Summer is Almost Over

This is Labor Day weekend and soon there will be a chill in the air as the sun gets lower and the days get shorter.  Gasoline prices in the USA are lower this Labor Day than last year motorists get to drive a crazy amount this long weekend.  US CO2 emissions are increasing and Tesla sales in the US are down considerably from last year but their stock TSLA is at an all-time high.   So is the S&P 500 stock index at over 2,000.  Life on the surface looks wonderful with a booming stock market, lower gasoline prices, and good weather predicted for the weekend.

The PV power stations in the northern hemisphere will see declining output all the way through March of next year.  My friend’s station in the Bronx had a few better weeks of power generation with the sun high in the sky and now the solar modules will soon have the dirt and bird dropping covered with ice and snow and hardly generate electrons.  This is the unstoppable cycle.  John Kerry finally has admitted that ISIS is a cancerous crisis and his boss will halt playing golf to deal with the worldwide threat posed by these terrorists.   Of course playing golf is a summertime pastime hence the timing of the statement by Mr. Kerry on the Labor Day weekend.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/30/us/kerry-isis/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Mr. Obama addressed the ISIS crisis as well as the Ukraine Pain at a press conference dressed in a lightweight tan suit.  He looked like he was going to a tea party in the Hamptons and was once again bewildered.  The Tan suit was a decoy to focus on, rather that his utter incompetence in foreign policy.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/obamas-tan-suit-buzzed-world-25186767

I think Mr. Obama should wear a Green suit as he wants to reduce CO2 emissions.  I found this interesting link where such a suit can be bought.

http://begreenman.com/products/green-suit

Quoting from the Product Details on the link:

“Wearing a greenman suit is an amazing experience that you won’t get anywhere else. First, it lets you stand out in a crowd. More importantly, wearing a greenman suit transforms you. When you put on the suit, and you feel like a superhero. Initially, it’s a little scary and awkward, but it forces you to break through your personal barriers and pretty soon, all of your inhibitions have vanished and you’re having a great time. Behind the mask, you are completely anonymous, and at the same time usually the center of attention. And not just because you are an eerily seductive ninja.”

Yes Mr. Obama your inhibitions of how to deal with Islamic Terrorists such as ISIS and Hamas need to vanish.  Of course if you wear the Greenman’s suit companies like A 123, Solyndra, Ener 1, Range Fuels, Cello and Condi’s Kior will thrive and make all the CO2 and bad news go away.   Wearing the Greenman’s suit on the Golf Course will also make you score like a pro and Fox News will not be able to see you to report on your goofing off during a crisis.

I plan on BBQing this weekend and taking a break from the bad news.  Yes I will be adding to carbon load in the atmosphere but the half gallon of propane I burn has a far lower carbon footprint than driving hundreds of miles and burning up tens of gallons of gasoline.  I think I will BBQ chicken as that seems to be what American foreign policy has become.

Another Not So Green or Good Week

The world endured a pretty awful week, with sad news coming from all parts of the globe.   The TV was filled with protests, war, drought, volcanos, and jihadists who hate a free world and a free press.  The protests in Furgerson Missouri had me thinking that folks become angry when they know they are not represented by the people in authority.   I empathize with this feeling as my US Congressman and my California Assemblyman have certainly ignored truth and have chosen to ignore my protests of the greatest greenwashing known on planet earth by their rich friends and patrons Al Gore, John Doerr, and Colin Powell.   The Bloomdoggle in energy is a continuing saga of crimes against nature and humanity and yet the plundering continues.
  

I guess CNN, Al Jazeera, Fox News, and the BBC won’t get high rating by showing Bloom Energy stealing several hundred million dollars under false pretense of being green.  I guess these networks will not get a single added viewer by showing that KIOR blew through over $600 million on hogwash they would make copious amounts of diesel from pine trees.  But images of war, rioting, and a crazy cop calling the President an Alien are left right and center on the news.

The President is not an Alien to the US he was born in Hawaii and this is fact.  But, he is an alien to honest energy policy and he certainly is alien to a coherent and strong foreign policy.  His DOJ is alien to the rule of the laws of thermodynamics and is remiss for not prosecuting former politicians for greenwashing and plundering the US as well as individual states and citizens for billions.   

If the poor folks in Furgerson knew just how much influence VCs like John Doerr and Vinod Khosla have over the president and where the big money goes - they too would be mad.  If they knew how much a dinner with the president cost at Vinod Khosla’s house - they would be mad.  If they knew that the poor in Mississippi are owed almost $70 million by Mr. Khosla’s company KIOR - they would be mad.   If they knew the poor in Delaware are forking over more than $2.5 million per month for the next twenty years to Mr. Doerr’s company Bloom - they would be mad.

Of course Anderson Cooper wants to keep a racist bigoted cop honest, but Mr. Cooper it is time to keep John Doerr, Vinod Khosla and yes the President of the United States honest.  Yes the very same President who talked pure nonsense in Cairo five years ago in his appeasement of religious zealots.  Yes Anderson it will take many hours of news reporting to present the people with the truth that went on behind the scenes to help Cello, Range, KIOR, Gevo, Amyris, LS9, Lightsail, Calera and other thermodynamic crap take billions of dollars of poor peoples’ money and give it to billionaires.   Of course these operatives do not make idiotic speeches at meetings where they claim to be Rambo and larger than life for the audience of idiots.   Wait, around the same time Obama made his idiotic speech in Cairo, Vinod Khosla did make a few idiotic speeches on green energy and how he was the guru of green.  Take a look at this clip on Earth Day 2009 at Google no less.  Soon I will blog of the greenwashing at Google who do no evil but simply lie about matters green.  ISIS and Hamas also claim to do no evil.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euXfy9c3Vuw

Here is Obama’s equally idiotic speech in 2009 in Cairo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_889oBKkNU

Both Vinod and Barak are talking heads.  Talk is cheap but reality of dealing with evil and energy is expensive.

KIOR at 12 Cents a Share

Condi’s green company continues to get more gangrene.  The stock hit an all-time low of 12 cents a share.  Condi’s patron Vinod Khosla and his good friend Bill Gates just do not know how to treat a patient with gangrene.   Actual these two guys are totally clueless in all things that relate to thermo and energy.

They also have a geothermal company called AltaRock that caused earthquakes  

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/science/earth/12quake.html?_r=1&

Bill Gates is more tied into Vinod than only the KIOR or AltaRock connection.   He invested in Khosla’s green fund as well

http://www.greenenergyreporter.com/funding/bill-gates-invest-in-vinod-khoslas-renewable-energy-fund-video/

Bill’s algae-to-oil company Sapphire is Blue not Green and laid off fifty workers earlier this year and got a new CEO last month.

http://www.xconomy.com/san-diego/2014/07/28/san-diegos-sapphire-energy-names-new-ceo-amid-signs-of-change/

When Chu Chu ran the department of entropy they too were thinking Sapphires were green not blue.

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/bioenergy/pdfs/ibr_arra_sapphire.pdf

Bill and Vinod know a lot about software and computers but the simply get an F in thermo.   Condi does not even know what day of the week it is and was last seen at Stanford playing the piano.   Haley Barbour in Mississippi is still trying to figure out what to do with the shiny steel facility in Columbus that KIOR is “safely” shutting down.   Haley the only part of the facility worth a cent is the chipper  that can mulch the rest of the worthless plant and send scrap to China.

It is time to refocus the department of energy on shale oil and gas and for the President to say he had terrible advice for Chu and Moniz and that Solyndra was just the tip of the green fiasco.   Gates and Khosla should simply go back to knitting binary numbers.  Condi should probably just play golf at Augusta where she can wear a green jacket. 

The Green Machine should get a medal of honor for pointing out all this nonsense years ago.  Congressman Huffman should finally meet with the Green Machine and listen to his constituent that has been begging for some representation.   But guess what the thermodynamic fake out will continue and Nancy Pelosi will still say the Qataris told her that Hamas is a welfare organization and that Al Jazeera lies less than Al Gore.   At least Al Gore has stopped saying that Al Jazeera is a news organization he is now saying they are a bunch of crooks and Ehab the CEO of Al Jazeera America pulled a fast right jab on him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/16/business/media/al-gore-sues-al-jazeera-over-current-tv-deal.html?_r=0

The Green Machine – “You can fuel some of the people some of the time, but you cannot fuel all of the people all of the time”

A real green guy

My friend Ophir is an engineer and his job is to manage projects for installing solar cells on large roofs of commercial properties for projects that are typically greater than one megawatt.  He has a real green job.   Ophir lives in Napa County and commutes to his office near my home in Marin County.  This is an 80 miles a day round trip.  Previously he drove his pickup truck when he commuted but on taking this job he bought a CNG powered Honda Civic and commutes using natural gas as his fuel.

His Civic get 40 MPG equivalent and he commutes 20,000 miles a year.  His old pickup got 20 MPG at best.   He would have used 1,000 gallons a year of gasoline had he not switched vehicles, now he uses approximately 62,000 standard cubic feet of natural gas a year.   Performing all the tedious algebra he would have emitted 25,000 pounds a year of CO2 in his truck and now emits only 9,500 pounds a year of CO2.  Of course he could have bought a gasoline powered Honda Civic and halved his CO2 foot print to 12,500 pounds a year.

Ophir also enjoys dollar savings by using CNG not gasoline.   His cost to fill up averages $2.40 a gallon equivalent.  He pays PG&E $2.20 per gallon equivalent at the PG&E yards where he can fill up during business hours and he pays Clean Energy $2.80 per gallon to fill up at their sites that are open for business far more frequently than the PG&E yard.  His bill for fuel in his car is now $1,200 a year versus $4,000 had he kept the pickup truck.  The fuel savings pay for his new car.

Ophir is a mechanical engineer and also a licensed contractor.  He is now investigating installing a natural gas compressor at his home.  PG&E has a special rate for homeowners who install home compression for fueling vehicles and the cost saving on his natural gas compared to buying the compressed gas at Clean Energy may well pay for his compressor as he will install the system himself.

His Honda Civic has a compressed gas tank that is set to operate at 3,500 psi.   Pretty high pressure!!   He told me he fills up once in a while in Berkeley California where the station actually compresses gas to over 3,900 psi.   Yeah those folks in Berzerkeley always had high blood pressure while protesting and causing mayhem.  The compression to 3,900 psi versus the rated 3,500 psi gives the car an extra 10% of range but I am not sure I would like to drive with an overfilled tank.  I am not sure I would feel too good with 3,500 psi behind my butt but the CO2 savings solar savings make Ophir feel comfortable.

Who Is The Bigger Liar Al Gore or Al Jazeera

Looks like the two Big Als are fighting

 http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/08/al-gore-sues-al-jazeera-for-fraud-194016.html

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-15/al-gore-sues-al-jazeera-over-500-million-current-tv-deal.html

Yeah Al Share The Word

UPDATE

I kind of remembered that Senator Di Fi's hubby Richard Blum was on the board of the company Al Gore sold to Al Jazeera I wounder if he will become involved in the latest suit.   Of course he will there is money to be made in the suit.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/07/al-gore-sued-current-sale-al-jazeera_n_2827366.html


I wonder how one says hanging chad in Arabic?  Kling Ons may well be the word !

BBC Says Israel Causes Global Warming

Dateline London August 14, 2014

The BBC has agreed with the UN GWBI panel that Israel is responsible for 95% of global warming and Qatar only caused a minor amount of the rise in sea levels that are being reported in Dover a town on the French Channel.

The UN GWBI is a special panel headed by former Prime Minister Tony Blair an adviser to Vinod Khosla in Silicon Valley.  GWBI is short for Global Warming - Blame Israel and had nothing to do with George W Bush Iraq.

To substantiate their position the UN GWBI panel said the Jewish State emitted 53 metric tons of CO2 per capita for the year 2009, while Qatar only emitted 44 metric tons of CO2 per capita for the very same year.

I did some checking and found that wiki does list carbon emissions per capita

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita

I did see that Israel did emit 5.3 metric tons of CO2 per person and was wedged between Switzerland and Sweden in their crimes against nature.   No doubt some “honest and fair” reporter for the Biased Broadcasting Corporation reporting from a tunnel and looking through the slit in a burka managed to multiply Israeli crimes by a factor of ten to make it look worse than the owners of Al Jazeera.    The reporter also failed to tell listeners that the United Kingdom a country that perpetrated crimes against humanity in the Boer War, the Opium War and the fire-bombing of Dresden emitted 8.5 metric tons of CO2 per capita in 2009.

The Board of the BBC said they will investigate the bias in their reporting but in essence they simply were using data provided by UN GWBI and that Tony Blair was a “reliable source” on rising sea levels and the underlying causes for this threat to mankind.   Supporters of Israel pointed out that 12 million Jews on Planet Earth while accounting for a significant fraction of Nobel Prizes did not disproportionately cause global warming and that again the biased media and that BBC and the UN GWBI have no right to accuse Israel of being disproportionate.   Al Jazeera the Qatari owned humanitarian news organization that told Nancy Pelosi that Hamas are environmentalists who care for the earth had this idiotic piece by Toby Cadman about proportionalism.  Toby is a Brit who still believes the Boer War was justified while defending the UK in ongoing investigations at the Hague

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/07/israel-violence-settlers-201473112953194805.html

Perhaps Al Jazeera should report on Qatari crimes against nature by having an opinion on per capita CO2 emissions. 

P.S.  I made up the part of the slipped decimal point, it was used to illustrate Bias and Anti Semitism.   Al Sharpton, Al Jazeera, and Desmond Tutu have yet to utter a word on the Rabbi who was murdered on his way to temple on the Sabbath carrying only a bag for his prayer shawl.    Maybe the murderers were members of PETA and the bag was made of the fur of Non-Jews.   PETA stands for Please Eradicate Tel Aviv and is headquartered in London.

Robin Williams Superman

Of course Robin Williams has nothing to do with thermo, but he lived in my town and he was the greatest comedic mind of the past 20 years.   Sadly he died yesterday in my little town of Tiburon and the world is focusing in tribute to this amazing man.  Robin attended the local high school and added massively to the humor and knowledge in the world.  He simply was a genius and a mensch of a person.  I doubt he read my pieces in our local paper the Tiburon Ark and I doubt he ever heard of the Green Machine.

I did a google search to see if Robin ever joked about energy using the words Robin Williams Joke Energy and got 33 million links.   The links talk to the endless energy that Robin Williams had.  One link discussed Meryl Streep saying that Robin had “unstoppable energy”

http://www.today.com/entertainment/meryl-streep-recalls-robin-williams-unstoppable-energy-1D80053927

Robin did look a bit like Bono and told a joke about Bono clapping his hands

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8CEBOHmEbk

I once joked in a blog that Bono told Al Gore that even Bono did not believe Al Gore anymore.   I do not know if Robin believed Al Gore although he did help Clinton and Gore raise money when Clinton was president.  I voted for Clinton twice so I do not hold that against Robin.  Note unlike most democrats I did not vote twice for Clinton in the same election.

Had Robin studied thermo he would have mastered it beautifully.  His mind was as sharp as a bell.  Had I tried to become a comedian I would have failed miserably.  It is very hard to say who the funniest man in Tiburon is now as we lost our funniest man ever.   Sadly that role of funniest man in Tiburon could be mine now.  Robin you made me laugh over and over and now that you are up there please tell God a joke.

I still have to convince those on earth like Al Gore that Doubt Fire that there is no fuel like an old fuel and fossil fuels are bloody old  and that you can fuel some of the people some of the time but you cannot fuel all of the people all of the time.  Robin your job is done and you certainly added in large measure to mending the world.  Have fun with your college buddy and good friend Christopher Reeves, he played Superman you were Superman.  The photo is of a sunset over the San Francisco Bay taken from Tiburon that I took last summer.  Each time I will look to the west over the bay I will think of how Robin lit up my life. - The Green Machine Tiburon CA.

Nice Photo From Capetown Today

A friend in Capetown shared the photo.  Nothing to do with thermodynamics but a really heart warming photo of people expressing friendship not hate.  Not calling for death to anyone.  The difference between good and evil.  Of course CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera will not carry this as it does not ferment hate.

The BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera should read what Isaiah wrote 4,000 years ago

"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil."

Things like the second law of thermo and the words of Isaiah endure.  Al Gore Jazeera will soon be forgotten.

Electric Vehicles In China

This week I read an interesting article on the real story of electric vehicles in China.  Not Teslas or BMWs but a host of small companies making simple EVs that have lead acid batteries (not lithium ion) and selling these cars in rural villages.

http://green.autoblog.com/2014/07/25/a-window-into-chinas-low-speed-electric-vehicle-revolution/

These low speed cars are pretty cool and make sense.  Friends then asked why these type of cars are not imported into the US.  The answer is safety.  A three wheel car does not need all the safety approvals.  A our wheel car does need them all.   That got me thinking about three wheel cars which are actually classified as motorbikes in the US.  I found this company called Elio that will soon launch a three wheel gasoline powered car.

http://phys.org/news/2014-01-three-wheel-car-gears.html

The article is a little wrong in that the car cannot accelerate to 100 mph in just over 9 seconds, the author mixed up kilometers per hour with miles per hour, but other than that the article is very revealing.  I do hope the Elio comes to market.

Tesla sales are dropping in the US.  Lots of hype about the Giggle Factory, the Model X, and then the people’s model but the Model S was a 18 month wonder and then sales have dropped in the US pretty precipitously as reported by Inside EVs.  Only 7,900 Model S Teslas sold in 7 months this year versus 11,850 last year.  This is in a growing market where other like the Nissan Leaf are gaining market share.

http://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/

Tesla is still hyping the Chinese market for their Model S but I think the company is selling a really wonderful car at a high price that has a limited number of potential buyers.  They should simply increase the price on their cars by another $20,000 and make some profit as they are in the luxury goods market not in a major market.   Even Chev has now admitted the Volt is never going to be a mass market vehicle.  

http://insideevs.com/general-motors-on-chevy-volt-its-not-a-mass-market-vehicle/

The Volt will have a new model coming out in about a year and will have an even smaller gasoline engine mated to the electric drive.    This is a pretty innovative internal combustion engine.

http://insideevs.com/sources-next-gen-chevy-volt-get-seating-5-1-0-liter-3-cylinder-engine/

A lot of innovation is happening in the automotive industry.  Navigant reported that within a decade one billion gallons a day of gasoline will be produced and sold worldwide.  This is pretty scary.  Back in 2006 the US peaked in gasoline usage at approximately 375 million gallons a day.  I drive about 15 miles a day and use about three quarts of gasoline a day.  I am well below average as a motorist and that is good.  I do hope to be using even less gasoline in ten years time when I buy a low miles Model S that someone got tired of.    I am still convinced that Elon knows th3 85 kilowatt hour battery pack in the model S is good for 5,000 charge discharge cycles and that one can get almost a million miles on a Tesla without changing the batteries.  My low miles Model S that I buy in 2024 may have over 150,000 miles on it. 

I am serious that the battery pack can go through 5,000 cycles.  Ping Batteries, the Chinese company, that I referenced more than 4 years ago in my US Senate Testimony claims their much simpler battery pack which is air cooled can last over 3,000 cycles with 70% of the capacity still remaining.

http://www.pingbattery.com/servlet/the-2/lifepo4-lithium-ion-phosphate/Detail

I was completely wrong in thinking that lithium ion batteries are not well suited for electric vehicles as I was wrong on the assumption of the number of charge discharge cycles the battery pack could survive.  The batteries last a long time if properly cooled and controlled and I do not see any reason why a 2012 Model S will not be running 25 years from now.  Sadly for Elon and Tesla they have to find new buyers each month in a crowded market that others have easily copied.    I doubt many of the 2015 Elios will still be running in 25 years.   As they say on Shark Tank it will get squashed like a bug.

That and KIOR Buys A Cup Of Coffee

A quick blog.   We all know the saying that and 25 cents buys a cup of coffee.   Vinod Khosla’s and Condi Rice’s wonder child KIOR is trading at 25 cents.  Hence whatever that is and a share in KOR will buy you a cup of coffee.

The greenwashers at KIOR cannot even read a calendar.   They filed with the SEC that they would hold their annual shareholders meeting on Friday August 6^th 2014.   August 6^th has come and gone and was a Wednesday.  

Form 8-K for KIOR INC

---

23-May-2014

Shareholder Director Nominations, Other Events

Item 5.08 Shareholder Director Nominations.

The information set forth under Item 8.01 of this Form 8-K is incorporated by reference in this Item 5.08.

Item 8.01 Other Events.

The board of directors of KiOR, Inc. (the "Company") has changed the date of the Company's 2014 Annual Meeting of Stockholders ("Annual Meeting"), which was previously scheduled for June 24, 2014. The Company's Annual Meeting has been rescheduled for Friday, August 6, 2014 at 8:00 a.m., local time, at the Hilton NASA Clear Lake, Endeavor Room, 3000 NASA Road 1, Houston, TX 77058.

Qualified stockholder proposals or nominations (including proposals made pursuant to SEC Rule 14a-8 and any notice on Schedule 14N) to be presented at the Annual Meeting must be received by the Company at its principal executive offices located at 13001 Bay Park Road, Pasadena, Texas 77507, addressed to the Secretary of the Company. In accordance with Regulation 14A and the Company's Amended and Restated Bylaws (the "Bylaws"), such proposals must be received by the Company not later than the close of business on Monday, June 2, 2014 (which is the tenth day following this public announcement of the date of the Annual Meeting). All proposals must comply with applicable Delaware law, the rules and regulations promulgated by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the procedures set forth in the Bylaws.

Dr. Chu was going to give these jokers one billion dollars of DOE loans.   Thankfully Solyndra busted and Dr. Chu’s boss said enough egg on the DOE face and the billion dollar loan to Condi and Vinod never materialized.   Sadly the diesel and the gasoline from yellow pine also never materialized.    Vinod Khosla and Condi Rice owe us all a lot of money and an apology.  

Tomorrow is August 8^th and at 8 am the shareholders will meet.  This is 8 8 8.  The shareholders will ask if the dog ate (8) the diesel.  Mr. Obama knows that Vinod has two pretty big dogs that could eat Bo in one gulp after attending the $32,400 fund raising dinner at Vinod’s house.

http://www.thesouthasiantimes.info/?param=news/10894

Mr. President, Vinod has nine ginormous green dogs that ate taxpayer money.  His two real canines are Condi Rice and Tony Blair who advise him.

Capacity Factors

In electric power generation a very important parameter affecting the quantity of power delivered and ultimately dispatched to users is the capacity factor of the generating system.

Capacity factor is defined as the total kwh (kilowatt hours) delivered in a period of time divided by the maximum possible kwh that theoretically could have been delivered in the same period of time.   The period of time is typically a year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor

Certain power generation stations are peaking units and only run for short periods of time when the grid is short of power.  These power stations are typically fueled with natural gas and are a simple cycle combustion turbine.  Some thermal power stations also run to provide ancillary support or spinning reserve to the grid and are not dispatching power to customers but simply keeping the voltage and frequency within specification.

Renewable energy power stations such as solar cells or wind have to rely on gas powered stations to provide voltage and frequency support and their capacity factor is also lower due to the intermittency of the renewable energy source (wind or sunshine).

The EIA does report on capacity factors for various sources of energy that are either renewable or fossil fuel based.  Nuclear and geothermal have the highest capacity factors and wind, solar, hydro and simple cycle peaking units have the lowest capacity factor.  This makes sense one cannot run a nuclear power station intermittently. 

http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=14611

Bloom Energy had claimed in Delaware they would have a capacity factor of 96% but actually only achieved 84% over a year reporting period.  Additionally this level was achieved as DELMARVA the utility gives the Bloom Boxes first priority in dispatching power to grid.  GE and other wind turbine manufacturers claim capacity factors of over 50% for their latest product offering yet wind energy has not increased its capacity factor over the past three years.    The peaking unit combustion turbines have a very low capacity factor of only approximately 5%.

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/07/01/ges-brilliant-wind-turbine-wind-power-cheaper-than-coal-or-natural-gas-part-3/

From the above one can see that the grid is a complex system and much surplus capacity needs to be in place to keep power quality and reliability acceptable.   Even Apple Computer overstates their capacity factor for their large 40 MW PV power station in Maiden NC.  Apple unfortunately sited this large privately owned power generation station in one of the rainiest spots in the country.  The rains are also constant month by month and season by season over the year.  We are fortunate in California that we have winter rain and winter is when the sun is the lowest and PV power is hardly generated.  Apple should have sited this power station in Arizona or California and not North Carolina.

http://www.weather.com/weather/wxclimatology/monthly/graph/28650

A friend installed 1.6 MW of PV cells on the roof of a warehouse in the Bronx NY and the capacity factor of this system has been far lower than was expected.  Sadly the capacity factor is around 12%.   My guess is there are a lot of sea gulls and pigeons who take aim at the roof.  Also the amount of dirt and soot on the PV modules in the Bronx will diminish the actual power than can be generated from the roof mounted station.   Additionally the contractor may have installed inferior panels, inverters, controllers, and transformers and all of these contribute to the diminishment of the quantity of kwh in AC form that are actually dispatched to the grid.  Shading of one panel by adjacent panels or shading by surrounding buildings and vegetation also diminishes the amount of power actually dispatched.

Developers of all power projects should pay careful attention to the real capacity factor that can be achieved in projects and all the companies who sell power generation systems tend to provide estimates of capacity factors under ideal conditions that actually never result.   Bloom promised 96% capacity factor and they also promised green energy.  They deliver neither but get paid a lot of money for their electrons not because of their electrical connection but their political connection.   Interesting Senator Feinstein who has assisted me with the US FTC investigation of the greenwashing by Bloom was one of the dignitaries who videod in to the formal launching of Bloom in February 2010.

http://gigaom.com/2010/02/25/why-bloom-energy-is-isnt-the-google-of-greentech/

I guess four years later after the real data on Bloom’ s performance is now known those like Ms. Feinstein with a brain and eyes can clearly see that Bloom hyped their performance and can say they were duped.  Sadly this company continues to hype their performance and their capacity to greenwash is 100%.  Perhaps some smart lawyers will be able to go after GE for hyping their capacity factor of over 50% on wind turbines if in fact it turns out that in the real world this is not so.   Remember the EPA has determined that carbon dioxide is harmful to the health and welfare of Americans.   If the Bloom Boxes and the GE Wind Turbines do not deliver as promised more power from inefficient coal and simple cycle gas fired stations is needed.  The clever lawyers will claim that like the tobacco companies these green hypers have adversely affected the health and well-being of people.   One does not have to smoke to inhale the excess CO2 so even Bill Clinton may join the class of affected citizens.   Al Gore will be a defendant as he is closely involved with Bloom and his fund once held a lot of stock in GE.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/al-gores-inconvenient-stock-portfolio-exposed-58965892.html

The latest holdings of Al Jazeera Gore's fund are in the link below

http://www.filingsanalysis.com/managers.php?id=0001375534

GEVO Gets The Heave Ho

Vinnod Khosla’s Gevo got the old heave ho this week when its stock tumbled to 48 cents a share today.  Three years ago when Vinnie was the darling of green gurus on the tree lined street of Wall Nuts, the stock traded at $25 a share.   Just like Kior in its dying moments it seems that Gevo is hyping their chances of success.  Kior now trades for 30 cents a share and is headed to a “safe shutdown”.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-01/gevo-sees-minnesota-biofuels-plant-breaking-even-in-2014.html?cmpid=yhoo

Yes Gevo can make isobutanol and ethanol from sugar or starch but the question is what is the real cost of doing this and why even do it?   Kior was completely misguided in making diesel from pine trees and Gevo is misguided by pretending to make iso butanol when they could simply run the Minnesota plant to make ethanol, distiller’s grain and corn oil and maybe make a profit.    But wait Richard Branson is an investor in Gevo and has to tout his virginity by flying a jet plane a few thousand miles on bio jet fuel.   That is why this whole folly continues.

Amyris, Vinod’s other bio fool bust managed to get some press that a GOL jet flew from Florida to Brazil with their bio fool.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/first-international-commercial-flight-completed-175239418.html

This utter nonsense of jets greening up by flying on bio fuel is pure green window dressing.   Perhaps the best way for green intercontinental travel is to bring back the Hindenburg and let it be filled with renewable hydrogen made from PV power.  

It is time for us to admit that all efforts should be focused on solar power and wind power and the bio fools were a complete waste of time.   Talking of solar there again is a glut of PV module capacity now that US Utilities have slowed down in next generation projects and China will fall 40% short on the installation goals for 2014.  The price of a module is back to where it was 20 months ago.  The price of solar stocks will likely soon drop but don’t worry they will not flame out like Cello, Range, Amyris, Gevo, Kior, LS9 or Virdia.  The solar stocks at least have a real product and are not frauds.  

Talking of bio fools it has been very quiet from Zeachem the folks who were going to make trees into vinegar and then the vinegar into wine in Oregon with help from the USDA.   But wait there is even a bigger BS idea.  Yes to make plastics out of air.  Not kidding the Cretin Broadcasting Service (CBS) that launched the BLOOMDOGGLE on Sixty Minutes published this. 

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/company-unlocks-secret-to-making-plastic-out-of-air/