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| Subject: More Visibility | Date: 6/9/2000 3:39 PM | |
| Author: judy2212 | Number: 312 of 2171 | |
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Since it seems to be my unofficial job to keep this board informed of new developments concerning American Superconductor, I'll post a few excerpts from an article that came out today. June 9, 2000 Dow Jones Newswires Power Points:For New Economy, Reliability Trumps Price By MARK GOLDEN A Dow Jones Newswires Column NEW YORK -- Power shortages, deteriorating transmission systems and the rising price of electricity have U.S. utilities scrambling to buy supplies, power marketers like Enron trying to get rich trading the commodity and merchant power companies' stock prices reaching new highs. But all of this is chump change, according to the two gurus of power technology anointed last year by uber-seer George Gilder - Ronald Reagan's supply-side tutor who has been forecasting the success of Internet technologies for the past decade or so. The U.S. electric supply system will become as precise, quick, clean and smart as a microprocessor chip, because the computer-centered economy demands it and because the new economy companies are willing to spend the hundreds of billions of dollars necessary to get there, according to the Gilder Group's Mark Mills and Peter Huber. As the computer bores even further into the running of small businesses and homes, high-end power technology will follow.... For decades, the U.S. electrical system has been designed to be 99.9% reliable, which means that the average customer goes without power for almost nine hours a year. For an economy driven by CPUs, that's nowhere near good enough, Mills says. Your lights, air conditioner and toaster won't notice the split-second interruption. But with that same imperceptible outage, your computer chip is "toast," Mills said at Merrill Lynch's power technology investor conference in New York this week. The new economy - not just dot.coms, but all highly automated industries from paper mills and pharmaceutical companies to tire manufacturers - needs at least five more nines added to the utilities' 99.9% power. Mills sees a new industry that will provide those nines growing to $500 billion a year in the U.S., in the process remaking the financially stagnant $200 billion electric utility industry. "Discount Mill's numbers any way you want, and they're still huge numbers," said Gregory Yurek, president of American Superconductor Corp. (AMSC). American Superconductor's technology, by the way, was the first to get the Huber-Mills thumbs-up for leading the revolution. American Superconductor, Emerson Electric Co. (EMR) and Siemens AG (SMAWY) were highlighted by Mill as companies that build systems that handle switching and smooth out large voltage fluctuations. At the very least, the embryonic industry is inspiring a lot of talk. Some 350 people showed up at this week's conference, about 100 more than Merrill Lynch expected. The Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group is hosting a summit Friday on exactly these issues with California utilities and regulators. Huber and Mills's own three-day conference next week in San Diego starts Wednesday. Don't bother booking a flight. The conference sold out in three days. When I said that American Superconductor was gaining visibility, I mentioned but didn't specify that Yurek also spoke at the Merrill Lynch conference. I think it would be a mistake to underestimate the impact of such PR. It was mentioned in Msg 2206 by Mickey Joe Mack on the Yahoo board that the timing of Yurek's presentation at the Powercosm Conference may be more than coincidence: Yurek is scheduled to speak Thursday June 15. The luncheon speaker that day is the Director of Research for the Office of Naval Research. After lunch they have a tour of a Navy destroyer thats being reconstructed/retrofitted. Isn't the head of the HTS motor division @ AMSC a Navy guy. And isn't it time we hear about the work on HTS motors and the 25000hp motor being designed for the Navy? It would be the perfect setting to announce some big motor news --- just a thought. I thought it might be interesting to share this since several of the latest posts here have concerned AMSC and motors. Judy |
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