Saturday, September 28, 2013

Austin Electric Powers – The Politician Who Screwed Me






The folks in Delaware are finally waking up to the news I broke more than 18 months ago that their politicians screwed them with the Bloom Energy deal in the First State



The article gives all sides of the story of how the folks are overpaying for power from the Bloom Boxes that by using political influence Al Gore, John Doerr, and Colin Powell hoodwinked a young governor Jack Markell to install in coastal Delaware.

The Federal lawsuit against Markell and his subordinates drags on, but certainly now the plaintiffs Fuel Cell Energy and Nichols will have great evidence of the overcharge for power.

 Interestingly Fuel Cell energy is now a more formidable competitor to Bloom as NRG a very large company has teamed up with Fuel Cell Energy.    With Bloom getting over $200 per mwh for their politician who screwed me power, NRG and Fuel Cell Energy might just have a great business by charging only $199 per mwh.

The part of the Aaron Nathan’s article that tickled me was this:
Bloom continues to provide clean, reliable electricity from its Delaware manufactured fuel cells under the exact same terms that were agreed upon a couple of years ago,” said Bloom Vice President Joshua Richman.

Interesting name Richman, of course if he works for Bloom he cannot be Poorboy.  Let’s dissect the fake statement made by the VP of Bloom.  Clean – hell no the toxic and hazardous solid waste cannot be considered clean nor can the CO2 and VOC emissions.  Reliable – the load factor of the Bloom Coffins per the DELMARVA filing with the DPSC has dropped from a level of 96.6% to 91% in the last five months.

Yes Mr. Rich Man the terms are exactly the same crony crooked terms that Markell and the PSC are being sued for because of the sweetheart noncompetitive deal that was given to Bloom.   Mr. Rich Man Bloom continues to rip off folks in Delaware and California.  The rip off in California is even greater than in Deal Away thanks to the quarter billion Congressman Huffman gave you all under the SGIP.  In Deal Away the local press know when they are being screwed by a slimy politician and their crony VC buddies, here in Californication the green orgy continues with Mr. Huffman still being lauded by an ignorant press in 2nd district. 

The movie District 9 was a great success, I can’t wait till Austin does a movie called District 2 – The Politician Who Screwed Me.   Al Gore will play Dr. Evil and Jared Huffman will have the role of Mini Me.  But wait Huffman played volleyball for the USA and is very tall so maybe he will have the role of Number 2.  Number 1 will always be played by Al Gore who probably has told Governor Markell to hang in there as the press and the people can easily be manipulated if he continues to tell the same lie over and over.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Khosla Gives Kior A 5 Month Lifeline



Kior announced that Khosla personally will inject $25 million into the struggling company and that Khosla Ventures would also inject another $25 million.  The $50 million of funds give Kior 5 more months to make more diesel and gasoline out of pine trees.

Condi Rice can now sleep better for a four more months till the next funding crisis hits the beleaguered company.  Condi and Vinod must have asked dozens of “friends” to invest and no third party wanted any part of the company.  The Province of Alberta which is also heavily invested in Kior also said Nyet to any further investment.

The small amount of stock float that is available to trade got excited because Kior also said they will double down on the plant size in Columbus Mississippi, the backwater town where the alchemy is performed.

My read of the tea leaves is that Kior is making between 20 and 25 gallons of liquid fuel per bone dry ton of wood in the first Columbus plant and that they will report sometime in mid-October their third quarter results that will show about 300,000 gallons of production for the quarter and a loss of $100 per gallon for a loss of $30 million for the third quarter.

Condi will likely drift away from the company soon and the claim will be she has pressing commitments.  Khosla will use the latest investment as a defense that he tried everything to save the company.  In February 2014 the company will have its next funding crisis but they will all say that they have a business plan for a third plant in Columbus or Natchez that will use old rail road ties rather than pine and that they still believe they will yield 92 gallons per bone dry ton of biomass with a twelfth generation catalyst and that they just need a little more time.


The good news for the folks in Columbus who work in the plant is that the company has money to meet payroll for a few more months.

Monday, September 23, 2013

The EPA Has Double Standards





There is a lot of hubbub today that the EPA has mandated new CO2 emissions requirements for new electric power plants in the USA.  I have already blogged on this being a trick to get Al Gore and friends at Bloom Energy more business.


I do think however this desire by the Obama administration to banish coal from future power stations is a two edged sword for the EPA and some clever lawyers for the coal industry may be able to use the following double standard argument to win a lawsuit that the EPA simply does not know what it is doing and talks from both sides of its mouth.

Here is the logic behind the argument.   The EPA sets the ratings on fuel efficiency of vehicles.  For electric vehicles such as the Tesla Model S they have given an equivalent miles per gallon (MPGe) of 89.  They did this by using a factor of contained chemical energy in a gallon of gas of 37.3 kilowatt hours or 127,267 BTUs per gallon.  The Tesla needs 0.419 kilowatt hours to travel a mile and the EPA divided 0.419 into 37.3 and voila they state the Tesla Model S achieves 89 MPGe.

This is all fine and dandy and smoke and mirrors as the EPA assumed 100% of the chemical energy in the gasoline becomes electricity.  By this they also mean the electric grid generates and transmits electricity with 100% efficiency no matter what fuel is used to generate the electricity.   I blogged about this over a year ago.

OK I know the MPGe are fake figures that the Obama administration uses to promote their misguided policy of promoting plug in vehicles.  I know the grid is not 100% efficient at generating power from any and all fuels.  But for the sake of defeating the new EPA rule on the limits of emitting CO2 from a new coal fired power plant I will drop my thermodynamic hat and wear the EPA dunce’s cap that their Tesla Model S MPGe is correct at 89 and the grid generates electricity with 100% efficiency.

Coal from the powder river basin is widely used in power generation.  The USGS lists the carbon content and calorific (BTUs/lb) of this type of coal.

Performing tedious math in a spread sheet I calculated that if the power generation is 100% efficient 0.145745 pounds of carbon contained in the powder river basin coal are combusted for each kilowatt hour of power generated.  As CO2 has a molecular weight of 44 and carbon has an atomic weight of 12 each pound of carbon combusted results in 3.66667 pounds of CO2.  Multiplying 0.145745 by 3.66667 we obtain that if the power generation is 100% efficient coal fired power stations emit 0.534397 pounds of CO2 per kilowatt hour.  Multiply this by 1,000 and we obtain 534.397 pounds of CO2 per megawatt hour.

The EPA has limited new coal fired power stations to a maximum of 1,100 pounds of CO2 per megawatt hour and Dr. Moniz (Secretary of Energy) and Ms. McCarthy (Administrator of the EPA) are having a “hang out” at the Whitehouse on the clean power rules.   Here is what Dr. Moniz posted on his Facebook page.

Ernest Moniz shared a link.
There are few priorities more pressing than the need to #ActOnClimate. Tomorrow -- Monday, September 23, at 12:15 p.m. -- I’ll be joining EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy for a live White House Google+ Hangout. We look forward to answering your questions about the President’s Climate Action plan, and progress made so far to meet its goals.

To participate, watch live on http://WhiteHouse.gov/ClimateHangout. Ask questions now at Grist.org (http://bit.ly/16MA6DW), or on Twitter using #ActOnClimate.

Learn more: http://go.usa.gov/DEVx

Well a clever lawyer for Peabody coal could use my arguments above that on the one hand the EPA promotes plug in cars by stating that power is generated with 100% efficiency and therefore powder river basin fired coal power stations emit only the “equivalent” of 534.397 pounds of CO2 per mwh by the EPA’s own admission and calculation and are well below the new 1,100 pound per mwh standard. 

On the other hand if Dr. Moniz and his hanging out friend Ms. McCarthy want to use real emissions from power stations they simply cannot lie to us about the 89 MPGe of a Tesla Model S.  This hang out is actually a thermodynamic fake out by two puppets of an administration that is all about letting “science” dictate policy.   

 It is time to draw a green line in the sand where the EPA and DOE start telling thermodynamic truth and not manipulate the math for electric vehicles when it suits them and their misguided policies of subsidizing friends and contributors and penalizing opponents.  

 Dr Moniz shame on you !  You are in lockstep with Dr. Chu and the thermodynamic fake out at the department of entropy.  Your hippie hairdo may make you look like you are hanging out and cool but your actions show you are just another puppet on a string.  As for Ms. McCarthy she comes from a family of puppets and her brother Charlie would shed a tear for the state of the country.  As for WC Fields he would say “there comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.”

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Oy Vey KIOR Needs Moolah





I did some checking on the word Moolah and it of course is slang for money but it also is the word for a cow’s teats.   Now you all think I have gone udderly crazy.  But Kior needs moolah real fast.  They need approximately $10 million by month’s end to survive another month.  To put it bluntly they need a cash cow!

Even if they sold approximately 100,000 gallons of fuel during the two months of July and August combined, their cash bleed was still around $20 million in those two months alone.  During July and August Khosla gave them $20 million of loans to cover the bleeding but now that line of credit is depleted.


Condi and Vinod must be begging all sorts of folks to come in and invest in Kior.  Will Vinod and or the Province of Alberta Canada step up with more loans?  The operational update Kior announced yesterday was pretty bleak.


If funds are not raised very soon, layoffs and write-downs will begin.   Actually write-downs of fixed assets should have already occurred as the plant has no hope of attaining the stated nameplate capacity. 

They claimed they would run with increased uptime in the 3rd quarter than in the second quarter where they ran at 43% uptime.  Let’s assume they managed 65% uptime in July and August.  Let’s assume they stuck with running the plant at 40% of its nameplate capacity (200 tons a day of bone dry wood versus 500 tons a day).   There are 62 days in July plus August so they fed approximately 8,060 tons (0.65 X 62 X 200) of bone dry yellow pine to produce 199,071 gallons.

This means they could yield 24.7 gallons of fuel per bone dry ton of pine (not the 72 gallons they claimed).  If their uptime was 80% and they ran at 50% of nameplate the yield will be only 16 gallons per bone dry ton of yellow pine.  Note the start-up of their semi-scale facility in Columbus Mississipi has now been going on for almost a year.   It probably has lined out to where it can go.  If KIOR does raise money and is still around to report 3rd quarter earnings in mid-November we may actually hear from them what their actual uptime percentage and capacity utilization percentage were. 

Condi is being used at Stanford as a high powered recruiter of football players.  She can also play the piano and tell us all about Mr. Russ Putin. Now she simply has to find a lot of moolah or Kior will go me-khoo-leh which is Yiddish for bankrupt.


Vinod has a new green start-up called MiKi-Orlay which takes out of date and rancid potato chips from convenience stores and extracts the oils and ferments the starch to make bio-diesel.  This company will make folks who speak Yiddish say that they invented Oil of Oy Vey.  Condi is probably looking up the hebrew4christians site for the word smart lawyer.

Huffy The CO2 Vampire Chicken Slayer





The EPA considers carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant that needs to be controlled.  They announced new standards for new power plants to be built in the USA.


These standards placed large coal fired plants in the same bucket as small natural gas generation stations.  The limit of CO2 emissions is set at 1,100 pounds per megawatt hour.  Traditional coal fired stations simply cannot attain this level so the EPA rules simply end the construction of new coal fired power stations unless they become ultra-supercritical stations on integrated gasification combined cycle stations.   The recent Bechtel projects in Indiana and Illinois proved these types of coal fired stations are prohibitively expensive to build, therefore the EPA has effectively mandated the end of coal as a fuel for any new power stations in the US.

The small natural gas plants have a threshold that was set with Bloom Energy in mind.  Al Gore probably met with the EPA to help set the 1,100 pound per megawatt hour figure.   The gangrene bloom box can keep its limbs at this limit.

1,100 pounds of CO2 per mwh means a heat rate at higher heating value of 9.402 million btus per mwh for natural gas.  This means the plant has to an efficiency of 33.4% based on the higher heating value of natural gas.  This may actually mean some reciprocating engines may also qualify for the small natural gas generation but it basically means the EPA is trying to push fuel cells (Bloom Boxes in particular).   I see right through this proposed legislation that Al Gore, John Doerr, and Colin Powell wanted.

My take away from this is that the case against Bloom Energy is actually stronger in Northern California.  The EPA has now listed Carbon Dioxide as a dangerous and harmful pollutant that must be limited.  I can therefore argue that as Bloom more than double the CO2 emission per mwh in PG&E service territory here in Northern California, Bloom Boxes should be banned from being installed in areas where they exceed the prevailing carbon dioxide emissions.  The California case against Bloom is therefore very strong and so is the case in Connecticut.    Bloom has influenced the legislators (like Huffman) in these two states to give them buckets of give away money.   When the EPA rules go into effect I intend to ask Mr. Jared Huffman to hold a house hearing on why the EPA can mandate limits on CO2 emissions from new power plants on the basis it is a harmful pollutant and he allowed bloom to emit 225% of the prevailing CO2 emissions in the air I breath in Marin County California.

Jared Huffman Mr. Huff and Puff posted on his Facebook page that Marin County is no longer known for its hot tubs in the back yard but for its chicken coops.  Huffy the Chicken Slayer boasted he has a chicken coop.
This from Huffy’s FB page “As a backyard chicken owner, I can attest to this phenomenon. “ http://www.marinij.com/novato/ci_24091171/chicken-coops-replacing-hot-tubs-marins-back-yards

 Little does Huffy know that poop from his coop ends up as methane emissions.  Methane is 21 times as bad as CO2 as a GHG.  Huffman is 21 times as bad as Woolsey who he replaced in the House.