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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas Mercer-Hursh who wrote (40546)	3/17/2001 4:49:46 PM
From: Larry S.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

demand for electric (from some of the info on Power Plus fund): "Computers consumed about 3% of the total power generated in the United States in 1990. That jumped over four-fold to 13% by 1999. Some would project that could be as high as 50% by 2010. We have never seen this before. Usually, power grows in line with GDP, pretty dull and boring at 2% or so over the last 10, 20 or 30 years. This new sector element adds something new again, that we have never seen before. What that means is, that in addition to other areas of demand, the actual amount of supply of power has been declining for some time." it also talks about the reliability of power - that for home usage, occassional outages are not a problem, reset the VCR and clocks, but for businesses, interruptions of electrical supply can be extremely costly, so we need a much higher degree of reliability of power supply. I am on the east coast (western NY) we have not had any electricity problems so far. There is a lot of talk of big problems for NYC and large metropolitan areas this summer. California always leads the country in trends, electrical shortages just seem to be the latest :) I hear cold tubs are NOT a lot of fun. larry another snippet from Power Plus: "The grid, when we look at the grid, if you have a coal power plant, the electricity is generated from burning a lump of coal, very simply that generates the heat that boils the water that creates the steam. That what runs a turbine and that is what, for 120 years, how we have been getting electricity from coal powered plants. But only 32% of that energy is successfully converted or utilized in creating the power. Fuel cells, such as Fuel Cell Energy, when you attach the turbines from capstone micro turbines to it, you have an efficiency of 75 to 80%. Combined cycle large gas turbines are 50 to 55%. So, the alternative to the grid for onsite power generation and distribution is much more viable right now than ever before. "