Monday, February 8, 2010

xFruits - 21st Century Regenerative Technology - 5 new items

Areva to Buy Solar Thermal Startup Ausra  

2010-02-08 18:14

Katie Fehrenbacher - clean power

Whoa — big news on the solar thermal front today, as French power giant Areva says it’s agreed to buy solar thermal startup Ausra. Back in November there were several media reports that said Ausra was in talks to be acquired by one of three companies, and it looks like Areva won the deal. Terms of the acquisition weren’t disclosed.

Areva, which has a large nuclear portfolio, says it will use the Ausra acquisition to become “the world leader in concentrated solar power,” and will sell solar thermal tech to utilities and independent power producers. Solar thermal technology uses mirrors and lenses to concentrate the sun rays to power turbines, and utilities have been turning to it in droves as of late.

During 2009 Ausra changed its strategy from looking to build and operate its own solar thermal power plants to providing its equipment to solar power producers. Building and operating these solar power plants would have taken a ton of financing, which, in a hard economy, would have proven to be a difficult route. Proof of that came at the end of last year when Ausra announced that it will sell its Carrizo Energy Solar Farm project, a proposed 177MW project still under development in San Luis Obispo, Calif., to industry thin-film solar giant First Solar. And in September Ausra said it had been chosen to provide its equipment for a 100MW concentrated solar thermal power project being developed in Ma'an, Jordan.

When Ausra’s acquisition talks emerged in the media, Katherine Potter, its VP of communications, told us: "As our recent string of announcements have shown, our business strategy of focusing on being a solar steam systems provider is working and producing results."

Without knowing the price of the acquisition or the valuation, it’s hard to tell how well Ausra investors will make out in the deal. Ausra's investors include Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures, Al Gore's Generation Investment, Alberta, Canada-based KERN Partners and Melbourne, Australia-based Starfish Ventures. The 4-year-old company has raised around $130 million to date. I’ll do more digging, but I think this is the first (or one of the first) exits for Kleiner Perkins.

Areva will have to compete in an increasingly crowded market including eSolar, BrightSource, Infinia (which is raising $75 million) and Stirling Energy. The acquisition is expected to close in the next couple of months and is subject to regulatory approval.

More on Ausra:

Solar Thermal Startup Ausra Looking to Sell?

First Solar Buys Ausra Solar Project; PG&E Power Purchase Deal Is Off

Ausra Gets a Piece of 100MW Solar Thermal Plant in Jordan

Solar Thermal Startup Ausra Tracks Down $25.5M

Ausra Turns On Solar Thermal Power Plant Ausra: Financial Markets Could Effect Utility Solar Projects

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Getting Solar Onto the Smart Grid

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Pole Solar: Petra Solar Goes Big With $40M Funding Round  

2010-02-08 17:35

Justin Moresco - clean power

Update: Petra Solar, which develops pole-mounted solar systems for electric utilities, announced Monday that it has raised $40 million in funding led by Craton Equity Partners and Espírito Santo Ventures with participation from existing investors including OnPoint Technologies, a venture fund for the U.S. Army. 

Petra Solar said it will use the new funding to expand its customer base and hire more staff. The South Plainfield, N.J.-based company also said it plans to expand its product line to address new applications and market segments. We're still waiting for comment from Petra Solar, but we’re thinking that those new applications and markets might have to do with commercial and residential customers. The company's website has dedicated sections for commercial and residential products and services.

Update: Petra Solar CEO Shihab Kuran has confirmed for us that the company will use the funding to expand into commercial and residential markets, but always with "utilities in mind as partners," such as those with initiatives to add PV to their customers' roofs. Also, the startup will use the funding to expand its applications for utilities, such as around smart grid, mounting systems and grid reliability.

Last year Petra Solar inked a $200 million deal with New Jersey utility PSE&G to build 40 MW of pole-mounted solar capacity, or about 200,000 installations. Petra Solar CEO Shihab Kuran said in a statement released at the time that the contract, its first deal with a utility, was "transformational" for the company. Petra Solar now says it's shipping its pole-mounted solar systems in volume to PSE&G, and that a growing number of utilities and municipalities are "engaged with the company."

Petra Solar's pole-mounted package, called SunWave and including a solar panel (presumably with an embedded micro-inverter since it cranks out AC power) and a communications system, can be directly tied into a utility's electric grid. The communications piece sends critical operational data, such as energy generation, voltage and temperature, to a utility's back office where it can be viewed through a Web browser. Communications can also go the other way, from the back office to the pole-mounted systems, for firmware upgrades.

Petra Solar says its SunWave product is price-competitive with conventional roof-mounted PV but can be brought online faster because of the relative ease of mounting the systems to a utility's existing distribution and streetlight poles. The startup hopes this will be attractive to utilities rushing to meet government rules that mandate the increased use of renewable energy.       

Founded in 2006, Petra Solar previously has received a grant from the Department of Energy worth up to $2.9 million and raised $14 million in venture funding.

Image courtesy of Petra Solar.

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AMEE Raises $5.5M for Carbon Accounting Engine  

2010-02-08 16:15

Katie Fehrenbacher - Green IT

The end goal of AMEE is for everyone and every organization to know their complete energy use, or their "energy identity,” explained Gavin Starks, CEO of the web services platform that helps track and measure carbon consumption, at our Green:Net 2009 conference last year. To help reach that vision and expand the amount of enterprise carbon accounting firms that use its engine, AMEE has been raising funding and this morning announced that it has raised $5.5 million in a Series B funding round led by Amadeus Capital Partners and including O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and Union Square Ventures.

AMEE, which originally stood for Avoiding Mass Extinctions Engine, was launched by Starks back in 2007 and has now amassed a customer list including the UK Government's Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), SAS, Morgan Stanley, Google, Radiohead and Sun. AMEE’s platform is an open API that aggregates the information needed to monitor carbon emissions and perform carbon calculations for the user. By using a standard methodology and set of data to measure carbon footprints, AMEE can make this nascent practice more reliable, trusted and transparent and perhaps one day lead to the integration of validated carbon information into profiles of everything from goods to actions to people.

Carbon accounting is expected to be a $4 billion market by 2017, driven largely by regulation. However there have been a couple hurdles for this market lately. The bill that could deliver a cap-and-trade system in the U.S., and offer a boost for the carbon accounting market worldwide, seems to be stalled in the Senate this year. And the missed opportunity to provide clarity for the market during Copenhagen led to the biggest drop in European and UN carbon prices over a year-long period.

But a platform like AMEE can help add more stability in carbon prices, Starks explained to me in a phone call last week. Because the engine helps standardize the data and processes and adds transparency, the thought is that it will add a dose of reliability to the market (investors like things like clarity and security). Check out this video of Starks speaking at our Green:Net conference last year, and look for him back at our Green:Net 2010 (April 29 in San Francisco).

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The Anxiety of Digital: Cars, Power Grid Up Next  

2010-02-08 05:00

Katie Fehrenbacher - Automotive

If you can’t recall the collective anxiety that is attached to the emergence of digital and networked technologies just take a peek back at the news headlines of yesteryear. The fear over computerized voting systems started soon after the 2000 U.S. presidential election debacle, while worry about online banking began when the first bank put its customer accounts on the web. But as the latest systems, including vehicles and the power grid, crossover to the digital and computing world, and get connected to communication networks, expect the same, if not more, fear.

The Transformation: Grid, Vehicles

Both vehicles and the power grid are undergoing massive transformations involving IT. The so-called smart grid industry has emerged to sell utilities infrastructure based on communication networks, and companies are building software and services to help utilities manage energy data. The smart grid is projected to generate $210 billion in investment between 2010 and 2015, and President Obama has called for the installation of 40 million smart (digital and connected) meters in the U.S.

Cars are going digital and connected, too. Vehicles are now “packed with up to 100 million lines of computer code,” and have “at least 30 microprocessor-controlled devices,” points out the New York Times this weekend. Many automakers offer services based on network connections, like location-based navigation (enabled by a GPS system) or GM’s OnStar System which is based on a cellular connection.

As electric vehicles emerge in the coming years there will be even more uses of software and communication networks to manage the vehicle’s charge. Utilities will have to manage the collective charging of customers, so that EV charging doesn’t take down their grids. Electric vehicle infrastructure player Better Place will be offering its customers “a comprehensive suite of in-car services designed to provide drivers with the best possible EV driving experience,” when it launches commercially in 2011. Those types of services include directing drivers to available and nearby charge points, and rely heavily on software, computing and communication connections.

The Anxiety

Before electric vehicles even hit the mainstream market, though, consumers are already getting anxiety over computer and software dependent cars. Last week Toyota said that a software glitch is responsible for the braking problem in its Prius hybrid 2010. That’s led to a new round of media headlines taking a hard look at the trend of software and computing in cars (like the New York Time’s this weekend: The Dozens of Computers That Make Modern Cars Go (and Stop)).

I’ve experienced software glitches when driving a Smart Car that’s networked in the car sharing service City Car Share, and believe me it wasn’t fun. The Smart Car has a lot of embedded software, and the City Car Share service has its own software and IT systems, and I’ve had to call customer service several times in order to restart the computing system (kinda like rebooting a computer) to get the car to work properly. As the drivers of the Toyota Prius’ with glitchy software found: beta software just doesn’t cut it at 60 mph.

The smart grid has also had growing pains. “The Bakersfield issue,” emerged when residents in Bakersfield, Calif. filed a suit against utility PG&E for smart meters that they claimed boosted electricity bills. The problem was a combination of unusually hot weather and a lack of proper customer outreach, but at the heart of the issue was anxiety surrounding the introduction of the new digital meter.

When Digital Meets High Impact

Both vehicles and the power grid have different relationships with consumers, compared to entertainment, communications and some types of information. When your wireless network drops or your browser crashes and you’re sitting in front of a computer, it’s annoying but not life threatening. Software problems and dropped communication connections could have much more serious consequences in a vehicle (crashing, being stranded somewhere, not being able to get to work, etc), and for the power grid (outages, surges, etc).

Problems with reliability of software and computing in high-impact areas has been studied for years. For example, health care — last month I read this New York Times article that investigated faulty software that caused a string of medical errors for radiation treatments and lead to several deaths. It’s terrifying to think software that controls radiation shot at someone’s chest, could freeze as easily as my Firefox browser. The aviation and defense industries have long been dealing with the impact of software and communication systems on their high-impact technologies.

There’s also the worry over networks being more susceptible to security concerns. Adding a two-way network connection, means something, or someone, can access the data — that’s the whole point of connecting it to a network. But that also means the connected system can be hacked and used in ways that it wasn’t intended. The smart grid is no different, and computer security firm IOActive has shown a virtual demo of how a worm or virus could infiltrate connected digital smart meters and crash a power grid. The U.S. government is paying particular attention to smart grid security, following warnings from the Internet industry. How long until we see headlines about hacked cars?

The companies building the future of digital, connected vehicles and the power grid will be smart to look at the lessons learned through the digitization of some of these high-impact area, like aviation, defense and health care. These companies will just have to realize how sensitive the transition is to digital, connected systems and remain hyper vigilant. But expect to see a lot more headlines about digital anxiety over vehicles and the power grid in the future.

But ultimately the transformation to digital, connected vehicles and the power grid can’t slow down due to digital anxiety. Digitizing these 2 sectors — which are two of the biggest factors that contribute to the world’s carbon emissions and global warming — is fundamental to fight climate change.

Image courtesy of FlickrJunkie’s photostream Creative Commons.

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Better Place Preps for Israel Launch: Partners, Demo Center  

2010-02-07 21:12

Katie Fehrenbacher - Automotive

Electric vehicle infrastructure company Better Place has a lot of work to do before it commercially launches its first networks of battery swap and charging stations in Israel and Denmark next year. But this weekend the company took a couple steps forward in Israel. First, Better Place announced the opening of a slick demonstration center in Israel built on top of a gasoline storage and distribution center, inside a refurbished oil tank (see photos). The company also announced partnerships with gas station operator Dor Alon and additional corporate customers that have pledged to swap portions of their fleets with Renault electric vehicles next year.

As you can see from the photos the demo center is pretty swanky. It’s meant to be used as outreach for both potential Israeli customers, as well as international visitors, and features a multi-media center, a driving track, and will eventually have demos of the Renault Fluence.

In terms of the partnerships, Better Place says it plans to install battery swap stations at outlets owned by Dor Alon, one of the biggest gas station operators in Israel with 170 public retail outlets across the region. We’re waiting to hear back on how many of Dor Alon’s outlets will get the battery swap technology (Update: Better Place says they’re still finalizing deal). Better Place also says it’s boosted the number of corporate fleet partners in Israel, like Motorola and Computer Associates, to 92 companies, which have a collective total of 45,000 fleet vehicles. We’re also waiting to hear back on what percentage of that fleet will get swapped out for electric vehicles. (Update: No specifics offered on this either).

All of this prep work is needed to make the Better Place proposal attractive to Israel customers. The big question for 2011 will be, once the first Better Place network is launched commercially in Israel, will customers sign up?

One thing that next year’s launch will need is much more marketing, particularly because the Fluence will have just gone on sale. But Better Place does have that recently-raised whopping $350 million in funding — which was one of the largest rounds raised for cleantech ever — to help with the launch. And Better Place has now raised about $750 million. The funding is massive, but so are the stakes — if Better Place doesn’t work in Israel, it might not work anywhere.

Images courtesy of btrplc’s photostream Flickr.

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Posted by Chad S at 1:41 PM 0 comments

Sunday, February 7, 2010

xFruits - 21st Century Regenerative Technology - 10 new items

Earth2Tech Week in Review  

2010-02-06 19:05

Josie Garthwaite - Misc

Smart Grid Problem?: Smart at the Edge, Dumb in the Middle: Too much intelligence at the edge of a network, and not enough in the middle, makes for a volatile network, says Ray Gogel, president and chief operating officer of the Current Group.

Proterra Names Green Bus Plant Site, Closes on Funding: South Carolina's poised to get some skin in the game of the green bus rush, as Colorado startup Proterra has just announced plans to set up a new assembly plant in the state in 2011.

Aptera Faces More Than Leadership Troubles After Founders’ Official Exit: According to a newsletter Aptera sent out this week, Aptera co-founder Steve Fambro "will leave the day to day operations” at the startup. The departure itself shouldn’t overshadow the very significant hurdles that Aptera now faces, no matter who’s leading it.

Cisco to FCC: 5 Suggestions for the Smart Grid: The Federal Communications Commission plans to make recommendations for how the National Broadband Plan should help shape the fledgling smart grid industry, and this week Cisco submitted a couple of key suggestions to the FCC.

Boston-Power Plowing “Full Steam Ahead” on Saab EV Project: Boston-Power CEO Christina Lampe-Onnerud told us this week its electric vehicle demonstration project is going "full steam ahead" with Saab, the loss-making auto brand that General Motors is selling to specialty car maker Spyker.

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How Long To Expect the Loan Guarantee Process to Take  

2010-02-05 21:05

Josie Garthwaite - Uncategorized

When Energy Secretary Steven Chu fast-tracked the long-stalled $25 billion dollars in loans and loan guarantees, created as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and appropriated by Congress in 2006, it was a breath of fresh air for the clean power and green transportation sectors. But how long do government-backed loan guarantees actually take to get the wheels turning on helping a company raise funds?

More than a year — at least in the case of cellulosic ethanol startup Range Fuels. In January 2009 the company secured a conditional commitment for an $80 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Agriculture out of the 2008 Farm Bill. And according to an SEC filing this week, Range Fuels has just filed to raise that $80 million in debt financing to build out its first commercial plant in Soperton, Georgia.

The Broomfield, Colo.-based company told us that the funds “will be used for both the current Soperton Plant project to be mechanically complete this month and for future phases at Soperton.” Range Fuels had completed half of its commercial facility at Soperton as of October 2009, according to the New York Times. Out of all the companies trying to reach commercial scale production of cellulosic ethanol in the U.S., Range Fuels is one of the farthest along.

But the commercial plant is still taking a long to build out. Range Fuels began construction of the planned 100-million-gallon-per-year plant in Soperton back in November 2007, with costs expected to reach hundreds of millions of dollars. Before the markets crashed in 2008, the company had been considering an IPO to raise money for the project, and raised $100 million in second-round financing from firms including Khosla Ventures and Passport Capital.

Scoring a loan guarantee is a crucial competitive edge for a company like Range Fuels, but it’s not money in the bank. As the DOE explained about its loan guarantee program last year, recipients still have to "secure their own share of financing — similar to earnest money in a home mortgage.” That fund raising takes time.

But a loan guarantee typically enables a company to finance projects with a better interest rate and at a lower cost than would otherwise be available to them. It serves essentially as promise by the government to back a loan if the company can't make good on it. The USDA as well as the Department of Energy have been using this type of award to help nudge forward emerging energy technologies in a time of difficult debt and tax credit financing for clean power projects. At the time the USDA announced Range Fuels’ guarantee, the lead lending agency on the guarantee was slated to be AgSouth Farm Credit, a provider of agricultural and rural loans that’s part of Farm Credit Services.

At this point, Range maintains on its web site that the first phase of the plant is on track for completion by the first quarter of this year, and production of ethanol and methanol in low volumes (less than 10 million gallons per year) will begin during the second quarter of 2010. Now the company needs to bring in the investors, raise the debt, and finish the plant.

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Q&A: Vulcan Power's CEO on the Potential of Geothermal  

2010-02-05 17:37

Justin Moresco - clean power

At times it’s seemed like geothermal power is the Rodney Dangerfield of clean energy – it’s gotten little respect compared with glitzier cousins like solar and wind. But that image is changing as more investment flows into the industry and new technologies make tapping the heat below the earth's surface cheaper and more accessible. According to the Geothermal Energy Association there are 144 new U.S. geothermal plants under development, which could add seven gigawatts of new baseload power, and enhanced geothermal systems, a field of promising new technologies, could increase the U.S. geothermal generation capacity 40 fold, according to the Department of Energy.

We sat down with Robert Warburton, acting chief executive officer of Vulcan Power Company, to get his outlook for the industry. The Bend, Or.-based geothermal project developer, which announced earlier this week that it raised $108 million in private equity investment, has some 170,000 acres of geothermal properties in four Western states including California and Nevada. Vulcan is currently developing geothermal plants totaling 300 MW of power, and it has signed 180 MW of long-term power purchase agreements with utilities, with another 120 MW currently under negotiation.

Earth2Tech: Federal and state policies such as renewable portfolio standards and the Recovery Act largely fueled the U.S. geothermal industry's growth last year. Could the loss of some of these drivers mean the industry will struggle to expand?

Robert Warburton: From our point of view, renewable energy is a clear focus in this country now and we don't foresee that going away. The key is to bring the cost of [geothermal] down. There are firms out there — design firms and equipment suppliers –- who are working on more efficient geothermal technology and making projects more cost effective. So there are efforts going on, private and federally funded, to improve drilling techniques and the success rate of drilling. But geothermal on its own is already pretty cost competitive with grid pricing at this point.

E2T: How important is technology for the growth of the industry? Is technology the linchpin to making geothermal a large portion of the nation's energy mix?

RW: I think financing is probably the most critical piece because geothermal is a capital-intensive business. Technology would follow after that to the extent you can be more efficient with your drilling — lower cost of drilling a well –- and improve your ability to find the resources. Typically you may assume that you drill 10 wells and two or three will be dry. If you can drill 10 but only one is dry, you just reduced your upfront costs. But over the next several years the key component will be access to capital. The current technology is robust enough to support the growth projections by the [Geothermal Energy Association].

E2T: We don't hear as much about geothermal energy as we do about other forms of renewable energy, and it seems venture capitalists, with a few exceptions, have largely ignored the sector. Do you think the industry has failed to capture the imagination of investors and, if so, what needs to happen to change this?

RW: Its growth isn't as high as other renewable energy. People put up 1000 MW wind farms. Geothermal is pretty much confined to the Western U.S., and that has had an impact. Plants tend to be in sizes of 20-60 MW, and that doesn't capture the attention of the general population. Also, it hasn't been as evident in the marketplace that geothermal is a very reliable and cost-effective renewable energy strategy. But I think that is becoming more the case now, and there is a focus within the industry in making it known.

E2T: Do venture capitalists have a role in geothermal?

RW: I don't know that I'd call it an explosive new technology. There are steady advancements in technology but not what I'd call game-changing technology. But as investment firms get more comfortable with the drilling risk and the ability of firms to deliver, I think you'll see more investment.

E2T: Where do you see opportunities in geothermal for startups?

RW: Potentially on the drilling side, but there is a lot of competition. Also on the equipment supply side, maybe to come up with a more efficient system to extract that energy. There are a number of firms working on technology to extract energy from lower fluid temperatures [see for example, Raser Technologies' use of so-called Kalina conversion technology]. Right now, the main focus on geothermal is to find fluids typically above 275°F or 300°F but to the extent that you can use lower temperature fluids, it opens up more opportunities from a drilling point of view. You could use fluids that in the past weren't hot enough to be used by the existing technology.

Image of drilling rig courtesy of Vulcan Power.

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GreenRoad: Maxing Out MPG With Real-time Feedback  

2010-02-05 15:45

Josie Garthwaite - Automotive

Think of it as a friendly backseat driver with a remarkable mind for calculating risk and a keen ability to cut your fuel use and emissions. That’s kind of how 7-year-old startup GreenRoad Technologies’ tool works for improving driver behavior through real-time feedback.

GreenRoad’s system uses sensors, an accelerometor, GPS and customized algorithms to calculate the relative risk of different driving maneuvers, then communicates that to the driver by illuminating either a red, yellow or green light. Installed mainly on commercial fleet vehicles (80 fleets so far), the device can have its algorithm customized according to a customer’s priorities, and it communicates information via cellular networks to GreenRoad’s data center. “The brains are in the vehicle,” GreenRoad marketing chief Eric Weiss told me this week, so even in areas without cellular coverage, drivers “always get real-time feedback.”

Weiss commented that the “preoccupation” with banning texting while driving (an idea that’s gaining momentum in certain states and among U.S. policymakers), and the “legislative approach of cordoning off all the things you can’t do…is not effective for converting wrong to right.”

It also obscures a larger opportunity, he said, to transform driving habits using technology, or more specifically: real-time feedback for drivers (both positive and negative), constant data gathering and an online display showing potential savings and areas for improvement — similar to the energy management tools rolling out that monitor homeowners’ real-time use of electricity, natural gas and water, and present it in web-based portals and in-home displays.

Based in Redwood Shores, Calif., with offices in the U.S., UK and Israel, Greenroad is not alone in trying to seize that opportunity. A number of smartphone apps and after-market vehicle retrofits have emerged in an effort to meet demand for the real-time and cumulative data about fuel efficiency that hypermilers have come to love in the Toyota Prius display.

And more automakers are starting build these tools right into the vehicle. Ford, for example, has developed an instrument cluster that, as Grist put it recently, tells “the driver (nicely) whether to ditch the lead foot or keep the good times rollin’.”

For GreenRoad, backed by Virgin Green Fund and Benchmark Capital, among others, one of its main selling points to fleet operators is that the real-time risk assessments of different driving maneuvers help to improve safety, reduce wear and tear on vehicles and slash the number of accidents. But Weiss said that the company’s system has been installed in “two of the country’s largest truck fleets, primarily because of fuel saving.”

We’d like to see bigger cuts in fuel consumption than the 10 percent noted on GreenRoad’s web site, and the up to 15 percent that Weiss said the system can deliver (depending on the route, vehicle and driver). But the system represents one tool that’s relatively easy to implement and, in combination with other technologies, could help to reduce emissions from the transportation sector — the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country since 1990, and also one of the largest.

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CellEra Raises Cash for Cheaper Fuel Cells  

2010-02-05 08:00

Jennifer Kho - Automotive

Israeli fuel-cell startup CellEra has kept its activities under wraps since it raised $2 million from Israel Cleantech Ventures last year. But a German press release from angel investor group BrainsToVentures has revealed the company has raised another $2 million, from BrainsToVentures and Israel Cleantech Ventures, and has developed its first prototype. CEO Ziv Gottesfeld confirmed the news, telling us the cash represents part of a larger round.

Gottesfeld also told us CellEra already is working with a major manufacturer and is integrating its fuel cells into backup power systems. CellEra plans to use its new cash to turn its working prototype into its first commercial product, he said, adding that the company aims to have products ready for the market in two years.

According to the release, CellEra believes it can cut fuel-cell development and manufacturing costs by more than 70 percent by eliminating the most expensive material – platinum. The precious metal, which is by far the costliest part of a fuel cell, is normally used as a catalyst to create the electrochemical reaction that converts hydrogen, air and water into electricity.

The key to CellEra’s platinum-free fuel-cell technology is its proprietary electrodes, Gottesfeld said, which are the positively and negatively charged areas where the reaction takes place. The company isn’t developing the platinum-free catalysts itself, instead working with partners that use raw materials such as iron, cobalt or silver, he added.

CellEra’s plans to initially target stationary applications, such as providing backup power for hospitals, which already spend more than $3 billion for lead-acid batteries each year. CellEra also plans to target the diesel-generator, telecommunications and information-technology markets.

Further into the future, the company also seems to be considering the elusive vehicle market. Christian Schütz, a partner at BrainsToVentures, told the Financial Times’ German edition that he expects CellEra to introduce fuel cells for hybrid cars by 2015.

Gottesfeld shied away from giving a date, saying that “given the flux in this market today, I would not venture to make any projections.” Still, he added that the technology could work “very nicely and cost-effectively” with batteries to extend the range of electric vehicles in the future.

If CellEra succeeds in significantly lowering costs, it could help fuel cells overcome one of its key obstacles. Fuel-cell companies, delivering huge promises and few mass-market products for decades, have long been an easy target for skeptics. The technology’s ability to convert fuel, such as hydrogen, into electricity with no emissions other than water vapor has led automakers to tout fuel cells as the next big thing for vehicles since at least 1993, when Ballard Power Systems originally demonstrated a fuel cell in a vehicle and planned to make it available in just a few years. But high costs, as well as infrastructure issues and some technical challenges, have kept the technology in the wings.

The CellEra announcement is part of a spate of recent news, including advances from automakers, customer announcements (see here and here) and new government programs in the U.S. and the UK, that may help to bring back a bit of optimism about the potential for fuel cells.

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Proterra Names Green Bus Plant Site, Closes in on Funding  

2010-02-05 00:02

Josie Garthwaite - Automotive

South Carolina’s poised to get some skin in the game of the green bus rush, as Colorado startup Proterra, formerly called Mobile Energy solutions, has just announced plans to set up a new assembly plant in the state in 2011. Without specifying the expected capacity of the project, Jeff Granato, CEO of Proterra — which makes drive components and energy storage systems for electric and hybrid buses, delivery vans and other commercial models, as well as the vehicles themselves — said today at an announcement reported by local media that this will be the company’s first full-scale facility.

All well and good, but will this project sit in limbo, awaiting a green light on funds from the Department of Energy, like so many other green vehicle manufacturing plans? No, spokesperson Sarahjane Sacchetti told us today. She said a private equity investment is “being finalized,” and incentives have already been secured at the state and local level for the project.

Sacchetti said Proterra will likely pursue federal funding to help with integration of Proterra’s energy storage and drive systems into certain classes of vehicles. Proterra could also see benefits federal support for greener transit projects. Sacchetti tells us 21 transit agencies around the country have requested government funding for the purchase of more than $400 million worth of Proterra vehicles.

Founded in 2004, Proterra isn’t the only startup working to deploy next-gen hybrid and electric vehicle technology in a bus market that has been buoyed by stimulus funds in the U.S. and a government push for electric buses in China. Transit agencies and private bus fleet managers can dare to be early adopters because of their predictable demands. As Terry Copeland, CEO of battery maker Altairnano told us back in 2008, “They go out on fixed routes and come back to the same place every night where they can recharge."

Proterra plans to lease a 240,000-square-foot building at Clemson University’s International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR) in Greenville County, with the option to expand in coming years. According to a release from Clemson University, Greenville beat out competing sites in more than two dozen states. The area stands to gain some $68 million in investment and more than 1,300 jobs through the project over the next seven years, with construction expected to begin as early as this spring.

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Daily Sprout  

2010-02-04 23:40

Katie Fehrenbacher - Misc

Hack-A-Credit: Last week hackers broke into online accounts and stole and resold carbon credits, according to the German newspaper Der Spiegel — Wired.

The Yes Men @ Davos: Ha, ha. Supposedly the Yes Men put up this dubbed video of ADM CEO Patricia Woertz speaking from World Economic Forum — Grist.

Power Plants As Cap & Trade Guinea Pig?: “[S]enators are studying whether power plants should be the guinea pig industry for the nation’s first cap-and-trade system designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions.” – New York Times, ClimateWire.

BYD’s E-6 Emerges As Chinese Cab: BYD fulfilled most of 100-vehicle order for the Shenzhen Taxi Company — AutoblogGreen.

It Was The Software!: Ford says it will upgrade the braking software on its Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan hybrids after a problem was discovered with braking according to Consumer Reports. Cars aren’t so good with beta releases. — Wall Street Journal.

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Chinese Motorcycle Maker Eyes Tech From Superbike Startup Mission...  

2010-02-04 21:00

Josie Garthwaite - Startups

Mission Motors, the San Francisco startup working on high-performance electric motorcycles with lithium-ion batteries, has caught the eye of Chinese motorcycle maker Zongshen Power Machinery. The motorcycle blog Asphalt & Rubber this week picked up a translation of Chinese reports saying the firm has signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate with Mission Motors on development of electrical engine systems, and possibly invest in the startup.

While the investment and partnership have not been finalized at this point (the memo is more of a road map of how the pair will proceed if talks go well), the deal could be an important step for Mission Motors as it works to build a viable business model in a market that not too long ago sent pioneering electric scooter maker Vectrix into bankruptcy.

Mission Motors CEO and co-founder Forrest North told us last fall that the startup, angel-funded so far with at least $2.2 million, needed to raise less than $30 million over the next 3-5 years, and it had “really strong interest” at the time in discussions for pre-Series A financing. China Knowledge reports that part of Mission Motors and Zongshen’s memorandum of understanding calls for the startup to deliver a three-year development plan by the end of this month.

Mission Motors gave us a statement this morning from chief operating officer Jit Bhattacharya describing the arrangement with Zongshen, which the startup has identified as a “potential partner.” As part of an ongoing discussion, he said a strategic investment is under consideration, and, “We are exploring how we can leverage Mission Motors’ technology with Zongshen’s strengths in high volume, low-cost manufacturing to create a lower cost electric powertrain for the Chinese market.”

If the deal goes through it could support Mission Motors’ long-term goal of expanding beyond the luxury market (where Vectrix floundered) and into lower-priced commuter models. According to North, the company already has a larger trend working in its favor, with new opportunities opening up for electric motorcycle startups with the right technology. The industry has shifted, he told us last year, from large manufacturers showing general disinterest in startups’ plug-in technology to a point where they increasingly “see value in working with a startup" that's nimble and "technologically focused." North didn’t mention Zongshen at the time, but he told us many manufacturers were calling up the startup amid a rush to develop electric models. “Building up the technology internally,” he noted, “will take them much longer.”

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Report: If A Quarter of U.S. Power Is Clean by 2025 = Jobs  

2010-02-04 18:56

Jeff St. John - clean power

Given that a U.S. carbon cap-and-trade system appears increasingly unlikely in the near term, what's the next best way to boost the domestic renewable energy industry and deliver green jobs? According to a study done by Navigant Consulting on behalf of the renewable energy industry group, Renewable Electricity Standard Alliance for Jobs, the answer is: a national renewable energy standard. Specifically one requiring every state to get 25 percent of its power from renewable resources by 2025.

A nationwide standard would result in 274,000 more jobs around the country than sticking to the status quo, and will be needed to help stave off job declines expected to come in the short term as tax incentives and stimulus funding for U.S. renewables start to slack off, the report found.

It isn't the first time someone has talked about a national goal for renewable energy. President Obama has called for a 25 percent national RES by 2025, and the Union of Concerned Scientists said in March that this would create 297,000 jobs and save consumers $64.3 billion in electricity and natural gas bills. While not quite so ambitious, the Waxman-Markey energy and climate bill now cooling its heels in the House of Representatives, calls for the nation to get 20 percent of its power from renewables by 2020.

But Navigant's report — which also assumes shorter-term national RES's of 12 percent by 2014 and 20 percent by 2020 to get things going, and doesn't include energy efficiency as part of an RES, as Waxman-Markey does — says that its more aggressive framework would create about three times the number of jobs that would come from the House proposal.

About 30 states now have their own renewable energy mandates in place, with California's call for one-third of its power to come from renewables by 2020 among the most ambitious. But "Contrary to popular belief, a strong national RES will have major impacts in every state," Jay Paidipati, a Navigant managing consultant, said in a Thursday conference call. In fact, sticking with the status quo is likely to lead to job losses in 10 states over the next 15 years, compared to a 25-percent RES scenario, which would lead to job gains across every state, the report contends. About half of those jobs would be in manufacturing, and another quarter or so in construction and craft trades, but a fair share of white-collar jobs would also be created, the report found.

The idea of a national standard has traditionally faced opposition from states seen as lacking in the natural resources behind renewable energy — most notably, states in the Southeast, which lack the sunny skies of the Southwest or the strong winds of the Midwest to capture for power generation. But the southeast could make up those deficits by turning to hydropower, waste-to-energy and biomass energy in a big way, according to Navigant.

Much of the growth in biomass jobs — 60,000 by 2025, the report says — could come in states such as Florida, Louisiana, Alabama and Georgia. Robert Cleaves, CEO of the Biomass Power Association, said the Southeast was "unequivocally the future of this industry" — a clear call to Southeast states to get behind a renewables push they've so far been slow to adopt. (By the way, a national RES isn't quite as simple as each state getting 25 percent of its power from in-state renewable sources, as states and utilities could trade renewable energy credits with each other to reach the goal).

There's a lot that Navigant didn't tackle in its Thursday report, including just how much capital investment would be involved in getting a quarter of the nation's power from renewable resources by 2025, and what effects it would have on the price of electricity. Another question left unstudied was the impact of having — or not having — a price on carbon over that time. Of course, with President Obama publicly saying this week that carbon cap-and-trade is less likely to be included in ongoing work on national energy legislation this year (see Wall Street Journal), it might be wise to avoid making any assumptions on that point.

Images courtesy of Navigant.

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Solar Startup 1366 Closes $5.2M, Signs New Customers  

2010-02-04 17:31

Jennifer Kho - Startups

Solar startup 1366 Technologies has closed $5.15 million in a second round of funding from North Bridge Venture Partners and Polaris Venture Partners and plans to announce the funding this morning. Xconomy first reported the story yesterday, and according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing yesterday, the cash is part of a round expected to total $6.2 million.

The new cash comes after 1366 raised $4 million from the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program, becoming the first (and so far, the only) photovoltaic startup to be selected. The MIT spinoff, founded in 2007, also previously raised $12.4 million back in March.

1366 is developing technologies to boost the efficiency – and lower the cost – of manufacturing conventional multicrystalline solar cells, starting with two machines: one that “texturizes” solar cells, giving them a surface texture that increases internal light refraction and boosts solar panel efficiency, and another that produces thinner conductive metal “fingers” on the cells, which cut costs and reduce shading, again increasing efficiency.

Craig Lund, director of business development for the Lexington, Mass.-based company, tells us the company is about to sign on its third customer for testing these tools and plans to install them in its customers’ pilot lines in the first half of next year. The company has signed confidentiality agreements and can’t yet disclose the names of its customers, Lund said, adding that all three are based in Europe. The company last year had expected to deliver a machine for its first customer this March.

In September, chief technology officer Emanuel Sachs said 1366’s technologies have already produced cells of almost 18 percent efficiency, and the company expects to hit 19 percent this year, at a cost only pennies per watt more than that of producing cells with 16 percent efficiency. Standard multicrystalline cells average approximately 16 percent efficiency, although the most efficient multicrysalline cells, such as those made by Kyocera, already have exceeded 18 percent efficiency.

With its ARPA-E money, 1366 also is researching a new way of making wafers by molding them directly from molten silicon, cutting out many steps in order to potentially cut costs by 70 percent, reduce silicon waste by 50 percent and further boost panel efficiencies to up to 20 percent, Lund said. Such low costs could make it more feasible to produce wafers in the United States instead of in China, especially if the U.S. market takes off, he added.

If the technology works as 1366 hopes, the company plans to manufacture wafers – instead of supplying equipment as it is with its other technologies – and sell them to solar-cell manufacturers, the same customers that it’s targeting with its first machines. It hopes to have a factory up and running by 2012, Lund said, adding that the company is hoping to help fund the manufacturing facility with a federal loan.

1366 also is hiring, Lund said. The company has grown from 12 to 26 employees and expects to reach 30 employees by next month, he said.

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Posted by Chad S at 12:51 PM 1 comments

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

xFruits - 21st Century Regenerative Technology - 5 new items

Cisco to FCC: 5 Suggestions for the Smart Grid  

2010-02-03 01:11

Katie Fehrenbacher - Green IT

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plans to make recommendations for how the National Broadband Plan — due to the U.S. Congress on March 17 — should help shape the fledgling smart grid industry. Interested parties have been submitting their comments over the past few weeks, and this week network infrastructure giant Cisco submitted its comments to the FCC, with a couple of key suggestions.

First, Cisco’s “shoulds”: The National Broadband Plan should embrace broadband for the smart grid, it should look to the IT industry for smart grid security, and it should focus on correcting the problems with incentivizing utilities around energy efficiency, says Cisco. And the “should nots”: The plan should not pay much attention to calls for separate spectrum for the smart grid, and the concerns over interference of unlicensed spectrum are overblown, says Cisco. Here are five suggestions that Cisco has for the FCC when it comes to the smart grid:

1). Broadband Smart Grid: It’s not just about Internet Protocol (IP), which Cisco has been stongly promoting, but Cisco says the smart grid will be fundamentally tied to broadband. Cisco writes “not only will the new smart grid largely depend upon broadband technologies, but the extension of broadband to all end users is critical to delivering on the power and promise of a broadband-enabled electric system. We will not be able to achieve the full effect of a smart grid without a robust broadband network that connects the supply side with the demand side of the electric industry ubiquitously.” That’s a huge contrast to the jaw-droppingly awful crawling speeds of current utility networks which Cisco says “generally transmit only 256 bytes of data and can operate with a latency approaching two seconds.”

2). More Spectrum for Utilities? Meh: Some utilities and telecom trade groups have been calling for the FCC to allocate separate wireless spectrum just for the smart grid. The FCC’s new Energy and Environmental Director, Nick Sinai said recently that one of the ways to promote the use of commercial networks over proprietary networks for the smart grid could be working with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to look at available federal spectrum bands.

Cisco says “it appears that advanced wireless technology platforms available today or in the near future are likely to have sufficient bandwidth and quality-of-service to support evolving smart grid needs for the foreseeable future. Thus, additional spectrum is not needed to deploy technology that is unique or specific to smart grid applications, per se.”

3). Interference Concerns Misplaced: There has been a debate over whether or not smart grid services should run over licensed spectrum, which is owned by one entity and can be used for a single purpose, or unlicensed spectrum, which is shared and doesn't require an expensive license to access it. Some have raised concerns (including the group that created a report for NIST) that unlicensed spectrum could have issues with interference for utilities’ services. Cisco says: not so much:

“In Cisco's view, interference concerns are misplaced. The 802.11 [WiFi] standard is a ‘contention-based’ protocol, which means that, if packets are missed as a result of simultaneous use of a channel by different devices, they are simply requested by the receiving device and re-sent. Thus, an increase in simultaneous users does not fundamentally affect the reliability of the data transfer.”

4). Look to the IT Industry for Smart Grid Security: Cisco says concerns over security for the smart grid are real, but that the industry and regulators should look to the companies that have already built security applications and tools based on Internet Protocol. And yes, that means look to Cisco.

5). There’s Still A Regulatory Incentive Problem: Despite all the standards work done by NIST, and the injection of the $4 billion in smart grid stimulus funds, Cisco says there’s still a fundamental issue with how to incentivize utilities to sell less electricity. Specifically Cisco asks the National Broadband Plan to ask the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency to update a report on a rolling basis that looks at the most successful cost recovery practices and efficiency projects. Cisco says: “The real work of deploying a smart grid will come from 'smart regulation' and even 'smarter deregulation' by state utility commissions.”

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Daily Sprout  

2010-02-02 23:00

Josie Garthwaite - Misc

Red Planet to Green Building: “Aspen Aerogels, which makes insulating material for industrial applications, has started selling its air-filled aerogel blankets to make existing buildings more energy efficient.” Previously, aerogel manufacturers have focused on higher-end industrial applications, such as insulating oil and gas pipelines and the Mars Rover. — CNET’s Green Tech

Smith Electric Partners Up With Proton Power: Fleet van maker Smith Electric Vehicles and hydrogen fuel cell developer Proton Power Systems have agreed to collaborate on a new battery-powered vehicle using Proton’s fuel cell technology “to substantially extend the range of Smith’s previous models to nearly 200 miles.” — VentureBeat’s GreenBeat

Obama vs. Obama: The $54 billion in loan guarantees for nuclear power plants in President Obama’s 2011 budget proposal is not “exactly an about-face from the talk that once emanated from Candidate Obama, but it does represent a significant shift from his once-cautious stance.” — Greentech Media

White Roofs for Climate Cooling: A forthcoming study suggests that “if every roof in every city were painted white, it would reduce demand for air conditioning and ultimately cool every city by an average of about 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit.” — NYT’s Green Inc.

Next Chapter for UN Climate Accord: As of today, 55 countries have submitted their greenhouse gas emissions reduction plans to the United Nations, including the U.S., Canada, the 27 members of the European Union, India and China. — UPI

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Boston-Power Plowing "Full Steam Ahead" on Saab EV Project  

2010-02-02 20:07

Josie Garthwaite - Automotive

The shaky status of Saab — the loss-making auto brand that General Motors threatened to shut down late last year before finally reaching a deal with specialty car maker Spyker — cast uncertainty around the first publicly announced demonstration of battery maker Boston-Power’s devices in plug-in vehicles. The dust has now started to settle, and Boston-Power CEO Christina Lampe-Onnerud tells us the project is going “full steam ahead.”

Spyker, which agreed to pay GM at least $74 million in cash for the brand, released plans today to operate Saab as,”an independent performance-oriented niche car company with an industry-leading environmental strategy,” and announced the goal of making it profitable by 2012. Lampe-Onnerud told us in an interview yesterday that the Massachusetts-based startup now has “people deployed on the ground” in Sweden (she declined to specify how many), and Saab is still engaged in the project. 

Heading into the Swedish EV project, Lampe-Onnerud said, “We knew there was some business risk.” But the potential gains and opportunity to learn about deploying its batteries — currently used as premium upgrade batteries for Hewlett-Packard laptops — in electric vehicles and figuring out “the ideal handshake” between the battery and the drive train, made the collaboration a “no brainer” for Boston-Power. She said the startup is “thrilled with Spyker coming in.”

Other partners in the EV coalition, which is receiving funding from the Swedish government, include electric powertrain developer Electroengine, project incubator and manager Innovatum Technology Park, and Swedish power industry trade group Power Circle. According to the coalition’s December 2009 announcement, the group has built a small number of demo models and plans to produce more than 100 vehicles in 2010.

According to Lampe-Onnerud, Boston-Power has other auto projects in the works. While the company is “trying to be very humble with our customers,” and let them make any announcements about planned plug-in vehicles and battery suppliers under consideration, Lampe-Onnerud said Boston-Power is involved with automakers that are testing vehicles at various scales and stages — from tens to thousands of cars per month. “This is not a real market, it’s an emerging market,” she said. “So every project is one-off.”

Despite the supply contracts automakers ranging from General Motors to Fisker Automotive have recently handed to LG Chem, A123Systems and other battery makers (and the battery ventures that companies like Nissan and Daimler have established) to support upcoming plug-in vehicle lineups, Lampe-Onnerud sees the very nascent electric vehicle market as still fairly open for battery makers. There’s a common perception that “all automotive companies have picked their batteries. Not in our experience,” she said. “Everybody will need multiple sources.”

There’s room for “large, competent battery players” that are “very likeminded” with legacy automakers, said Lampe-Onnerud, but also for “agile battery players able to respond” quickly to an evolving market. For now, low-volume projects are the name of the game for Boston-Power in the EV space. Running up against capacity constraints, Lampe-Onnerud said, “20,000 cars would sell out our capacity…We have to be careful in allocation of cells.”

For the foreseeable future, any expansion in production capacity will most likely take place overseas. After the Department of Energy denied Boston-Power’s request for $100 million to set up manufacturing operations in the U.S. last year, Lampe-Onnerud said, “We went right back to China.”

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Home Energy Efficiency to Get Its Day in the Sun by 2014  

2010-02-02 18:51

Josie Garthwaite - green building

Tools and services for improving a home’s energy efficiency — things like Energy Star appliances, home energy audits and green roofing materials — often lack the glitz and gadget-appeal of solar panels and other highly visible signs that a homeowner has “gone green.” But according to a new report out today from Pike Research, energy efficiency retrofits, products and services for the residential building market are poised to see a wave of growth as the U.S. pulls out of recession over the next five years.

In particular, Pike forecasts that the home energy auditing market will nearly triple to $23 billion by 2014, up from $8.1 billion last year. The market for efficiency improvements along the lines of roofing and window replacements and upgrades for HVAC systems and appliances will increase to $50.2 billion by 2014, up from $38.3 billion in 2009, the firm predicts. And Energy Star refrigerators and clothes washers could generate revenues of $21.9 billion to $33.2 billion between 2009 and 2014.

After what Pike describes as “a long period of obscurity” for energy efficiency — not to mention a major slowdown in new home sales and remodeling — what’s driving this growth? A big part of it comes from federal, state and local governments offering incentives, tightening building codes (one of our 4 Green Building Trends to Watch in 2010) and developing new green building requirements.

But there’s more to it, says Pike managing director Clint Wheelock. “A number of factors are converging to make energy efficient residential products and services a hot sector over the next several years,” he notes in today’s release, including environmental awareness among consumers and new offerings and rebates from product makers. And As Geoff Chapin, chief executive for home energy retrofitter Next Step Living, told us recently, rebates from utilities for homeowners to get energy audits, install insulation or take other steps to reduce their energy use are also helping to boost business for energy efficiency companies.

But Pike voices concern that the residential efficiency market could see short-lived growth if government programs like President Obama’s so-called “cash for caulkers” initiative supporting home energy retrofits comes to an end at some point. However, regulations like California’s new green building code, adopted last month and taking effect next year, have staying power. And there’s nothing like the simple progression of time to spur interest in some of these technologies and services: Pike anticipates that the aging U.S. housing stock, along with rising utility prices in coming years, will help buoy demand for energy efficiency products.

Photos courtesy of Flickr user O b s k u r a

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Smart Grid 101: It's About Relationships, Not Technology  

2010-02-02 16:33

Katie Fehrenbacher - smart grid

Sure, your company’s smart grid tech might be the slickest on the market, but don’t expect that to guarantee success in the industry. According to a report out this morning from Lux Research, which predicts the smart grid market will be a $16 billion opportunity by 2015, getting ahead in the smart grid market is more about who you know , rather than how advanced your technology is. “Few smart grid companies are differentiated by the technologies they're fielding,” writes Jacob Grose, a Senior Analyst at Lux Research.

That’s likely because the smart grid is made up of technology that’s already well-established: wireless networks, software applications, computing. Being fairly mature, this tech leaves less room for differentiation than say next-gen biofuels. Instead the key to moving ahead or falling behind in the market has to do largely with getting utility customers and being able to scale your technology. “Competitors unable to establish early commercial relationships with utilities will likely get squeezed out of the market before long,” says Lux.

For a new startup, scoring that utility deal can often be about partnering with one of the bigger industry players (IBM, Cisco, Accenture, Silver Spring Networks) for a utility project. Utilities would prefer to do deals with larger companies, given that they’re pretty risk averse, slow-moving and need “mission-critical” electrical gear. As Warren Weiss, partner at Foundation Capital, put it during our smart grid bunker event last week, the next generation of smart grid startups will be wise to stand on the backs of giants in this industry. Pulse Energy, a Vancouver-based startup we profiled this morning, has followed that strategy closely.

And Lux points out, it will be a big ol’ race to grab those utility deals. "The most successful players will be those who can navigate a shifting landscape of market segments, and partner with companies able to capitalize on opportunities before their competition,” says Grose. That’s particularly true with the injection of $4 billion in smart grid stimulus funds. Utilities that were allocated funding under the stimulus package will soon have to spend it on projects and that means there is currently an uptick in utility deals that will quickly die down.

This week a variety of smart grid firms announced deals with utilities, including that the Tennessee Valley Authority will be working with SmartSynch, and Tantalus Systems has done a deal with small Tennessee utility Johnson City Power Board for a smart grid network.

Image courtesy of ogimogi’s photostream Flickr Creative Commons.

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Posted by Chad S at 7:41 PM 0 comments

xFruits - 21st Century Regenerative Technology - 10 new items

Pulse Energy: Buildings, Like Cars, Need Efficiency Tune-ups  

2010-02-02 13:00

Katie Fehrenbacher - Green IT

Buildings, like cars, need constant tune-ups to make sure they’re running efficiently, says David Helliwell, co-founder of 4-year-old startup Pulse Energy, which makes building energy management systems. Fortunately for Pulse Energy’s customers, buildings don’t need the time-consuming, oil change-type of maintenance, and Pulse Energy can use software to make sure a building’s energy monitoring is performing optimally in real time, says Helliwell. The Vancouver, Canada-based startup has been doing one of these so-called “continuous commissioning” projects for Canadian utility BC Hydro, and Helliwell says the company is working on “a few big deals in California,” too.

While Pulse Energy might not be a big name in the U.S. smart grid ecosystem, the company has done well for itself in its domestic market, including installing its combo of software and hardware in 10 buildings for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, among them the speed skating and hockey stadiums and the athletes’ village. Pulse also has a background with the University of British Columbia, developing software that could make sense of energy data from the university’s 300 campus buildings.

Pulse’s system has a few key parts: One, collecting the data from the building through inputs (Siemens’ and Cisco’s energy management systems, smart meters, etc.); two, using its servers to analyze and calculate data, like crunching the numbers to find out how much energy and money the energy management system is saving the building owner; three, creating a dashboard so facility managers and building occupants can see the energy data; and four, creating energy reports so building owners can dig into specific areas of their facility that need fine-tuning.

Pulse Energy is an example of a company developing next-generation applications, while much of its services piggyback off of already installed hardware and energy management systems. Helliwell says while some part of the service needs hardware, “As much as possible, we like to use existing systems.” Utility-focused applications are one of the next untapped opportunities (for a more in-depth look, check out our GigaOM Pro subscription service).

For example, UBC’s buildings already had a newly zinstalled Siemens’ building management system, and had just gotten an efficiency upgrade when Pulse came along. But the building managers couldn’t “make heads or tails” of the information that emerged, said Helliwell. UBC asked Pulse Energy to help it communicate the energy info to the building occupants, so Pulse developed a real-time dashboard for their systems. Pulse has also partnered with Cisco and integrates with its building mediator tool. As Warren Weiss, partner at Foundation Capital, put it in during our smart grid bunker event last week, the new generation of smart grid startups would be wise to stand on the backs of the giants in this industry.

If Pulse Energy can sign up those big deals in California that it mentioned to us it could mean the beginning of moving beyond its Canadian roots. This year Pulse plans to double the size of its team, and while the company has been bootstrapped to date, Helliwell says he gets calls from venture capitalists on a weekly basis, mostly from the Bay Area and Massachusetts.

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Tesla's Profitability Claim Was The Milli Vanilli of Cleantech  

2010-02-02 08:00

Josie Garthwaite - Automotive

“Profitability” can be a squishy term for startups — until they file for an IPO and deliver, through the SEC, what’s often the first unfiltered snapshot of their financial situation: the S-1. That’s been the case for Tesla Motors, which filed on Friday to raise up to $100 million through an initial public offering.

Over the years the startup has highlighted specific units — the powertrain supply unit and the core Roadster business – within the company as they became cash-flow positive. Last year Tesla even trumpeted its first-ever “overall corporate profitability” for the month of July. But as Tesla’s filing makes all too clear — it’s generated just over $108.2 million in revenues and has a deficit of more than $236 million — the company as a whole remains far from turning a real sustainable profit and has never been profitable for a single quarter (a 3-month period).

Tesla claimed in August 2009 that it “attained a significant milestone in July when it achieved overall corporate profitability with approximately $1 million of earnings on revenue of $20 million.” CEO and Chairman Elon Musk called it “a bottom-line profitability.”

In a press release, the company attributed this turn of events primarily to sales of its higher margin second-gen electric sports car, the Roadster 2. And wouldn’t that be great — if a few tweaks to the company’s much buzzed-about Roadster could nudge the company into profitability? Well, it didn’t really work that way.

Tesla told us at the time that the $20 million in revenue included “a small percentage of revenue from technology sales,” but that profitability for the month was “based primarily on revenue recorded on cars delivered to customers.” Spokesperson Rachel Konrad acknowledged back in August, “It's definitely conceivable that we would not be in the black every month going forward as expenditures ramp up" for the Model S project.

Friday’s filing suggests several other factors (in addition to Model S investments) could make a repeat-performance of the July figures difficult for some time to come. Tesla’s only powertrain deal to date, with Daimler, is for a demo project with only up to 1,000 vehicles. The filing with the SEC shows Tesla didn’t start recognizing revenues from actual powertrain sales to Daimler until the last quarter of 2009. Between May and November 2009, however, Daimler made payments to Tesla under a battery pack development agreement, including five months worth of payments that had been deferred until the contract could be finalized in May.

Tesla notes in its filing that its revenues in the three months ended September 30, 2009 “were significantly higher than in prior quarters,” after the company “made a significant effort to increase our production capacity in order to accelerate deliveries to customers.” Some of the 324 deliveries in that quarter were a matter of making good on reservations placed months earlier, rather than simply keeping up with booming demand.

Tesla notes in its filing that in the first nine months of 2009, “A significant portion of the revenue recognized during this period came from fulfilling reservations placed prior to 2009.” Some revenue during that period also stemmed from vehicles that had been delivered in 2008 but received promised powertrain upgrades last year.

Down the road Tesla might not have the luxury of backorders to help boost in revenue in a given quarter if it’s focused on getting the Model S to market. As the company writes, “We may not have a significant wait list of orders for our Tesla Roadster in the future, and we may not be able to maintain or increase our vehicle sales revenue in future quarters.” The company plans to stop producing its current Roadster in 2011 and doesn’t expect to sell a next-gen Roadster until at least a year after the Model S starts production (which at the earliest is 2012). It’s unclear whether Tesla will take reservations — collecting payments and building up a wait list –for the Roadster model during that time (in fact, Tesla anticipates it’s possible that “Regulators could review our practice of taking reservation payments,” and require the company to halt or restructure this practice).

So what does Tesla say its saving grace for profitability will be? Relatively high-volume sales of the long-planned Model S — at an estimated 20,000 per year. As BusinessWeek put it, “It's hard to see that [those volumes] happening. It took Toyota three years to get to that kind of annual sales clip with the Prius, and it sold for less than half the price.” If and when Tesla goes through with the IPO, we’ll be able to see in black and white (and for a while, probably red) how that plan plays out.

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Semprius Surges Into 2010: A Siemens Deal, VC Funds  

2010-02-01 23:30

Justin Moresco - clean power

Hit the ground running in 2010. That appears to be the game plan for Semprius, a semiconductor technology company that is developing solar concentrator photovoltaics (CPV), systems that use mirrors and lenses to concentrate sunlight onto highly efficient solar cells. Just a month into the new year, Semprius has already closed an $8.16 million second round of venture funding and cut deals with heavyweights Siemens and the Department of Energy.

According to a Securities and Exchange Commission document filed late last month, the Durham, N.C.-based firm increased a previous round of funding (announced last June) by about $1.7 million. ARCH Venture Partners, Applied Ventures, Illinois VENTURES and a handful of others were disclosed as investors in June, but it's unclear who joined in the final tranche. We’re waiting to hear back from Semprius on more details of the funding.

Perhaps the startup's biggest win to date is its partnership with Siemens Industry Inc., a U.S. affiliate of Germany's Siemens, a global powerhouse in automation systems, power conversion and control technologies, among other things (see How Siemens Is Tackling the Smart Grid). Semprius announced last week that it is partnering with Siemens Industry to jointly develop and deploy a "plug-and-play" CPV demonstration system based on Semprius' solar module arrays and Siemens' automation and control components. The companies said the systems are slated to be installed in "numerous" test sites, including at utility sites, commercial sites, and government facilities, but they didn't say when the demos would be up and running.

Semprius says its secret sauce is what it calls a micro-transfer printing technology, a process in which semiconducting material is rapidly stamped onto a substrate, such as glass or plastic (see a video here). The technology is a faster and less expensive way to produce semiconductor devices – in this case solar modules but it could be extended to other industries such as disk drives – than current manufacturing techniques on the market, according to Semprius.

The startup's initial focus is the production of CPV modules for "large-scale" power generation. These modules would use gallium arsenide-based, multi-junction solar cells coupled with "inexpensive optics" to concentrate solar energy onto the high-efficiency cells.  The company's CPV system design also calls for using dual-axis trackers, and that's at least partly where Siemens comes in — its automation and control equipment could be used to drive the trackers. In addition to any technological support from the deal, Siemens adds a new layer of validation for the startup's technology and business plan.  

Semprius also announced in January that it is one of four companies selected to participate in the Department of Energy's PV Technology Incubator Program. Under the program, the department will invest up to $12 million total in the four companies to support their advancements to full commercial scale. Semprius is off to a strong 2010, but commercial production will be where the rubber meets the road.

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Daily Sprout  

2010-02-01 23:00

Josie Garthwaite - Misc

Climate Spies (or Lobbyists): “Britain’s former chief science adviser says the theft of climate e-mails from the University of East Anglia in southern England may have been the work of spies,” or possibly U.S.-based lobbyists. – Associated Press via Washington Post

Incentives Proposed for Small-Scale Solar, Wind: “The U.K. government Monday introduced incentives for small-scale green electricity generation and published its plans to encourage low-carbon heating technologies, as it seeks to boost renewable energy supply to meet European Union 2020 climate change targets.” — Dow Jones Newswires

1BOG, One Year Later: San Francisco startup One Block Off the Grid, or 1BOG, says that it pulled together enough groups of homeowners to have 550 solar systems installed in 2009 (it collects referral fees from installers), and saw a profit. — NYT’s Green Inc.

Inextricable Links: For the first time, the Pentagon's primary planning document addresses the threat of global warming, noting that “climate change, energy security, and economic stability are inextricably linked.” – The Wonk Room via Grist

Chevy Volt Rollout Plan: Everywhere Simultaneously: General Motors CEO Ed Whitacre says the automaker plans to introduce the upcoming Chevy Volt “everywhere simultaneously,” at low volumes, rather than sequentially state by state. — GM-Volt

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The New Smart Grid Players: Korea, Japan, China, Oh My!  

2010-02-01 21:00

Katie Fehrenbacher - smart grid

Huge electronics conglomerates in Japan and Korea — Sharp, Panasonic, Samsung, LG — have long been leaders of gadget, battery and mobile innovation. China has also spent decades as the low-cost manufacturer always “just about to emerge” as the electronics innovator and massive purchaser. Now it’s these same companies and countries that are poised to have a very big impact on the global smart grid industry.

Last week at our smart grid bunker event, I had an interesting conversation with Pike Research founder Clint Wheelock who said he’s seen a growing interest from Korean electronics and communications companies in the U.S. smart grid market. Wheelock told me that Korean firms like LG Chem (which is supplying battery cells for the Chevy Volt) and Samsung SDI “have strong ambitions for the U.S. market. I believe they will soon begin business development discussions with utilities, if not already.”

Already a group of them — including LG, SK Telecom and KT — are building a domestic smart grid pilot on the island of Jeju, which is south of Seoul in South Korea. The companies told Reuters last November that they’re shooting for 30 percent share of the global smart grid industry.

KT, SK Telecom, and LG tend to spend a lot of money on R&D, taking risks and rolling out new products and services that are at the bleeding edge of technology. That can lead to some major innovations. The country's leadership in the battery space could also instantaneously give it a leg up in energy storage for the smart grid. LG Chem competed directly with A123Systems (a AONE) for the Volt deal and won, and will no doubt be competing with A123Systems and other players in the grid storage market.

Last week it became clear that Japanese companies are also closely eying the U.S. smart grid market. Japanese firms, including Toshiba, Kyocera, Shimizu, Tokyo Gas Co., and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, will spend $33.4 million on a smart grid project in Los Alamos and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Toshiba says it will install a 1-megawatt storage battery at the Los Alamos site, while Kyocera and Sharp will test smart home, energy management and load control technology.

The national Japanese newspaper The Yomiuri Shimbun reported this weekend that Japan’s Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry will try to get the International Electrotechnical Commission to adopt 26 Japanese standards to serve as global standards for the smart grid. The paper says “The move is aimed at catching up with the United States, which has taken the lead in developing technological global standards, according to sources.”

Then there’s China, which is clearly no longer the sleeping giant in electronics, particularly when it comes to building out a smart grid. New research out from ZPryme Research and Consulting last week reports that the Chinese government plans to spend $7.32 billion in stimulus funds on building out a smart grid — surpassing even the massive stimulus funds from the U.S. government — in order help manage the doubling of its electricity consumption over the next decade.

U.S. companies are flocking to China to try to get ready for the funds, much in the same way Korean and Japanese firms are stepping into the U.S. market. Last month General Electric said it will partner with the City of Yangzhou, China, to build a smart grid "demonstration center" in the city of 4 million. Last year IBM said it signed an agreement with ENN Group, a Chinese energy provider, to form a joint venture focused on "intelligent energy,” and IBM told us it expects to generate a minimum of $400 million in smart grid revenues in China over the next four years. Hewlett-Packard, Cisco and Accenture, along with meter maker Itron are all also developing smart grid-related business in China.

Image courtesy of kodama (home)’s photostream Flickr Creative Commons.

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Obama's 2011 Budget: What Did, & Didn't, Make the Cut for...  

2010-02-01 18:21

Josie Garthwaite - Policy

The Obama administration released its proposed budget for the 2011 fiscal year this morning, and within the more than $3.8 trillion plan are several programs that could help shift the playing field for greentech startups and energy companies. To start, there’s direct support for the renewable energy, carbon capture and smart grid industries, through loan guarantees, research and development project funding and other programs. Glaringly absent is the $646 billion in revenues that last year’s budget assumed would come from a program for limiting and trading carbon allowances, signaling dwindling confidence that the Senate will pass a bill with a cap and trade system this year.

The administration has also proposed to take a nearly $39 billion bite out of tax breaks for the fossil fuel industry that some advocates of renewable energy sources like solar and wind argue have blocked the gateway to grid parity and fair competition. The bulk of those cuts — $36.5 billion worth through 2020 (a small fraction of the sector’s projected revenue) – are targeted at the oil and natural gas industry ), while Obama proposes cutting tax breaks for the coal industry worth some $2.3 billion in that time frame.

The portion of Obama’s budget dedicated to the Department of Energy includes $300 million for the highly competitive grant program known as ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy), which supports very early stage, moonshot technologies that might be too risky for other investors  and can open new doors for cleantech startups. Last fall, the agency awarded its first round of grants, totaling $151 million, for 37 projects — out of a pool of 3,600 applicants.

The budget proposal for the DOE, which on Friday announced a new commission on nuclear energy, also includes significant support for nuclear power plants and research: a whopping $36 billion in new loan guarantee authority for two new nuclear power facilities (tripling the amount currently available for these guarantees) and $793 million for “a new cross-cutting research program to address technology needs for all aspects of nuclear energy production.

Meanwhile, a proposed boost for renewable energy and efficiency projects would support up to $3 billion to $5 billion in guarantees. It’s a lesser amount than the nuclear loan guarantee program, but those dollars could support more projects due to the high costs associated with nuclear development (the first award under the DOE loan guarantee program last year, for thin-film solar startup Solyndra, clocks in at $535 million).

Makers of green energy equipment could also benefit under a proposed $5 billion expansion of a tax credit first created as part the stimulus package, which covers up to 30 percent of the costs for new, expanded or retooled greentech equipment factories. That likely comes as welcome news for the companies behind several hundred projects that didn't make the cut for $2.3 billion in credits awarded last month under the oversubscribed program. For smart grid technologies, the administration proposes allocating $144 million for R&D as well as demo projects.

In a major shift from the administration’s 2010 budget proposal today’s proposal does not include revenue from a cap and trade system for limiting greenhouse gas emissions. Whereas last year’s proposal assumed $646 billion or more would roll into federal coffers between 2012 and 2019, this year the President says he expects a cap and trade system will be “deficit-neutral,” neither boosting nor shrinking the government’s revenue.

Over at the Environmental Protection Agency, today’s budget proposal includes a $4 million increase over the 2010 allotment for implementing greenhouse gas reporting mandates, bringing the 2011 amount to $21 million. The agency is also aiming for a major $43 million uptick over 2010 in funding for”regulatory initiatives to control greenhouse gas emissions.” That brings the 2011 total to $56 million, with the largest chunk proposed to help states set up permitting programs for large carbon emitters.

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Coulomb Technologies Picks Up $14M for Electric Car Charging  

2010-02-01 15:53

Josie Garthwaite - Automotive

With plug-in cars like the Chevy Volt, Tesla’s Model S, the plug-in Prius and Nissan’s LEAF all set to hit the market in the next couple of years, get ready for an electric vehicle infrastructure boom. Investors are — this morning Coulomb Technologies, an EV infrastructure startup based in Campbell, Calif., announced that it has raised $14 million in second-round financing. Voyager Capital and Rho Ventures led the round, while Hartford Ventures and Siemens Venture Capital also joined.

At more than triple the size of Coulomb’s$3.8 million Series A round funding round a year ago, this latest funding suggests a serious ramp-up ahead for the 3-year-old company. Coulomb says the new funds will help it expand research and development, operations and sales, and gain ground in markets in Asia and South America — the latest targets in the overseas expansion Coulomb began last year, focusing initially on Europe.

With the governments of China, France and other countries investing heavily to build out national infrastructure for plug-ins, early movers in Coulomb’s space have a significant opportunity. Raising this capital to accelerate its efforts in foreign markets could help carve out a larger piece of the increasingly competitive, but still nascent EV infrastructure market.

Coulomb offers smart charging — coordinating vehicle charging and discharging according to the power grid's needs and user preferences through software. Coulomb's subscribers can get a lower rate for charging sessions if they agree to allow the utility to temporarily suspend their charging when needed. A company like smart grid firm GridPoint can connect the dots to let utilities dynamically shed portions of that load based on set parameters.

Coulomb's business model involves selling subscriptions for access to the charge points, and also collecting fees from retail stores, home and building owners, and other entities to install the equipment. Those property owners will get to keep single-use fees to cover electricity costs (with more to spare), while Coulomb draws revenue from subscribers with pre-paid charging plans. According to today’s release, more than 120 customers, including McDonalds, Dell, as well as municipalities like San Francisco, have signed up for Coulomb’s charge points, which are used by ”thousands” of electric vehicle drivers.

By selling access, rather than electricity, Coulomb could avoid a potential roadblock now facing companies like infrastructure startup Better Place, which plans to provide electricity sell electricity directly  – generally the province of utilities — to drivers through a network of battery charging stations (see “5 Misconceptions About Electric Car Charging“). In California, expected to be one of the largest early markets for electric vehicles, it remains unclear whether and how the state’s Public Utility Commission will regulate third-party electricity providers.

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What A Successful Tesla IPO Would Mean: Branding Is Everything  

2010-02-01 13:00

Katie Fehrenbacher - Automotive

Electric vehicle startup Tesla’s IPO-filing last Friday provided industry-watchers with the first real glimpse behind the company’s hip brand and high-profile PR. What they saw wasn’t as pretty as the image: a company that’s lost $236.4 million, sold less than 1,000 cars, and will lose many millions of dollars more as it retires its current generation Roadster next year and strives to produce the more mainstream and lower cost Model S.

If investors actually respond positively to Tesla’s public offering, to me, it will mean that in this media-saturated day and age, branding is truly everything. The hip silver (and green) brand, and the company’s claim to fame of being "the first, and currently only, company to commercially produce a federally-compliant highway-capable electric vehicle,” according to its S-1, will have completely outshown investor’s natural instincts to back companies that will be able to generate sustainable profits in the near term.

Tesla’s vision — to use an EV sports car to create mass appeal — is such an utterly cool concept that despite a lot of ups and downs at the company (from the founders feud, to months and months of delays of the Roadster, to layoffs, to slapping Roadster customers with charges for previously standard features, to recalls) most are still rooting for the company to make it.

The company does very little advertising, and has used word-of-mouth and media appearances to create a brand that Ad Age recently declared one of America’s Hottest. Tesla referenced its “Brand Leadership” in its S-1 as one of its competitive strengths — to me it seems like it’s by far and away it’s biggest strength.

But the problem with brands is that they can also be vulnerable. One incident with a battery that blows up, or too long of a delay in production of the Model S, could seriously handicap Tesla’s brand and thus its future. And as Business Week points out when Tesla’s Model S comes out there will be many more competitive brands out there. Nissan will have its Leaf on the market, General Motors will be selling the Chevy Volt and there will be a plug-in version of the Prius. Tesla’s best bet for a successful IPO at this point is to just to maintain its stellar brand, but then again, there’s that whole quiet period ahead.

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The Untapped Opportunity in the Smart Grid: Utility Applications  

2010-02-01 08:00

Katie Fehrenbacher - smart grid

While a lot of the attention has been focused on gadgets, software and services that will convince the consumer to engage with home energy management, an untapped area for opportunity for startups and incumbent players alike will be utility applications. That was one of the themes that came out of our Smart Grid Bunker Session we held last week in San Francisco (see videos here) and which I’ve focused on for an article on GigaOM Pro (subscription required).

Here’s the idea: Utilities will be faced with managing 3,000 times more information on a daily basis when smart grids are built out, said Warren Weiss, Managing Director of Foundation Capital. This massive amount of data will force smart grid networks to ultimately be based on distributing computing and machine-to-machine networks, like most modern broadband and communications networks. That’s a big leap from the mainframe, point-to-point, often times manual, systems that utilities currently have, pointed out Andy Tang, Senior Director of the Smart Grid for PG&E last week.

For startups, smart grid companies and IT players this means utilities will need to buy applications and software layers that can help them manage that information and automatically control devices within the grid. Tang said that he’d seen a lot of power point presentations on tools that could automatically manage load, but not many ready-to-ship products yet. Weiss also said he’s been actively looking at applications that provide utilities automatic control and management of services.

Who will be able to sell these tools most effectively to utilities? Well, one thing’s for sure, the bigger the company, the more comfortable a utility feels with purchasing a product from them. Weiss explained it during our event as, the new startups will be smart to stand on the backs of giants to see — ie, partner up with a large, well-known player like Siemens, Cisco, or IBM. For more specifics on utility applications and services that will be the next hot space check out our GigaOM Pro story.

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Tesla IPO: 12 Things You Should Know  

2010-02-01 05:00

Josie Garthwaite - Automotive

Tesla Model STesla Motors, by filing on Friday for a long-awaited initial public offering, has unleashed a flood of facts and figures about its business, strategy, future plans and more than a few challenges.

In the hours after the 7-year-old startup first filed its prospectus with the SEC, we laid out the company’s financials, noted the significance of this IPO as a test for the VC model in the green car biz and pulled out some fun facts from the filing (including plans for a big gap in Roadster sales after 2011). Here’s 12 more things you should know about Tesla’s current and future business that are tucked into the S-1 filing — from what happens if the startup’s deal with Lotus doesn’t get extended to why Tesla thinks it has the lowest-cost battery pack on the market:

What does Tesla have riding on its deal with Lotus? Tesla’s current contract with UK-based supplier Lotus is only good for another 700 or so vehicles and “gliders” (partially assembled vehicles without an electric powertrain). Tesla notes it needs to seal a new supply agreement, or extend the existing one with Lotus, or else contract with another supplier — opening the floodgates for new challenges. Tesla says it would require redesign of the Roadster chassis, adjustments in the supply chain, establishment of a light manufacturing facility, licensing of certain intellectual property rights, and more — all at great expense and significant time.

What’s Tesla selling besides cars? In addition to sales of the Roadster itself, Tesla has drawn $11.1 million in revenue by selling zero emission vehicle, or ZEV, credits to other automakers since June 2008. The startup currently has a deal with one car manufacturer for credits earned from the sale of the vehicles that Tesla made in 2009, and it has until the end of June 2010 to sell those credits under the agreement. Tesla says it’s now “negotiating to extend this agreement for vehicles manufactured in 2010 and 2011.”

Can Tesla break out of the Silicon Valley bubble? Tesla is charging into uncharted territory with the Model S, a product targeted for consumers closer to the mainstream than its inaugural Roadster. Whether the company will resonate with tens of thousands of customers outside its established insider network of early adopters remains to be seen. “Many of our Tesla Roadster sales have been made to persons who had pre-existing relationships with our management team or who are affluent individuals with a strong interest in owning a novel product,” the company observes. “It may be difficult to attract high numbers of new Tesla Roadster customers who do not have pre-existing relationships with us or who are attracted to buy the Tesla Roadster after its initial novelty phase.”

What technology has Tesla developed in-house? Battery “cooling, power, safety and management systems,” a “proprietary alternating current 3-phase induction motor and its associated power electronics,” and “extensive software systems to manage the overall efficiency, safety and controls.” Tesla believes these innovations, combined with standard components, have given it the lowest-cost battery pack currently on the market, in terms of cost per kilowatt-hour.

What’s at stake in the EPA’s new range calculations? Based on today’s EPA testing system for electric vehicle range, Tesla expects to offer electric range options from 160 miles to 300 miles. But those numbers could be up to 30 percent lower by the time the Model S rolls out, since the EPA is working on a new methodology, as Tesla notes: “Recently, the EPA announced its intention to develop and establish new energy efficiency testing methodologies for electric vehicles, which we believe could result in a significant decrease to the advertised ranges of all electric vehicles, including ours.”

Why can’t Tesla take its time with the Model S? Delays, changes in the electric range estimates and the design changes that are all but inevitable as the Model S goes from prototype to production could cause Tesla to lose customers — historically, the company says people have cancelled their reservations for the Roadster after production delays.

Moreover, a delayed Model S launch would also push back the next-gen Roadster, which Tesla does not plan to introduce until at least one year after Model S production begins. “The launch of our Model S could be delayed for a number of reasons and any such delays may be significant and would extend the period in which we would generate limited, if any, revenues from sales of our electric vehicles.”

What might keep Tesla out of certain markets in the U.S.? Legal challenges lie ahead for Tesla’s distribution model — selling its own vehicles at stores (rather than through franchised dealerships) and over the internet. As Tesla notes, “many states have laws that may be interpreted to prohibit internet sales by manufacturers to residents of the state or to impose other limitations on this sales model, including laws that prohibit manufacturers from selling vehicles directly to consumers without the use of an independent dealership or without a physical presence in the state.” As a result, Tesla may have to change its sales model for at least some states or find itself shut out of whole swaths of the U.S. market.

Can Tesla’s battery take the heat (and the cold)? Tesla mentions reports in its prospectus that “have suggested the potential for extreme temperatures to affect the range or performance of electric vehicles. Many others in the electric vehicle space, including General Motors’ Volt team, accept this as fact, but Tesla describes it as though it’s a surprising new discovery: “For example, certain recent reports have suggested that electric vehicles operated in colder temperatures may experience a reduced overall range as batteries may lose the ability to hold a charge more rapidly in cold weather. If such reports gain widespread acceptance, our ability to market and sell our vehicles may be adversely impacted.”

How likely is Tesla to win a larger supply deal with Daimler? Germany’s Daimler picked Tesla last year to supply up to 1,000 battery packs and chargers for a trial of the electric Smart fortwo in Europe. However, as Tesla acknowledges in its prospectus, “There is no guarantee that we will be able to secure future business with Daimler as it has indicated its intent to produce all of its lithium-ion batteries by 2012 as part of a joint venture with Evonik Industries AG. If Daimler goes through with this, we are likely to lose the only customer in our powertrain business.”

Does Tesla have a lock on the full $465 million DOE loan? Under its agreement with the DOE, Tesla notes it cannot “access all of these funds at once, but only over a period of up to three years through periodic draws as eligible costs are incurred,” and only then if Tesla meets certain conditions, including approval of a Model S factory site under environmental regulations, and commercial customers signing up for powertrain components.

How much of the DOE-backed projects does Tesla have to cover? Tesla has agreed to spend up to $33 million “plus any cost overruns” for the two projects (Model S and powertrain), and set aside half of the net proceeds from the IPO. The startup is also obligated to direct half of the net proceeds from the IPO to an account dedicated to its DOE-backed project. The feds will later reimburse those costs.

What’s coming down the pike? For future models, Tesla is considering an electric SUV, commercial van or coupe. “By developing our future vehicles from this common platform, we believe we can reduce their development time, and therefore reduce the required additional capital investment. Our long-term goal is to offer consumers a full range of electric vehicles, including a product line at a lower price point than the planned Model S.” Having designed the Model S with a battery pack that’s easily swapped out, Tesla says it may at some point offer Better Place-style battery swapping at its stores.

Model S photo courtesy of Tesla Motors

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Posted by Chad S at 1:12 PM 0 comments

Thursday, January 28, 2010

xFruits - 21st Century Regenerative Technology - 5 new items

5 Young Scientists Searching for Energy Breakthroughs With Stimulus...  

2010-01-28 08:00

Justin Gerdes - Policy

One of Energy Secretary Steven Chu's top, if often overlooked, priorities has been to try to keep the U.S. from falling behind in the race to train the next-generation of scientists and engineers to build tomorrow's energy technologies. "Strong support of scientists in the early career years is crucial to renewing America's scientific workforce and ensuring U.S. leadership in discovery and innovation for many years to come," Chu has said.

Earlier this month, Chu announced that 69 young researchers will receive up to $85 million in funding from the stimulus bill under DOE's new Early Career Research Program. The five-year grants will cover salary and research expenses and this year's awardees were selected by a panel of outside experts from a pool of 1,750 applicants. Earth2Tech asked five of the awardees to describe how their research might lead to tomorrow's clean-energy breakthroughs:

David Erickson, Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University:

Erickson specializes in taking techniques developed to shuttle light around in the telecommunications industry, and applying them to shuttle nanomaterials around on a microchip. The goal, he says, is to "create a special kind of tweezer that can pick up and assemble tiny elements of matter into new materials." Basically a "light-based nano-assembly line." He says the research could lead to highly efficient photothermal and photoelectric energy conversion devices.

Patrick Yin Chiang, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Oregon State University:

Chiang is working to improve the energy efficiency of interconnections between the thousands of processors used for super computing – the power-hungry data crunching needed for, say, DNA sequencing or climate modeling. "It turns out that the energy consumed to make a computation is 10x less than the energy used to move that computed result somewhere else. This is the case at every level – within a single integrated microprocessor, connecting multiple chips in a single server, and connecting multiple servers in a data center," says Chiang. The goal of his research, he says, "is to tackle innovative circuit techniques that leverage Moore's Law scaling to reduce the energy of these various interconnects."

Maria‐Victoria Fernandez-Serra, Department of Physics & Astronomy, Stony Brook University:

After modestly insisting that it is difficult to connect her research to the real world, Fernandez-Serra pointed to a decidedly concrete real-world application: extending the life and improving the efficiency of fuel cells, with the help of computer modeling. A critical hurdle to be surmounted, she says, is to design and synthesize the perfect electrode – "one that does not degrade and which is a very efficient catalyst for the chemical reaction that fuel cell is designed to operate with."

"Computational experiments can shed light there where experiments cannot give accurate enough information. What I’m proposing to do is not only modeling the quantum mechanical processes that are the source of the energy provided by fuel cells, but do this on cells designed to work with hydrogen and oxygen as fuels," she says.

She also takes the long view: "What we do will not be part of new technologies in one or two years, but in 10 or 20 years that hydrogen fuel cells will be a standard technology and our research will have contributed to it."

Delia Milliron, The Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory:

Milliron's research is aimed at understanding the basic mechanisms underlying the operation of nanostructured materials, specifically inorganic nanocomposites. "The unique properties that arise from combining materials on such a small scale can be useful for improving the performance of technologies crucial to our energy future," she says, including next-generation dynamic windows and rechargeable batteries.

Working on such a small scale promises not just to improve the performance of all manner of next-generation products, it should also reduce production costs. "Because our materials are assembled entirely by solution processing and with low thermal budgets, they offer the possibility of low-cost fabrication, even over large areas," Milliron says. "Our research may inspire new technologies capable of high performance at low cost."

Andrew Gaunt, Chemistry Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Chemistry Division:

If nuclear power is to have a future in the U.S. energy mix, proponents and detractors alike agree that methods must be devised to safely secure or dispose of highly radioactive waste from spent nuclear fuel. Part of Gaunt's research focuses on aiding one proposed solution, a process called partitioning and transmutation: partially recycling spent fuel by removing the radioactively long-lived actinide elements such as plutonium and "burning them up" in new fuel or inside a particle accelerator into much shorter-lived radioactive isotopes.

The hope, Gaunt says, is to drastically reduce both the volume of waste generated and the storage time required to guarantee the integrity of the waste from hundreds of thousands of years to just centuries. "Figuring out which actinide separations are most feasible and how to develop them will help decision-makers to decide which radioactive waste processing options will offer the best solution for safe, reliable, and cost-effective disposal," he says.

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Obama's State of the Union: Pass the Energy Bill  

2010-01-28 03:00

Katie Fehrenbacher - Policy

Nice. President Obama used the State of the Union to call for the Senate to pass a comprehensive climate and energy bill. During the early part of his speech he said “This year, I am eager to help advance the bipartisan effort in the Senate,” and:

“[P]roviding incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future — because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation.”

Obama specifically gave a nod to building a new generation of nuclear power plants, “making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development,” (that will no doubt get boos from environmentalists), and more investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies. Some will see the mentions of nuclear and offshore oil as “Republican talking points,” but I am heartened that Obama took the opportunity to back the energy bill, despite the recent disappointment in Copenhagen.

See the tag cloud of the speech below – clean and energy front and center:

created at TagCrowd.com
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Thursday in DC: DOE Chief to Deliver Green Car Loan Announcement  

2010-01-27 23:33

Josie Garthwaite - Automotive

For at least one green car maker out there, tomorrow may be the lucky day. According to a press advisory from the Department of Energy today, Secretary Steven Chu will — drumroll please — “make a loan announcement” related to the agency’s advanced technology vehicle loan program at noon (EST) Thursday at the Washington Auto Show.

This could go at least a couple of ways, with Chu either announcing the closure of one of the loans that the DOE agreed to last year on a conditional basis. A far more interesting option, of course, would be the announcement of a sixth loan recipient.

Between June and October of last year, the DOE announced conditional loan agreements with Tesla, Nissan, Ford, Fisker and parts maker Tenneco. No awards have been announced in the months since the program got a new director, a former venture capitalist brought on partly to help streamline the operations. So far, only Tesla and Ford’s loan agreements have been finalized.

Since the initial outpouring of awards, the dozens of projects seeking funding under the $25 billion Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program have been inching through the evaluation process.

Most recently, for example, the stealthy T. Boone Pickens and Kleiner Perkins-backed startup V-Vehicle entered the environmental assessment stage, according to local media reports yesterday. (Back in October 2009, the company said it expected an answer on the loan by November.)

Other companies vying for funds under the ATVM program include Ener1, which in March 2009 said it had progressed to the second stage — financial and technical viability — of a four-stage evaluation process. Last week a spokesperson for Ener1’s battery-making subsidiary, EnerDel, seemed confident that the company will receive funding under the program — just not the amount it originally requested.

Rather than a $480 million loan, spokesperson Rachel Caroll told us the company expects a total of $400 million in federal funds, including the still-pending loan and a $118.5 million stimulus grant awarded last year. We have not heard back from the company yet on our request today for an update.

Norwegian electric car maker Think, in which Ener1 holds a 31 percent stake, is also seeking ATVM funds to support set up of manufacturing for its electric Think City model in Elkhart, Indiana. Yesterday Think named Indiana-based EnerDel as its exclusive battery supplier for models sold in the U.S. through 2012 — a move that could check off one more box for Think’s ATVM application.

A Think spokesperson told us today the arrangement “provides EnerDel with an identified market customer and volume assurance for their lithium ion battery pack and helps us control manufacturing costs.” That could potentially help both company’s bids for government funds.

The raft of other companies hoping for funds under the ATVM program also includes Bright Automotive, Aptera and Chrysler. The latter and largest of those three told the Detroit News late yesterday that it expects the loan this year. But hey, we don’t have a crystal ball — we’ll let you know tomorrow what the Secretary has to say.

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Daily Sprout  

2010-01-27 22:30

Josie Garthwaite - Misc

Climate, Energy Likely to Escape Axe in Budget Freeze: Climate change and green energy programs are expected to receive ample funding in the president’s fiscal 2011 budget request despite a plan announced yesterday to freeze non-military discretionary spending for the next three years. — Greenwire via NYT

East Coast “Hydrogen Highway”: Connecticut-based sunHydro wants to put the East Coast on the hydrogen fueling map with a quest to build 11 self-contained, solar-powered hydrogen fueling stations between Portland, Maine and southern Floriday. — Wired’s Autopia

Revenue on the Rise for CoaLogix: Acorn Energy subsidiary CoaLogix, which specializes in filters that remove certain pollutants from coal plant emissions saw an 80 percent increase in revenue between 2008 and 2009 — “indicating growing interest in clean coal initiatives other than carbon capture or sequestration.” — VentureBeat’s GreenBeat

Why Antivirius Vendors Belong in Green Computing: Antivirus specialists like Symantec and McAfee “seem born to manage energy consumption.” They already enjoy a trusted brand name with much of the computer-owning public. They also “contact consumers on a regular basis, and you need what they are pushing down the pipe.” — Greentech Media

Moment of Truth for High-Speed Rail Stimulus: “So it looks like tomorrow, after the State of the Union, President Obama is planning to announce how the $8 billion in stimulus money for high-speed rail projects will get spent.” Will the funds be spread too thinly, across 13 projects in 31 states? — TNR’s The Vine

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The Apple iPad's Green Grade: B  

2010-01-27 21:00

Pedro Hernandez - Green IT

So it’s official. Today, Steve Jobs took the stage and held up the iPad, Apple’s long awaited tablet. Last week, we took the best information surrounding the iPad and made predictions about the device’s eco-attributes, and we ended up being pretty spot-on. So how did the iPad fare in terms of a green grade?

Here’s our take post-iPad launch. Recently, it has become custom for Apple to extol the eco-friendly virtues of their gadgets, and sure enough, Jobs took the time to discuss the now-familiar environmental checklist slide. As expected, the iPad is free of the toxic chemicals that have bedeviled the electronics industry. So say good-bye arsenic, BFRs, mercury and PVCs.

The Case:

We predicted glass and aluminum enclosure, and sure enough, Apple is sticking with its signature materials. That means that the little slab will likely have the same solid feel of the newest MacBook Pros. Glass and aluminum also happen to be easily recyclable, so Apple gets to keep the grade we awarded it last week.

Grade: A

The Screen:

Sorry, but for a device that starts at $499, OLED is simply a non-starter. As expected, an LED-backlit LCD drives the display. Apple points out that it’s a 9.7-inch, 1024 x 768 IPS screen, which stands for in-plane switching, a type of LCD screen technology that offers better viewing angles over common twisted nematic (TN) LCD displays. Mercury-free too, so it carries forward the same grade from last week.

Grade: B

The Battery:

The good news is that the 10-hour battery will last you from the moment the planes take off in San Francisco until the wheels touch down in Tokyo. The bad news is that you won’t be swapping in a battery if you happened to have played one-too-many graphically intensive games. During the reveal, the lack of telltale seams and hatches hinted at a non-user-replaceable battery. The iPad’s spec sheet confirms it with this bullet point: “built-in 25Whr rechargeable lithium-polymer battery.” Emphasis, of course, on “built-in.”

Grade: C

Our predictions were pretty good. You can also add other energy-efficient components like Apple’s own ARM-based A4 processor and internal flash storage to its green credentials. However, as an e-book reader, the iPad is far from the greenest device out there. While Apple’s iBooks store may one day help dematerialize an entire forest worth of books, battery life simply can’t match that of the Kindle, which can go several days without recharging thanks to its electronic ink display. Fortunately for Apple, it’s also marketing the iPad as a device built for the consumption of multimedia, games and rich Web content. E-books just happen to be a big, although not necessarily primary, part of its repertoire.

All things considered, and given the laundry list of things it can do, the iPad is a pretty green little machine. Maybe even green enough to impress Al Gore (who was in attendance at the launch today).

Grade: B

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Posted by Chad S at 12:10 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

xFruits - 21st Century Regenerative Technology - 3 new items

e2e Materials Taps $3M for Greener Particleboard  

2010-01-26 16:53

Josie Garthwaite - Startups

If you spend any time reading about indoor air quality and green building materials, you quickly encounter concerns about particleboard — the pressed wood products that the Environmental Protection Agency says are the most significant source of formaldehyde in homes. Startup e2e Materials, a spinout from Cornell University that according to a regulatory filing has just raised about $3 million of a planned $4.5 million round, has come up with an alternative.

Rather than using wood chips and shavings and an adhesive that contains urea-formaldehyde, e2e produces a similar composite material — lightweight, durable and low-cost – using fast-growing plant fibers like jute, flax and kenaf, along with a resin made from soy proteins. The resulting material can be used for applications such as floors, walls, furniture and vehicle interiors. So far, customers have included the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems, as well as skateboard maker Comet Skateboards.

According to CEO Patrick Govang, e2e Materials’ process requires two-thirds of the energy needed to manufacture conventional particleboard. "We operate at about half the temperature required to produce typical resin-based panels," he told Green Building Advisor last spring. "We also require none of the OSHA equipment to mitigate fumes. So we use less energy, less material."

Of course, one of the main selling points for pressed wood products is cost, and e2e Materials claims it can compete on that level, too, by using waste products.

Zachary Shulman, a managing partner in the Ithaca-based firm Cayuga Venture Fund who also lectures on venture capital and entrepreneurship at Cornell, is listed as an investor in today’s filing.

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How an Iris Can Inspire Efficient Gas Engine Tech  

2010-01-26 13:00

Josie Garthwaite - Automotive

Startup IRIS Engines has a new take on an old technology: develop a more efficient internal combustion engine that mimics the iris of an eye. By switching up the internal structure in such a way — allowing its diameter to expand and contract – the company says it can build a powerful two-stroke gasoline engine at costs comparable to today’s typical four-stroke engines, with up to twice the efficiency.

Chief executive Levi Tillemann-Dick, who currently makes up half of the Washington D.C.-based startup’s full-time staff (one of his 10 siblings, president and chief technology officer Corban Tillemann-Dick, is the other half) told me he sees the nascent markets for hybrids, plug-in hybrids and extended-range electric vehicles as a key opportunity for the company.

“These vehicles are often used as platforms for new technologies,” Tillemann-Dick explained, and a very small, efficient and power-dense engine like the one IRIS is developing could help increase the range and overall efficiency of a car like the Chevy Volt (currently, General Motors says the model’s gas-powered  ”range extender” affords up to 300 miles beyond the 40 miles of all-electric range).

Secret Sauce: The key element of the IRIS engine design (the brainchild of the IRIS executives’ father, Timber Dick, who died in 2008) is a system of valves and vents that allows the combustion chamber to expand in diameter, rather than length. IRIS claims this expanding diameter means 70 percent of the surface area of the engine chamber can “react productively” to combustion, which is to say, by moving.

In a conventional engine, the company claims only about a quarter of the chamber’s surface area is productive — the rest is passive. You can think of it as reacting wastefully, by heating. (Another startup, Clean Tech Open finalist Alphabet Energy is tackling waste-heat recovery for automotive and other applications).

Growing Competition: IRIS, previously known as Tendix Development, represents just one of a growing number of ventures chasing after tech for a more efficient internal combustion engine. Khosla Ventures-backed EcoMotors, for example, is working on a two-stroke diesel engine, and sports car maker Lotus unveiled a 1.2-liter range extender engine-and-generator set at last fall’s Frankfurt Auto Show.

Tillemann-Dick contrasted IRIS’s “somewhat radical design” with what he calls “Lazarus projects — things that have died for some reason, and now one engineer or a group of engineers think they can make it work this time.” IRIS anticipates plenty of competition, however, from advanced vehicle technologies. For example, “If someone came up with an absolutely terrific battery,” Tillemann-Dick said, “that could be a competitor.”

Dash for Cash: Many hurdles lie ahead for IRIS at this early stage. Tillemann-Dick said IRIS has “prototyped some of the subsystems,” but it still needs to spend “a significant amount of time and money integrating them.” To fund further development over the next two years or so, he said IRIS aims to raise some $14 million in investment over the next six months.

Upon completing development (in collaboration with engine development and testing firm AVL), Tillemann-Dick said IRIS expects to spend about six months to a year working on licensing agreements with original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs. So in an optimistic scenario, the startup’s first revenue wouldn’t come in until around 2013 or later.

If the design pans out (some questions remain unanswered about how to minimize friction at higher temperatures and cycling speeds) and delivers the efficiency IRIS believes is possible, Tillemann-Dick said, “Everybody from Ford to Honda to BMW will sit up and take notice.”

The Track Record: Big talk from a small startup? Well, yeah. But IRIS has hit the ground running, with awards in several business plan and technology competitions (the total comes to more than $100,000, from sponsors including venture firm DFJ Mercury, Dow Chemical, ConocoPhillips and NASA). In addition to its contest winnings, IRIS has worked out a deal with the law firm Perkins Coie, which Tillemann-Dick said “has put in a substantial amount of work — hundreds of thousands of dollars worth — on the contingency that we will pay them back when we get funded.”

For their advisers, the Tillemann-Dick brothers have won over (among others) former Daimler-Chrysler executive Eric Ridenour, and Daniel Yergin, the founder and chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates who chaired the Department of Energy’s Task Force on Strategic Energy Research and Development.

Road Ahead: These votes of confidence may help open doors for the company, but even if the technology works as IRIS expects, it could take a lot of convincing for an OEM to make the investment to test out and ultimately adopt the startup’s tech. “It’s the same infrastructure, fuel and techniques,” Tillemann-Dick said, but, “integrating a new powertrain always requires a substantial amount of work.”

Making that bet on an unproven startup wouldn’t be an obvious decision for most automakers. As Tillemann-Dick noted, the industry has traditionally avoided “switching horses until they’re absolutely forced to.”

These days, he sees that pattern changing. But IRIS plans to cover its bases. It’s in talks with some undisclosed companies now about deals outside of the licensing model. And Tillemann-Dick said IRIS will likely pursue other applications such as generators, unmanned aerial military vehicles and racing, where players are “more willing to take risks on cutting edge technology.”

Graphics courtesy of IRIS Engines

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Landscape with Oregon native plants for ease  

2010-01-20 01:18

Carrie Sturrock, Special to The Oregonian - Enviro

Make gardening easier with native plants.
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Posted by Chad S at 10:05 AM 0 comments
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