I've been doing a lot of work the past month on finding alternative energy plays that are not having to do with solar, and I found a few names and now have a new watchlist. Most of these stocks are much smaller than the standard fare I buy, so I am being cautious and waiting for some of these stocks to pullback in price, but they have been extraordinarily strong even with these selloffs 2 of the past 3 weeks. American Semiconductor (AMSC) is actually a name a reader brought up to me a month or so ago when we were asking for some new ideas... this is not a new name to me but after watching the stock I had to take another look. Much like Energy Conversion Devices (ENER) (which I highlighted in early May in the upper $40s, and is now in the mid $60s) this has been a "hope" company for a long time - long on promise, but short on execution. (May 8: Energy Conversion Devices - Is the Turnaround Finally Here?) But we've seen how the ship has appeared to come in for ENER, and perhaps the ship is coming in for controversial AMSC as well. They received a huge follow up order today. This appears to be a 3 year contract for $450 million. Considering the company is only doing under $200 million in revenue in total this year, the magnitude of this contract is enormous for this size of company. The stock performance today reflects that. (congrats to the reader who owns this!)

• American Superconductor Corporation (NASDAQ: AMSC - News), a leading energy technologies company, today announced that it has received a $450 million order from Beijing-based Sinovel Wind Corporation Limited for core electrical components for 1.5 megawatt (MW) wind turbines.
  
• The contract calls for shipments to begin in January 2009 and increase in amount year-over-year through the contract’s completion in December 2011.
• AMSC’s wind turbine electrical systems and core electrical components include the company's proprietary PowerModule™ power converters.