Energy Portfolios, 18 Months, Analysis

EnergyPortfolios_Indices_2014_06 We are watching a paradigm shift.

How else can we explain the dramatic rise of the Sustainable Energy portfolio, the equally dramatic underperformance of the Fossil Fuel portfolio, compared to the Dow Industrials and the S&P 500 since I started this experiment on Dec. 21, 2012? The data are in my post of June 24, 2014, Energy Portfolios, 18 Months: Sustainable up 257%, Fossil Fuels up 24.6%.

Consider these questions:

  1. Which companies are Disruptive or Subject to Disruption?
  2. Which companies are Evolving and which are doing what worked for the last 20/30/50/80 years?
  3. Can management execute?
  4. Is management asking for government subsidies?
  5. What about the long term side effects? What are the Economic Externalities?

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Energy Portfolios: 18 Months: Sustainable up 257.06%: Fossil Fuel up 24.56%

PL_EnergyPort_14_06On Dec. 21, 2012, I put $16 Million imaginary dollars in equal imaginary investments in 16 real energy companies; Eight in the Sustainable Energy space and eight in the fossil fuel space. In the 18 months between the close of trading December 21, 2012 and the close of trading June 20, 2014,

  • The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 29.46% from 12/21/12.
  • The S&P 500 is up 37.27%.
  • The Fossil Fuel Portfolio is up 24.56% from Dec. 21, 2012.
  • The Sustainable Energy portfolio is up 257.06% from Dec. 21, 2012.

In addition to the data summary, below, this post, the 21st in the series, will be followed with a summary analysis.

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“Software as a Service” in “The Cloud” before we called it “Software as a Service in The Cloud”

Indoor Cloud. Courtesy 'Where Cool Things Happen.' com

Indoor Cloud. Courtesy ‘Where Cool Things Happen.’ com

Before We Called it “The Cloud” … We Still Had “Software as a Service.” We just didn’t know what Marketing wanted to call it.

Back in 1990 – ’91, before we called it “The Cloud,” before most of us used the Internet, when we were young and idealistic, I worked on three systems that offered what we would now call SaaS – Software as a Service.

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Is Fukushima Melting Antarctic Ice?

Image of Explosion at Fukushima

Fukushima Explosion, Courtesy Forbes

A lot of people have been talking about a new dawn of nuclear power (Telegraph, article from 2013 here).  “Fukushima,” they say, perversely, “proves nuclear is safe because only 3 reactors melted down.” They also say, “a culture of safety can make or break nuclear power.” (Japan Times, op-ed, here).

I think these people are not asking the right questions.

For example, the melt-rate of Antarctic ice has double since before 2010, that is since before Fukushima. Andrew Freedman on Mashable, here, and Phil Plait, on Slate, here wrote about a scientific study, accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters which documents the increase in the rate at which Antarctic ice is melting. The study attributes this increased ice-melt-rate to rising ocean temperatures. The conventional wisdom is that “The increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is causing ocean temperatures to rise.” But … what if this is only part of the problem?

What effect, if any, does the release of radiation from the Fukushima melt-down have on ocean temperature and therefore, the rate of melting ice?

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Limits to the Cloud

Image of a function illustrating limits,courtesy One Sage Calculus

Image of a limit courtesy One Sage Math Calculus Tutorial

While Amazon Redshift offers “fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse service… for just $0.25 per hour with no commitments or upfront costs and scale to a petabyte or more for $1,000 per terabyte per year” (and I can do it for less – see below) there are limits to the cloud.

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Energy Portfolios: 17 Months: Sustainable up 211.6%: Fossil Fuel up 18.52%

EnergyPortfolios_1405aThe Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 26.29% from 12/21/12.
The S&P 500 is up 32.03%.
The Fossil Fuel Portfolio is up 18.52% from Dec. 21, 2012.
The Sustainable Energy Portfolio is up 211.6% from Dec. 21, 2012. Continue reading →

The Wrong Way Into The Cloud

cloud-computing2-resized-600.jpgHow not to implement a cloud-based information service.

What’s the Cloud? The Internet is The Cloud. GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail are cloud based information services. More technically, these are referred to as Software as a Service, or SaaS. There are also Platform as a Service, PaaS, and Infrastructure as a Service, IaaS.

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Energy Portfolios, 16 Months: Sustainable Energy up 204.25%, Fossil Fuel up 15.38%

PL_Port.14.4aOn Dec. 21, 2012, I put $16 Million imaginary dollars in equal imaginary investments in 16 real energy companies; Eight in the Sustainable Energy space and eight in the fossil fuel space. The results:

  • The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 24.54% from Dec. 21, 2012.
  • The S&P 500 is up 30.56% from Dec. 21, 2012.
  • The Fossil Fuel Portfolio had a great month, however, it continues to dramatically underperform the reference indices. It is up 15.38% from Dec. 21, 2012.
  • The Sustainable Energy portfolio had a bad month, however, it continues to dramatically outperform the averages, and is up 204.25% from Dec. 21, 2012

 

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Energy Portfolios: 15 Months: Sustainable up 222.6%: Fossil Fuel up 7.3%

Line graph showing valuations of Sustainable and Fossil Fuel Energy Portfolios, not corrected for dividend distributions

On Dec. 21, 2012, I put $16 Million imaginary dollars in equal imaginary investments in 16 real energy companies; Eight in the Sustainable Energy space and eight in the fossil fuel space. The Sustainable Energy portfolio is composed of Cree and Lighting Sciences in the LED space, GTAT, which at the time made solar ovens for cooking PV wafers, and today is diversifying, First Solar and Sunpower in the solar space, Vestas, a wind company, Solazyme a biofuel company and Next Era, a utility. The fossil fuel companies are the oil companies BP, Chevron Texaco, Conoco Phillips, Exxon Mobil and RD Shell, the coal company Peabody Coal, and Haliburton and Transocean, companies in the offshore oil and oil and gas drilling service industries.

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Energy Portfolios: 14 Months: Sustainable up 184.4%: Fossil Fuel up 8.7%

  • PL_Port.14.2bThe Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 23.01% from 12/21/12 to 2/21/14.
  • The S&P 500 is up 28.39%.
  • The Fossil Fuel Portfolio continues to dramatically underperform the reference indices. It is up 8.7% from Dec. 21, 2012.
  • The Sustainable Energy portfolio continues to dramatically outperform the averages, and is up 184.41% from Dec. 21, 2012.

Note that the Sustainable Energy portfolio does not include Solar City, SCTY, or Tesla Motors, TSLA. Solar City’s stock price is up 713.0%, from 10.73 on December 21, 2012 to 75.86 at the close of trading Feb. 21, 2014. Tesla is up 614.5% from 34 to 209.60.

 

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Energy Portfolios: 13 Months: Sustainable up 167.4%: Fossil Fuel up 8.92%

PL_Portfolio_14_1Figure 1, above, shows the relative performance of my hypothetical investments in sustainable Energy and Fossil Fuels, since Dec. 21., 2012.

  • The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up25.38% from 12/21/12.
  • The S&P 500 is up28.95%.
  • The Fossil Fuel Portfolio continues to dramatically underperform the reference indices. It is up 9.44% from Dec. 21, 2012, and down slightly from Dec. 20, 2013.
  • The Sustainable Energy portfolio continues to dramatically outperform the fossil fuel portfolio and the averages, and is up 167.37% from Dec. 21, 2012.

As described in the earlier posts in this series, in Dec., 2012, I read that MidAmerican Energy was buying large scale solar electric generating stations being built by First Solar and Sunpower, and being financed by GE. This got me thinking … Continue reading →

Virtualization: 20% Lower Cost to Build; 70% Lower Costs for Power, Cooling & Operations

Virtualization, based on Table 0

Imagine an small to mid-sized enterprise which needs accounting, document management, e-mail,  a central file repository, centralized printer management, and a central anti-virus console. These services can be put on discrete servers, along with, using Microsoft’s authentication model, a redundant pair of machines described as “Domain Controllers.” Add an “Intranet” and a central backup system and you’re looking at 10 servers, at a cost, as shown in Table 1, below, in the neighborhood of $54,000.

The advantage of discrete servers for discrete functions is that maintenance on one system does not effect any others. By wrapping the logical functions – accounting, e-mail, etc – into “virtual machines” we get the same advantages – maintenance and upgrades to one system do not effect other systems – while reducing the total number of physical machines.

This can be “Virtualized” onto two or three servers at a cost, as shown in Table 2, below, in the neighborhood of $26,000 to $36,000. These are summarized in table 0, below.

Price Comparison
Item Ballpark
Physical $54,000.00
Virtual $26,000.00
V w Archive $36,000.00
Table 0

This savings also scales. Larger enterprises, which require more servers, may realize a 10 to 1 server consolidation.

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Energy Portfolios & Reference Indices, 2013 Summary

If a picture is worth a thousand words …

EnergyPortfolios_2013

here are two thousand words on Sustainable Investing in 2013.

EnergyPortfolios_Indices

While the data may suggest that a “correction” may be in progress for the “Sustainable Energy” portfolio, and while the actions or inactions of various governments can dramatically effect performance of these portfolios, the Sustainable Energy Portfolio outperformed the Dow Jones Industrials and the S&P 500, both of which outperformed the Fossil Fuel Portfolio.

As the professional say, “Past performance is no guarantee of future performance.”

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Energy Portfolios At One Year: Sustainable Energy up 140%, Fossil Fuel up 9.85%

PL_EnergyPort_13_12

On Dec. 21, 2011, reading that MidAmerican Energy was investing in utility scale solar energy generation, I looked at First Solar and Sunpower. Then I looked at six other companies in the sustainable energy world. I created a model portfolio. To make things interesting, I looked at eight companies in the fossil fuel industy and invested $16 Imaginary Million in these 16 companies, $1.0 Imaginary Million in each. As of the close of trading one year later, Friday, Dec. 20, 2013,

  • The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 23.91% from 12/21/12.
  • The S&P 500 is up 27.13%.
  • The Fossil Fuel Portfolio continues to dramatically underperform the reference indices. It is up 9.85% from Dec. 21, 2012.
  • The Sustainable Energy portfolio continues to dramatically outperform the averages, and is up 140.31% from Dec. 21, 2012.

The data are summarized beginning in Table 1, below.

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After XP – Windows 7, Windows 8, Linux, the Mac or Retirement?

Win7StartOn April 8, 2014 Microsoft will end support for Windows XP, Internet Explorer 6, Office 2003, and MS Exchange Server 2003. If you still use XP, and according to Net Market Share, as of Dec. 22, 2013, 31% of people on the Internet still use Windows XP, then you should plan on migrating to Windows 7, Windows 8, Linux or the Mac before April 9, 2014. Or retiring.

As I see it, the main reason to upgrade is security. Another reason is performance. The bottom line is money.

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