Some more positive press...
NEWS STORY 10,000% in 10 years?
1/5/2000 8:18 am EST
moneycentral.msn.com
Plug Power: distributed electricity
The electric power industry is one of the most inefficient and over-regulated in the world. You may not realize that far more power than is necessary courses through the United States' power grid, as it is oriented toward peak usage periods that rarely occur. Even if you are away from home, your power company is providing electricity for you to tap at a moment's notice. While some of that power is generated by decent dams like the Grand Coulee in Washington, most of it still is created at environmentally harmful and resource-wasting plants stoked with coal dug out of the earth in vast, ugly pits. Plug Power (PLUG) may have a better solution. It designs and develops power-generation systems for homes, apartment buildings and commercial uses that rely on something called "proton exchange membranes," or fuel cells that generate electricity from hydrogen gas without combustion. The units are something like a giant battery, fueled typically by clean natural gas. I think the market for Plug's units could be huge over the next 10 years. One good way to think about the opportunity was suggested by a Merrill Lynch analyst. He compared the coming power-distribution revolution as similar to the revolution that broke up mainframe computing. In this paradigm, Plug's units are like personal computers -- bringing each person the power that they need, when they need it, without reliance on a central source.
Plug holds key patents to the main elements of these units, and has a terrific distribution partner in General Electric (GE). Plug and GE's Power Systems unit plan to start selling them to homeowners in January 2001. With a stock price of $28.25 and a marketcap of $1.2 billion today, a 10,000% gain would take it to $120 billion by 2010. |
