Originally published at Montara Energy Ventures.

After writing about the BLM land auction last week we said we’d correct any information that wasn’t right once the results were posted. Well, the results have been posted and here are the California corrections:

• We believed Binkley Geo Resources won two parcels. In fact, they won one 470 acre parcel.
• We believed Calpine was an active bidder, that bidder is identified as Geysers Power Company LLC. The street address associated with the entity still has us under the belief it is a subsidiary of Calpine (10350 Socrates Mine Rd in Middletown, CA.)
• The successful bidders were: Geysers Power Company LLC (2 parcels), High Valley LLC (2 parcels), Kelsy South LLC (1 parcel), and Binkley Geo Resources (1 parcel).

Moving on to Nevada, the changes have to do with bidders, we don’t believe we reported any errors, but have now identified successful bidders.

• In order of number of parcels won, the successful bidders were: Ormat Nevada Inc (22 parcels), Sierra Geothermal Power Inc (9 parcels), Raser Power Systems LLC (4 parcels), Alexandra Kingzett (2 parcels), Silver State Geothermal LLC (2 parcels), and one parcel each First Covenant Construction, Kodali Inc, Miller Dusty LLC, and Montara Energy Ventures.

Detailed results of the sale have been posted at the BLM California and Nevada web sites.

Originally published at Montara Energy Ventures.

Ormat International, parent company of Ormat, announced today that they’ve been awarded the contract to build and operate a 340MW facility in Indonesia called the Sarulla Project. This is a joint venture between Japan’s Itochu and Indonesia’s Medco Energi Internasional Tbk that amounts to an estimated $800M investment.

At present, Indonesia has geothermal capacity of about 787MW and estimated geothermal potential of over 20,000MW.

Have you ever been down to the last battery bar on your phone and needed a little extra boost? Then here’s a product for you (or, if you don’t want that vampire load from little charger blocks on your house, this could help too….)

The Solar Style multi-charger comes with adapters for various electronic equipment as well as solar panels to collect power and charge these low-current devices. There’s even an online battery to allow you to collect energy during the day and reuse it at night. This isn’t the answer to every problem, it can only charge one device and it doesn’t do laptops. But it does seems a handy little utility to have around.

There’s a new movie on the horizon called The 11th Hour. It’s a Leonardo DiCaprio project and it looks promising. If you liked An Inconvenient Truth, I think you represent the target audience for this picture. I noticed it was in limited release this weekend, perhaps I’ll be able to catch it when it’s more broadly available. I like the approach in the trailer with an attempt to appeal to our better instincts and to catalyze action.

Moller M200 prototype



Jetson’s Family Transport


The early prototype of the Moller volanator looks like something right out of the Jetsons. But later versions, like the M400 shown below have become more airplane/car hybrid than flying saucer. These folks seem to make slow progress toward offering a production flying car, but it is taking a very long time. I’m not so sure I want people zooming around over our heads willy nilly, on the other hand, the prospect of getting to a 400 mile away destination in 1.5 hours vs. 8 on the ground is certainly appealing.

Moller M400 prototype