By Jeff St. John

Microsoft's (MSFT) Hohm home energy platform will soon be able to deliver monthly energy use data for all of Xcel Energy's (XEL) 3.4 million customers across eight states, all without smart meters. The two companies plan to announce the news on Friday at an event at Microsoft's campus in Fargo, N.D., a Microsoft spokesperson said Thursday.

After having introduced the wind energy market and established why it has such a very promising future in “Wind Energy: Now Is the Time to Invest”, we explored ways to invest in this space, from the broad industry index approach of the specialized wind ETFs (FAN) and (PWND) to the targeted method of focusing on top wind turbine manufacturers such as Vestas (VWDRY.PK) outlined in “Finding Opportunities in Wind Energy ”. For all practical purposes, this latest article could have been entitled “Investing in Wind Energy, Part 3” and it takes us to mostly unsuspected ways to invest in this vastly untapped source of renewable energy.

When it comes to the selection of wind energy stocks, a look at the value chain beyond turbine manufacturers reveals what are, in our opinion, some of the best ways to play this market. With the turbine manufacturers located approximately in the middle of the value chain, we first look downstream to where the demand is coming from.