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Bastida

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  1. Five: Insurance (RLI, MBI) Consumer electronics (AAPL), Oil (ATPG), Mining (ALS), Infrastructure (BAM). Regards, Bidatzi M. Bastida.
  2. 47.68% here. Mostly thanks to HWKN and also AAPL, BAM and ATPG. Regards, Bidatzi M. Bastida
  3. Hello, I just found a very useful course about Valuation at Academic Earth http://academicearth.org/courses/valuation It has about 30 hours of video content (free, of course). Maybe it's useful for someone else. Edit: There's a lot of complementary material for the course (lecture notes, spreadsheets, valuations...) at the professor's webpage at NYU Stern School http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/equity.html Best regards, Bidatzi M. Bastida
  4. Check out the kind of stuff that can be done with XBRL and a good multidimensional analysis tool (Quantrix Modeler, in this case. Think MS Excel dynamic tables on steroids) http://www.quantrix.com/QuantrixandXBRL.pdf Regards, Bidatzi M. Bastida.
  5. I've been thinking about this recently. There's going to be amazing innovation in this field in the next few years. The advent of XBRL will usher a wave of applications and web services that will make stuff like 10k Wizard look like the Flinstones car. Right now, someone is in a garage somewhere working in something involving XBRL, SPARQL and some amazing visualization and querying interface that will blow everyones pants off :-) Regards, Bidatzi M. Bastida
  6. Best analysis I've read about the economics of the Bloom Box and all the buzz that has surrounded the official launch: http://www.greenchipstocks.com/articles/bloom-box-fuel-cell-energy/756 Best regards, Bastida.
  7. Hi again kawikaho, I'm an industrial engineer and I also work in healthcare. Mostly IT but we also do a lot of specialized medical training with fancy simulators and gadgets (we have an ISRG DaVinci in our main training facility for example). Best regards, Bastida
  8. Hi kawihaho, first of all I want to apologize if I came up as rude in any of my previous replies. It was not my intention at all, I'm enjoying this discussion a lot. Regarding the Bloom Box fuel, the (now online) data sheet says "Natural gas, directed biogas". I think that settles the matter. About hydrogen production, although that question is now an issue not directly related with the Bloom box, I totally agree that getting the H2 from water (and renewable energy sources) is much more sustainable than from NatGas. But electro-hydrolysis remains a terribly inefficient process (and includes nasty stuff like Sulphuric Acid to make the water conducting so that electrolysis can work). I know there's some promising work with genetically modified bacteria that produce hydrase and feed on C02 and sunlight, and other really imaginative approaches that someday may become the mainstream way of making H2. I'm not aware of systems like the one you mention: sunlight producing hydrolysis at a cathode without electricity? Or are you referring to methods of producing electricity from sun light other than PV? thermal concentrators and that kind of stuff? The Bloom Energy site states an electrical efficiency >50% (I think is safe to assume that not much more than 50). This is very good, a Capstone turbine of equivalent output (100kW) is around 30% electrical efficiency. We need more info to compare uptime, maintenance requirements, degradation, manufacturing cost... I mean, Siemens and GE have SOFCs up and running in several test sites. But they're clearly MUCH WORSE at generating marketing buzz than Mr. Doerr :-) Best regards, Bastida
  9. Well, line-loss is clearly an additional concern. Transporting nat-gas is a little bit more efficient than electricity but I don't see a difference as big as 30%. Here in Spain, average electricity line-loss is around 20%. Isn't conversion efficiency a BIG factor in determining cost per watt? Because you need to take into account effective installed watts. I'm tired of hearing about "4kW (peak)" solar panels, giving the impression that the thing is able to output that for more than about 40 minutes a day. In determining the cost of an installation that provides X kWh per day to cover specific needs, of course conversion efficiency matters. Having horrible conversion rates is not good, regardless of the primary energy source (but yes, it's a bigger problem when you start from fossil fuels). Best regards, Bastida.
  10. Hi kawikaho, the Bloom Box runs on natural gas (methane, basically) not hydrogen. PEM fuel cells usually run on hydrogen (if you feed them with conventional fuels you need a "reformer" to obtain the H2 from them, although there are some Direct Methanol PEM FCs). Actually, it's way more efficient to get the H2 from nat-gas than from water. But yes, if you want to make a fuel cell system renewable you need to get your hydrogen (if that's what your fuel cell runs on) from renewable sources of energy (and from water and not fossil fuels). But that's not how the Bloom Box works. And there's a reason for that: inefficiencies compound. Let's see a simple example of the solar-hydrogen stack. Sun Light -> Solar panel -> Hydrolizer -> Hydrogen -> Fuel Cell -> Electricity Photovoltaic conversion is not very efficient, let's say 18% (a very expensive panel) and that's better than most installed systems. Hydrolysis is an atrociously inefficient process, and incredibly difficult to catalyze. Industrial-scale hydrolyzers run at efficiencies of around 40-43%. Let's assume that you can keep your Hydrogen storage without significant energy penalties (a big assumption, actually); you then feed your fuel cell that runs at a nice 60% efficiency. Well, this system has a total conversion efficiency of 4.32%. We can now use solar-equivalent hours from this handy table (http://www.solar4power.com/solar-power-insolation-window.html) and pick, let's say, LA: 5.62 kWh per day per sq meter (yearly average). The average daily electrical consumption of an American house (2005 data, sorry) is 31.3 kWh. Our fancy solar to hydrogen to electricity system produces 0,24 kWh per day per square meter. We just need 129 sq meters (1388 sq ft) of panels to run the whole thing. In addition to an industry-like efficient hydrolyzer, a yet-to-be-invented hydrogen storage system and a reliable fuel cell. I don't see how such an installation would ever break even. The big, big problem with the so-called "hydrogen economy" is that hydrogen is a NIGHTMARE to produce, store and transport. It burns nicely and cleanly, though :-) If we take the approach of using "sustainable" methane (landfill gas and so on...), yes, the system would be totally renewable and free of all the problems that hydrogen entails. But as you mention, in that case advanced conventional nat-gas generators would be just as good. Even for local distributed generation with cool stuff like what Capstone (CPST) sells. Best regards, Bastida
  11. It runs with plain old filtered air (the guy in the documentary explains that dirty filters are one of the usual causes of downtime).
  12. Actually, this allows for local generation as ANY conventional generator (gas turbines, conventional diesel generators) and it's as renewable as those (i.e. not at all). It's just more efficient and convenient (less noise, vibration, smokes...). This is not a renewable energy source, except where you use landfill gas an that kind of thing, but then any gas burning generator would also be renewable. This thing is just a better fuel-based generator.
  13. Indeed. The only environmental benefit of this device is in the form of (significantly) increased efficiency and absence of some combustion gases other than CO2.
  14. Keep in mind that these gizmos work directly with plain natural gas, not with hydrogen (as is usually the case with PEM). THAT is really a non-starter. A pipeline wouldn't last more than a few years transporting H2 before you have to replace the whole thing: the tiny hydrogen molecules have the nasty tendency to diffuse into metals making them brittle, and it's not something easy to avoid.
  15. Hi, It's always amazing to me how bad reporting about science and technology is. The system is just one example of a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell. Siemens and other companies have been working on these things for a LONG time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_oxide_fuel_cell Basically, we're talking about "solid state" (i.e. no moving parts, no rotating turbines or reciprocating engines) electrical generators that use conventional fuels (natural gas, gasoline...) and have very good conversion efficiencies (reaching 60% in some cases). But these things operate on very high temperatures (around 1000ºC) and that creates a lot of (costly) headaches in terms of materials, durability and so on. The most promising (and energy-efficient) approach is with hybrid set-ups http://www.energy.siemens.com/hq/en/power-generation/fuel-cells/sofc-gt-hybrid.htm I'm really hopeful about this kind of tech in the medium term, but this is a heavily populated field, and the buzz about the "Bloom Box" makes it sound as if it's just a breakthrough achievement by this fancy start-up. Check for example: http://fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/fuelcells/fuelcells_solidoxide.html http://www.fuelcellmarkets.com/fuel_cell_markets/solid_oxide_fuel_cells_sofc/4,1,1,2503.html http://www.fuelcellmarkets.com/fuel_cell_markets/industry/2,1,1,7.html?q=solid_oxide_fuel_cells_sofc They possibly have a better future than the more widely known PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane) Fuel Cells. But I'm not sure this is clearly actionable investing knowledge. And regarding PEM fuel cells, ask investors in BLDP how they feel about the promise of fuel cells :-) Best regards, Bastida.
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