The VTA and The Wilted Bloom

The Santa Clara Valley Transport Authority (VTA) told Bloom Energy to get lost.   Late last year Anna Eshoo a politician on the left got ahead of herself  by leaning over backwards to gift $750,000 of tax payer money to the VTA to install  two Bloom boxes. 

http://www.siliconbeat.com/2012/09/18/vta-gets-750k-for-bloom-energy-fuel-cells/

Suddenly after folks started investigating the “deal” there was a change of heart for the Board of the VTA to further investigate the project.

http://www.siliconbeat.com/2012/10/02/vtas-bloom-energy-deal-is-not-a-done-deal-agency-to-pursue-competitive-bid-process/

That investigation is now done and the deal is off.

http://www.vta.org/inside/boards/correspondence/2013/03_mar/03_29.pdf

Good to see the VTA has realized the Bloom is off the rose.  We all know how I feel about the expensive, inefficient, and dirty Bloom Box based on the data we found in Delaware.   The onion is further peeled back via the data in the VTA pdf referenced above.

The 400 kilowatt system for the VTA was to cost $5.8 million or approximately $14,500 per kilowatt.  An automobile with a 150 kw engine costs $20,000.  Wow!!!   This is a record for a power plant.  Now the zinger the maintenance contract to keep the two boxes in repair was to cost $425,000 a year.  If we assume that the two boxes generate full power for 8,000 hours a year, the amount of power generated is 3.2 million kwh per year.  Divide the $425,000 maintenance cost by 3.2 million kwh and we get 13.3 cents per kwh as the cost for maintenance  alone.  Add to this the cost of natural gas for the inefficient boxes and the payback for the massive investment and power from the Bloom Boxes is well over 30 cents a kwh.

I say Bravo to the team in DC and Sacramento that handed out massive tax credits to the owners of Bloom boxes.  Bravo Mr. Jared Huffman now my Congressman who had a hand as an Assemblyman in the California legislation promoting Bloom.  Bravo Ms. Eshoo you almost gave the $750,000 away without even doing the math. 

The real Bravo goes to Mr. Michael T. Burns the general manager of the VTA who put an end to the sham project in his memo to the board of the VTA. (see the link above).  

Now we have Delaware data about how dirty the Bloom Box is and we have VTA (California) data how expensive the Bloom box is, I wonder how quickly my Congressman Mr. Huffman will agree to meet up with me so he can get some basic lessons on thermo and economics and not continue to sponsor gangrene legislation.  I think Huffman will hide as he and Eshoo are trying to still shore up support for the Administration in the House that is getting very close to landing some big fish in the Fisker (Bloom’s sister company) debacle.

The VTA memo also shines the light on a company called Alternative Energy Development Group (AEDG) out of Radnor Pennsylvania.   AEDG is partnered with Bloom as well as some other connected solar companies such as SunPower.

http://www.aedgonline.com/about-us/partners/technology

I will try find out more about AEDG who were unable to bring funding to the Bloom VTA project “due to insufficient financial return”.   My take on the insufficiency of financial return is that the Bloom Boxes are bloody expensive to build and to operate.

Of course if Apple, E Bay,  AT&T, Walmart, Target, Staples, Adobe, Coca Cola, BofA, Fedex, Life Technologies, Cypress Semiconductors, and others want to greenwash by deploying Bloom Boxes their CEO's should read this blog and maybe they will have second thoughts about false claims their companies are making about lowering carbon emissions.  Sadly we are paying over half of the investment cost of these unsightly Bloom Boxes.

Tesla The Anti Gravity Car

The share price of Tesla (TSLA) has soared.  They are trading at $78 and the company has a market value of $9 billion.  Great news for those long on TSLA and terrible for those who are short on the stock.

The stock zoomed after TSLA reported profits for the first time ever.  Also Consumer Reports gave Tesla an extremely positive rating.  For months I have written that Tesla makes an Electric Aston Martin and it is a fine car for the wealthy and that if I ran Tesla, I would up the price of each vehicle even further to extract as much profit as possible.

This is what Tesla is doing.  They have given up on the smaller battery pack, delayed the next cheaper model, and selling cars for an average price above $100,000.  They have basically told the US DOE that the government loans will be repaid in five years and they have backed off claims of having vehicles with 300 miles of range. 

They now sell the vehicles with financing and they are moving to Ex US markets.  They are basically selling high performance for a high price and there certainly is a nice niche market for these vehicles.

But their CEO, Elon Musk, once claimed in a Charlie Rose interview that he wants to lower global carbon emissions and he cares for the planet.  I guess he cares more for greenbacks than for green vehicles.  When it comes to carbon emissions the Tesla Model S is gangrene not green.

A guy who is short on TSLA and probably lost his shirt by betting wrongly on the direction of the stock provided a detail blog about how gangrene the Model S really is.  Here is the link to that long analysis.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1418421-is-the-tesla-model-s-green?source=email_rt_article_readmore

The reality of the Model S is that it achieves about 22 MPG when the efficiency of the grid and the energy needed to manufacture the 85 kwh battery pack are taken into account.  The US EPA rates the car as having a 89 MPG equivalent rating.  The EPA is real culprit as they have the duty to provide real data to consumers.  If the EPA is making political decisions to skew the mileage figures in favor of plug in electric vehicles then the Tesla Model S is Green.  If the real data are used the very same car is Gangrene.

Elon is a businessman and he knows he needs to sell very high priced cars and maximize revenues.   That the Obama administration wants to lie about fuel efficiency of EVs simply helps Elon sell cars.  The DOE and the EPA should care for science and thermodynamics but they are just the puppets of a public policy set by the Administration that pretends to care about the middle class.  

Tesla received $68 million of revenues for Zero Emission Vehicle Credits during the quarter for the 4,900 vehicles they sold.  These revenues are paid by other auto manufacturers to Tesla.  Actually they are a tax on the average motorist as the other auto manufacturers add these payments to the cost of the vehicles they sell.  OK so Tesla was profitable because other automakers coughed up $68 million of our dough to subsidize a vehicle that is gangrene because the government claims it is green.  The super-rich can buy electric vehicles and feel they are saving the planet.   As they say Welcome To America and Have a Nice Day.

http://www.autonews.com/article/20130508/OEM05/130509880/tesla-posts-1st-quarterly-profit-on-higher-model-s-sales#axzz2SuDxNyNp

This week we heard about the lies Susan Rice told about the terrorist attack in Benghazi.  The week before, we heard about the crony capitalism at Fisker.  I suggest that the US House of Representatives hold hearings on how the EPA calculates MPGs for electric vehicles.  If needed I will write testimony that the generation of power in the US is not 100% efficient and that the battery packs require massive amounts of primary energy in their manufacture.  I am sure the EPA will claim otherwise as someone high up in the White House will rewrite the second law of thermodynamics to suit the purposes of blaming an internal combustion engine for a rocket attack.

O Sol Mia - SoloPower

There is a famous Italian song O Sol Mia that has these lyrics

What a beautiful thing is a sunny day!

The air is serene after a storm,

The air is so fresh that it already feels like a celebration.

What a beautiful thing is a sunny day!

But another sun that's brighter still,

It's my own sun that's upon your face!

The sun, my own sun, it's upon your face!

It's upon your face!

When night comes and the sun has gone down,

I almost start feeling melancholy;

I'd stay below your window

When night comes and the sun has gone down.

But another sun that's brighter still,

It's my own sun that's upon your face!

The sun, my own sun, it's upon your face!

It's upon your face!

Now we have another failed CIGs based PV company called SoloPower.

 

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/solopower-suspends-portland-thin-film-cigs-solar-operations

Remember Dr Chu was the biggest supporter of CIGs chemistry for PV and the Chinese clobbered him with simple and extremely cheap silicon.  Old Chu is now a prof at Stanford and is looking for “another sun that is brighter still”.  I doubt Chu is contrite and doubt he is almost feeling melancholy.   He probably will give lectures to Stanford students explaining why CIGs was a better chemistry than silicon and that had the Chinese not conspired against him the sun would never had set on SoloPower and Solyndra.

From the photo above one can see that the idea SoloPower had, was to lay long strips of carpet like CIGs PV cells on a flat roof and save on installation costs.  Solyndra’s business plan was also to save on installation costs.  The Chinese plan was to make a cheap solar cell and let others figure it out how to install the cells as inexpensively as possible.  SoloPower never drew the loan money that Chu wanted to give them, but the State of Oregon got to see a spectacular sunset and is now foreclosing on the assets in the factory in Portland.

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2013/05/oregon_prepares_to_foreclose_o.html

As for me my favorite sun song is by the Beatles and is “here comes the sun”.    For SoloPower, Oregon, and Dr Chu they can sing the last verse as  “here come the Chinese - here come the Chinese – its all over – it’s all over   Sun Sun Sun”.

Coda Blue For Real

Coda Automotive has gone bust.  Just as the Green Machine predicted.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-01/electric-car-maker-coda-files-for-bankruptcy-to-seek-sale-1-.html


Wow they went through $344 million to sell only 100 electric vehicles.  The folks who bought a Coda for about $30,000 after Uncle Sam and California gifted them money have a real museum piece that actually cost $3.44 million to manufacture.  Coda was a bipartisan effort brought to you by Hank Paulson (Bush's sec of treasury) and John Bryson (Obama's sec of commerce).  Two real wonderful public servants.


Al Gore spoke to a reporter at the Milken Conference and said our government is owned by special interests.  His interview is that "our democracy has been hacked".

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/al-gore-our-democracy-has-been-hacked-s~1YqlMbTBWutZl_vcs14w.html





The video of him is like a SNL (Saturday Night Live) episode.  Is he for real?  Mike Milken served time for insider trading and hopes to redeem himself via the MIlken Institute.  Al Gore should get a life sentence for the insider trading his Kleiner Perkins group has done at the DOE.  When Fisker goes flat line Al Gore will say he was not involved with the company and any statements he made about electric vehicles were by an imposter who hacked his account.


Thomas Friedman the great "futurist" at the New York Times told Obama back in 2010 that saving the old internal combustion engine car companies was dumb as hell and that Coda the Sino American partnership was the wave of the future.

http://www.greenexplored.com/2013/02/tesla-is-deranged-while-coda-does-not.html

Tommy the world is flat and your prediction is as flat as a Coda battery.

Video of the House Fisker Hearing

The house committee has a link to a video of the entire hearing on Fisker.  Here is that link.


 http://oversight.house.gov/hearing/green-energy-oversight-examining-the-department-of-energys-bad-bet-on-fisker-automotive/


In the second session at about 1 hour and 56 minutes, Congressman Jordan reveals that the new Acting Secretary Of Energy Mr. Poneman had an "interest in Fisker".  DOE lawyers then recused Mr. Poneman from further involvement in the Fisker loans but this was after Mr. Poneman was actively involved in discussions and conversations at the DOE regarding the DOE loans to Fisker.

Yes Dr. Chu has finally left the Department of Entropy.  Poneman was sworn in last week to be the acting Secretary till the new secretary is confirmed.

I think that the gates of Fiskergate are opening.  Ray Lane has been axed from active duty as a "partner" at Kleiner Perkins.  Mr. Fisker has been axed from Fisker.  HP also got rid of their chairman Mr. Ray Lane.  The DOE got rid of Dr. Chu and not a moment too soon.

In the Nixon era we had Watergate and Mr. Nixon had to live with that legacy of an amateurish break in.  Mr. Obama will have to live with the legacy of the most incompetent and corrupt department of energy ever.  Of course Dr. Chu can claim he was an amateur but to do that he would have to return his Nobel Prize in low temperature physics.  President Obama can truthfully claim he was an amateur in fact he can claim he was a neophyte.  The President can return his undeserved Nobel Peace Prize simply because the world has become far less peaceful in the past five years even with his apology for the US's approach to terrorism and foreign policy under his predecessor.

I believe that Mr. Obama should offer US citizens an apology for the utter incompetence of and corruption at his department of energy.  He should openly assist the house committee that is investigating the connection of DOE loans to crony capitalists like Doerr, Gore, Powell, Lane, Khosla, and Rice    

As for Dr. Chu he should hang his brilliant head that knew far better in utter shame.  He simply is a physicist who sold out the laws of thermodynamics for political reasons.

Fisker Congressional Hearing - Bringing In Kleiner Perkins

UPDATE   One of the regular readers of The Green Machine alerted me that Kleiner Perkins has removed Ray Lane as an active Partner involved in Green Tech and is now a Partner Emeriti 

http://www.kpcb.com/teams/partners-emeriti

Just two days I saw he was Al Gore's and John Doerr's sidekick as a Greentech team member 

http://www.kpcb.com/teams/greentech

Ray Lane as the fall guy has fallen fast.  I hope to see that the next two to drop out and become Emeriti will be Doer and Gore.  This will soon happen for the good of KPCB, America and the entire world.  

I suggest you all read the link below.  It is an article by Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/potomac_watch.html

I have extracted the following from Ms. Strassel's article.


Fisker Automotive featured in a House hearing this week, as congressmen questioned how that luxury electric-car maker—now in financial straits—ever qualified for a $529 million federal loan guarantee. The Obama Energy Department is facing some awkward questions—a la Solyndra—about what role politics played in granting that subsidy.

Perhaps we need not guess. For an excellent study in how green-energy cronyism works, look instead to the near miss (for taxpayers) of Next AutoWorks. That startup applied for a $320 million federal loan guarantee in 2009, promising a Louisiana factory that would produce cheap and fuel-efficient cars. Next didn't, ultimately, get its loans.

Next had lots riding on the loan guarantees, including $67 million in grants from Louisiana. Yet by early 2010 the Energy Department had rejected the company's initial application. Kleiner Perkins partner Ray Lane stepped in as interim CEO, and Next revised its application. Yet even as an entirely new CEO took over in October 2010, the emails show it was Kleiner working the phones and offices in Washington to land Next its money.

Yet that doesn't stop the political team or Kleiner Perkins. Mr. Fisher informs Mr. McCrea several days later that he'd spent a "very long day yesterday with Next (10 am-5.45)" and that "Jonathan (Silver ex official of the DOE in charge of the electric vehicle loan program) talked to John Doerr and Ray Lane on the phone at the end. They agreed we need to have 2x/week calls to status." Despite the credit department's obvious disdain, the process would drag on through the September 2011 Solyndra bankruptcy. In October, Mr. Silver resigned; in November, Energy pulled the plug on Next. Kleiner Perkins did not respond to a request from the Journal for comment.

The Energy Department has long claimed that its loans were made on merit, and that in this case merit won out. Yet would that have been true if Solyndra hadn't happened? The emails show how well-connected benefactors used their political pull to go around credit officials and try to drive the process "top down." This is called "politics," and it underlines the folly of government moonlighting as an investor.

Was the process for Fisker (also backed by Kleiner Perkins) the same? The Obama Energy Department is keeping tight rein on documents, so we don't know. But the Next story shows we ought to. 


A few weeks back I blogged that Ray Lane resigned from the position of Chairman of Hewlett Packard so "he can concentrate on being the fall guy for Fisker and Kleiner Perkins".  But it won't stop there.  Fiskergate will bring in even bigger fish than Ray Lane.  It will haul in John Doerr, Al Gore, Colin Powell, and possibly Joe Biden.  A minnow that may also get caught is Delaware Governor Jack Markell.  Jack Markell wanted those Obama Good Paying Manufacturing Jobs.  Poor Jack slept with dogs and only got fleas.  Jack has to be scratching his head as well as the rest of his body.

Lane, Doerr, Powell, Gore,Biden and Markell thought and believed the price of batteries would drop real fast.  Way back in early 2010 The Green Machine told the US Senate and you all that batteries would not drop in cost.  What has dropped is the big sword of the second law of thermodynamics.   When Ray, John, Col, Al, Joe, and Jack are called for the upcoming hearings (and they should be called soon I hope) the only thing electrified in the room besides their testimony will be the chairs they sit in.  Actually I can see Al Gore and his five friends from the gang of six pleading the fifth.  There is now a fifth law of thermodynamics that goes as follows:

When any pretend green organization has Al Gore involved, that organization will eventually go stone cold and reach an absolute temperature of zero and a net worth of also zero.         Al Gore is brilliant at talk but really is clueless when it comes to physics.

Fisker Congressional Hearings

A watershed day today as Rep. Jordan of Ohio chaired the hearings about Fisker and the DOE loans.   The hearings were broadcast via a live feed and I watched most of the day long event.   The hearings will be a prelude to other hearings with far larger fish to fry on an all electric skillet.  In fact the next hearing may even have an electric chair.

I think the next hearings will bring in the two Kleiner Perkins professional VCs - John Doerr and Ray Lane.  Doerr is Mr. Obama's big friend and was host to the Silicon Valley dinner with the late Steve Jobs and other big players.  Ray Lane is the fired ex chairman of Hewlett Packard.   KInd of big fish but there are two other even bigger fish who have KP duty.  Note in the army KP duty is the messy job of being in the kitchen.

The two KP duty guys are Al Jazeera Gore and Colin Powell who advise KP.  Together with Doerr and Lane the four of them are horsemen of the green apocalypse.  The humorous part of today's hearing was when the ranking Democrat read from a news paper article about the Romney campaign about Romney getting four Pinocchios.    If the four horsemen appear the noses will go all the way from the Capital up to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Here is the email I wrote to Rep. Jordan's staff member Mr. Dilley after I watched the hearing.

jared.dilley <jared.dilley@mail.house.gov>
Sent: Wed, Apr 24, 2013 3:13 pm
Subject: Re: Fisker Hearings

Mr. Dilley

I watched the entire streaming video of the hearing.  Good job by Rep. Jordan.

All the members missed the point that the loan of $1.4 billion to Nissan for the battery and Leaf plant in Smyrna TN is not a stellar success.  Very few batteries have been produced and very few leafs have been sold.  The Leaf is not a great marketing success.  Nor has Ford sold many vehicles with lithium ion batteries and the plug in Fords have been dismal sellers.

Tesla is not a great success from the DOE (tax payer) point of view.  DOE was promised a $50,000 people's EV with 40 kwh of batteries.  This model has been abandoned.  The Model X is now further delayed and only the super wealthy are buying Tesla Model S cars.

For three years I have been saying that Kleiner Perkins (Gore, Lane, Doerr, and Powell) yes Colin Powell are the folks behind this mess.  Powell needs to be added to the statements about KP.  I hope the Congressman can get the Four folks from KP at the next hearing.  Maybe start with Doerr and Lane and then bring in the two former US officials.  I liked the part about Four Pinocchios.  These other four are Horsemen.


Also the Two Europeans were a bit dumbfounded at some of the humor.  I cant wait till the Qatari board member of Fisker is a witness.   

I got to say I loved the show.

Thanks


Lindsay Leveen The Green Machine

Here is how Reuters reported on the hearing

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/24/us-fisker-doe-idUSBRE93N14J20130424

here is a fox news link

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/24/obama-administration-had-advance-warning-on-fisker/