Raser Technologies filed their earnings release today with no surprises. The company continues its path from a development company to a trading company and holds steady with their language and posture toward that shift.

The net loss for Q1 amounted to $4.6M, up from $3M this time last year. Revenue increased to $0.12M from $0.03M in the same period last year. Net cash improved due to the repayment of a note by AMP Resources and a private placement of $12.5M in the quarter bringing the net cash to $19M.

Raser has stated it believes it has sufficient cash to develop two, 10MW binary plants and bring them online working toward bringing 100MW per year online over time. Our research suggests that one 10MW binary plant is likely to cost $34M to develop and bring to operational state, it could be Raser is seeing something we’ve not yet encountered, but it could also be misplaced optimism in development.

The company continues its aggressive stance toward development, and that is a good thing.

Ormat, a leading geothermal operator and equipment provider, reported earnings today consistent with the pre-announcement last month. The press release is available to read here at your convenience.

In what must be a disappointing quarter for management, expenses were up on unplanned maintenance and revenue in the electricity operations were flat due to delays in bringing new projects online. The lone bright spot in this report is the performance of the equipment segment which saw an increase in sales from $16.5M a year ago to $18M.

Ormat management reaffirmed guidance that the company will be profitable for the year and that this miss was an isolated incident, or “it is unusual for so many issues to converge in one quarter” from the earnings call. We’ll watch Ormat carefully over the next few quarters, margins are thin and the debt load and debt service is high.

Renewable technologies are not all created equal, solar and wind are hot. These two technologies grab the headlines and are attracting R&D and implementation dollars in large hunks (solar more of the R&D and wind more of the implementation.) There is nothing wrong with that, both wind and solar have great benefits and anything that increases the footprint of renewable electricity generation is a good thing.

If we look at wind and solar respectively, we’ll notice that they each have strengths and weaknesses (as do all renewable generation technologies) that make it curious, in some respects, that these are the technologies that have caught fire.

Wind for instance, is relatively easy and cheap to develop (it’s pretty easy to see where it’s windy and a site assessment is cheap and quick to perform) on the advantage side. Modern turbines can provide capacity factors approaching 40% if sited well and provide large nameplate capacity of greater than 1MW per turbine. In addition, wind is modular. You don’t have to build a whole project at one time, several phases can be used to schedule the development which spreads cost and risk over time which is attractive to developers.

On the downside of developing wind projects, one doesn’t really know when the wind will blow, how fast, or how long. Yes, good site assessments mitigate this risk to some degree, but one is never quite sure of the wind. Consequently, the power purchase agreements for wind projects don’t bring in as much revenue as baseload technologies, right now, developers are lucky to get $45/MWh on their PPAs. Also, developers buy and install based on nameplate capacity which is now about $1.5M per nameplate MW. But, even with 40% capacity factor and 99% availability factor, at any given time the developer is harvesting only 400KWh per installed MW. Without the production tax credit, it would be difficult to make the numbers work for wind developers.

Solar (PV – not necessarily CSP) brings similar benefits and liabilities to the table as wind. Solar technology readily lends itself to small, distributed installations, something few other technologies bring to the table. As with wind, it’s pretty easy to develop as areas that receive good direct sunlight are obvious and site assessments are cheap and fast. The current generation of solar cells have efficiency levels approaching 20% and have a lifetime of 20 years. Unlike wind, solar remains very expensive to develop coming in around $8M per MW. The expected capacity factor for a solar project is in the 25% range. The cost of maintenance of a solar system is very low however, there are few moving parts and once installed, these systems are very reliable. Also, solar production tends to peak during the times that demand for electricity are at their highest, so the capacity factor and production to demand match is much better than wind.

The obvious disadvantages to solar are cost to develop and capacity factor. There is no way around it, solar is expensive to acquire and install relative to other technologies. The capacity factor of around 25% is also a limitation without sufficient power storage capabilities, which increase the cost of these systems even more. A hidden aspect of solar that isn’t well publisized is that the power produced is direct current and needs to pass through an inverter to enable standard AC power consumption from the grid, which causes even more power loss and cost.

That’s not to say that solar or wind are bad, they each bring benefits to the table, but in spite of their obvious benefits, their liabilities nearly preclude them from displacing say, a 200MW coal generation plant because consumers, really do expect the lights to come on when the light switch is flipped. That brings us to the key point of this entry: geothermal generation is a renewable technology that has the potential to displace coal plants unlike wind or solar, but is largely ignored in the renewable energy discussion.

Geothermal has its advantages and disadvantages like any other renewable technology. On the plus side, it’s baseload generation producing 90% capacity factor with 97% availability day-in and day-out. It uses traditional turbine generation technology that would be familiar to anyone with steam turbine experience (many fossil plants heat water to produce steam to generate electricity.) In closed system implementations, it is zero emission generation (and in open systems, near zero emission.) Geothermal costs on average around $3M per MW to develop, more expensive than wind, but far less so than solar. But better capacity and predictability than either.

On the negative side, it’s harder to know where to build such a plant. Unless there is a geyser or volcano, it’s not apparent to the lay person where geothermal resource might reside. Site assessment is expensive and takes a long time to complete relative to wind or solar projects due to drilling requirements. Even when a promising site is identified, there is no guarantee that it can produce at utility scale without drilling test holes and flow testing the resource.

Given the relative strengths and weaknesses of the harvest technology, it’s not clear why geothermal is largely ignored except that perhaps the resource it harvests is less accessible to the public. Anyone understands sunshine and wind, heat transfer from magma to rocks to water is a little more esoteric. But one has to wonder, given the benefits that geothermal harvest bring to the table if we should be diverting more of the attention, R&D, and implementation dollars to geothermal projects? As it stands, geothermal is the forgotten renewable.

Golden Eagle

From Renewable Energy Access:

Proponents of wind energy in the U.S. have long argued that the overall impact of properly sited wind turbines on birds is extremely low compared with other human-related activities and structures. Now a congressionally mandated study released by the National Research Council (NRC) on Thursday offers new findings to support this argument — and is recommending that implementing national-level policies to enhance the benefits of wind energy and minimize its harms would help guide state and local regulatory efforts.

Read more…

Over the weekend, another article cautioning on the evils of wind power, bird kills, made it into wide circulation. This is not a new issue and it’s not an issue easily solved as it pits two natural groups of allies against one another over a single issue. Generally speaking, people promoting the growth and use of renewable electricity generation are doing so not only out of the desire for profit but also to lessen the impact of electricity generation on the environment as a whole. And generally speaking, people working to protect the bird populations are doing so out of a sense that it is our responsibility to protect the environment and particularly those residents of the environment who don’t have a voice in the process, like plants and animals.

The key to recognize is that both groups have the same goal in common, these groups are not natural enemies. But, through the years wind operators and bird conservation groups seem to have lost sight of their basic shared mission.

Let’s be honest with ourselves over this particular tradeoff (avian death vs. wind turbines.) First, we need to acknowledge that the hunger for electric power is not going to slacken, it increases each year. Over the past 14 years according to Electric Power Monthly data, demand has increased over 30%. The demand for electric power has grown faster than renewable electricity generation can be installed and operated, so over that same period, while the gross amount of renewable power is much larger, the relative percentage share of renewable power is about the same and in some areas a little less. What does the heavy lifting for the grid? In order, coal (~50%), nuclear (~20%), natural gas (~17%), hydroelectric (~6%), and everything else (~7%.)

Since coal is the largest portion of the generation portfolio, let’s look at the impact of generating a megawatt hour. Emissions of around 1,000kg of carbon dioxide and around 15kg of sulphlur oxides, nitrogen oxides, and other trace contaminents like mercury. A megawatt of wind power by contrast is zero emission (yes, there were emissions accrued during manufacturing, transport, and construction but there no different than the coal plant had – so let’s not cloud the issue with that extraneous information.)

So in the end, we’re talking about trading off the negative environmental impacts of non-renewable generation vs. the health and well being of birds. The negative environmental impacts of non-renewable power generation affects all species on the planet. The turbines affect birds, not all birds, some birds. Not wholesale killing, an occasional bird death. When viewed through this lens, the answer should be obvious. Build as much renewable generation as we can because that will help the overall ecosystem and benefit all species, including birds. However, we should take measures to minimize the avian impact where possible. Ultimately, there needs to be a partnership between the avian conservation groups and the wind operators where cooperation is routine to serve a joint goal: minimize avian impact while promoting and growing renewable energy. No one relishes the thought of a Golden Eagle death at the hands of a wind turbine.

One item that has always been a curiosity for me on this issue is the singling out of wind turbines. Cellular telephone network towers, radio towers, buildings, and cars all kill these birds in large numbers too. I don’t see any campaigns to attack these structures; it only seems to be wind turbines that attract attention. It’s clear, cooperation, not conflict between the groups is necessary. Who knows, perhaps what is learned in minimizing avian impact for turbines could be used on other structures?

A final word on this, minimizing avian impact does not mean zero avian impact. The societal and environmental benefit of renewable power is worth making tradeoffs and clearly, this is one of them.