NYSE-listed Ormat Technologies has just completed a 20 MW geothermal plant in Nevada. It took only 8 months to build - that must be one of the fastest large power plant constructions.

Since going public just over a year ago, Ormat has performed well, now trading in the low 20s, having reached a low of 14 in April this year. The company also takes an interest in recovered energy generation, remote power units and biomass fueled power units, although its major focus is in Geothermal. Ormat's recent Q3 results were strong; revenues rose 9.5 percent and net Income grew by 82%. And the company has a large market capitalisation of over $700 m - of major importance to Institutional Investors.

Its subsidiary, Ormat Funding Corp, has a much snazzier looking website. OFC was founded in 2001 to develop, construct, own, and acquire through certain direct and indirect subsidiaries geothermal power projects in the United States.

This company appears to have a major slice in the Geothermal market - and is publicly traded.

Xantrex Technology Inc has just announced a sales deal with recently London aim-listed Clipper Wind Power for $12 million of wind power converters.

Xantrex sees itself as a world leader in advanced power electronics. With the major renewables such as solar and wind providing power not in your precisely chosen quantity or even exactly when you want it, power electronics are vital to smooth out the power supply.

As renewables make ever greater inroads, it will still have to be on the back of better electronics managing the power. That's why Xantrex is important.

Outside of India - where power supplies are extraodinarily unreliable - there aren't many companies doing this. Xantrex though, is one of them.

AEI followers will have picked up how many alternative energy stocks are based in Germany. So the level of political support there is of huge importance.

Prior to Germany's recent election, there had been fears within the country's renewable sector of huge cutbacks to its Renewables Programme.

Yet in a deal reached last Friday, it has been agreed that nothing will change until at least 2008.

Still, coalition governments between the 2 main parties in Germany do not have a habit of lasting a long time.

This is something to keep an eye on.