$3.4 billion for development

Tuesday October 27th, 2009 - Baltimore, MD

Green Chip Stocks: Update

President Obama announced today $3.4 billion in grants for smart grid development. The grants will go to 100 companies, utilities, manufacturers and cities in 49 different states.

Of particular interest is the fact that some of this money will pay for roughly 18 million smart meters. As you know, Itron, Inc.(NASDAQ:ITRI) is the leader in smart meters. And while the company's next earnings report may not make investors do cartwheels, you can bet that the company is going to be the recipient of a sizeable chunk of this smart grid funding. Currently we're up 27.3% on Itron since adding it to our limited coverage portfolio. Our price target on Itron is $68.

Also likely to benefit from this funding are Comverge, Inc.(NASDAQ:COMV) and EnerNoc, Inc. (NASDAQ:ENOC). Both have been huge winners for us this year. Since the start of the year, we're up 165.3% on Comverge and 313.2% on EnerNoc.

I'm also looking at another smart grid-related stock that we may be adding to the portfolio in another month or so. Still have quite a bit of digging to do on this one - but it could be a nice "under-the-radar" smart grid play for early 2010. I'll keep you posted as more develops.

And Western Wind Energy Corporation (TSX-V:WND) announced yesterday that it has secured about 575 acres near Tehachapi. The company plans to pursue the development of an additional wind energy project of at least 30 megawatts at this location.

Western Wind is also working on acquiring or leasing land parcels that could see this next project, which is called Windswept - increase to more than 1,500 acres and up to 80 megawatts.