50 Energy Books

Energy Trading & Investing: Trading, Risk Management, and Structuring Deals by Davis Edwards Call vs. Put Options: Why do energy traders use options? Insurance- options allow you to take on more exposure without taking on a large risk Investing- building a power plant gives the operator the option of burning fuel to produce electricity. The operator will burn fuel when it is profitable. Options are a good way to analyze an investment that involves a decision. Forwards-a trading contract that allows traders to arrange a transaction at a specific time and place in the tufter for a contractually identified price.  Future- a trading contract that allows traders to transact for future delivery but must be exchanged cleared. Only 2 types of options contracts: "calls" and "puts"  Long call option strategy- buy a call option with the expectation that the price of the stock will rise before the expiration date. $40 is the strike price. Your expectatio

A Golden Thread: 2500 Years of Solar Architecture and Technology by Ken Butti and John Perlin Main Points: Solar Thermal : In the 18th century Horace de Saussure built the world's first solar collectors called "hot boxes" which were heat trapping glass boxes that would heat water above the point of boiling (108 degrees Celsius). This led to August Mouchet to build solar powered steam engines due to his concerns of coal limitations in the 1860's and 1870's. Due to these two gentleman research into solar thermal devices began, but would soon be cast aside due to the falling prices of coal. It was not until 1968, when Professor Giovanni Francia built the first solar concentrating plant in Genoa, Italy.  Solar Water Heating : In the late 1800's, Clarence M. Kemp from Baltimore built the Climax- the nation's first commercial solar water heater. These designs were improved by Frank Walker who put the water tanks in a glass covered box and piped

Geothermal Energy: Renewable Energy and the Environment by William Glassley Main Points: Drill a production well and an injection well- and use the heat to power a binary power generating system. Two parameters Permeability- ability for fluid to flow through the subsurface Temperature- need temperature to run the turbines (higher the gradient, the shallower you need to drill to get access to energy) Iceland is in the lower right hand part of the graph and New York is in the upper left hand side.  The largest geothermal power plant in the world is at the Geysers in California which is north of Santa Rosa and west of Sacramento (no it isn't in Iceland). Enhanced geothermal systems- we frack the reservoir in the subsurface and we can circulate the fluid through the subsurface.  West- yellowstone and caldera. Through Utah, Nevada, and Oregon you have the "Sun Belt" where there is plenty of high grade hydrothermal.  East- the Appalachian basin, Ithaca, and

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner Lecture on the Book: About 20% of the people at Bell Labs were working on military matters during its heyday in the 1950's and 1960's. The inventions of the transistor and solar cell were invented in the same laboratories on the fourth floor of the Murray Hill building. AT&T was a true monopoly that was vertically integrated. At the bottom was the R&D arm Bell Labs. At the end of the 1940's about 9,000 people. By the 1960's there was 15,000. By the end of its time, there were 25,000 people working of which 3,300 were PhD's. The ideas would move up to Western Electric and implement them in the larger phone system AT&T LongLines. They also had horizontal integration by owning part or whole of 23 operating companies (Pacific Bell or New York Telephone).  Bell Labs started in 1925 and in the early days it was on West Street in New York, and after World War