Visa?

I visited a local TDAmeritrade today. One of the consultants asked me what I was thinking of investing in. 'Visa (V) among other things' I told him. "Visa? Pretty speculative" he quipped. "Have you looked at TDAX its an ETF"? I felt like I was at US Bank all over again with them trying to sell you on their products. I tend to like and dislike these guys all at the same time. Some like to shoo you away faster than others as if you are cutting into their video watching time while others try to make commission by noting that they talked to you on this or that. It depends upon how much money you have in your account and how you've performed with it I think.

Solar did fairly well today as everyone that we track was in the green and five of them in the double digits percentage wise. They were SOLF 20.82%, SOL 16.24%, CSIQ 20.50%, AKNS 20.00%, and STP 11.03%.

There has been a lot of news this month in solar. Much more than I expected to see. One of them that made me bust out laughing was the pittance the U.S. government is going to invest at 11 universities over the next three years.
U.S. Department of Energy selects broad range of PV R&D projects to fund
Monday, March 17, 2008 10:35 AM
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will invest approximately $13.7 million over three years in 11 university-led photovoltaic projects addressing a wide range of technologies related to manufacturing processes and products.

Isn't that a paltry $415,000 per school per year? How fast can we develop anything at that pace? Heck our daily expenditure in Iraq is about $576,000,000 or or more precisely $575.96 million usd. Daily!

Something is better than nothing? Seems like the "Don't say we didn't do anything about alternative energy research" retoric. Uncle Sam has left the building, gone fishing, out to lunch, or do not disturb...in regards to being a world leader in innovation and technology. Have we really given up our technological leadership in favor of violence? How soon till we are no longer the one to watch? Huh? Seems like that time is coming quickly.

The German Federal Association of the Solar Industry reported that there were 1,300,000 solar plants in Germany in 2006. 220,000 new plants were erected in 2006 alone. Read more about the leader in renewable energy.

Photovoltaic in new dimensions
Here the sun is shining again: Europe's largest solar energy installation is located in the middle of a former lignite coal-mining area. The company GEOSOL has built a solar energy power station with an output of 5 MWh on a former sedimentation basin for ashes in Espenhain to the south of Leipzig. Not far away on the grounds of a former lignite power station in Borna there is another 22 hectare “solar field” with an output of almost 4 MWh.

Innovative: solar diesel and bio-ethanol
The company Choren AG from the Saxon city of Freiberg has developed a new process for producing synthetic fuel from biomass which is a world's first. Together with Daimler Chrysler and Volkswagen the „Sun Diesel“ is being made ready to go into production. In the Saxon-Anhalt town of Zeitz the company Südzucker AG has erected Europe's largest bio-ethanol plant. Here 260,000 m³ of bio-ethanol, 260,000 t of fodder which is rich in proteins and 30 million kWh electric current are being produced every year.

Spain Requires New Buildings Use Solar Power As part of the country’s efforts to bring its building rules up to date and curb growing demand for energy.

Until now Spain’s building standards have done little in seeking to improve energy efficiency.“We have to make up the time we have lost,” Environment Minister Cristina Narbona said, inaugurating a seminar on the new technical building code

This means new homes have to be equipped with solar panels to provide between 30 and 70 percent of their hot water, depending on where the building is located and on its expected water usage.

New non-residential buildings, such as shopping centers and hospitals, now have to have photovoltaic panels to generate a proportion of their electricity.

I want someone else to get mad and say we are doing something substantial for renewable energy usage. I want someone to show me. I want to hear it on the news and see it in my town. I want to hear people talking about it like it wasn't some far off future thing.