The big story of the week is that Danish wind turbine company Vestas (VWS.CO) saw its share price plunge
after reporting a larger than expected loss on Tuesday. The company’s shares lost almost a quarter of their value, after the
company reported a 2Q10 loss of EUR 119 million (US$153 million).
Analysts expected a much smaller loss of about EUR 7 million.
Vestas CEO Ditlev Engel said the financial crisis is having a delayed effect on the industry, resulting in fewer orders than expected. This matches the warnings issued by the American Wind Energy Association last month, which said the pipeline for projects in development drops off significantly after the end of the year. And installed capacity in the wind industry is already down considerably from a record year in 2009. Vestas cut its full-year revenue forecast from EUR 7 billion to EUR 6 billion.
In other wind industry news, American Superconductor Corporation (NASDAQ: AMSC) announced that it has
acquired a 25% stake in Blade Dynamics Ltd. for $8 million
in cash. AMSC has been very successful in recent years licensing its wind turbine designs to Asian manufacturing firms. Blade Dynamics is a UK-based firm that is expected to develop even larger blades for turbines exceeding 5 megawatts (MW) in size. The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE: DOW), through its Venture Capital group,
also made a minority investment in the company. At the same time, the Louisiana Economic Development (LED) organization announced that Blade Dynamics will establish a manufacturing facility in New Orleans thatis expected to bring 600 jobs to the city over the next decade.
Following a delay of nearly two years, cellulosic biofuel company Range
Fuels announced that it finally has begun production at its facility near the rural, south-Georgia town of Soperton. The plant was originally scheduled to open in 2008, but the economic
downturn contributed to a big delay. Fortunately, deep-pocketed investors, like as Khosla
Ventures, and a Department of Agriculture loan guarantee helped keep
the company viable. Initially, the plant is producing cellulosic methanol from lumber industry scraps. Production of cellulosic ethanol is expected to begin in the next few months. Next summer the company plans to begin expansion construction to raise capacity to 60 million gallons per year.
Biofuel company Gevo, Inc., has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) of up to $150 million.
Gevo’s technology platform converts renewable raw materials into
isobutanol and renewable hydrocarbons that can be directly integrated on
a "drop in" basis into existing fuel and chemical products. The company says it is currently able to convert almost 94% of the plant
sugars theoretically available in a feedstock–which is a remarkably
high yield. Khosla Ventures is also a significant investor in this company, holding a 40% interest. In July, Gevo signed a non-binding agreement to supply renewable
jet fuel to United Airlines at its major hub airport in Chicago. Gevo
anticipates that the initial quantity will be 10,000 barrels per day,
beginning in 4Q12
Chinese solar manufacturer LDK Solar Co., Ltd. (NYSE:LDK) announced
plans to establish a massive new facility for solar cells and modules in
Anhui Province. The facility has a planned annual capacity of 1.0 gigawatt (GW) of
crystalline-based solar cells and 500 megawatts (MW) of solar modules. Production is expected to commence in 2Q11.
Texas-based Xtreme Power, a provider of utility-scale energy
storage systems, announced it has been chosen as the storage provider
for the Tres Amigas SuperStation.
Tres Amigas will be the first common interconnection of America’s three power grids. The SuperStation will allow for the transmission of renewable or traditionally produced power from one side of the country to the other. Extreme Power’s energy storage systems will be used to control and smooth the variations for energy delivery amont the Eastern Western and Texas Interconnections. Xtreme Power did not say how many of its Dynamic Power Resource battery units it will provide to Tres Amigas.
Startup thin-film solar company AQT Solar has attracted a lot of attention over the last
week. The Sunnyvale,
California, announced that it has begun manufacturing after spending only $15 million. That’s a mere fraction of the amount spent by competitors over the last few years. According to a Forbes article, the company cut its overhead by modifying common equipment for making computer hard disks. Furthermore, the company makes CIGS solar cells in the same format as crystalline silicon cells, so that assembly can be outsourced to companies that make silicon-based modules at efficiencies of scale. AQT solar currently has about 15 MW of production capacity and 20 MW worth of orders. And it plans to ramp up to 60 MW next year.
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