“There's legitimate debate about a couple of segments,” says Keith Raab, boss of Cleantech Venture Network. In some instances, valuations accorded to firms with no profits—and little chance of making any soon—were reminiscent of the excesses of the dotcom bubble. As Douglas Lloyd, of Venture Business Research, puts it, “There's too much money chasing too few opportunities. How is it possible that this many solar companies are going to succeed? They're not.”

As UCTE communicated yesterday, a UCTE Investigation Committee was set up this morning and placed under the chairmanship of Gerard A. Maas (as Chairman of the UCTE Steering Committee) who will be assisted by three convenors (corresponding to the 3-fold split in the system). The task of the UCTE investigation Committee is to clarify the causes of the incident and identify possible additional measures to be taken to prevent such disturbances to occur again. Due to the fact that the disturbance had an impact on all UCTE TSOs, all UCTE members will participate in the investigation. The preliminary results of this investigation will be available by the end of November.

The German distributor E.ON admitted it caused the blackouts, by switching off a power cable across the River Ems to allow a cruise ship to pass. This meant areas to the west were left with a power deficit, while cables in the east were overloaded. Supplies cut out in Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Croatia and Italy. The EU's Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs has called for the European Transmission System Operators (ETSO) to identify the problem urgently and ensure that such a blackout does not happen again.

A chain of power outages that swept through Belgium, France, Spain and even touched Morocco was blamed Sunday on Germany, but experts were divided about the original trigger for the blackout that affected millions of homes. The government of North Rhine Westphalia state, which was worst hit by the outage, said a load-balancing error after a surge of power from German wind-power turbines had played a role. Too much power entered the German grid and parts of it shut down.

Parts of Europe were hit by electricity cuts late Saturday with a chain-reaction effect blamed on a surge in German demand causing power losses as far south as Spain.

German utility E.ON said reports of the cuts began to emerge not long after it shut down a high voltage line over a river in northwestern Germany to let a ship pass through in safety, and that this may have been linked to the power loss. "In the past, these operations were often performed without any problems arising," the firm said, adding that the precise cause behind the loss in supply was still being investigated........In Spain, the fall in tension caused 2,800 megawatts of wind energy and one gas-fired power station to be cut off and interrupted the flow of electricity to Morocco, it added.

The German energy company RWE said the blackouts were caused by surging electricity demand Saturday evening due to a plunge in temperatures to the freezing point. Insufficient electricity supply first triggered blackouts in parts of western Germany, particularly in Cologne, and then across France as the French electricity company EDF tried to fulfill the surging demand but could not.

Power cuts have struck several countries in Western Europe, leaving millions of people without electricity. Power companies said the outage started in Germany with a surge in demand prompted by cold weather, and then spread to other parts of Europe. Some five million people in France lost power, mainly in the east of the country and including parts of Paris. "We weren't very far from a European blackout," a senior director with French power company RTE said.

E.ON AG plans to build wind farms with a total power generating capacity of 700 MW by 2010, chief executive Wulf Bernotat told Die Welt. As a result, Germany 'will take the lead in the field of offshore wind power generation,' he said. E.ON will set up the wind farms in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, he added.

The German environment minister Sigmar Gabriel gave the green light to a project that will see the construction of 12 offshore windmills in the North Sea. The move will go someway to reversing the country’s lag in the development of offshore wind farms, he said. Each windmill will generate 5 megawatts of electricity and will be ready for commercial use at the beginning of 2008, Gabriel said. The farm will be located 45 km off the island of Borkum.

Theolia has acquired two new wind farm construction permits in Ronchois, Seine Maritime for 30MW, and in Grand Camp, Eure et Loire for 24MW.

NIEDERAUSSEM, Germany -- Last year, to help combat global warming, Europe started charging industry for the right to spew hot air. For the first time on such a scale, governments slapped limits on the carbon-dioxide emissions of power plants, steelworks and other factories. Companies exceeding the caps have to buy CO2 "allowances" that trade on a European market. Because CO2 emissions now carry a cost, Germany's largest utility, RWE AG, is spending to improve the efficiency of its aging coal-fired power plants, including its biggest power station here in the country's industrial heartland.

As eco-friendly energy becomes more cost-efficient, convenient, and feasible, the time may be right for a growth spurt

Canadian manufacturer of solar cells and modules Photowatt (PHWT) filed to go public last week; its prospectus contains an overview of the renewable energy industry, and trends in solar energy. The excerpt below is from the company's F-1 filing:

For the first time, a five-megawatt wind turbine by REpower Systems AG (Prime Standard, WKN 617703) has been set up for the first time on the open sea. The first of a total of two turbines for the "Beatrice" demonstrator wind farm has just been set up on a lattice-like jacket structure, piled to the seabed at a depth of 44 metres in the Scottish North Sea, in the Moray Firth.

Most of the power emanating from the Ruhr these days is generated by wind farms dotted across the landscape. There is one just by the campsite, vast turbines the size of the Eiffel Tower rising out of the fields and casting a shadow over caravan and camper van alike. As an advert for the site, the windmills don't do much. Oddly, none of them was turning when I arrived. Like the site owner, they were clearly rising above the flap and bustle going on all around them.

A number of wind park operators in the northern German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein have filed an action for damages with the district court in the town of Itzehoe against the power grid operator E.ON Netz. They are accusing the company of using superficial or specious technical difficulties as an excuse for preventing the use of wind-generated electricity, which is unpopular with energy utilities.

FRANKFURT - Germany has approved a second offshore wind energy project in the Baltic Sea with 330 megawatt (MW) capacity, the relevant authority BSH said on Wednesday.

"This latest addition to our growing wind power portfolio is further evidence of our commitment to the European renewable energy market," said Andrew Marsden, managing director of GE Energy Financial Services' European operations.

According to the study, a further financial and technical strong-arm effort would be required in order to be able to even input the quantity of green electricity planned by the federal government into the German electricity network by the year 2015.