Member Info for Alfacomp

Leafie - can you summarise how things on SETS might be different, Exactly how far away from AIM50 are we at present ?

pounds worth

That would seem to suggest that someone has sucked up their stock of shares and they have had to release it to other MMs to allow the price to move up. We'll see at the end of the day.

The natural conclusion would be that if Cantor have a ready supply of cheap shares from a seller who is evidently not too bothered about 0.5p here or there, then when they are lining up to sell into the market then it would appear that is a good time to buy from them.

When Cantor disappear from the Ask then it might be considered as a sign that they don't have any shares to sell and that any buying pressure might drive the price higher.

It's entirely up to you whether you want to buy when the price is low, or when it is going up. I prefer the former.

You may wish to suggest to those that are not so au fait with their reputation what this might imply.

if someone wants ore containing 0.3% V2O5 we would have millions of tonnes of the stuff sitting in piles at Mokopane, not to mention who knows how much of the same stuff already dug up and sitting at Vametco. Let the rainbow chasers dream a little.

meanreverter - yep sorry for not correcting this after editing it a couple of times. I think all the other numbers are correct though.

Cantor Fitzgerald er people

Sorry, CFEP having to pay 25.4p now - I think the seller must have run out

Daisan - Perhaps they are gone but if still selling that still doesn't stop CFEP having to queue up to buy shares at 25.2p

Redleader - the UK of course has access to more offshore wind power than anyone else in europe

Redleader - I agree there is no alternative to transmitting by HV electrical cable if you wish to transmit energy from the middle of the north sea to the land.

However these still don't come cheap. The 1.4GW North Seal Link connector to Norway cost 2 Billion Pounds ( https://www.4coffshore.com/windfarms/interconnector-north-sea-link-icid10.html )

The North Sea Island people claim to wish to generate 30 GW out in the middle of the north sea and to be able to transmit this energy to 9 countries - for that I think they would need at least 3 undersea links (1 to the UK, 1 to scandinavia and 1 to the Netherlands) - so I would guess that the connectors would at least cost 4 Billion Pounds.

This cost does not appear to have been factored into the 1 Billion dollars (TM Austin Powers) that https://edgylabs.com/brexit-and-green-energy-the-north-sea-wind-farm-update claims the wind farm project will cost so I am guessing that that figure is just for the windfarm alone.

A quick check (https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2018/Jan/IRENA_2017_Power_Costs_2018.pdf page 93) shows that the upfront cost for a wind turbine is about 0.75M USD per MW in 2017 - thus to get 30 GW generational capacity they are going to need at least 20 Billion USD worth of turbines in 2025, maybe we could drop that to 15 Billion for the large scale of the project. Still that's a lot more than the 1 Billion quoted - hence I think it is 1 Billion just for the Island and that the turbines will be bought under someone else's price tag.

Thus we have

1 Billion for Island
c. 15-20 Billion for the generating turbines
c 4 Billion for interconnectors.

Well I think that leaves perhaps a couple of Billion in small change to provide a little VRFB energy storage.

Endion, I will take being compared with Newton. If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.

biganuf - no it would really not be a trivial thing to pump strongly acidic electrolyte 60 miles in a pipe under the north sea. You can transmit energy much more easily by electrical cable.

if it wasn't obvious I am suggesting that energy storage is an obvious and necessary thing to wish to have.

As will become apparent when I write up the International Flow Battery Forum meeting from earlier this month UniEnergy Technologies have a new generation containerised battery (the so-called Reflex system) that can store 40MWh on the area of 3 Basketball courts (that is 15,000 square feet, or 1,500 square metres).

6 square kilometers is 6,000 times this area, so if you just wanted to use ,say, 1/6th of the island for battery storage - that would be 666x40MWh, or 26.6 GWh - roughly an hour's peak energy production.

Build a somewhat bigger island and you could increase the energy storage duration to 4-6 hours. This could probably allow you to downsize the cables to the island by a factor of two, and halve the energy wasted in transmission from the island to the mainland.

It is either that or move manchester onto the island.

Endion,

stick a windfarm in the middle of the North Sea and guess what you have to provide big cables to it to deal with the peaks of power production (or throw the extra away, or melt the cables).

Store the energy locally at the centre of the windfarm and guess what - the cables you need to provide can be somewhat smaller. Not only are you losing less energy transmitting at the peak times (remember the dissipated power is proportional to current squared, so it is the peaks of current that produce the highest wastage).

This is precisely the situation where you need long duration electrochemical storage, because guess what, you cannot build a pumped water storage system in the middle of the north sea, not unless you wish to build a mountain on top of the island.

http://www.mygridgb.co.uk/last-28-days/

Yesterday the contribution from renewable was so large that a carbon intensity for UK electricity generation of around 100g CO2 per kWh was achieved - normally the level is around 250g CO2 per kWh.

This is around the level that we need to obtain as an average through the day in order to meet the UK's 2030 carbon emission targets. We have less than 12 years to reduce our carbon intensity by approximately 60%.

In order to do this we will need to continue investing in renewable energy, wind is the obvious choice in the UK, though PV has its part to play, and in order to smooth out the fluctuations in these sources there will need to also be massive investment in energy storage.

This is where VRFB batteries will come in.

Somtam - AIM is still a pretty illiquid market so SP rises do not necessarily correlate with news if there are strong trading currents around - eg witness the complete lack of response to the YD buyout during a period when Erongo was being sold down. Of course in the cases where the SP does apparently respond to news it often turns out that the market makers have simply spiked the price and investors pay over the odds for being Jonny come-latelies. The right approach is to invest in fundamentals and before news arrives - you are therefore in the right place.

Pdub and loudspeaker - I agree wholeheartedly with both of your assessments of Fortune, the Viljoens and Mikhail - these guys are totally committed to what they are building in BMN and fortunately are well away from the City of London and all of its self-obsessed temptations.

Research, and this board.