power2050 -total energy revolution

Welcome to TheSietch.org. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

So, one day soon stay tuned for a very long, very in-depth, very detailed, very drooling discussion of Tesla Motors. I’ll be covering *glowingly, their backing (ahem: PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, &… Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page et. al.) what I’ve perceived to be their strategic genius in their initial funding, and until relatively recently, their obsession with secrecy to come out of nowhere to be positioned as the Ultimate car company of the future! Anyway.. color me shocked that they are backed by my favorite industry de-stabilizers, the Google Boys. It occurred to me almost instantly that in a few years, when solar costs come down to parity with coal, etc… that to combine that with a beautiful, efficient, powerful, long-range sedan would be the killer app of the alternative energy revolution. And then some. ‘Free’ Green Power + Relatively Cheap Car that never breaks down = World peace

So that leads us to…. y’know, I guess the intelligence required to hire a ridiculous percentage of P.H.D.s on the planet lends itself to the investing acumen required to, well… see the future. Its alot less hard than one might think.

Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page (along with brother Carl Page) are investors in Nanosolar, whose last round of financing netted them a cool 100 million. They specialize in thin-film solar cells. These thin-film solar cells are less efficient in harvesting the sun’s energy than traditional crystalline solar cells, but will cost-efficiently cover everything from your house, to your laptop, to window shades. Transparently. Which… if you hadn’t guessed, will rock. Alot.

“Nanosolar has a thin-film technology that it claims is 10 times as cost-efficient as traditional cells, and a printing-based manufacturing technique that it says will bring the price down to less than a dollar per watt, competitive with natural gas and peak electricity prices (see Redherring.com article: 10 Cleantech Companies to Watch: Nanosolar).”

Some stats from Nanosolar.com

March 2006: Nanosolar’s research and development team produces cells with world-record efficiency: the most efficient printed cell ever. NREL certifies these efficiencies achieved.

June 2006: Nanosolar secures $100,000,000 from a global group of top investors (the “largest greentech financing in 2006“). Nanosolar commences with its plan to build a factory with annual output of multiple 100MW’s. [More info]

August 2006: Nanosolar and Conergy announce a cooperation agreement. [More info]

January 2007: Nanosolar secures 647,0000 sqft of space for manufacturing. [More info]

March 2007: The U.S. Department of Energy selects Nanosolar among a stiffly competitive field of applicants and awards $20 million to the company. [More info]

March 2007: James McNicholas, Hitachi’s top finance executive, joins Nanosolar as Chief Financial Officer. [More info]

[* upon some further diging we find a little more proof. Elon Musk, by the way, is one of my freakin hero’s. from his Blog as Chairman of Tesla Motors:
Becoming Energy Positive
I should mention that Tesla Motors will be co-marketing sustainable energy products from other companies along with the car. For example, among other choices, we will be offering a modestly sized and priced solar panel from SolarCity, a photovoltaics company (where I am also the principal financier). This system can be installed on your roof in an out of the way location, because of its small size, or set up as a carport and will generate about 50 miles per day of electricity.]

As I said, more on Tesla Motors later.  And I’m sure we’ll be keeping track of the dynamic duo of Sweet Elctric Car + Renewable Energy!

I need to find avenues into the political/regulation structures

Peak Oil Blog Post

“‘Any reasonable form of cost for carbon dioxide would immediately make a whole suite of alternative generating technologies competitive to our very cost-effective fossil fuels,’ the Government’s adviser on the nuclear industry, Ziggy Switkowski, said in an interview this week. ‘And so nuclear would become more competitive, wind, solar, eventually geothermal … and then the market will decide where the investment funds should flow,’ he said.

‘The higher the price of carbon, the larger the ’swing’ towards no or low-carbon intensity sources of electricity generation and, more importantly, away from coal-fired generation,’ says CommSec utilities analyst, Paul Johnston. …”

It’s all going to be about real-world economics.
Alt. energy price comes down by leaps and bounds, demand goes through the roof.

The real crux point will come as production costs and efficencies for these actually out-strip the cost-effectiveness of coal, while demand stays high because of increasing costs of getting power from the grid, public awareness and perceptions that global warming is real, and the beautiful fact that consumption is NOT going to see a sizeable or even significant decrease. In fact, my bet is that it will continue to grow steaduly and quickly for the forsee-able future. Gotta make it cleaner! And there’s so many options!

::
Customers to weigh bills against alternatives
from Alternative Energy News

‘And as utility rates end up being whatever they are, they’ll make some forms of technology more available.’

As power bills rose across the state this year, southern Illinois solar-panel technician Aur Beck fielded more calls than usual from people wanting to generate their own electricity at home. via Quad-City Times”

What better way to start a mastermind conversation about why its going to be all about getting rich AND saving the planet, then a recent post from Business 2.0 laying it for me.

This is the way of the future. And its not your hippie-minded, all talk no solution, wailing-wall complaining that some people have associated with the movement towards green technolgies.

It’s going to happen, everything is going to green, and sooner than later there will be a trend towards home moving off the grid or becoming contributors to it!! (more on that soon)

Business 2.0

The background: Carbon dioxide makes up nearly 80 percent of all greenhouse gases. More than a quarter of that CO2 comes from electrical power plants.

The solution: Wind power, thanks to recent breakthroughs in turbine and transmission technology; it’s also 70 percent cheaper than solar power. In May, Dublin-based Airtricity, the world’s fastest-growing wind developer, announced plans for a European supergrid - a network of 2,000 offshore wind turbines in the North Atlantic. The grid would initially supply 10,000 megawatts to 8 million homes.

The payoff: Founded just seven years ago, Airtricity is on track to bring in $657 million in revenue by 2010. The company operates 16 wind farms in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland.

The opportunity: Airtricity is already lobbying for government approvals. But there’s opportunity for other wind producers to start banding together, since scale is what’s needed most to lift wind out of the “alternative” market.