Posted by Max Dunn
Wed, 27 Aug 2008 03:35:06 GMT | 1 comment
It is so incredible it is a little hard to get my brain around. Several months ago, without any fanfare, Nanosolar showed off its new production tool that can produce 1GW (gigawatt) of solar cells per year.
To put this in perspective, most plants produce less than 100 MW (megawatts) per year, less than 1/10 of Nanosolar’s 1GW machine. For instance, here is a Masdar plant being built in Germany that will produce 70MW a year and cost $230 million. So it would take 14 of these plants to equal the output of one of the Nanosolar machines.
The cost of the Nanosolar machine? $1.65 million! This is 2,000 times less than the Masdar plant! (While this is a comparison of a production tool to an entire plant, it is still an astounding difference.)
Posted by Max Dunn
Sat, 12 Jul 2008 03:59:56 GMT | no comments
It is commonly thought that a large part of the increase in the price of oil is due to the devaluation of the dollar. For instance, since the the euro is now 60% higher than the dollar it seems to make sense that 60% of increase in the price of oil is due to this devaluation of the dollar. However when you look more closely at the economics behind oil pricing, you will find that this is not the case at all. Actually, it doesn’t make any difference what currency oil is priced in because the price would still be the same.
Posted by Max Dunn
Tue, 24 Jun 2008 23:29:27 GMT | no comments
There is speculation that the increased cost of shipping due to rising oil prices will reduce globalization since it will be cheaper to make products locally than ship them all over the world. For some bulk items where shipping is a major component of the price, this could be true. But for many high-value items, manufacturing them in low-cost countries and then shipping them by boat will still be more economical than making them locally.
Posted by Max Dunn
Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:59:44 GMT | no comments
What are the top 5 countries that the US imports its oil from?
Most people would probably guess that Saudi Arabia is on the list, but they might also think that Russia is on it too, which it isn’t. (Russia is at number 14.)
Surprisingly, Canada is at the top of the list with 1.9 million barrels per day (mbd) and Canada exports more oil to the US than it uses itself. It gets about half of its oil from tar sands, and while there is a lot of oil locked up in tar sands it takes so much natural gas and water to get the oil out that it is unlikely that the daily production can be increased much more.
Saudi Arabia is second on the list and while it exports a total of about 9 mbd, the US gets only 1.5 mbd of this.
Mexico is third at 1.2 mbd which represents 80% of their exports, but their production is falling. The Cantarell field was the second largest producing oil field in the world before it peaked in 2004, and since then its output has fallen by an ominous 50%.
Would you guess that Nigeria is the 4th largest importer to the US at 1.1 mbd? It is, however Nigeria is a very unstable country and militant attacks routinely cause production to fall below its maximum potential.
Lastly, at number 5 is our friendly South American neighbor Venezuela at 1.0 mbd.
This list often surprises people. Most wouldn’t know that Canada is the top provider of our imported oil and that Nigeria is close behind at number 4.
Posted by Max Dunn
Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:15:18 GMT | 9 comments
According to the accounting firm Ernst and Young, in 2007 the average manufacturing company made 8.9 cents per dollar of sales. The U.S. oil industry did slightly worse at 8.3 cents per dollar of sales, even though this was a record year for them. Contrast that to beverage and cigarette companies that earned 19.1 cents and drugmakers that earned 18.4 cents. So even though oil prices have skyrocketing, are oil companies really making too much money?
Posted by Max Dunn
Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:38:31 GMT | 1 comment
There is a lot of talk floating around that if the US would just end the ban on drilling in environmentally sensitive areas, we would find plenty of oil and prices would go down. Let’s look at this more closely to see if it is true.
Posted by Max Dunn
Fri, 30 May 2008 04:10:09 GMT | no comments
There was an interesting talk at the Woods Energy Seminar at Stanford yesterday by Dr. Gavin Conibeer about 3rd generation photovoltaic (PV) devices.
The 1st generation are the PV cells we have now that cost around $6/watt and are around 20% efficient. The 2nd generation are the thin film cells which cost around $1/watt but are only about 12% efficient. The 3rd generation cells will use quantum dot technology created using thin-film manufacturing methods, so they will be a lot less expensive than 1st generation devices but will also use a variety of techniques to boost efficiencies up to 65% which will drive the cost down to $0.20/watt.
This sounds pretty great! However, the catch is that when asked when these 3rd generation PV cells would start going into production, his answer was “It is still a long ways away.”
