Tesla Had A Tough Week

The overall stock market did well this week but Tesla went into reverse.  Their results were bad and they would have been worse if not for the government hand out of some $80 million on them being a pretend zero emissions vehicle.  I like the car and think it is an electric Aston Martin, but It simply is a company not worth the price of its stock.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-reports-4th-quarter-loss-225128532.html

Elongate Musk their CEO made some crazy statement that Tesla like Apple will have a $700 billion valuation in ten years time.    Then the press went into a frenzy and said that Apple was working on its own EV that is like a minivan and called Titan.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-titan-car-project-to-challenge-tesla-1423868072

I have no clue if Apple will enter the auto market with their own car but it makes little sense for them to be worried about Tesla eclipsing them as the most valuable stock on Wall Street.  My belief is that Tesla will have massive competition from other auto makers and Tesla’s war chest is too small and they had better have a capital raise or else they will get squashed like a Bug as the guy on Shark Tank says.

I found an article that a team of engineers in Sri Lanka are building a very high performance EV called the Vega.

http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20150211-meet-vega-sri-lankas-900-horsepower-supercar

I remember the Chevy Vega that competed against the Ford Pinto and to me Tesla is Pinto Bean when it comes to the global auto market.

This basically tells us that building an EV is not that difficult and many companies will have offerings that match Tesla.  The heart and soul of the EV is the battery pack and Elon is right to want to be a leader in battery technology and manufacturing.  The problem is that LG Chem and Samsung are the leaders and who knows how many Chinese companies will compete in batteries for EVs.  

I listened to a talk by Dr. Chu here in Marin and he said he and a prof at Stanford are doing research on Lithium Sulfur batteries and while they may fail, he thought this was better chemistry and cheaper chemistry than the batteries Tesla is using.  

If I was President for a day and could set energy policy I would ask the question on how many cycles the present batteries can endure in a car like the Leaf.  If the cycles are over 2,000 then I would instruct the VA to set up a program of leasing Leaf type EVs to Veterans at a price of $150 per month for a ten year lease.  This would put the car in the hands of a million people who actually need subsidized transportation.   I would end the $7,500 gift to the better off folks and concentrate via a VA leasing program to make the EV affordable to a mass market. 

I doubt Elongate will bring us the people’s EV.  I doubt Apple will bring us the people’s EV.  I doubt the Sri Lankans will do anything in global EV market but play cricket.    Maybe Vega is the Tamil word for Edsel?   What I do know is the Teslacle is falling and Elon’s voice will crack when all the competition hits.  I doubt the leery guy on the Shark Tank, Kevin O’Leary, would invest in the E Vega in Colombo or the Giggle battery factory that Harry Reid but never right helped steer to the Silver State.  I wonder if Colombo the capital of Sri Lanka was named after Charles Coulomb who is probably getting a charge in heaven out of all this EV talk.

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

Who is Edward Randolph?

Unlike George Washington or Bill Clinton, Edward Randolph was never president of the USA.  Unlike Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton, Edward did zero work in the scientific arena.  So why is the Green Machine concerned about Edward Randolph?  The answer is for the simple reason that he is part of the BLOOMDOGGLE.  He is actually a big part of the BLOOMDOGGLE.  He helped put DOG in the doggle.

Edward is the Director of the California CPUC Energy Division.  That is a very prominent position at the CPUC and his staff should have made sure that the CPUC issued SGIP impact reports that were correct.  We know his staff let Itron (their consultant) greenwash the carbon emissions savings under the self-generation incentive program (SGIP).  In fact the CPUC is so messed up in reporting the carbon emissions saved under the program that the CPUC has not yet issued the Impact Report for the year 2013.  Their last report of this billion dollar program was for the year 2012.

http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/energy/Resources/about.htm

Also Edward decided to take it upon himself to tell his subordinates at the CPUC that the NBC Bay Area Investigates piece on Bloom Energy’s Greenwashing was not a “story”.  I have an email from July 11, 2014 from Edward Randolph telling his subordinates at the CPUC that “The point of all of this is to convince the reporters there is not a story here (which there isn’t) but

the more we give them data tells a complex picture the more likely they are to misuse it.”

Well Mr. Randolph the NBC reporters did have a story, they had a massive bloody big story.  They did not misuse data.  Itron and the CPUC misused data and Bloom lied about data.  You see the Green Machine was helping NBC all along the way to understand the data.  NBC had someone on their team that understood thermodynamics.  If only the CPUC Energy Division had a staff member who understood thermodynamics we would not have had the BLOOMDOGGLE. 

So why was Mr. Randolph so worried about the BLOOMDOGGLE story?   Well before he became a high level operative at the CPUC he was an equally high level operative in Sacramento.  He had a hand in getting the SGIP legislation passed.   He like Jared Huffman helped legislate for the BLOOMDOGGLE.  Mr. Randolph’s time in Sacramento is well described in the link below.  From 2003 till 2010 he was the Chief Consultant to the California State Assembly on Utilities and Commerce.

http://www.caiso.com/Documents/Edward_Randolph-Director_Energy_Division-CPUC.pdf

In the BLOOMDOGGLE, we have the political strategist consultant now becoming the Director of the division that oversaw the SGIP.  Of course this operative did not want a “story” he wanted the data hidden just like Bloom hides the sulfur waste.  Did Mr. Randolph want his subordinates to give “responsible” answers and meet “all requirements” of the PRA when dealing with the press?  He would say yes.  I would say no.  Those are Bloom’s quoted words when it comes to their handling of solid sulfur waste that only the Green Machine found.   

The CPUC is there to protect the ratepayers.  That is their mandate!  Sadly the military industrial congressional complex has operatives like Mr. Randolph who prefer to protect special interests rather than ratepayers.  The President of the CPUC (Peevey) resigned and I think the CPUC needs a lot more spring cleaning to get back to the job of protecting we the people rather than the Bloomdogglers. The BLOOMDOGGLERs claim to have a war on carbon.  I question if they really care about carbon or just wish to enrich the complex.   

Mr. Randolph was asked to comment on this story.  I am awaiting his reply.

Mississippi Goes After Khosla

The Magnolia State has accused Vinod Khosla and his cronies of fraud in the civil case that involves the failure of Kior.  I have blogged so often and so long that Kior was a thermodynamic fake that it was inevitable that Mississippi would take this action.

http://msbusiness.com/blog/2015/01/15/miss-files-fraud-lawsuit-khosla-kior-failure/

The bigger thermodynamic fake than Kior involving a lot more money is Bloom Energy.  The Golden State, the First State, and the United States should follow the Magnolia State’s lead in tackling greenwashing fraud and go after the officers, directors, and major shareholders of Bloom.

Interestingly Old Miss did not name Condi Rice in their suit even though she profited as a director of Kior by an insider trade of their shares and uttered some false story on the “reality” of Kior’s technology saving America from imported oil.  They must have decided she was just too slippery to try catch or maybe she never even attended board meetings and simply was there as a figurehead to help navigate and exploit the military industrial congressional complex.

http://www.greenexplored.com/2013/03/kior-ships-essentially-zero-biofuels.html

The targets of the suits that should be filed in the BLOOMDOGGLE should include John Doerr who is three times as wealthy as his partner Khosla.  The Province of Alberta investment arm Aimco should be co named as a defendant.  TJ Rodgers and Colin Powell should also be named as defendants as they are listed as “independent directors”.  They are about as independent as a six month old infant that has not yet been weaned.  Of course in the Kior case the CEO was named and in the Bloom case their CEO KR Sridhar is perhaps the biggest transgressor of the laws of thermodynamics that has ever existed should be named as the number one defendant.   He is after all the “inventor” of the BLOOMDOGGLE.

http://www.bloomenergy.com/about/board-of-directors/

People think of Mississippi as being far behind California.  Actually the Magnolia State is ahead in measles inoculations and going after fraudulent greenwashers.  CNN wrote below that old Miss can teach Moonbeamers about the prevention of measles.  I think Old Miss can show us how to put greenwashers to face the wheels of justice.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/04/opinion/sutter-vaccine-mississippi-california/

The one officer of Bloom who sold these boxes is Matt Ross their Chief Marketing Officer.  He was interviewed by the press after the NBC report on Bloom's greenwashing and had this to say.  "Matt Ross, chief marketing officer for Bloom, said the NBC story was misleading. "Their report is a hodge podge from different time periods. They're comparing apples to oranges to rocks," Ross said"   

Mr. Ross look at the chronological data in the charts below from the data AC Transit gave me, the Boxes you market as providing  clean, reliable and affordable electrons actually generate dirty, unreliable, and bloody expensive electrons.  Mr. Ross as the chief marketeer of the BLOOMDOGGLE I hope you get named in one of the suits.

The storm has passed

Last night we had a strong Pacific storm that blew over plants in our yard.  As I am the Green Machine the plants were potted and some large pots toppled but thankfully the pots did not break.  One pot with a large tree is too large and too heavy for me to right, so I will get some help in straightening things out.  Nature is very powerful.

In a twenty four hour period three inches of rain fell here on the Tiburon peninsular.  Let’s assume that the land area of our small peninsular is ten square miles.  This equals an area of 278.78 million square feet.  Three inches is a quarter of a foot, hence multiplying area by height we get the volume of water that fell in the twenty four hour period and this equals 69.695 million cubic feet of water fell upon us.

This equals 521.319 million gallons or over half a billion gallons of water.  For argument sake let’s assume the clouds were at an elevation of 5,000 feet and the potential energy lost in the 24 hour period by this mass of water is approximately 8.268 million kilowatt hours.  The 4,000 homes on the peninsular used approximately 100,000 kilowatt hours of electricity in the 24 hour period.  This means that the potential energy in the storm that was lost by the water dropping from the clouds to the ground could have powered all homes in the peninsular for 82 days.

The Marin Municipal Water District claims all of its customers use approximately 15 million gallons in a day.  This means the single rainstorm’s quantity of water that fell on our peninsular in that one day could have served all of the Marin Municipal Water District’s customers for almost 35 days.  Of course 99% of the water went to the San Francisco Bay.  The land was already soaked and we don’t have dams to collect the rain that falls upon the small Tiburon Peninsular that is surrounded by the bay.

These data show how powerful the rainstorm was.   The Hoover Dam generates about two million kilowatt hours each hour.  The rain that fell upon us here in the Peninsular  in that one day could have powered the Hoover Dam turbines for 4 hours.  Think of the rainstorm above only the small Tiburon Peninsular as being one sixth as powerful as the Hoover Dam.

Of course the storm covered an area far larger than the peninsular where I live.   The area of the storm was perhaps ten thousand square miles and the power in the lost potential energy of all of water in the storm approximately equaled the combined power of 160 Hoover Dams.  This was one powerful storm.

The Marin Municipal Water District reported that on February 1, 2015 that the dams in the district are already 97% full and that storage is at 120% of normal for this time of year and twice as full as last year when we had a terrible drought.  The district has raised rates for six of the seven previous years and has asked customers to cut back on usage as we had experienced a drought.  Now that the drought is broken here in Southern Marin will the district roll back rates and tell us to use more water?   I doubt that will happen but then again I did not believe the long story of our drought would end so rapidly with a few massive storms of the century.  Of course we are still in the early part of the century.  Last year we had 3.8 inches of rain from July 1 to Feb 1, this year we have had 31.4 inches in the same period and adding this latest storm that will end on Monday our rainfall for this year has been plentiful.

Just like the weather it is hard to predict the price of oil.  My spectator blog got a few irate responses that the Green Machine must not be a spectator.    Guess what some things are just beyond my power to move like the large potted tree that toppled over.  I know my limitations and obey the second law of thermodynamics as well as Newton’s laws.  In a large storm I know to stay inside and just watch through my window, I will let others pretend they can tame the flow of 160 Hoover Dams.

Bloom Energy - AC Transit Is Their Terminus

I blogged that AC Transit was Bloom Energy’s smoking gun.  This greenwashed company essentially faked their greenness and now AC Transit data further proves this to be true.   Real month by month data for the period April 2013 till October 2014 provided under the CA PRA by AC Transit to the Green Machine

The contract language that I reviewed under the PRA also is very interesting.  Bloom mentions the “desulfurization bed canister” but never revealed the quantity and composition of the solid waste with sulfur.  The contract also has reference to Bloom’s previous but now changed spec sheet for the ES 5700 fuel cell.  Also the contract clearly shows that the system installed at AC transit will generate 420 kilowatts with a maximum usage of 2.64 million BTUs of pipeline natural gas per hour.   This is a claimed minimum lifetime efficiency of 60.12% based on the lower heating value of natural gas.  Even at startup the boxes did not meet this minimum efficiency.  In October 2014 the monthly efficiency was 42.6% based on the lower heating value of natural gas.  After Bloom was caught greenwashing in the NBC Bay Area report they changed their spec sheet to claim an efficiency range of 52% to 60%.  Well 42.6% is much lower than 52% and the spec sheet needs further revision!

The system is also not as reliable as Bloom promised AC Transit.  The same PRA data show the monthly capacity factor of the Bloom Coffins.  Bloom promised a 97% capacity factor when claiming AC Transit would save 1,500 tons a year of CO2 emissions.    The capacity factor for the month of October 2014 was only 72.8%.  The chart below shows the decay of the reliability of the Bloom coffins.

The AC Transit information proves that Bloom fibs about efficiency, fibs about reliability, fibs about carbon savings, but most of all simply lies about solid wastes with sulfur.   The AC Transit information also implicates a global NYSE listed engineering company in the BLOOMDOGGLE.  Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. was hired for $125,000 to provide design, procurement, and construction support for the Bloom coffins at AC Transit.  I have contacted a senior commercial executive at Jacobs to find out if Jacobs knew of the fibs and lies that Bloom Energy tells unsuspecting customers.  When I hear back from Jacobs I will report on this.

Who Knows What Oil Price Will Be?

Several months ago I had a telephone conference call will some folks who know quite a bit about energy.  Oil prices were around $100 per barrel then.  The gurus told me that big money was betting prices would drop to $70 a barrel and I reported this to my client in the energy business.  I did expect a drop in oil prices, but never imagined how far down it would go.

I am not a fortune teller but at this level of oil price many fortunes have been lost and many companies may see shutdown of their production.  Big Oil Companies like BP, Exxon, Chevron, and Shell have slashed budgets.  Russia is reeling and the American motorists are smiling while filling up at the pump.   Boom towns in North Dakota may just empty and Texans may not boast as much.  But what will happen is that cheaper oil will mean more added carbon in the atmosphere. 

Everyone knows now that biofuels from cellulose were a thermodynamic pipedream and a myth.  The US produced less than 1,000,000 gallons of cellulosic ethanol in 2014.  Perhaps we will produce as much as 10 million gallons this year with new plants that started up in Iowa and Kansas.  This is a drop in the bucket.  Vinod Khosla and the VC who bet their money and took taxpayer money for these bio fool pipe dreams did not succeed in making OPEC weaker, they just proved that the laws of thermodynamics rule.  A company called GEVO that I said would get the heave ho is now trading at 13 cents a share.  It once traded for $25 a share.  KIOR once had a market cap of over a billion dollars now it is worthless.

Bigger cars and trucks will sell more as motorists now think $2 a gallon gasoline is here to stay and the whole cycle of waste will repeat itself till gasoline goes back to $4 a gallon.  Then we will say Houston we have a problem. 

I wish I could tell you all that we have a real plan on what to do to start to lower carbon emissions in a real way but each time we make a little progress, OPEC or some other group comes up with a way to manipulate a market and cause massive economic and ecologic dislocation.  The world just runs that way.  Greed and Fear drive markets.  Thermodynamics is different it does not depend on greed or fear it just makes entropy increase as time progresses.  The rule that time progresses in the direction entropy increases is never going to change so we just have to look forward to a more disorganized future.  We can all wish it will be different but it won’t.  That is why I cannot tell you where oil prices are headed.   I just drive as little as possible and hope that the Super Bowl is a close game.  I am sure there is statistician somewhere who can correlate a NFC win with low gasoline prices.  My head is spinning and I cannot even pretend to tell you what gasoline will cost in February 2015.  

Just like watching the Super Bowl, the Green Machine is a Spectator when it comes to predicting energy prices.

Nat Gas Plus Wind and Solar A recipe For Success

There are many who think shale gas is bad.  I do not!  There are many who think PV and wind power generation are bad.  I do not.  Of course wind and solar still receive subsidies and sometime the solar cells are placed in locations with little sunlight over the year but inherently both wind power and solar power if properly located can generate significant amounts of energy for the grid.  My solar project in the Atacama desert of Chile dispatched 270 gigawatt hours of power in a year from 100 MW of peak capacity (>30% capacity factor).  Of course in upper New York State or Ontario Canada the same cells will be lucky to dispatch 40% of this amount of energy (12% capacity factor).

The real reason that the grid can take more and more PV and Wind generation is that shale gas has lowered the cost of natural gas significantly ($10 per million BTU to $3 per million BTU) and gas fired power stations can run and provide the grid stability from spinning reserves and what are called ancillary services.   Had natural gas remained expensive then dirty coal power stations would need to generate power for the grid and also provide the spinning reserves.  Now natural gas fired station do the job more and more.

Therefore one has to come to the conclusion there is a good and symbiotic relationship between shale gas and the renewable energy from PVs and wind.  I discussed this a little as a hypothesis back in 2003 when I wrote my book on energy and sustainability Hydrogen Hope or Hype?

http://www.amazon.com/Hydrogen-Hope-Primer-Energy-Sustainability-ebook/dp/B0070YIZWY

Of course in 2003 both wind and PV were more expensive but the book did contemplate an improvement in cost due to a “Moore’s” type law of learning for these technologies.   The book showed an acre of land can yield approximately 10,000 kwh of energy per year if dedicated to corn ethanol, 100,000 kwh per year if dedicated to wind (the land can still be used for food), and 1,000,000 kwh per year if the land was covered in PV cells.  The efficiencies of the wind turbines (larger and better blades, taller, better gear boxes, etc.) have probably gone up by 50% since the time the book was written.  The efficiencies of the PV cells have also increased approximately 50% since the book was written.

The book also foretold that fuel cells would be a Betamax technology.  Technologies that would remain expensive, and would not become widely adopted.  Wow I was correct!    The book foretold of the wonders of LED lights and flat panel displays, again brilliantly spot on.   The one hoped for technology in the book that did not materialize was the lower cost production of Titanium metal from Titanium Dioxide (found in sea sand).  This technology has made no progress and Titanium remains very expensive.  Had inexpensive titanium metal become available cars and airplanes could have been lightened and nuclear waste could be safely stored in drums made of Titanium.  Cambridge University in the UK was working on the Titanium from TiO2 process in 2003 but they simply hit a brick wall. 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925838805016348

I have Titanium frames on my spectacles, but I still have a 1999 C 280 Mercedes made of heavy steel.  Gladly the PV cells, the wind turbines, and the methods to improve shale gas production saw wonderful improvement since I bought my car in December 1998.  Mercedes makes such a fine German car that I will hold onto it until the Brits finally succeed in making inexpensive Titanium.