James Altucher highlighted stocks to buy to play Wind Power on thestreet.com:

a.  Suddenly, all of these hot wind power stocks that make no money started shooting up.

b. general approach when dealing with “hot topic of the day” type of stocks is to look for back doors. Find stocks that have legitimate cash-generating businesses trading at cheap multiples that happen to be making serious moves in whatever the hot field is.

c. Two favorite stocks that are back doors on wind power:

-  Aerovironment (AVAV);  company has been around since 1971, has $120 million in cash and no debt, and generates a ton of cash in its primary business: making unmanned aircraft systems that hang out in the stratosphere for weeks at a time spying on enemies, checking out hurricanes and forest fires, and doing whatever else it is they do up there for the Aerovironment’s military and corporate customers.  The company is growing at 25% per year and trades at a fairly cheap (for its growth) 22 P/E.

Aerovironment just patented the technology to put micro-wind towers on top of buildings that then power whatever buildings they are on. This way, vast tracts of rural land don’t have to take up so much space with ugly wind towers.

- Otter Tail (OTTR), the Northwest U.S. utility company that uses its excess cash flows to invest in other businesses; One of those businesses is DMI Industries, one of the largest makers of wind towers. It just opened up new plants because it can’t handle all the demand, and it has orders for ugly wind towers reaching into 2012. But regardless of windpower, it also always has its boring utility business, which boasts Bill Gates as its second-largest shareholder as well as a 3% dividend.

Track Altucher’s picks at:

http://trackthepros.com/categories.php?category_id=539