Dr. Terry Peterson

GLG News^SM Analyses by Terry Peterson

GLG News is now G+ Insights

G+ is a community for professionals, academics and entrepreneurs to connect through online discussions and in-person meetings. You will continue to see G+ Insights (formerly GLG News) here as well as on the G+ website, where you can share and discuss the G+ Insights you read.

Nuclear Power Poised for Another Belly Flop

June 24, 2009

Analysis of:U.S. Chooses Four Utilities to Revive Nuclear Industry | online.wsj.com

The WSJ article passes along rumors of DOE decisions and fond hopes of nuclear power advocates regarding fast-track siting and construction of new plants based on Japanese and French designs.  It remains to be seen whether or not government largesse spun from the current wave of stimulus packages will suffice to embolden commercial investors to back these costly--and still risky--power plants.  But the predictions of operation by 2016 are not consistent with prior experience and seem fatuous.

Good news for early growth resumption in U.S. residential PV sector

June 4, 2009

Analysis of:SolarCity and U.S. Bank Forge New Partnership to Fund Solar Projects | www.solarbuzz.com

There has been great uncertainty about how much the U.S. market can take up the demand slack left in the PV space by the contraction of the 2008 Spanish market bubble.  Part of that concern has been fueled by worries that tight credit would continue to hamper innovative financing by installers such as SolarCity and GroSolar.  The referenced SolarCity press release and the 1/2-page GroSolar advertisement in today's San Jose Mercury News (touting "3 months of free solar electricity") seem pretty clear indications that the credit "freeze" for PV may be over.

CSP--The "Other" Solar Power--Finally Gets Some Respect

June 16, 2008

Analysis of:BrightSource's novel solar thermal power concept for California heats up | www.latimes.com

As the LA Times article describes, solar thermal electric generation schemes have actually been technically successful for some years and the 354 MW of parabolic trough systems built in the late 1980s are still running very well.  What's needed now for these technologies, collectively known as "CSP" for Concentrating Solar Power, to flourish is deployment that can foster learning-by-doing technology advancements.  A few thousand more MW of experience with building real-world hardware will almost certainly provide significant cumulative cost reductions and position several CSP schemes to compete economically for utility-scale generation in the sunniest parts of the world, most notably in the Southwest United States, which has abundant sunshine and rapidly growing electricity demand. But all of this hangs precariously by the thread of the Federal 30% Investment Tax Credit, which the current Congress seems bent on cutting.

"Silicon shortage" spawns desperate measures?

September 25, 2006

Analysis of:Solar concentrator firm Solaria lands $22 million | news.com.com

Sunlight concentration for photovoltaics (PV) is a good (and old) idea but many analyses and industry experience suggest that it must be highly concentrated (hundreds fold) to make it viable.

The publicly accessible information about the startup company in this press release is insufficient to form a definite opinion about its specific technology. But its terse description of the approach as using "2-3X" concentration should raise red flags. Other recent announcements about non-tracking PV concentrators all fall under this same cloud.