A123 Systems (AONE) has been surging off the bottom over the past 30 minutes on news it will use $5 million from the US Dept of Energy to collaborate with Detroit Edison on a study to find out if electric car batteries can be bundled together to store emergency supplies of power for the electric grid. Detroit Edison, owned by DTE Energy, will bundle the battery packs containing 25 lithium batteries in 20 groups and expect output of around 25kw of power over 2 hrs.
The $5 million is a drop in the bucket considering the expected cost of the project will be in the billions, but the companies are hoping for private funding as well.
These funds are part of an overall $620 million dished out by the Dept of Energy today for 32 smart grid projects around the nation. Curiously, only EnerNOC (ENOC) is the only smart grid pure play up today.
Shares of AONE are currently up close to 10% and have been stabilizing over the past week after a significant correction. I like shares down at these levels and own some personally.
all this battery storage reminds me of Ethanol spending…….sometimes, like spending ridiculous amounts of money on something that makes no sense is just a waste of money
right now, the big spending push is to find a battery solution to store wind power….even an uber bull wind person like me has to say , this is a WASTE of good money chasing bad!
comparing ethanol to lithium batteries? now that’s an argument I’d like to see expanded!