can hardly wait.

Columbia Power Technologies (still private) - Columbia is based in my backyard in nearby Corvallis, Oregon. Although it's still private, the Company is worth watching because it has already deployed a version of its SeaRay generator in Puget Sound and is set to commercialize its technology within the next two years.

Unlike the PowerBuoys, SeaRay generators look like a big oil barrel with floating wings. Essentially the core barrel, for lack of a better term, is a magnetic coil that produces energy when the wings move up and down on the waves. The intent is to use as few moving parts as possible - in this case two.

The company has partnered with angel investors and received some $8.5 million in grants from both the Department of Energy and U.S. Navy.

This month, they'll be retrieving the SeaRay from the water and beginning work on the full-scale version called a "Manta" with the intent to deploy it in 2013.

There is no word on commercialization yet but with more than 63% of anticipated wave-based energy capacity yet to be developed, there is undoubtedly time.

Not to mention "alternative" alternatives we haven't yet begun to envision but which are undoubtedly being developed in a garage somewhere.

Source http://moneymorning.com/2012/02/29/hydrokinetic-power-is-the-next-wave-in-cheap-energy/

Money Morning/The Money Map Report

©2012 Monument Street Publishing. All Rights Reserved. Protected by copyright laws of the United States and international treaties. Any reproduction, copying, or redistribution (electronic or otherwise, including on the world wide web), of content from this website, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited without the express written permission of Monument Street Publishing. 105 West Monument Street, Baltimore MD 21201, Email: customerservice@moneymorning.com

Disclaimer: Nothing published by Money Morning should be considered personalized investment advice. Although our employees may answer your general customer service questions, they are not licensed under securities laws to address your particular investment situation. No communication by our employees to you should be deemed as personalized investent advice. We expressly forbid our writers from having a financial interest in any security recommended to our readers. All of our employees and agents must wait 24 hours after on-line publication, or after the mailing of printed-only publication prior to following an initial recommendation. Any investments recommended by Money Morning should be made only after consulting with your investment advisor and only after reviewing the prospectus or financial statements of the company.

Money Morning Archive

© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in