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Can't say for sure but with 2-12-13 short volume up at 119500, it sure would make sense for the MM to lower the price as Querka points out to cover his short.
After hours reported trades were 86000 on 14th @ .0793, 34000 on 13th @ .0841= 120000 explaining why 2-14-13 has no short volume since they were 500 shares in the black.
http://www.mightymarkets.com/regsho-daily-short-volume-lookup.html/
QTMM QUANTUM MATLS CORP
QUANTUM MATLS CORP SYMBOL: QTMM
DATE SHORT VOLUME TOTAL VOLUME
February 13, 2013 61490 325698
February 12, 2013 119500 401798
February 7, 2013 15500 22200
February 6, 2013 21600 91600
February 5, 2013 1080 42305
February 1, 2013 59025 197150
January 31, 2013 8500 58500
* Missing daily volume is due to no short volume activity for that day
Bill
Solar Power Graphs to Make You Smile
This is over a year and a half old but still sheds light on the future growth for the industry.
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/06/10/solar-power-graphs-to-make-you-smile/
Solar power in some markets is already cost-competitive with power from fossil fuels or nuclear energy. It’s expected to take over more and more markets in the very near future as its costs continue to decline and the costs of other antiquated energy sources continue to rise.
Nuclear, coal, even natural gas — even if you don’t take into account externalities (public health, environmental, and national security externalities that you really should take into account), probably won’t be competitive with solar soon (marking important crossovers in the history of our planet).
Two top solar executives — Tom Dinwoodie, CTO and founder of SunPower and Dan Shugar, former president of SunPower and current CEO of Solaria — and Adam Browning, the executive director of the Vote Solar Initiative, have been explaining this crossover to a variety of journalists and policy-makers this week and and they’ve used a number of cool graphs to help them do so.
Yesterday, Stephen Lacy of Climate Progress shared some of the graphs and the “ferocious cost reductions” that are making solar into a truly competitive energy source.
I thought I’d drop those and the most of the commentary below for you all to check out as well. Enjoy (note that this remainder of this is all from Stephen Lacy/Climate Progress, I’m just not sticking it in block quotes to make it easier to read):
click to enlarge
Notice in the first chart how steadily manufacturing costs have come down, from $60 a watt in the mid-1970’s to $1.50 today. People often point to a “Moore’s Law” in solar – meaning that for every cumulative doubling of manufacturing capacity, costs fall 20%. In solar PV manufacturing, costs have fallen about 18% for every doubling of production. “It holds up very closely,” says Solaria’s Shugar.
The “Moore’s Law” analogy doesn’t necessarily work on the installation side, as you have all kinds of variables in permitting, financing and hardware costs. But with incredible advances in web-based tools to make sales and permitting easier; new sophisticated racking, wiring and inverter technologies to make installation faster and cheaper; and all kinds of innovative businesses providing point-of-sale financing (think auto sales), costs on the installation side have fallen steadily as well. The Rocky Mountain Institute projects that these costs will fall by 50% in the next five years. (Note: This chart is from RMI, not from the Dinwoodie/Shugar presentation.)
click to enlarge
What has driven these cost reductions? A staggering ramp-up in installations around the world that have driven an even greater increase in solar manufacturing. (By the end of this year, GTM Research predicts we’ll have 50 GW of module global production capacity.)
click to enlarge
As SunPower’s Dinwoodie puts it:
That 17 GW installed in 2010 is the equivalent of 17 nuclear power plants – manufactured, shipped and installed in one year. It can take decades just to install a nuclear plant. Think about that. I heard Bill Gates recently call solar “cute.” Well, that’s 17 GW of “cute” adding up at an astonishing pace.
He has an excellent rhetorical point, which highlights the brilliance of solar: This modular technology can be produced and installed at a pace far faster than most energy technologies. And businesses are getting amazingly efficient at doing so.
However, this comparison neglects the “value” of energy. Nuclear is a baseload resource; solar PV is more of a “peaking” resource. To compare 17 GW of global solar PV development to 17 GW of nuclear power plants ignores the fact that nuclear produces far more electricity than an equivalent solar PV plant.
With that said, solar brings a different kind of value to the grid. Not only can it be quickly deployed on existing infrastructure (warehouses, commercial buildings, residences) at rates that are orders of magnitude faster than nuclear, it offsets the most expensive peaking power plants – providing immediate economic value.
Here’s an amazing statistic told by Shugar: If only 500 MW of solar PV had been deployed in the northeast U.S. to help alleviate demand for electricity, the August 2003 U.S.-Canadian blackout wouldn’t have happened. That blackout was the second largest in the world, causing between $7 and $10 billion in economic damage.
Notice in this chart how beautifully solar PV fits in to the highest demand periods in the middle of the day.
click to enlarge
“We are considerably lower than natural gas peaker plants,” says Dinwoodie. We’re also coming in lower than new nuclear and becoming lower than new coal. Gigawatts of these plants are being developed in months – not years or decades.”
Here’s their comparison between solar PV, natural gas peakers, nuclear and coal. The figures come from Lazzard, an international financial services firm that tracks energy data, and the Department of Energy.
You can see that natural gas peaker plants, which sit idling most of the day, are an expensive option for utilities.
click to enlarge
In sunny markets like California, solar is becoming competitive with large combined-cycle natural gas plants as well. According to Dinwoodie, there have been 4 GW of contracts for solar PV plants in California signed below the Market Price Referent – the projected price of a 500-MW combined cycle natural gas plant.
While that is a major milestone for the solar industry, we need to be careful about jumping to conclusions based on these figures. Some in the solar business fear that many developers are signing contracts too low – which means they get the contract, but investors may be hesitant to provide financing because they’re concerned the projects won’t pencil out. But the trend is clear: continued declines in the cost of building solar plants is allowing developers to compete with fossil energies in certain markets.
Here’s another important statistic: When SunPower built the 14-MW Nellis Air Force Base system in 2007, it cost $7 per watt. Today, commercial and utility systems are getting installed at around $3 per watt. In 2010 alone, the average installed cost of installing solar PV dropped 20%.
It would appear that solar PV is also cheaper than new nuclear.
click to enlarge
This year, the U.S. industry may install 2 GW of solar. The last nuclear power plant to come online in the U.S., Watts Bar 1, has a capacity of 1.1 GW – but that took 23 years to complete, not two years.
When looking at the time and cost of construction of new nuclear – as well as insurability issues – solar PV (in sunny areas) is already competitive with those plants. Again, I believe there is a big difference in the “value” of electricity from nuclear and solar PV given that they play such opposite roles; but these figures do tell an interesting story. (These figures were put together before the Fukashima accident.)
And what about coal – supposedly our cheapest form of energy? Dinwoodie and Shugar argue that solar PV is becoming competitive against that technology too.
click to enlarge
Over the last few years, 153 coal plants have been abandoned, in large part due to uncertainty over environmental regulations. Dinwoodie and Shugar believe that by the time a new American coal facility is built in the next 6 years, solar PV in the sunniest regions can be competitive with those plants.
Again, we have to recognize the differences in energy value. Resources like biomass combined-heat-and-power, geothermal and hydro may be better equipped to make up for the loss of coal. But if these projections are accurate – and experience suggests they are on target – getting solar PV competitive with coal would be a huge boost to the industry.
So what does all this mean? It means that the notion that “solar is too expensive” doesn’t hold up anymore. When financing providers can offer a home or business owner solar electricity for less than the cost of their current services; when utilities start investing in solar themselves to reduce operating costs; and when the technology starts moving into the range of new nuclear and new coal, it’s impossible to ignore.
According to SunPower’s Tom Dinwoodie: “The cross-over has occurred.”
Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2011/06/10/solar-power-graphs-to-make-you-smile/#cgrhAVjVGkAvJXwo.99
Clean Technica (http://s.tt/12DaJ)
LCOE
According to a new report from the folks over at Bloomberg's New Energy Finance, the past three years have served as a launching pad for the new energy economy. Here are a few key points from the report:
•Natural gas-fired generation met 31% of U.S. electricity needs in 2012, compared with 22% in 2007.
•Non-hydro renewable energy capacity virtually doubled from 2009 to 2012 to 85.7 gigawatts.
•Gas and renewables combined (including hydro), represented 58% of the total U.S. generating capacity.
•The levelized cost for large-scale solar dropped from $0.31/kWh in 2009 to $0.14/kWh in 2012.
•The levelized cost for large-scale wind dropped from $0.09/kWh in 2009 to $0.08/kWh in 2012.
•From 2007 to 2009, the amount of coal-based energy consumed fell from 22.5% to 18.1%.
•Hybrid and plug-in electric vehicles sales in the US totaled 488,000 in 2012, representing 3.25% of U.S. passenger vehicle sales.
Interestingly, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) released its yearly report about a week or so before Bloomberg's report.
Solar's growing at a rate that puts all other sources to shame:
According to the EIA's March 2012 Energy Report, the renewable sector has added 221% more power to the electric grid than natural gas!
And it's only expected to increase over the next several years, as unit prices tumble...
You can see here where the money will be made the fastest. Multiply the large scale projects by the utility companies in countries interested in lower LCOE to boost their bottom line.
http://us.mc1615.mail.yahoo.com/mc/welcome?.gx=1&.tm=1360198938&.rand=75h9em27kqk64#_pg=showMessage&sMid=44&&filterBy=&.rand=855020511&midIndex=44&mid=2_0_0_1_12652680_APXWi2IAAF0QURJp3gqSRDx%2FcF8&fromId=&m=2_0_0_1_12659072_APXWi2IAAWMoURJ6pwJAHwaV9xU,2_0_0_1_12657792_APTWi2IAADbVURJ3MgWpX2E94Ig,2_0_0_1_12656681_APXWi2IAAORaURJyBAfPvRkGgLQ,2_0_0_1_12655396_APTWi2IAAUmtURJugA4G8WELqss,2_0_0_1_12653940_APTWi2IAAP9SURJqKwCbNm1x9VQ,2_0_0_1_12652680_APXWi2IAAF0QURJp3gqSRDx%2FcF8,2_0_0_1_12651257_APLWi2IAAQVGURJfMQNr7UnYLZ4,2_0_0_1_12649756_APXWi2IAASEmURJbeQveShIVb3U,2_0_0_1_12648738_APPWi2IAAO4EURJV2wtonjpsjeU,2_0_0_1_12647276_APXWi2IAAHl0URJNsgwC8lboF%2Fg,2_0_0_1_12645982_APLWi2IAANVNURI6GwO2fGtr9FE,&sort=date&order=down&startMid=0&hash=99dee6132828436159d837f49ff5a404&.jsrand=3926991
Bill
Little Things Can Make a Big Difference - They don’t know it yet but those little things are TQD’s. According to this article $2.50 per watt, would drive over 50 gigawatts of demand even with no government incentives!
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Guest-Post-Brad-Mattson-on-the-Real-Birth-of-the-Solar-Industry
excerpt:
There is a fine book by Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, that provides an in-depth examination of the concept of the tipping point. We can only get into a somewhat limited analysis in this forum, but the short story is that it is my belief that we have passed the tipping point in solar.?
It is not so much that solar is already economically competitive with traditional sources of energy, although it is in many cases. It is more that the momentum has shifted so far and so fast, that it is unlikely that any other renewable energy source will be able to catch up. To put a sharper focus on the issues, just look at the possible scenarios for 30 to 50 years from now:
• There is little chance we can continue to use fossil fuel to satisfy our growing energy needs.
• Hydro is great, but will be limited by geography.
• Wind is great, but blows at night when we don’t need it, and grid storage is really tough.
• Nuclear is, well, even if it makes sense no one wants it in their back yard. You can’t site it.
• Solar is clean, abundant, works at any scale, is easily distributed, and now it is cheap.
I’m sure the quick summary above does not do justice to the world of renewable energy, but from the 30,000 ft. level, it looks like solar is really ready to take off.
It is the price of solar and its comparison to the existing cost of electricity that drives industry growth. This is the concept of grid parity, where the cost of solar electricity = cost of grid electricity.
The charts below summarize a study done by NREL to determine when and where we hit grid parity in the United States. It should be noted that this chart is using the retail price of electricity -- that is, the prices that you or I pay at the meter at our home or the price businesses pay at their factories. This retail price, of course, is much higher than the cost to generate electricity. For example, in Monte Sereno, California, I pay $0.28 per kilowatt-hour for electricity. This electricity probably only costs $0.08 to 0.10 per kilowatt-hour to generate. Of course, the electricity generators are typically many miles from my home, so there is also the cost of transmission and distribution. And of course, PG&E has to make a profit.
Some would say we have not reached grid parity until we hit the wholesale, not the retail, cost of electricity. I disagree. It just depends on who the customer is. As a paying customer for grid electricity (from PG&E), I can tell you that we are at grid parity at my house. I am a believer that the future of U.S. energy independence will come through more distributed (i.e., solar on rooftops) generation. That battle between distributed and centralized generation is yet another important topic that we don’t have time to cover here.
So, with the caveat that we are talking about retail costs, we can look at the NREL data. The figure on the left shows the status of the United States in 2008. The dark red areas are where we are already at retail grid parity. You can see it is a fairly small portion of the map on the left. But, this level of grid parity is based on an installed cost of solar of about $8.00 per watt, or roughly the cost in 2008.
The chart on the right shows the anticipated areas of grid parity if the install price of solar is lowered to $3.50 per watt. This is an amazing increase in coverage. So, when will we get to $3.50 per watt? The answer is we are already there in some states and will soon be in many others.
Source: NREL
Let’s try to translate that into demand in terms of gigawatts. Some great work has been done by Richard Keiser at Keiser Analytics. He went through each state, country and even area code in the U.S. to determine cost and demand for electricity at each price point. There are, of course, some simplifying assumptions that need to be made to translate installed cost into the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE), but without getting into complicated LCOE discussions, it seems that reasonable assumptions have been made. Figures are given with and without the government ITC subsidy (Investment Tax Credit). Here are the estimates made of demand at each level of installed cost:
As you can see, at the $3.50 per watt install cost, where much of the map above goes red, there is almost 100 gigawatts of demand in the U.S. To put that in perspective, the U.S had a record-breaking year in 2012 for solar installations with 3.2 gigawatts installed. Obviously, we have just scratched the surface. Of course this depends on maintaining the Investment Tax Credit. But even with no government subsidy at all, we just need to get to $2.50 per watt installed cost to see more than 50 gigawatts in demand.
There is so much money, people, supportive data, policy, and even entire countries behind solar that I feel it has become a fait accompli. We have passed the tipping point and we are witnessing the true birth of the solar industry. These are very exciting times.
In the coming months, I hope to engage in a dialog with those who might share some of this optimism to discuss a roadmap for that success, and how the U.S. has real competitive advantages and can, must and will succeed in this brave new world of Solar 2.0.
***
Brad Mattson will be speaking in more detail on the dawn of Solar 2.0 at a free event in Palo Alto, California on the evening of February 13. For more details, visit the Silicon Valley IEEE Photovoltaic Chapter website.
Waiting patiently to retire!
Bill
AI
